Mickey stepped out of the car and checked his sidearm before replacing it in the holster and buttoning his suit coat. The sidewalk was clear and free of debris. His steps were measured and calm. As he walked, he thought of his condo in Virginia, about when it would finally be time to sell it and get on with the next phase of his life. He had been law enforcement for so long, chasing monsters that haunted him in the darkness of sleep for so long, he wasn’t certain he could do anything else. But perhaps that was the point—to have the time to find something else to do.
He hadn’t seen it until he had come out here. He’d had enough Carries to last several lifetimes. Enough ghosts were following him around already. He didn’t need any more.
The house was two stories and appeared well maintained. The porch was clean and the yard freshly trimmed. Professional landscapers must’ve been hired. Mickey approached the door. He turned the doorknob. The door was locked.
He went to the window on the porch. The window was open slightly but had a screen. He pushed the screen out and opened the window all the way. Sticking his head in to make sure no one was waiting for him off to the side, Mickey then climbed into the house.
The air was still. It would have been quiet except that this was an old house. The wood floors creaked with each step and ambiguous noises emanated from the ceilings and walls. Mickey pulled out his sidearm and held it by his side.
This level was the main living area. It consisted of two bedrooms, both empty, and a bathroom and living room next to the kitchen and dining table. One of the bedrooms had been turned into a study and Mickey browsed through Carrie’s choice of books. They shared some of the same tastes and seemed to prefer 19th-century American literature to modern fare.
The living room was well decorated in a Southwestern décor. A painting of a cowboy riding a horse hung on the wall over a white leather couch, and Mickey stood in front of it a moment. The cowboy didn’t have a face.
He searched the rest of the floor before coming to two sets of stairs in the hallway. One led up, and one led down. He slipped off his shoes, and then quietly took the stairs leading up.
The second floor had one bathroom and one bedroom along with a linen closet. Mickey searched them and found nothing. He sat on the bed and stared out the window into the neighbor’s home. As he was about to get up, he noticed something on the nightstand. A pink notepad. He opened it. It was a journal. He went to a random entry and read.
I miss them so much. I think about the way Bryan’s hair would curl up in the back and how Jocelyn would pull on it and then Bryan would chase her through the house. I think about how they would hold my fingers and laugh when I’d make silly faces. The pain is so intense sometimes it feels like someone sitting on my chest. Every day I just want to take some pills and end it. And every day I find some other reason to go on. I just hope one day I’ll be able to see them again. I’ve never been religious, I’ve always found the whole thing ridiculous, but I sure hope it’s true.
Mickey closed the journal. Reading it stung like a needle in his chest. He placed the journal back on the nightstand and left the bedroom.
He climbed down the steps and then took the next flight down to the basement. The door was thick, much thicker than the ones in the rest of the house. He opened it and the hinges creaked.
Mickey stood in the doorway a while. The basement had a musty smell. Warmth and mildew. He held up his weapon and entered the basement gun first.
A treadmill and some lifting machines stood next to a few dumbbells. Mickey’s eyes scanned them and then went over to the door leading into another room. He crossed quietly over and peeked inside the next room. It was filled with boxes. He entered and glanced at some of the open ones. Clothing and decorations. He reached into a box near him and pulled out a small shirt, something a two or three-year-old child would wear.
As he placed the shirt back, he became acutely aware that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. And then, in the quiet of the basement, he heard it. Breathing. It was coming from behind him.
Only Mickey’s head turned. In the corner, Zain Tamora stood, glaring down at the floor, his massive chest heaving with each inhalation. His eyes slowly drifted up, catching Mickey’s, and the two men stared at each other.
Time seemed to slow. Neither made a move or said anything. Mickey could feel the heat emanating from his gigantic frame. The man was easily six five and outweighed Mickey by a hundred pounds.
“What the hell are you?” Mickey said softly.
The voice was metallic from disuse, grainy, like an old record, as Tamora said, “The devil.”
He rushed Mickey, his enormous bulk racing forward like a semi truck. Mickey spun out of the way but was caught unprepared. Tamora got a piece of him.
The knife slid across Mickey’s ribs, a thread of blood seeping out of him and soaking his shirt. Mickey raised the sidearm and Tamora grabbed his wrist, nearly breaking it as he bashed it with his elbow. The gun flew out of Mickey’s hand and hit the floor.
Mickey swung with his other arm, the fist connecting with Tamora’s face. But the blow was like a baby hitting a punching bag. Tamora wasn’t fazed. He lifted Mickey by his belt and arm and flung him across the room.
Mickey hit the wall back first, knocking the wind out of him. He collapsed onto the floor as Tamora ran at him and delivered a kick like a bull into his stomach. Mickey flopped from the impact and dry heaved, but his stomach was empty. Nothing came out.
Tamora lifted him and flung him in the other direction. Mickey slammed against the wall and hit the floor. He felt his teeth hit the bare cement and crack and bleed. Before he could even move, Tamora had him again, flinging him into the ceiling as if he were a doll. He hit the ground hard, pain shooting through his ribs.
Mickey rolled to his back, looking up at the giant before him. Blood was seeping out of Mickey’s ribs and mouth. Normally, he would be panicked. The sight of his own blood was an indicator that someone else could potentially get infected. But here he didn’t care. He relished the coppery taste because it reminded him that he was still alive. That he could still feel.
Tamora picked him up by his hair. The giant swung, bashing his fist into Mickey’s cheek. The blow shattered his cheekbone and pain radiated through him like a hundred injections in his head at once.
Tamora lifted him again, staring into his eyes. He hissed.
Mickey took in a deep breath. Something was wrong with his lungs and he knew he would pass out soon. He wasn’t getting any air.
Mickey coughed and a thick glob of blood oozed from his mouth. “Offer one hand,” he said, breathless, “and attack with the other.”
Tamora glanced down to where Mickey was looking. Mickey held his sidearm, the muzzle pressed firmly against Tamora’s heart.
Mickey pulled the trigger. The sound, against the cement walls of the basement, reverberated in his ears and caused them to ring. It disoriented him as Tamora dropped him. But the giant still didn’t fall. Mickey lifted the weapon and steadied his firing hand with the other and fired. The round caught Tamora in the left eye and his head snapped back. His other eye was wide as it focused on Mickey, filled with pure, fiery hatred.
Mickey emptied the gun into him.
The giant fell to his knees. He collapsed forward onto his face, his arm outstretched, and his fingers touched Mickey’s face. Mickey recoiled and brushed them away.
Every muscle and bone in his body felt like they had been torn and broken. Nothing worked properly. A pulsating pain that nearly blinded him at its apex dragged at him as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. There was only one person he could think to call.
“Mickey, where are you?” Angela’s voice said on the other end.
“Carrie…” he managed to rasp.
Hearing her voice, young and full of passion, reminded him of his daughter. An acute joy filled him just then. He had never known why he cared so much about Angela. Why, of the hundred or so agents he had trained
over the years, she was the one he always thought of. She was the one that could always count on him. His daughter…
As the darkness overtook him, he smiled, and lay his head back.
29
The funeral was attended by only two other people.
Carrie Mendelsohn Tamora’s only living relative was a nephew who lived in Florida. He had flown out with his wife to, as they’d informed Mickey, “Close out a few things.” Mickey understood what they meant. The home, a savings account, and various stocks and bonds were left to the nephew in her will.
Mickey stood back as the priest finished the last rites. He leaned on a cane and the cotton stuffed in his mouth from the dental work he’d had performed made his cheeks puff out.
Carrie wasn’t religious, but Mickey had insisted a priest be there. He thought maybe she would have liked that.
When the service was complete and the nephew and his wife left, Mickey hobbled to the casket, leaning heavily on the cane. He took his time and looked at a flock of birds in the sky. Down at the other end of the cemetery, another funeral was taking place. It was packed with at least thirty to forty people.
Zain Tamora might have had a funeral, too. But the prison’s policy was cremation unless the family wanted to pay for something different. With no family, he was slated for cremation within three days of his death.
Mickey had been there for it. Had watched the gigantic body slide into the inferno. As the iron doors closed, it felt like something had been taken away from him, something heavy and dark that he couldn’t shake until that moment.
Mickey laid the rose in his hand on the casket. He stared at the photo of Carrie there. She was much younger in the photo and had her arms around her children. They were on a beach somewhere, sunshine engulfing them. Mickey wondered who had taken the photo.
He sighed and put on his sunglasses. Before turning away, he whispered, “Find peace in his arms.”
Angela waited for Mickey to finish at Carrie’s funeral. She had gone to a funeral just two days before for David Chan. Mickey had come, too. He stood by her and wouldn’t leave her side. Her own father had been a powerful intellectual and almost necessarily had been cold and distant. Mickey wasn’t like that. He was warm and open. She felt as though no matter what happened to her, he would always try to protect her.
He limped back to the car and got in, leaning the cane between his legs.
“You good?” she asked.
“I’m good.”
She put the car in drive and pulled away. She glanced at him once. The pallor of his skin was worsening and he seemed to be losing weight every day. She had seen the horse pills he had to take every four hours and it sickened her. The fact that a disease was slowly chipping away at his health and his strength drove her insane. It couldn’t be fought, or arrested, or killed. It was part of him.
“Why don’t you move out here?” she said. “The air’s dry, there’s a huge retirement community… What? Why are you smiling?”
“Can you imagine me playing horseshoes at a retirement community?”
She smirked at the thought. “No. Guess not.” She looked at him. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to retire, and lie on a beach somewhere and drink margaritas.”
“Now that sounds like a plan. But are you really going to do it?”
“I don’t think I can add anything anymore. I’m tired… and I’ve seen enough that I don’t need to see anything else.”
They drove in silence a long while. Angela got onto the interstate and they headed to the McCarran Airport. She wasn’t quite sure what to say. It felt like some kind of death. Mickey had always been the one she called when she was stuck on a case. He was the one who helped her through bad breakups, who told her stories on the phone when she was feeling alone. He was, for all intents and purposes, closer to her than her father. But she didn’t know how to express that to him.
“I’ve never liked words,” she said. “That’s why my degree’s in chemistry. I wanted to interact with other people as little as possible. But I’m gonna say something and then I’m never gonna say it again… I love you. Okay, there. I said it and if you ever fucking tell anyone I’ll cut your balls off.”
He grinned. “I love you, too, Agent Listz.”
Though they didn’t speak again until they got to the airport, she couldn’t wipe the grin off her face.
At the terminal, she took his only bag out of the trunk and he slung it over his shoulder. The planes were loud as they flew by overhead and the smell of exhaust and grease was strong.
“You really retiring?”
“Yeah, I’m really retiring.”
“Well, our loss then.”
He nodded. “You think about what I said, Angela. You think really hard about it. Before you have more ghosts than you can handle.”
“I will.”
She resisted as long as she could and then threw her arms around his neck. She’d been the first one to Carrie’s house and had found him on that dirty cement floor. Her heart sank as she ran to him and he didn’t move. When she felt his pulse underneath her fingers, she began to weep. When Mickey had gotten better at the hospital and she recounted to him what had happened, she left that part out.
“You take care of yourself,” she said.
He pulled away from her. “You, too.”
As he walked into the terminal and disappeared, Angela had a heavy grayness in her gut. It felt like it could drag her down to the ground and she wouldn’t get back up again. But there was something else there, too—a picture of Mickey lying on a beach, staring at crystal blue waters.
The image stuck with her as she got back into the car and drove away.
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Please note that this is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All events in this work are purely from the imagination of the author and are not intended to signify, represent, or reenact any event in actual fact.
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