THE INSTANT he inserted the key into the lock of his second floor apartment, he knew he had made a mistake. He should have plopped his ass back on that milk crate, on the fire escape where he was sitting, and rode out the rest of the night. Instead, he was inside drowning his sorrows.
What's done is done, he shrugged, and was about to leave the bathroom when he heard his wife's nag in his head.
“So, the department frowns on clean hands?”
He smirked and applied a squirt of liquid soap. Like a subconscious clinging to memory driftwood, more and more lately, he had been hearing his wife’s soft but firm attentions.
When the garbage was getting full—“You know, they pay sanitation men a good salary, but they won’t come up here to get it.”
When he left his clothes lying around—“I love you honey, but you will be wearing dirty underwear come laundry day.”
And, especially, when he came home in a foul mood from job related stress—“It's not a crime to give your wife a hug and kiss in this state, is it?”
Whether it was tough love or a gentle hand, Carol had this way of breaking through his emotional wall. He scooped up the remote to catch some news, and reasoned her perceptual powers were inherited from her father’s side of the family.
Alan Hanson had been a therapist for thirty years, before passing away the year prior. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room, but had a way about him. He would look you in the eye when he talked, and look through you when you responded.
Carol would always say he had soft hands and a heart to match. His comprehension of the human condition enabled him to be a resident handyman to broken souls. One of Dr. Hanson’s most admirable qualities was that he didn’t move to some swanky residence, and set up shop for elite clientele. He rented moderate office space downtown and treated anyone who walked in the door.
Reg saw a lot of her father in Carol. They both were smallish in stature with hearts of gold. Alan had many patients. Carol had one. Too bad she decided hers was a lost cause.
He poured a shot and gulped, clenching his neck muscles after swallowing. The burn soothed the back of his throat. He poured another, duplicating the ritual. 80-Proof, water-logged eyes, glanced around the apartment. He had been hearing Carol’s nag in his head, but hadn’t exactly been listening to it.
Newspapers, clothes, case notes, pizza boxes, and a number of empty fifths of gin were strewn about the living room. He had to fix the place up in case Carol did come back. If she walked in on what he was looking at, he knew what her exact words would be.
"Reginald Thomas Williams, what the hell have you been doing in here?"
He chuckled to himself at the look he imagined on her face. Her eyes would be slits, her mouth pouted, her brow furrowed, her hands on her hips, and her chest heaved to show she was serious.
If that didn't tell him she meant business, the ‘hell’ would have. Carol didn't curse unless agitated, and the most she would let out would be 'hell.'
She was a professed Christian and tried to adhere to the requirements, but if you ruffled her feathers, she wasn't afraid to get in your face and let loose her 'hell' on you.
It was his conscience meter, a sign that he had gone too far in something. When she would unfurl her 'hell,' along with his full name, it was time to reverse course. But he also knew what else it meant. It didn’t just mean 'hell' for whatever he had done, it meant to 'hell’ with your job, Reginald, I can't take it anymore.
Carol loved hard. The pressure of dealing with the visit every cop’s wife feared would wear on her from time to time. After talking it through for an hour or two, he would suggest a couple of nights out on the town, maybe a solo weekend away at her mother's.
It always did the trick.
The one time it took longer than a weekend, and lasted a week, was when he asked his partner Reuben to swing by his place and pick up a case file. He had been running late that morning and forgotten it on the kitchen counter.
Reuben felt the need to look down and check the shine on his shoes, just as Carol was opening the front door. She saw what she thought was an indication of bad news, with a somber Reuben about to look up and deliver the dreaded message. She clasped her hands over her mouth and shrieked before Reuben could say a word.
It took Reuben fifteen minutes to convince Carol that he wasn’t dead. And another fifteen for them to reach him, as he was in a meeting with his Captain at the time.
Thirty minutes of torture is how she described it when he arrived home that evening. The next few days were a cornucopia of 'hells' for everything he did. He had no choice but to pack her off to her mother's for a week.
After seven years of marriage, and a year removed from the incident with Reuben, Carol had been gone five months. No phone calls, no letters, no texts, no nothing. That's how he knew she wasn’t coming back. Even at the height of her distress, whenever she went away, she would leave some kind of message for him. Something along the lines of, “Keep the apartment clean,” or “Eat something besides pizza.” Not this time. This time there wasn’t so much as a fart in the wind.
"Hell," he said, and poured another shot.
The thought of eating something before turning in sounded like a good idea. The TV anchor’s words found him, before his stumbling fingers found the remote’s power button.
"Breaking News. The terror of Bay City, designated by some media outlets as the Animal, has struck again. Authorities are not releasing detailed information on the victim, pending family notification. But what we can tell you is that it occurred in Kawkawlin. We go now to our own Angela Gates, who is live on location. Angela?”
“Thank you, Katie. I'm here on the scene in Kawkawlin, where the Animal's latest victim has been discovered. As you can see behind me, the deceased was found strung up to that telephone post in hog-tie fashion.”
Reg watched in abject horror the neighborhood he left hours ago.
“An anonymous source described this killing as the most gruesome to date. Standing beside me is a woman who says she may have gotten a glimpse of the assailant. Ma’am, can you tell us your name?"
"I ain't telling you my name, but I’ll tell you what I saw."
"Okay, then, tell us what you saw."
"I got up to get me a glass of win ... I mean water, and I hear this noise in the alley outside my window. I looked out and saw this scruffy guy near the fire escape.”
Reg blinked rapidly, thinking it was the gin playing tricks on him. He lurched to the edge of the sofa to get a better look at the screen.
“I yelled down at him to cut out the noise or I would call the police. You know, because that alley is where hookers from Market Street come with their Johns."
Nope, it wasn't the gin. Front and center, big as day on his thirty-two-inch screen, was Ms. Scallywag herself.
"Did you get a good look at him?" the reporter asked.
"I’m getting to that. Anyway, he looked up at me and said something about being on patrol, like he was the police. I'm part of the building watch, and my watch commander didn't say anything to me about police being in the back alley that night."
"Are you saying he was a police officer?"
"No, I'm saying that is what he said. If you stop interrupting me, I'll tell the story. I said to him what kind of patrol you doing in the alley at two o’clock in the morning? If you’re a cop, why don’t you catch this Animal person running around killing people?"
"What was his response, if any?"
"He said something about advisement and ran off down the block. I'll bet you he was the killer. Ain't nobody going to be in a hooker-alley at two in the morning, unless he is looking for a hooker.”
"Have you talked to the authorities about being a witness?"
The sound of the shot glass breaking against the television wasn't as loud as Reg thought it would be. He had been aiming for Ms. Scallywag, but missed and hit the power button at the bottom of the set.
Before the anger and self-pity took over, he thought about going to the scene to help out. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Show up smelling like a liquor store with a suspicious back alley story. No one but his partner knew he was using his off days for Animal stakeout.
Reg stared at the black screen and wondered about his life and where it was going. He blamed himself for the death of the Animal’s latest victim. Who is this maniac? Why is he doing this?
"I had him. I was right there."
He lowered his head into his hands, and just as the Carol argument-tape started to play in his head again, the phone rang. Reg knew who it was before the second ring. If he didn't answer, Reuben would come over to see if he were okay. He didn’t want that.
"What's up, partner?"
"Hey, Reg, you heard?"
"About the Bay City Bastard? I heard."
"A pissing shame. When are we going to catch this freak?”
"I feel you, Rube.” Reg glanced at the cable display above his now gratefully unbroken Magnavox. 4:30AM. "We can get together before I go downstate and bang heads about it."
"You’re halfway in the bag, aren't you? Guess I don't have to ask how tonight’s field trip went. Sorry, Reg, you’ll get him next time."
"This time would have been nice."
"7:30, 8:00, Krissy's place?" Reuben said.
"8:00AM sounds good. See you then."
It couldn’t be helped that Reg’s first thought when thinking of his partner was good man. What else could you say about a guy who marries a woman and adopts her two kids as his own? Reuben has also been there every step of the way for him, from the accidental shooting six months ago, to this whole Carol fiasco now.
Reg glanced at the cable box again—4:35AM. He had the 8:00AM at his sister's restaurant, and then another pow-wow session with Carol's mother. He sighed and grabbed for the fifth of gin and one last shot, before a quick nap.