The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,5
the door before the key was even in the lock. “Hey, you stupid cat,” Halloran said, scooping him up. “Past dinner time, huh?” He threw his coat and the mail onto the couch and carried Mel into the kitchen, setting him on the counter. The overhead fluorescent flickered to life and Halloran pulled a can of 9 Lives from the cabinet. Mrs. Donovan, his cleaning lady, had stocked up at the grocery today, but she’d apparently forgotten to feed the cat. Mel began to purr, rubbing against Halloran’s arm, then greedily dived into his dinner.
There were some Mexican leftovers in the refrigerator from Tuesday, but he didn’t think he could stomach that tonight. Nothing really sounded appealing. He opened a beer and swallowed a third of it in one drink, then pulled a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket.
He loosened his tie as he shuffled down the hall, the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. In the dark bedroom, he stepped out of his shoes and stretched out on the bed, wriggling his toes. He reached for his lighter and lit his cigarette. What a terrible twenty-four hours this had been.
He tried to imagine Chapman at home with his wife and kid across town. There he was at thirty with everything Halloran still wanted at forty. A family. A house. Someone to come home to. Chapman had joined the department right after high school. His father had been a cop in a neighboring county, so Chapman had practically grown up in the force. It had seemed to be his destiny.
Halloran on the other hand had knocked about for a couple of years after graduating from college, first working as a manager for a firm that owned several convenience stores before joining the police department in Cedar Hill. He’d truly enjoyed most of the work he did as a cop, though he had to admit there were some rough moments. He had been shot at, spat on, kicked, slapped, punched, and called everything imaginable. After a couple of years he had been promoted to detective. His first partner was a mean son-of-a-bitch named Logan who retired a year later and was replaced with Mark Miller. Miller was a guy just a couple of years older than Halloran, and the two of them had formed an instant bond; in fact, they often hung out together outside work, even taking a couple of weekend fishing trips over at the lakes. But last year Miller had decided to move out west—big-sky country. Halloran, now a lieutenant, was placed in charge of investigations and Chapman had been brought up from the ranks to fill his old slot. Although they got along well, Chapman wasn’t the kind of guy to hang around after quitting time. Chapman had his little family to go home to, and he wasn’t interested in kicking back for an after-work beer or taking off for a long weekend. Marriage certainly changed things, and in spite of his loneliness sometimes, Halloran was grateful to not have that baggage on him.
Not that he hadn’t had chances. There had been several women in and out of his life over the years, and one or two that he had briefly considered marrying. But the nature of his work kept him from getting in too deep with anyone. After observing day in and day out what people did to each other, you got a kind of apathy toward life. You learned to turn off that part of yourself that needed an emotional attachment. You became an animal of sorts—eating, sleeping, working. And once a woman realized that about you, she gave up and moved on to something else. Besides, the crazy hours he worked didn’t leave him much time for a social life.
He took a swig of his beer and felt the coldness spread through his belly. Christ, when was the last time he’d been with a woman? Eight months? A year? He couldn’t remember. Occasionally he found himself sniffing around after Camron, the dispatcher at the station; she was Hispanic—dark-skinned and green-eyed with legs that looked as though they might squeeze the breath out of you if they were wrapped around your waist. He smiled at that; when he fantasized, he usually thought of Camron. Lonely as he sometimes was though, women just complicated things. Period. As jealous as he might be of John Chapman, he knew he was happier the way he was.
No commitments. That was the way to go. He drank to