She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,124

pain, though, was nothing like the beating going on in my head. That came courtesy of the bottle of Jameson I drank the night before, provided by my good buddy, Trey, behind the counter of Mike’s Package Liquor. I hadn’t been there in over two months, but he sure perked up when I came through the door, knowing there was a hundred-dollar bonus in his immediate future. The muscle memory of our previous transactions came back to both of us with little trouble, like riding a bike. I put the cash on the counter, he grabbed a bottle for me from the shelf at his back, handed it to me, and I was out the door. Not a word exchanged between us. A quick nod from me, a sly smile from him, and it was over. An event totaling twenty-three seconds, yet capable of derailing my life.

I didn’t care.

There had been a fire.

A bad fire.

And I needed a drink.

Need probably isn’t a strong enough word.

My body would have gladly given up oxygen for a taste of alcohol. Just a little drop to numb things, that’s what I told myself. Some half-assed lie even I didn’t believe anymore.

When Matteo finally dropped me off at home Monday night, the sun long gone, the air heavy with humidity, I was damn tired. I climbed the steps, fumbled with my keys, let myself in. Willy wasn’t there. His blankets were neatly folded and stacked on the edge of the couch, with his pillow on top. Apparently at home his parents were sticklers for making beds. He felt the need to make the couch. I figured they’d complain about their missing son at some point, but that day never came. I suppose with the cost of college tuition off their list of things to worry about, they weren’t too upset when he basically moved into my apartment.

I dropped down onto my own bed face-first, clothes still on. I somehow managed to kick off my shoes before the exhaustion carried me over to slumberland. I expected the dream to find me, but it didn’t. There was nothing.

I woke at a little after five in the morning and stumbled into the kitchen for a glass of water. I parked myself on the couch to drink it. Still no sign of Willy. The world seemed incredibly quiet, and that made me feel alone. I clicked on the TV in hopes of nothing more than some background noise, and when the screen filled with an image of Stella’s house, I first thought I was watching a rehash of the previous day’s news.

The large house.

The smoke.

A moment passed before my sleepy brain realized the smoke wasn’t just coming from the west end, but the entire house. There were flames now too, flames everywhere—crawling up the walls, reaching for the sky from holes in the roof. When I turned up the sound, someone who wasn’t Pete Lemire of KRWT CBS told me the fire had started in the middle of the night, looked like it had been set deliberately, but little else was known.

By midday, I was still on the couch, still watching.

The house was all but gone.

The bodies of four police officers had been found in the foyer, cause of death yet to be determined. Someone took the time to lay the bodies out next to each other, line them up, nice and neat.

At one in the afternoon, the soap operas came on, and coverage of Stella’s burning house was reduced to a small box in the corner of the screen. At three, the little box disappeared too. At 3:01, I got up and made my way down to Mike’s.

Willy found me passed out on the couch a few hours later.

We had words.

I left again, wandered, and found myself in the cemetery, watching the funeral of Detective Faustino Brier.

That was yesterday.

Today it was Matteo’s turn to yell at me for the second time in a week. For the past hour, he had done just that, with Willy sitting silently at the opposite end of the lawyer’s conference table. He had been scolded, too. Apparently my babysitter shouldn’t have left me alone. Groundings due all around.

“We need to get you out of here,” Matteo droned on. “Out of this city, away from all this crap you’ve got yourself caught up in.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere. This is my home.”

Matteo snickered. “Pretty soon your home is going to be an eight-by-eight cell over in New Castle. If the police don’t find