SHORT STORIES : Bad Cops

I press the ball of my thumb into the sharp edge of my Swiss army knife, breaking the skin open and watching trickles of blood running down the gleaming blade. It burns, as though someone is squeezing a lemon into an open wound, but I don’t let the pain get to me. I endure it. The truth is, I enjoy it. I relish in the stinging, burning sensation overtaking my thumb, because I know that this is nothing compared to the torture O’Malley will be forced to endure before this night is over. I lick my thumb clean, tasting the sweet, salty taste of my own blood as it coats my tongue.

I look over with contempt at our current “guest,” sitting on a chair within the unfinished basement of Rodney Cambry, strapped tightly, with absolutely no way to squirm, lie, or coerce his way out this time. “You’re not gonna get away with this, you bastard! Do you have any idea who I am?”

“I know exactly who you are,” I tell him, looking down upon this pathetic excuse for a cop and for a man, his face still covered in sweat, trying to put on a strong show for me and Rodney here, but you can still see the expression of paralyzing fear over his face and definitely in his eyes. He’s still in uniform, still got on his tie and his badge. The only thing missing is his gun, half of what makes him feel special, what makes him feel he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants to do it to and get away with it. The fat slob with the pudgy face, sweating profusely as I hold my knife in front of him doesn’t look so tough now, especially not with that dark patch of urine over his crotch.

“I’m an officer for the NYPD, goddamn it! You can’t do this to me!”

“Shut up!” And the back of my hand lashes across his face with a slap! as it is thrown to the side. I take great pleasure in the look of horror on his face when he sees that I mean business.

“Yeah, that’s telling him, Fred!” exclaims Rodney. “That’s telling him good!”

“Officer Jim O’Malley of the NYPD. Badge#39865. House of residence: 73 Plymouth Road, Queens, New York. Divorced on the grounds of domestic abuse and adultery. Two kids. You see, I know all about you. I know your social security number, all of your credit card numbers, everything. I even have the password to your email account at Hotmail. I could become you, if I wanted to. I could go on the Internet and buy so much shit using your credit card numbers, you’d be ruined; you’d be forced to declare bankruptcy a thousand times over.”

Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little here a little as I get further down what I know about this slime. I don’t know his email account password or even his email address, or any of that other stuff I said afterward. But that doesn’t matter. If he’s scared, then everything’s going well. I haven’t even been stalking him for several months; that’s a damn exaggeration right there. It’s only been about two or three weeks at the most. The whole purpose here is to make his death as miserable for him as possible, the way he made Missy’s death a nightmare of pain and humiliation, so too must Rodney and myself make it the same way for this corrupt cop. I think you’ll agree: it’s only fair.

“But that’s not my intention, O’Malley.”

I swing the blade of the knife before his eyes like a pendulum, his eyes swiveling to and fro, following the swaying blade of my knife, remaining glued to it as though it may strike him at any minute. I can see his mouth quivering, the nostrils of his piggish nose twitching as he whimpers and begs me not to kill him. His cowardice disgusts me. His corruption sickens me, and the gratification I receive from torturing him like this is immeasurable. I almost don’t want to kill him now; just want to keep him lingering, keep on tormenting him, keep him sitting there, sweating and begging for mercy as he pisses his pants again and again, see the hot urine running down his pant legs, soaking deep into the fabric. I wonder what Missy would say if she knew I was receiving an almost erotic thrill from all of this. Would she be in any way jealous? I wonder.

But Missy is forever gone now, God how I miss her…

“Ten years on the force, O’Malley,” I go on. “Ten years. Thirty counts of police brutality. Countless instances where you were busted for taking bribes. And that’s not to mention that cocaine addiction you secretly have. You see, I know all about you, O’Malley. I’ve been stalking you for several months now; I’ve even been watching while you take a shit. I even know about that hooker you’ve been seeing since even before the divorce.”

“How can you know about that?” he asks, shocked. “You can’t know that! No one knows about any of that!”

I slap him in the face once again. “I already told you, I’ve been stalking you. You never noticed my presence before. I’m quite good at the stalking game, you see, but I’ve always been there. Every time a cold shudder runs up your spine, and you think someone might be watching, that someone is me.”

It’s the intimidation game that I seem to have a natural flair for, not stalking. I’d just been lucky these past few weeks, that’s all; it was through stalking him that I learned of the hooker he’s been seeing. Everything else I know, I know through information I’ve learned through the Internet and through hacking, something I’m capable of doing but also something I very rarely do, if at all, because it’s illegal and very risky.

“Yeah, he just told you he was stalking ya! Why don’t you fucking pay attention?” Rodney yells as he cracks his knuckles. He is a black man, short hair with a mustache and goatee, standing at around five nine and weighing 180 pounds. He has become my best friend as of late. He had been wrongly arrested by O’Malley just before Missy’s death. Worse, he had been beaten, one of way too many incidences of police brutality that O’Malley has gotten away with and has hated O’Malley’s guts with a passion ever since and has gladly agreed to help me exact my revenge. We both agreed that tonight was going to be the night, right here in this very basement. He’s been waiting a long time for this moment, as have I, and I can tell just by looking at him that he is enjoying it just as much as I am, if not more. And why not? He’s got every bit as much reason to enjoy this as I do. I remember all too clearly his terrible debacle with our old pal Jim O’Malley and his dutiful partner, Lambert. He had told me all about it when we first met, and I remember every last vitriolic word spewed forth from his lips, as though the words were imprinted in text within my mind.

 

* * *

 

 

* * *

 

Naturally, they figured out that Rodney wasn’t the guy they were looking for and set him free once he had received the proper medical attention he required from that little skirmish, and had even been given a small amount of cash to compensate for the ordeal he had been wrongly subjected to, although it wasn’t nearly enough to truly make up for what happened, neither in my mind nor in Rodney’s.

Of course, it was Rodney’s word against O’Malley’s. Despite all of Lambert’s talk and bravado in the cruiser, he had caved in and chickened out when it really counted and agreed with O’Malley’s bullshit story, naturally enough, every word of it. Not to say that O’Malley had gotten completely off the hook, mind you. He did get a verbal reprimand and was suspended from the force for a week without pay. But that was merely a slap on the wrist compared to what he truly deserved.

That’s okay though; payment is now about to be dispensed in full. And payback really is a bitch when you finally get right down to it. Payback’s a real bitch indeed.

I watch as Rodney pulls back his fist and then rams it straight into O’Malley’s nose, hearing a dull crunching sound from the blood and then see a small trickle of blood running down from one of his nostrils. O’Malley moans softly as his eyes begin to. Rodney lifts up his foot-he has on a pair of cleats, and I know that what he is about to do is going to hurt like hell and this knowledge puts a smile on my face, wide, stretching all the way across from ear to ear. Rodney brings down his foot over O’Malley’s groin, stomping it, crushing it beneath the sole of his left cleat. I hear something pop and chuckle softly to myself as I think: There goes a testicle, O’Malley. Looks like with the exception of body count, maybe, you truly are the equal to Hitler now! O’Malley cries out, writhing in agony, his sharp, shrill screams resonating in my ears like music, a beautiful song. His bittersweet suffering, his cries of pain and pleas for mercy are music to my ears. This truly is an experience to be savored.

“Goddamn motherfucker!” Smack, crack, slap, smack! THIS’LL TEACHA TO BEAT MY ASS LIKE THAT, YA DOUCHE BAG MOTHERFUCKIN’ COCK-SUCKIN’ PIECE OF SHIT!” Crack! Bam, bam, smack! “HOW DO YOU LIKE BEIN’ ON THE OTHER SIDE, HUH, YOU SONOFABITCH?! HOW DO YOU FUCKIN’ LIKE IT?!” Wham! “’CAUSE I DIDN’T LIKE IT ONE FUCKIN’ LITTLE BIT!”

Eventually, instead of hitting something hard, I can hear the blows getting softer, meatier, with more and more red droplets of blood flying through the air. Rodney eventually stops, his fists now covered in O’Malley’s blood, now pattering against the cement floor. He is winded, out of breath, yet exhilarated at the same time, as though he had just run the marathon and came in first place. Rodney shakes some of it off his hands, snickers, and then spits in the cops bloody face.

“Man, that felt good!” he exclaims vivaciously. “Better then sex, in fact! I may have pulled a few muscles there, and my knuckles will be sore as hell in the morning, but it’s all gonna be worth it, no question about that.”

“I hear ya,” I reply as I give him a good pat on the back. “Now it’s my turn.”

O’Malley is now hunched over on that chair, whimpering softly, his face now a mask of blood, his hair now matted to his forehead. Some of it is dripping over the floor, but most of it rains over his uniform. I can see the gashes and bruises all over his face, some of the skin split open in a few areas, and the nose now hideously disfigured, definitely broken, squished into his face. He looks up at me, his head lolling on his shoulders, his eyes now bloodshot, completely red. I can see that if allowed to live long enough, his eyes will eventually swell shut. He stares at me for a little while, and then is overtaken by a brief fit of harsh nagging coughs. He then spits out a tooth, which is scattered across the floor along with several others.

“You sons of bitches,” he groans, hissing through swollen lips and several new gaps in his teeth. More droplets of red fly from his mouth with every sound he utters, a thin mist of scarlet. “You won’t get away with this, you son of a bitch, you--” He gags and coughs again, and out comes yet another tooth.

“You’re pathetic.” The palm of my hand lashes across the side of his face, and I wipe the blood off my hand over the left pant leg of my pair of Levis.

“Please...” He sobs and whimpers, and I can see a few tracks of tears forming over his bloody face and am repulsed at the sickening noises coming from his nose, those snuffling noises as more blood gushes out of his now crooked nostrils. “Please…don’t hurt me anymore…please…just kill me…or lemme go…I…I can’t take this no more…”

“You deserve everything you get and more,” I hiss through my teeth bitterly. “After what you’ve done, what you’ve taken from me…”

A vision of Missy flashes through my mind. I can see her long, flourishing honey blond hair billowing in the wind; her blue eyes gaze warmly down on me, that radiant smile over her face, her ruby red lips. She was so beautiful, both on the inside and on the outside; so caring, so wonderful, so kind…

I’m overcome with grief once more, the same sorrow I felt the day I’d been informed of her passing. There’s a lump in my tightening throat, and tears now spill down my own face as I stand there, sobbing and weeping.

“Oh God, Missy…I miss you, honey, I miss you so much…”

I fasten my hands tightly around O’Malley’s throat, choking the life out of him and watching as his face begins to turn purple. I am filled with rage, gritting my teeth as I pull this douche bag forward by the throat, still squeezing, and thrust my knee into his stomach. I jamb my knee into his gut again, and again, and again, harder and faster each time, growing more and more enraged as I think about what this rotten son of a bitch has done and what he has cost me. I can barely control myself. My rage compels me, and I continue to bash my knee hard into his gut, while my grip around his neck tightens, and instead of pink, his face now turns purple. I utter a sound, a small moan at first, and then cry out in anguish, screaming into the night, my howls of pain lingering on ever more. No matter how many times my knee gets jammed into his fat belly, no matter how tightly I grip his throat, I know that I will always be in even more pain than he is in right now, not because of what I do to him, though. It makes some of the pain go away, it relieves some of my agony, but the hurt is still there. The hurt is always there, lingering, stabbing at my heart again and again each time I see Missy’s face in my mind’s eye.

I release my hold from his neck.

I watch as he gasps for breath, the color now returning to his face. He coughs, and then vomits all over himself, spitting up grayish brown liquid chunks all over his uniform, adding to the bloodstain and I take great pleasure in the suffering I’ve caused him.

But then, the pain, the anguish rushes over me once more, overtaking me as the memories of my wife tear my heart shreds. I guess O’Malley isn’t the only one here who’s getting a bit choked up (pun intended) because now I feel my own throat tighten up. I bury my face in my hands, sobbing, crying, feeling the warm tears from my eyes washing over my palms and it hits me not for the first time that no matter what I do, whether I get drunk off my ass, or beat the living shit out of something, no matter what I do to try and soothe the pain, it always returns. It comes back tenfold, bigger, meaner, and nastier than before, and I can’t shut it off!

I love you, Missy.

Rage boils through my veins once more and I just want to kill this bastard, but at the same time, I want to leave him alive, clinging to life and begging for death, the sweet release of all pain and torment, an end to all the torture Rodney and I are putting him through. It couldn’t end soon enough. No matter what I do to him, it’s still not enough to make up for my own loss, for what he stole from me.

“YOU STOLE EVERYTHING FROM ME!” I cry out, screaming hysterically, feeling the boiling tears stream down my cheeks. “YOU RUINED MY LIFE! YOU DESTROYED EVERYTHING I EVER FUCKING CARED ABOUT, YOU SON OF A BITCH! EVERYTHING!”

I fall to my knees, crying, the image of Missy still haunting me, still looking down at me with that radiant smile of hers, with love. God how I miss her! I can’t get her out of my mind, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much her memory torments me. Even now, I still can’t get over what happened to her. I just want to reach out to her, feel her to hold me and make all the pain go away.

I remember the day we met, about five years ago, but I still remember that beautiful spring morning with perfect clarity, even after all these years. It’s imprinted in my mind forever, just like her beautiful, picture-perfect face. I just can’t get her out of my mind. I remember seeing her sitting in her stalled BMW, lights flashing. I offered her help, if she needed it, and it turned out she did. I’ve always had a knack for fixing cars, since even before I got my learner’s permit. I could’ve been a hell of a mechanic, but I became a computer engineer instead. I’m real good with computers, too, you see. I guess you could call me Mister Fix-it. Missy was very grateful, so grateful in fact that she agreed to treat me for lunch, though I don’t remember the name of the restaurant. We became an item shortly after that, went steady, got engaged, and finally got married.

We had a near-perfect marriage. A few arguments here and there, but for the most part, we got along just fine. I was always deeply in love with her and she was always deeply in love with me. I remember nearly everything--the walks in the park, on the beach, the many nights we spent in bed in each other’s arms. I remember this one time, about two years ago when I had fallen off the roof and broken my leg. She was there to take care of me, warmly, compassionately. She never complained no matter how hard it had been for her. I was the one doing all the complaining, in fact, whining and bitching about the pain. I was in some of my worst moods during that whole two-month period, but she understood that it was the pain talking and not me. I would have never intentionally said anything to hurt her. When I healed, I did everything in my power to both make it up to her for being such a jerk and to thank her for taking care of me and taking all my shit while I was in that infirmed, vulnerable state. “Hey, don’t mention it,” she had said, “you would have done the same for me, wouldn’t you?” And she was damn right. I would have, had the tables been turned, and I would have been more than happy to do it as well. We were always there for each other. We were the perfect match, soul mates, meant to be, whatever you want to call it, we were absolutely perfect for each other and loved every minute of our marriage.

The one problem that we did have (if you want to call it a problem) was that she so desperately wanted kid, but I was unfortunately incapable of giving them to her. I’m sterile, you see, not impotent. I can keep an orgasm, and stay hard. I just can’t create sperm for some reason. For whatever medical reason there is, I’m sterile, always have been and always will be. I don’t think about it these days, since her death; it’s barely even cropped up since then and I don’t think I even give a shit anymore or ever will ever again. But back then I was greatly ashamed about it. I had the bigger problem with it than she did, you see. There were times when I was eaten away with guilt, consumed with shame over not being able to give my wife the thing she wanted most. She was always understanding, though. It wasn’t my fault, she kept on telling me and she was right, of course. She was always right, but there were times when I doubted nonetheless, when no matter what she said or how often she reassured me that she still loved me despite my inadequacy ( my term, not hers) to give her everything, that I still felt deeply ashamed and wracked with guilt. But there was nothing I could do about it. We had considered adopting many times, but never got around to it. I wished we had at some point back then, as I’m sure she did as well. She would have made a wonderful mother. But now, looking back on it, and the way everything got screwed up, I’m glad we didn’t. No child deserves to be put through any of this.

 

* * *

 

The night before I’d heard of her death, I had been worried sick about her, my stomach churning with fear. I told her she shouldn’t have gone out that night. I had a bad feeling. She thought I was being irrational, and I wish I was. I told her that her friend, Liz lived in a dangerous neighborhood. Had I been sick, Missy would have taken care of me and nursed me back to health as always, and I would have done the same for her, as always. But this time, it was Liz that was sick, Liz in need of care, but with no one else to take care of her. Missy was there, though, of course, made it a point to be there for her friends in their time of need, as always, she was such a sweet girl, always trying to help everybody out and make everybody happy. The world would be such a bright place if only she were still alive, but the problem with angels, as they say, is that they always seem to go to heaven much too soon.

I wish Liz hadn’t lived in such a dangerous neighborhood. If only she had moved to a safer part of the city. If only she hadn’t gotten sick on that particular night. If only Missy wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time…

“Relax, Fred, I’ll be fine,” she had said that night, and I could almost hear her smiling right through the phone line.

“I know, honey, it’s just…I don’t like you in that neighborhood, you know?”

“Yeah, Fred, I know. You’re just worried for my safety, and that’s really sweet of you. But I’m a big girl and can take care of myself, so just relax, get some sleep, and I promise I’ll be home by tomorrow morning and that everything’s gonna be fine.”

“I…I’m sorry, but…I just don’t like it.”

“I know, but I’ll be fine. Bye Fred.”

“Yeah…bye, Missy. Love ya.”

“I love you, too, Fred.”

And then she hung up. And that was the last time I ever spoke to her.

I didn’t sleep one wink that night.

I sat in the living room, flipping through channels, mostly sitting through half-hour paid commercial advertisements, though barely paying attention to any of them and by next morning I could no longer remember any of the products they were trying to sell. I spent a brief period of time on the Internet, checking through some of the message boards I frequently participated in, checking my email. There were new posts in my forums, and new emails in my inbox, and I read through all of it, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t absorb any of the information. The text might as well have been written in a foreign language, for all the trouble I went through struggling to absorb it. I checked on some of my favorite websites to see if they were updated, and a few of them had been, but I had the same problems there as I did with my new emails and forum postings. I couldn’t even chat with any of my online buddies on Yahoo! Messenger due to my inability to keep up with the conversation so finally gave that up and simply shut down my PC. Okay, I thought then, trying in vain to lighten up the mood, back to flipping through the channels on my TV and sitting through stupid half-hour paid advertisements for crap I have absolutely no use for whatsoever.

I was a nervous wreck that whole night, waiting for Missy to come home, hoping and praying again and again that she would be alright, that she would come back to me unharmed, completely unscathed, and that some psycho hadn’t attacked her in that dark alley, raped her, and perhaps even murder her as well. She’d crossed that alley a hundred times and nothing had happened to her, but all those time had been during the day, when it was a lot less dangerous to do so. Never once at night, though, not until now. Under normal circumstances she never would have even thought about crossing that alley in the middle of the night; it’d be a death wish. And I’m quite sure she was just as nervous about doing it then as I was, but she did it anyway, because her friend was sick and needed someone to take care of her. It really says a lot about Missy, when you think about it: the type of person that she was and just how far she was truly willing to go to help a friend in need.

She’s done this trip through the alley a hundred times during the day, I kept on telling myself, but at night, things are always different. At night, everything’s a lot darker, and all the ghosts, and goblins, and monsters seem all the more real in the cold nocturnal shadows.

Why I continued to torture myself, I guess I’ll never know for sure.

Hell, it was because I honestly couldn’t help it, that’s why.

There were times when I heard a car pulling into the driveway, when I heard that loud beep that signaled that someone had locked all the car doors with a push of a button and then I heard footsteps tapping on the walkway, coming closer toward the front door. I was filled with relief then, nearly jumping for joy at what this had meant: Missy’s home. Missy’s finally come home and she’s all right! Nothing got her in those alleys after all and everything’s gonna be just fine now because Missy’s finally come home for the night! I leapt off the couch, rushing to the door and almost tearing it open, only to see nothing more than a dark and empty driveway. I slowly pushed the door shut, and then rested my forehead against the window next to it, disappointed, and now once again overwhelmed with trepidation over what might be happening to her right now, an image of her body lying dead in that decrepit alley, raped, torn open, now dinner to a bunch of scurrying rats, buzzing flies, and maggots slithering over her rotting flesh.

Feeling defeated, I slowly returned to the couch and waited once more.

I don’t know how many times I repeated that dreadful cycle of imagining those sounds indicating my wife’s return, but I fell for it hook line and sinker each time. It’s amazing just how much of a cruel, heartless bastard your imagination can be during times of great distress.

The next day, I would say, had to have been the absolute worst day of my life. I’ve had bad days before, obviously. Who hasn’t? But that one day had beaten them all by a hundred miles, a hundred fucking light years, in fact.

Normally when I miss a night’s peaceful slumber I am feeling hazy, drowsy the next morning and throughout the rest of the day as well, but not this time. This time I was wound a little too tightly, my nerves frazzled, worried sick over what might have become of my wife. It hadn’t slowly quelled as the night progressed into morning but instead intensified with each passing second.

It was around 9am when I saw the police cruiser pulling slowly to the side of the road next to my house, of the two police officers exiting the vehicle, arguing over something, but I couldn’t quite make out what. Regardless of their little spat, I knew why they were here. It had something to do with Missy. My heart went cold just then, and I froze, not wanting to open the door and let them in so they could tell me what awful news there was to tell. But I had to know. A million questions rushed through my mind: What happened to Missy? Is she alive? Is she okay? Is she stuck in a hospital somewhere? Conscious or unconscious? Was she in a coma? Brain dead? Was she in a great deal of pain? Goddamn it, what’s happened to her? I didn’t even want to know, for fear of the devastation it would cause. The cops had come to my house. It couldn’t be good if the cops where here. Whatever it was, a part of me didn’t even want to know. But that didn’t matter because I absolutely had to know, and so I let them in.

“Are you Fredrick J Sanders?” asked one of the cops, his eyes staring off to the side as he spoke to me, and when I looked at his partners, I noticed his fleeing eyes as well. Neither one of them wanted to look directly at me, for some reason, as though I were Medusa and a glance at my face would turn them both to stone, or as though I were a solar eclipse, and looking directly at me would burn out your eyes and blind you for life. Gee, I felt special right then. But I didn’t really care. All I cared about was finding out what happened to Missy and why she hadn’t come home last night or this morning. She didn’t even call at all except that one time I mentioned earlier, and that was just so unlike her to do such a thing.

“Yeah, that’s me,” I answered as I let them in, noticing that they not only avoided direct eye contact with me, but seemed to refuse looking directly at each other as well, flinching away whenever their eyes came even remotely close to meeting. “Call me Fred.” I could notice some tension between the two officers, but dismissed it as a trivial disagreement that would eventually blow over, sort of like a lover’s spat. “Have a seat,” I offered as I sat back down on my couch and shut off the TV, but they remained standing.

“I’m Officer O’Malley,” the cop introduced himself as he shook my hand, his eyes moving slightly to the left. “This is my partner, Lambert.”

“Hi,” I said timidly.

“I’m afraid we have some rather bad news, Mister Sanders.”

“Is it about my wife?”

O’Malley nodded, while Lambert just stood there, remaining silent throughout the entire conversation, brooding to himself and sparing his partner the occasional contemptuous glance. “Afraid so,” said O’Malley.

My hysteria returned once more, my heart beating against my ribcage. “What happened to her?” I yelled. “Where is she, goddamn it? WHERE IS SHE?”

“She’s dead,” O’Malley whispered.

“What?” I exclaimed in shear disbelief. “No…no fucking way, man, she can’t be…she can’t be…I…I just spoke with her last night…oh God…nooooo…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh God…this can’t be happening…”

“She was found dead in an alley this morning at around 5am.”

And that dreadful image of Missy lying dead in that dark alley near her friends apartment returned, flooding my mind. I could think about nothing else. No matter how hard I tried, the image only became clearer, sketching every grisly, painful detail across the field of my minds eye. I could see the scurrying rats feasting on her remains, the maggots burrowing through her decaying flesh. The flies buzzing--

“She was found lying face up, her pants unbuttoned and unzipped, forcefully no doubt.”

“What’re you trying to tell me?” I asked, sobbing, but I had it already figured out.

“She was raped from the looks of it.”

“Oh God…” I buried my face in my palms, hiding the tears that were now flowing from my eyes. “Who did it…Christ…who did this to her?”

“We don’t know,” replied O’Malley.

I looked toward Lambert, saw him mouthing something off, a spiteful comment, but I couldn’t make out what it was…not then anyway.

“We believe that she was attacked in that alley while returning to her sick friend’s flat after running an errand for her, and was attacked suddenly, forcefully stripped of her cloths, raped, battered, and left for dead. Liz Gordon claimed to have fallen asleep minutes after Melissa left the flat. She had been sleeping soundly until we knocked upon her door, awakening her, and then told her what happened. She was groggy as she answered the door, but once she heard the news, she began to cry hysterically, and…” O’Malley went on talking, but suddenly I could hear nothing. The image of some psycho pervert forcing himself into her was too horrible to bear, but my mind kept focusing on it nonetheless, tormenting me. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I couldn’t believe any of it. Despite my frantic worrying for her, I refused to believe that she could have been possibly raped and murdered. It was a lie. It had to be.

“Mister Sanders…Mister Sanders!”

…This is only a nightmare, you see…I did fall asleep after all, and now I’m dreaming…I’m dreaming a horrible, horrible dream that my wife was just raped and murdered…yeah, but a dream is all it is…once I wake up, she’ll be there…she’ll have come home and everything will be okay…just fine and dandy…yeah…

“Mister Sanders!” O’Malley snapped his fingers, and I was out of it, looking up at him through teary eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Get out,” I hissed.

“Excuse me?”

“I said get the hell out of my house right now, both of you!” I screamed through clenched teeth, feeling my throat closing up, making it difficult to say anything clearly through the muffling sobs. “How dare you do this to me! You think it’s funny, messing with my mind like that, telling me my wife’s dead…is that a fucking joke to you people?”

“Mister Sanders…”

“Get out of here now, or I’ll report this to your superiors.”

“If there’s anything you need…” Lambert finally spoke up, his voice almost soothing where O’Malley’s lacked any emotion or sympathy whatsoever.

“Just leave me alone,” I whimpered and the two of them left.

And as I saw the front door close behind them, I collapsed to my knees, looking up at the ceiling while the tears continued to stream down my face. “Oh God,” I whimpered, “Missy…come back…please…oh please, honey…please come home…” I fell into a fetal ball, my face pressed against my knees, and I cried uncontrollably for what seemed like decades…

Brrrrrrrrrrrriiiinnnnnggggggg!!!!!

My eyes fluttered open. I had no idea how long I was on the ground for. I yawned and stretched my arms as I rose off the ground, and it was then I realized that I had fallen asleep. The phone rang again, and a third time as well, and I felt pressure squeezing my head tighter with each sound it produced.

“Yeah, what the hell do ya want?” I muttered bitterly as I brought the phone to my ear.

A frail, voice on the other end: “Oh my God, Fred, I am so…so sorry…” It was Liz; I could hear her sobbing on the other end.

“You should be!” I barked.

“It’s my fault, what happened to Missy…all my fault…I--I don’t know what I could’ve been thinking…God, I…we were out of ginger ale…well, I was and…well…she was hesitant to go out there to get some…but you know…she went anyway, and…”

“You sent her out there in the middle of the fucking night to get GINGER ALE?”

“Well…yes, no…I might have hinted a little that I wanted some, but…”

“You fucking bitch, it’s your fault she’s dead!” I screamed into the phone, tears now streaming down my cheeks once again in my sudden fit of rage. “If you hadn’t gotten sick in the first place then none of this would’ve happened and she’d still be alive, you fucking bitch, IT’S ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT!” And I immediately slammed the phone back onto the cradle.

The funeral was held about a week later, and my heart ached the moment I saw her hedge stone and read the inscription:

 

Melissa Sanders
1974 - 2001

 

and watched as they lowered her lifeless body six feet into the ground. I couldn’t believe it was finally over. Our fairy tale marriage had ended in death, and only after three years. I had feared this might happen, of course, but I sure as hell wasn’t prepared for it. She was so young…

Sitting a few feet away, I could see Liz, dressed in black with a black veil over her face, wiping the tears from her eyes with a Kleenex, the box of Kleenex sitting on her lap. I glanced toward her a couple of times, remaining conspicuous about it though, and always looking away whenever she turned her head toward me. I think she was doing the same thing as well. It was really awkward seeing her, after those things I had said a week earlier. We hadn’t spoken since then, I wanted to apologize for those horrible things I had said to her, but I didn’t even have the guts to approach her. I had been wrong to say those things, I had already come to realize, but I’d been very upset at the time, and I still was now as well, and well after the funeral.

Afterward, I saw the two cops, O’Malley and Lambert. I don’t know what they were doing there, but they were there to pay their “respects” nonetheless, along with a few other officers as well. I approached them, feeling a bit awkward about it, after my fit of rage and denial when they had given me the news of Missy’s death, but I walked up to them nonetheless and apologized for the way I had reacted.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” O’Malley said in a solemn voice. “It’s perfectly understandable.”

“How’s the investigation going?” I asked.

Lambert looked away, taking his distance and apparently refusing to have any part of the conversation. Even O’Malley once again refused to look me directly in the eye. “It’s at a bit of a stand-still,” he said. “All the evidence we have is still inconclusive. I’ll be honest with you, Mister Sanders, it’s really not looking too good at all. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to catch the guy.”

“It’s only been a week so far! You can’t be giving up so soon!”

He sighed. “We’re not giving up just yet. I’m just saying that the chances at this point of catching this guy are rather slim right now. We’re doing the best we can, but given the lack of conclusive evidence, it’s going to be rather difficult indeed. We’ll keep you posted on any further developments.”

“Yeah…thanks.” And I walked back to my car and left.

From that point on, I drifted through my life in a deeply dejected state, indifferent to the world and to all the people around me. I never did speak to Liz again. It wasn’t because I hadn’t intentionally avoided her; I just never got around to calling her back after the funeral or making any contact whatsoever and she was probably too afraid to call me as well. I began pushing everyone away, friends and family alike. Ended up losing my job eventually, coming in late to work everyday, sometimes completely tanked and being a real jerk and making a complete and total ass of myself…or sometimes I wouldn’t show up at all, wouldn’t call in sick, wouldn’t give a damn. I got in everybody’s face. No one wanted to put up with me, the state I was in. And really, who could blame them?

There were times when I would be driving at night, and I thought I had seen her walking to the side of me, sometimes by a corner. I would immediately hit the brakes, hearing my tires screech as I come to a halt, and then rush out of my car, sometimes even in the middle of traffic, and hurry toward her, where I thought I had seen her, only to realize that she was no longer there. She had vanished. Then it would hit me that she hadn’t ever really been there to begin with. It was just another cruel trick of the imagination.

And at home I would sometimes find myself half-expecting to see her walking in the front door, finally back from wherever she had been all this time, to console me and reassure me that she was really alive and that everything was going to be all right. I would sometimes expect to walk right into her as I went into each room, or I wandered aimlessly about the city, but of course that never happened either.

And as I slept I would often dream that she came back into my life. That I would be laying awake in bed, and she would come walking through the doors with that radiant smile of hers on her face, and she would come gracefully toward me, and I would embrace her, holding her tightly against my chest. She would assure me that it really was her, in the flesh, alive and well, that she had finally come back to me and that she had missed me so much and promise to never leave me again. I tell her I love her. She says the same to me. And then we lay back in each other’s arms and make love until dawn. And then I wake up and she was gone and I realize with grim disappointment that what had happened last night was only a dream. I lay back down on my bed, sometimes shoving my pillow over my face and my teary eyes, with absolutely no desire or motivation whatsoever to even bother getting out of bed.

I contemplated suicide, wondering what was the point of even going on. I had nothing. I had pushed away everyone I ever cared about and everyone that ever cared about me. I had lost my job. I pissed away my entire life and didn’t even care. My life was meaningless without Missy. I was still distraught, lost without her. She was all I wanted and I couldn’t have her, not as long as I was still alive. The only way I could see her again would be to die myself, and so it made perfect sense. And as time went on, my depression grew, and I became more and more suicidal, coming closer to making that one final leap into the realm beyond.

And then, a few months after Missy’s death, I received a phone call.

“Hello.”

“Mister Sanders, it’s Officer Lambert.” I hadn’t spoken to Lambert or O’Malley since the funeral. Neither one of them had returned any of my phone calls or my emails. I eventually gave up on them both.

“Is this about the investigation?”

“I’m afraid my partner and I haven’t been honest with you at all,” he confessed grimly.

“What do you mean? Do you know who the killer is? Have you found the sick son of a bitch that did this to my wife?” I had shaken off my depression, at least momentarily. I was both excited and enraged at the same time as I tightened my grip around the phone. “Who is it? Who did this to her?”

“I’ve known who it was all along. It was my partner, Officer O’Malley, probably one of the world’s worst cops ever.” And from there, everything began to make sense: Why both officers had done everything to avoid eye contact with both myself and each other, even going to great lengths as to being overt about it. It had also been the reason why O’Malley had expressed great discouragement on the funeral regarding the investigation and a great desire to just give it up and move on. They had the evidence, but instead of being examined, it was covered up. No one on the force wanted to find the killer because they already knew whom it was; it was one of them. And so they did everything in their power to bury the whole event.

“But why didn’t you say anything?” I asked, bewildered that he would stand back and allow such a thing to take place. “Why did you let him get away with it?”

“Because I’m a gutless coward, that’s why,” he said upfront. “I wanted to turn him in, to report what he had done. I’ve wanted to blow the whistle on all of his abuse for several years, since I was partnered with him in the first place. But I always chicken out at the very last minute every single time without fail. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

“It’s that damn police code of silence. It’s not that I believe in that bullshit or what it represents, because I don’t. But if I ratted out my partner, there’s no telling what the repercussions might be. I’d not only be shunned, spat on, and treated like shit by everyone on the force, but I might very well be killed myself. Backup would take it’s sweet time arriving and finally get here just a few minutes too late when I absolutely needed it. Or someone might ‘accidentally’ fire a shot at me, and that would be the end of it. In short, I feared for my life, and that’s why I’ve always kept my mouth shut time and time again like a sniveling coward too afraid to do the right thing.

“But this…this business with Melissa Sanders…it’s definitely the worst of it yet.

“I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s not like he has a lot of respect for anyone, whether a man or woman. He sure as hell’s never had any respect for me. Guess I was always meant to be stuck with him, treated like shit by this arrogant son of a bitch. It’s my cross to bear, I suppose, but to tell you the truth, I’ve gotten pretty damn sick of it a long time ago. Not that I have the balls to report him or anything. Hell, I can’t even request a new fuckin’ partner, I’m so damn gutless.

“We were out on nightly patrol, on the night he killed your wife. He had just been reinstated into the force after a brief suspension after an incident of police brutality. And what a way to start things off, too.

“I don’t know what we were doing in that alley; God only knew what O’Malley wanted in there, and he was the one drivin’ the cruiser. He slowed to a halt as he saw a young woman in her late twenties, your wife, Melissa Sanders, of course, exiting an apartment complex, and then killed the engine. ‘Well, well, well, will ya look at that nice piece of ass dead ahead!’ he exclaimed as he got out of the car.

“‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jim?’

“‘I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna go and get me some of that. You can come too, if you want.’ He grinned devilishly, and I shuddered at the thought of what he was most likely gonna do to her, thinkin’ up ways I could stop this, wondering if this time I could build up enough courage to maybe report him. I’m so sick of dealing with his shit, and so very sick of being reprimanded as well whenever he does get caught.

“I don’t know how this is gonna sound to you, Mister Sanders, and please don’t take it the wrong way, but sometimes I think about turning my own weapon on him, and say that he startled me or something. Hell, I’ve been thinking of doing that since the day I was forced to partner up with the asshole, and I get closer to going through with it every day. Consequences and a guilty conscience be damned, I’m sick of dealin’ with his shit, you gotta understand, I’m really fuckin’ sick of it!

“‘I’m married,’ I told him, not that it would have stopped him or anything, had he still been wearing a ring.

“‘So what’s that got to do with anything?’ he replied smugly.

“‘Fuck you, man! I want nothin’ to do with this, ya hear? I wash my hands of all your fuckin’ bullshit!’

“‘Yeah, ya always were a wet blanket,’ he scoffed.

“Then he got out of the car and approached Missy just as she passed by our cruiser with a quick glance. ‘How ya doin’ miss?’ he asked; don’t know if it was much of a pick-up line, but that was the least of my concerns. ‘Awfully dangerous neighborhood for a nice girl like you to be walkin’ around in.’ He chuckled.

“‘Oh hi,’ she said, a beaming smile on her face, which would have brightened up the grim atmosphere of this dark alley at least a little bit had I not had at least some idea of what was about to go down. ‘I’m just picking something up for a sick friend, that’s all. Don’t worry about me, Officer, I think I’ll be fine.’

“‘You sure, ma’am?’ he grabbed her wrist, and I burst out of the passenger seat. It had only been a few seconds; it hadn’t even begun yet, and already I’d seen enough. ‘I mean, me and my partner here, we can give ya a ride to the store, if ya want. Hehehe…and maybe we can even stop by my place and have a little fun before I drop ya back home to your sick friend’s.’

“‘Damn it, O’Malley, that’s enough!’ I intervened.

“‘Fuck off, Lambert, this ain’t none of your concern, so just fuck off!’

“‘Leave her alone, O’Malley, or so help me God--’

“‘So how ‘bout it, Lady,’ he said as he wrapped both hands around his crotch and shook it a few times in her direction, and I could see by the look on her face, her smile beginning to slowly fade, that she was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. ‘Don’t listen to my asshole partner over there--he’s just a stupid fag anyway. But me, babe, I’m your dream come true, and I’m here to rock your world, baby, I’ll rock your fuckin’ world!’

“‘No thanks, Officer, I’m married,’ she replied, and then lifted her hand to reveal the wedding ring firmly in place on her finger. ‘See?’

“‘Yeah, I used to be married myself, and it never stopped me from gettin’ a little action on the side.’

“‘And I bet that has a lot to do with why you’re not married anymore, Officer,’ was all she said, before she turned around and started to walk away.

“‘Hey, I didn’t say you could go yet!’ And O’Malley grabbed her by the back of her collar, pulling her in and tearing her shirt in the process as well. She screamed; I could hear some of the rats scurrying away in terror, but no one arrived on the scene, and O’Malley threw her to the ground.

“‘Let me go, you bastard!’ And then she screamed again.

“‘O’Malley, you son of a bitch!’ I shouted as I rushed toward him, but he merely lashed his elbow behind, striking me hard in the face. Then, while pinning Missy down on the ground with a knee, he grabbed me but the shoulder, drawing me closer, then brought the side his other fist down upon my nose like a hammer before slamming my face again the wall.

“And then it was back to Missy…

“I’ll spare you the graphic details of what happened, Mister Sanders, I know it must be difficult for you and…

“Well, O’Malley somehow broke her neck, but I’m not completely sure at what point that happened. He’s got this choking fetish, I guess, and he…well, you get the idea.”

Yes, unfortunately I did get the idea a little too well, too, and was then haunted by images of O’Malley on top of Missy, his hands fastened around her throat, as he drove his hardened cock into my wife, hearing his fierce moans of pleasure, seeing her haggard, contorted face as she struggled to scream…and then that dreadful crack as her neck finally breaks at some point during the ordeal. “Oh God!” I moaned, quietly sobbing; that haunting vision was just too much for me to bear, and I nearly collapsed off the chair, overwhelmed with grief and rage and disgust, now wanting more than anything to tear O’Malley’s heart out. I closed my eyes, and it only became clearer. For the first time in my life, I was dead serious about wanting to kill somebody.

“I…I’m sorry, Mister Sanders…Fred…are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, wiping the tears from my eyes, “yeah, I’m fine…”

“Reality finally set in for him, after he had ejaculated on her, his libido now quenched, and when he realized that she was dead, he was a bit flustered at the revelation, and I was absolutely horrified.

“‘Oh Christ, she’s fuckin’ dead!’ O’Malley said, shock setting into panic.

“‘No shit, she’s dead!’ I spewed back at him, drawing my gun as I pinched my bloody nose closed with my other hand. ‘You son of a bitch, you killed her! Goddamn it, O’Malley, this is it.’

“‘Okay, no need to panic, right? We can cover this…put our heads together and I’m sure we can come up with one hell of a good cover story, can’t we, Lambert?’

“‘Not this time, partner,’ I said, trying to sound firm and without fear, though I could feel a trickle of sweat running down my temple, and my arm trembled madly as I pointed the gun toward him. This was it, I thought. No more backing out now, and no more bullshit intimidation. This time it was going to stop. This time, O’Malley had gone way too far, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it this time. I could pull the trigger any time I wanted to, despite the heavy weight of my gun pushing my arm down. I had him this time, and he wasn’t’ going to squirm his way out of this one. My heart was racing uncontrollably; I was as terrified as I was excited, anxious over what might happen and where it might all lead to, but sure that after tonight, I would be free from O’Malley once and for all. ‘This time, O’Malley, I’m takin’ you in.’

“‘What? You’re joking, right? Taking me in? Yeah, that’s a good one, Lambert. You’re a real laugh riot, ya know that? Absolutely hilarious!’ He burst out laughing, but I was dead serious.

“‘Stay back, asshole!’ I screamed, the quiver in my voice a little too exposed to the light of O’Malley’s perception for my taste, but I was the one with the gun, and I could squeeze the trigger any time I wanted.

“‘Or what? You gonna shoot me, is that it? Your own fucking partner, and your gonna shoot me just ‘cause I raped and killed some stupid cunt who shouldn’t have been dumb enough to walk through the alley at night anyway? Well then go ahead, you stupid tight-ass faggot-shoot me! Blow me away, why don’cha?”

“I wanted to shoot him, Mister Sanders, to blow him away, just as he said, just as he tried to goad me into doing so, for whatever twisted reason he had in mind. I could see myself doing it easily. Just one quick pull of the trigger, and he would be taken care of. Naturally I would have to call it in immediately, to report the incident and tell them everything that happened. I’d tell them what it was that provoked me to turn my gun on my partner, what he had done; I would have a whole stack of paperwork waiting for me to fill out down at the station. But given O’Malley’s sordid history as an officer, I think that in the end they’d believe me.

“After the heat died down, I would resign, turn in my gun and my badge, and then take my family and move away from the city, somewhere else far away. I’d get into another line of work entirely. It wouldn’t be easy; my father was a cop, so is my brother--cop is all I know. But if I tried hard enough, I’m sure I can pull it off anyway. Any line of work would have been suitable, as long as it meant getting out of law enforcement. It would have been for the best.

“‘Come on, Lambert,’ O’Malley continued to taunt me, startling me out of my thoughts, and I was once again intimidated by my own partner. The irony was kind of hard to miss, I suppose: I was the one with the gun, and still, it was he who had been intimidating me. ‘Shoot me, you fucking wuss faggot chickenshit! Shoot me, just like you said you would!’ He took a step forward, and I stepped back.

“‘On the ground, now, O’Malley! I mean it! Get your ass on the ground now!’

“He took another step toward me, and another, and another, and as he got closer, I backed away further, sensing the wall behind me, getting dangerously close to being cornered. I felt my palms growing slimy with sweat, the gun now starting to loosen and slip out of my hand. I tightened my grip, but it seemed to do no good. And my trigger finger felt frozen, paralyzed.

“‘I knew it,’ he said and laughed, as he lunged forward, and tore the gun from my sweaty hand. ‘You’re too much of a pussy to actually go through with it--all talk and no walk, ya pansy-ass faggot!’ He let my gun fall softly to the ground, so as not to trip the hammer, and then kicked it away. ‘Pathetic. I would have thought that you’d have at least grown some balls in all the years we’ve been working together!’

“He then grabbed my lapels and with great forced pushed me backward, and I felt my back slamming hard against the brick wall behind me. He held me like that, getting up close, his face nearly pressed against mine, and as he spoke, I could feel his saliva bouncing off my cheeks.

“‘Now you listen to me, you piece of shit,’ he spewed venomously, ‘if I go down for this, I’m takin’ you with me, understand? I’ll identify you as my accomplice, and you’ll be thrown in the slammer just like me. You’ll be raped and beaten on a daily basis by the other inmates, some of which we apprehended. You’ll be a target for every other prisoner in the cellblock, Lambert. You may think you have me this time, but you better understand one thing, buddy, you’re in this just as deep as I am!

“‘And even if you manage to sleaze your way out of this and leave me to take the fall all by myself, you’ll be known as a rat because you were the one who fingered me, Lambert. You’ll be a disgrace to the rest of the force. An outcast. Even worse, you’ll be a sitting duck to any psycho-cop who ups and decides to finally finish you off for what you did, and I hope they make it as horrible and painful as fucking possible, you squeaky-clean rat bastard!’

“Then he relaxed his grip, as well as the intensity in his voice. ‘Or, you can stick by me, as you always do. Just cover my ass, just as I would happily do for you if our roles had been reversed, Lambert. Come on, man, you know I’d cover your ass. What are partners for, right?’ He chuckled casually. ‘You know I’ve got friends from high up that’ll gladly bury the evidence for me; and all I gotta do is ask them to do. I can make up any story I want, and all you gotta do, Lambert, is back up every word I say.’

“He released his grip on me altogether, but I still felt ill at ease, discomfort, fear, guilt. He picked my service revolver up off the ground and placed it gently into my hand. ‘So what do you say, partner?’ he said, with a friendly pat on the back and an eerily warm grin on his face. I said nothing, merely slipped my weapon back into its holster. ‘That a boy, Lambert. You’re doing the right thing.’

“He went to check the woman’s ID, and reported it to dispatch.”

I was absolutely horrified by the story Lambert had just told me. “I’m gonna kill that bastard!” I growled into the phone. It was all I could think of to say. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. O’Malley had been the killer all along, the officer who had come by my house the morning after to inform me of her death had been the perpetrator.

But suddenly, it all began to make sense. Why else wouldn’t O’Malley and Lambert have been able to look directly at each other either when they were at my house or during the funeral? What else could that tension that I had sensed between the two partners possibly have been about? It was because they were giving me a bullshit story all along, while they both knew the truth. I had always thought it peculiar that they would give up the investigation after only a week, or at least be ready to give it all up, just because they might not have had any real leads in that short time. In reality, of course, they wanted to give it up not because of lack of evidence or any leads, but because they didn’t want the perpetrator found.

I thought back to when O’Malley was explaining to me how discouraged he was getting as far as the investigation went; I remembered how I saw Lambert mouthing something off. At the time I couldn’t make out what he was saying, and had thus brushed it off as something insignificant then. But now, I think that what he might have been trying to say might have been a lot more important than I would have ever thought before. Lying sack of shit, I think he’d said. I can’t be completely sure, but it makes a lot more sense to me than anything else.

“I’m so sorry, Mister Sanders…Fred…it…it’s as much my fault as it is his, because I did nothing to stop it,” he apologized, now on the verge of crying. “I wanted to…I stood there, wanting to either break it up, to pull O’Malley off her, or…or to call for help, for back up or something…but I couldn’t do either one. All I could do was stand by helplessly and watch, petrified, unable to even move. And knowing that I froze at such a crucial point when my intervention became mandatory is something I’ve had to live with ever since, something I’ve struggled to bury but has always managed to emerge time and time again, refusing to go away, refusing to be forgotten.

“It’s gotten to the point now where I just had to tell someone; I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, since that night, and on the rare occasion that I actually do fall asleep, my mind always drifts back to that night, and I have horrible…horrible nightmares of what I helped cover up…I mean, I can barely even look in the mirror anymore without feeling ashamed of what I see, without feeling absolutely disgusted…”

He went on, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t exactly blame Lambert for any of it, really, despite what he might have believed. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t hate him. I was enraged, but my anger and hatred was directed solely at O’Malley, for it was he who had started the whole thing, he who confronted and harassed my wife, and then raped and killed her as well. He was the one deserving of my hate, not Lambert. Lambert at least had the decency to tell me the truth.

“I’m nothing but a gutless coward, and I don’t deserve to live!” he finished.

Then a loud blast went off on the receiver, like a bolt of thunder, piercing my eardrums, and I screamed as I ripped the phone from my ear. I put it back on, but heard nothing but silence after that. “Lambert…Lambert, you there? LAMBERT!”

No answer.

He had taken his own life, I later found out. He had shoved the barrel of his service revolver into his mouth, and pulled the trigger, splattering his brains against the wall behind him. His brainstem was completely blown apart and death was almost instantaneous. Strange how hard it had been for him to shoot his corrupt and hated partner, impossible really, and yet, he was able to take his own life with such ease. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so peculiar if you looked at it the right way, and even if it was, I was certainly in no position to appreciate the irony regardless.

I naturally went to the police first to send them the accusations, but without any proof they were unable to help me. They had lost the one semen sample they had collected from the crime scene--it just mysteriously disappeared from the crime lab on the night after it had been collected, and was most likely destroyed. O’Malley’s partner had committed suicide over the whole fiasco; if it were a prank, if he were merely yanking my chain and messing with my mind, I seriously doubt he would have blown his own brains out during the phone conversation. I figured that there had to be something to the accusations. But to the cops, Lambert’s suicide confirmed absolutely nothing, and I was told I had no case against anybody and should just give it up. I left with at least some dignity in that they didn’t have to drag me out kicking and screaming.

But knowing that O’Malley was not only the one to murder my wife, but that he would get away with it as well, that was absolutely devastating. They wouldn’t even question him about it, wouldn’t even entertain the notion that their high and mighty police officer might have possibly had something to do with something as horrible as the rape and murder of my wife. They wouldn’t even look into to it at all, just coldly dismiss my claims as though I were a complete lunatic, as though under my duress, I was grasping at straws and putting truth to a lunatic’s claims. And there was nothing I could do to convince them otherwise!

It’s that damn police code of silence, Lambert had said to me, and I now knew exactly what he was talking about. And it was the police code of silence at work here as well; I could smell it in the air, smell the corruption and evil of a tradition that never should have begun in the first place. It’s not that I believe in that bullshit or what it represents, because I don’t. But if I ratted out my partner, there’s no telling what the repercussions of that might be…I might very well be killed…Backup would take it’s sweet time arriving and finally get here just a few minutes too late…Or someone might ‘accidentally’ fire a shot toward me, and that would be the end of it.

That was it then; Melissa was dead, O’Malley had killed him, and the son of a bitch would get away with it, too. There would be no justice, because everyone on the force probably knew about it, but were too busy trembling in fear and covering up the cancer that resided within their precinct to do a damn thing about it.

Once again, I couldn’t believe any of this was even happening.

I feared for my life, and that’s why I’ve always kept my mouth shut time and time again like a sniveling coward too afraid to do the right thing.

Yeah, well, don’t worry, Lambert, you’re not the only one.

But alas, thanks to the police code of silence, there would be no justice.

I later met Rodney in a public chatroom (he went by the screen name Roddgi456 and I went by Mullex774). We had met strictly by chance, but bonded instantly by our passionate hatred for O’Malley. Rodney had long since recovered from the beating he had received at the hands of the rogue cop, but his anger and righteous hatred for the pig in blue was still very strong.

 

Roddgi456: I’m fine now, fully healed and long since released from the hospital, and yes, they did compensate me, but it’s not nearly enough to make up for what I’ve been through.
Roddgi456: that bastard violated my rights.
Roddgi456: he shit and pissed all over them, and I didn’t even do nothing wrong!
Roddgi456: just because I matched the description of a “perp” they were looking for, O’Malley’s gotta go and beat the shit out of me; he had absolutely no right whatsoever to do that. None!
Mullex774: Yeah, I understand completely.
Roddgi456: And that money they gave me, it’s long spent and nowhere near what I’d consider a generous compensation.
Mullex774: I HAD no compensation; just a bunch of huge debts I had to pay off, and that was that.
Mullex774: And NOTHING was done to punish O’Malley at all for what he did.
Mullex774: Not even a slap on the wrist.
Roddgi456: Yeah, man, that’s absolutely appalling, the way they’re covering for him, after what HE did.
Mullex774: You can thank the police code of silence for that one.
Roddgi456: Fuck the police code of silence, man! It ain’t right at all, them covering for that sick bastard like that!
Mullex774: No, it’s not right at all.
Mullex774: Even after all these months, I still miss her. I still can’t believe she’s gone. There are times at night, when I lay awake waiting for her to come to my side, when I still think that this is only a nightmare that I’ll at some point wake up from.
Mullex774: That son of a bitch stole EVERYTHING from me. He ruined my life.
Roddgi456: He must be one hell of a high-ranking officer if they’re all covering for him like this.
Mullex774: Yeah, probably.
Roddgi456: Officer Jim O’Malley will soon take the plunge, Fred.
Roddgi456: It’s only a matter of time.

 

We instantly became the best of friends. I had nearly immediately added him to my friends list on Yahoo! Messenger. And we had an email correspondence as well as the occasional IM chat. And it wasn’t long after that that we finally met face to face. Living in approximately the same area made that a very easy task. And once that was done, that was when the formal planning officially began. For a couple weeks, we merely stalked him, learning about him, his strengths and his weaknesses and all of his habits. Maybe I don’t know as much about him as I told him I do earlier tonight, but Rodney and I found out enough, and then, we decided it was time to strike.

 

* * *

 

Tonight’s the night.

I waited outside O’Malley’s apartment, a cloth damp with chloroform in my hand, waiting for him to come out. The parking lot was deserted, luckily. Had there been anyone else, other than myself, O’Malley, and Rodney, there would be no way in hell we’d be able to pull this off. But it was already getting very late, and most people were already asleep, ready to go to work the next day. O’Malley was scheduled to work the night shift tonight, and that’s why he had left his apartment when he had. A cop is always on-call, always on duty, and that’s perhaps why the occupation is so rough on the marriage. Not that O’Malley’s ethics and general attitude would’ve made it any easier living with him either. But that sure as hell isn’t my problem, is it?

As I waited, I could barely contain myself; my whole body was trembling, in great excitement, and just a little bit of fear. This was the moment of truth, after all. What if I screwed it up? What if I leapt out prematurely? It was a great threat; I struggled to keep myself under control, to retain some sense of composure despite the growing urge to jump out at every noise I heard. My adrenaline was pumping; there were too many false starts, too many instances where I thought I heard the footfalls of Officer Jim O’Malley, only to find that it was only the wind, or only my imagination. I thought back to that night I waited for Missy to return from Liz, how my mind tortured me then as well, making me believe that Missy really was coming home, that I really did hear her car pulling into the driveway, only to realize at the very last second that I had heard nothing at all but what I wanted to hear. Could I rely on my reflexes now, or were they doomed to fail me? Would my overactive imagination lead to my downfall?

Footsteps…I could hear footsteps now, from inside. Could it be? Was it really O’Malley, or just my imagination? My heart pumped faster, my blood flowed like rapids throughout my veins, and my adrenal glands were now in overdrive. I could think of nothing else but finally getting the chance to destroy O’Malley once and for all. It took all my strength just to stand still, but I knew that this could be just another trick of the imagination. I looked toward Rodney, and he nodded. He could hear it as well, and that only meant that it really was O’Malley.

“This is it, bro,” whispered Rodney.

I nodded, grinning.

I love you, Missy.

The door swung open, and out came O’Malley, hurrying through, not even catching us in his peripheral it seemed; his eyes never swayed to the side. He absently shut the door behind him, and that’s when I finally moved in for the kill…figuratively speaking of course (at least in that phase of the plan, it was). I leapt onto his back, my legs tangling around his torso, and my arms hanging on for dear life over his neck and face. He was pushed forward, with me still hanging over him, and let out a startled cry, muffled when I put the damp cloth to his face. Even as he inhaled the fumes of the chloroform, he fought fiercely to get me off his back, spinning sharply a few times, left, then a sharp turn to the right as well, his arms flailing, and I could hear him growling beneath the cloth I smothered him with. I saw briefly, Rodney standing, watching the struggle, ready to jump right in if needed, ready to pounce upon the rogue cop if he should manage to shake loose.

Somehow, he did manage to slip lose from my grasp, to remove the damp, suffocating cloth from his face, to rip it free and once again take a nice, deep breath of the fresh air that had he had momentarily been deprived of. I was shaken off and landed on my side, looking up at O’Malley, now free but in a drunken stupor, barely able to stand up straight. He wouldn’t have gotten far, not like that, but still, I feared that Rodney and I had screwed up royally, and that he would manage to escape to safety, and that instead, we would have been arrested and locked up for assault on a police officer.

O’Malley’s legs buckled hard as he reached in to draw his service revolver, and that’s when Rodney struck, leaping into the air and tackling O’Malley, bringing the officer down hard onto the pavement. I heard the gun go off in the holster, saw the flash around O’Malley’s leg as it lit up the parking lot briefly. I heard him scream, but I don’t think anyone was hit. There was no blood, just powder burn. “You okay?” Rodney hollered at me as he held the fiercely struggling officer down on the ground.

“Yeah,” was all I said, as I crawled quickly, with the damp cloth still in my hand, and put it down onto O’Malley’s face again. He thrust his head left and right, trying to prevent me from smothering him again, but I managed to get the cloth over him, and held it firmly to his face, hearing him growling and grunting as he squirmed beneath Rodney. His movements slowed, his growls subsiding to soft and low-pitched moans, and then he fell silent, and stopped moving altogether.

“I think we got him,” Rodney said finally.

I held the cloth down a few seconds more, just to make sure, and then removed it from his face. He appeared asleep, unconscious, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted. I snapped my fingers a few times near his eyes; he didn’t flinch.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “he’s out cold.”

Rodney rose to his feet, and I could see the steady rising and falling of O’Malley’s chest. He was still alive and well, and that was good, because it was going to be a long night for him and a fun one for us. Don’t worry, Missy, I thought solemnly, tonight’s the night that justice is finally gonna be served.

I slipped the gun slowly out of his holster, removed the remaining five bullets and placed them in my pocket as threw the emptied revolver into the nearest dumpster, where, hopefully, no one would ever find it. Rodney opened the trunk of his car, and we carried O’Malley toward the car, me holding him by his armpits, and Rodney holding his leg. He was quite heavy, being the fat, overweight cop that he was, but somehow, we managed to get him there, and thankfully, stuffing him into the trunk wasn’t as difficult as I had feared either. I was very much relieved that we had thought to chuck the spare tire before leaving Rodney’s place.

“What if he wakes up?” I asked.

“Then he wakes up.”

“If he wakes up before we get there, it’s gonna be a bitch getting him into your basement,” I brought up.

“Then we apply more chloroform, carry him into my basement, and then once we tie him to the chair, we slap his face ‘til he wakes up, simple as that,” he explained coolly.

I still felt uneasy about it; if he woke up, what if he decided to start messing around with one of the taillights? What if we were caught in a speed trap? If pulled over, how would you go about explaining what you were doing riding around with a cop locked up in your trunk? Still, if we were ever to be avenged, if justice was ever to be served, we’d have to take our chances.

“Let’s do it,” he said finally.

I nodded, and Rodney closed the trunk, and as I turned away, I heard the soft click of the lock on the trunk door as it snapped shut.

 

* * *

 

“Tell me, O’Malley, do you feel any remorse at all for what you’ve done?”

He looks up at me, through bloody eyes behind swollen lids, his toothless mouth parting slightly. He licks some of the blood off his lips, coughs, and spits out yet another molar in my direction. “What…what’re you talkin’ about?”

“It was you who killed Missy, wasn’t it?” I ask, knowing full well the answer to that question. I just want to hear it from his mouth. I want a confession, if I can get one. I bring the blade my Swiss army knife close to his face, slowly pulling it right and left and watching as his eyes followed in its movement. “I’m gonna kill you anyway, O’Malley, so you might as well tell me the truth. Did you kill my wife, yes or no?”

He remains silent for a few seconds, and then: “Yeah…yeah, I killed your wife, you stupid prick. That’s why I’m here, ain’t it? Because I killed your dear sweet precious wifey? Ain’t that why I’m fuckin’ here?”

I bring my closed fist down across the side of his face, and hear yet another groan escape his lips. “Shut up!” I shout, now even more enraged than before. “Just shut up, you filthy bastard! I’m not gonna let a scumbag like you shit on her memory like that, so just shut the fuck up!”

I find it rather amazing that he can be begging for his life one minute, and be so bold as he was just now the next.

“You’re fuckin’ pathetic, man!” he continues to spew forth from his rancid mouth. “Yeah, I raped and killed your stupid wife. And I don’t feel one shred of remorse for doing it either. Stupid bitch had it coming to her; teach her to be a wiseass like that and then just walk away.

“Yeah! Lambert tried to stop what I was doing, of course, but he was never anything more than a pathetic wuss, and I fixed him good too. Ha--I’m glad he killed himself. I was really gettin’ sick of listening to all his shit, and odds are, I probably would’ve kill him myself eventually anyway.

“But hey, it all made the sex that much better, if you ask me, and I loved every minute of it; the way I forced her to the ground, holding her, the way she screamed and cried for someone to help her as I forced my way into her. Priceless! Maybe I shouldn’t have had my hands so tightly around her throat like that--though it certainly shut her up, ya gotta admit that. But I didn’t mean to kill her. But hey, I’ve always been into choking and shit like that…and as much as it sort of disgusts me to say this, I’m sort of into that whole rape scene as well, if ya catch my drift--”

His rantings give way to a sharp, deafening squeal of agony as I lift my foot into the air and then bring it down hard upon his crotch, crushing his genitals beneath the sole of my shoe. His piercing screams seem never ending; I can see his eyes watering now, tracks of tears flowing down his cheeks, revealing thin lines of flesh beneath his mask of blood. I slap him in the face just to shut him up, and even more flesh revealed within the handprint left behind over his cheek.

“Hey…hey, what’re you doing?” he asks as I now begin to undo his belt buckle. Now having put the Swiss army knife safely to the ground, I yank his belt off with one hard yank, and then throw it aside carelessly. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I unbuckle his pants now, unzip the fly, and as he continues to squirm and struggle, I lower his pants down to his knees, exposing the Fruit of the Loom briefs he has on, now yellow with piss, which saturated the fabric. As disgusting as this feels and as rancid as it smells, I am somehow able to tough it out and slowly pull off the piss-soaked underpants, until I see a thick tuft of wet pubic hair. I pull it down farther, until the briefs around halfway down his thighs, and he is still struggling, unaware of what I’m planning to do to him, but still frightened nonetheless.

Perhaps he has at least some idea, after all. No matter.

As I now pick the Swiss army knife off the ground, I see his penis, lying limp and moist on the seat of the chair between his legs. I grab his cock with my left hand, squeezing tightly, stretching it out to its fullest length of three inches, all the while holding the knife in my right hand. And I can see from the look in his eyes that he knows exactly what I’m about to do with him.

I then bring the knife to his penis, and begin to slowly cut into it, where it connects to the rest of his body, not even leaving behind a small stump. O’Malley shrieks shrilling, both in pain and in fright. “No…oh God, no, noo…NOOOOO!” I cut deeper and deeper into the flesh, the blade slowly sinking in, carving ever slowly to allow him to savor the agony, and he continues to scream, a haggard look of disbelief over his face as he turns away, unable to watch, but still horrified to feel. I feel his warm blood flowing over both hands, and struggle to keep the knife from slipping from my grasp as his penis hands on by a thinning flap of bleeding skin, growing thinner…and thinner, as the blade of my knife continues to pare into the flesh. My pinky, ring, and middle finger of my left hand reach out momentarily, as the thumb and index finger maintain the hold, and grab and pull the scrotum in, and the blade is now cutting into that as well. O’Malley throws his head back, still screaming, his shrieks now becoming horse as I finish up.

And then I am done, and his crotch continues to spurt blood, smearing crimson over his inner thighs, his abdomen, and the chair as well. His mouth quivers, as he looks up at me through teary, disbelieving eyes while I hold his severed genitals tightly in my hand, unmindful of the blood now trickling from my palm down my forearm.

From behind, about thirty feet away, Rodney bursts out laughing. “Ha-ha, yeah, baby! How do ya like that, huh?” he roars through uncontrollable fits of laughter. “Castrated and bobbitized in a single night! Ha-ha! Ain’t gonna go raping no more women now, are ya, ya sick fuck! Ain’t ever gonna rape no one ever again, are ya, now ya sorry son of a bitch!”

“Oh Christ, ya sick fuckin’ bastard!” cried O’Malley, now flustered, still unable to believe I just cut off the part of him that enable him to pass off as a man, unable to comprehend how it could be humanly possible that I could have taken away his weapon, the weapon he used on my wife, not to kill her, no, but to dehumanize her nonetheless.

“Shut up,” I say, softly but firmly. And my left hand, still holding the Swiss army knife, grabs the back of O’Malley’s head, fingers clutching his short hair, and pull it back hard, forcing his mouth open all the way. He yelps momentarily, a reflexive movement. I then force his genitals into his mouth, my hand as well, feeling his blood and saliva wash over my hand as I force his sex organs deeper into his mouth, all the way down into his throat. He squirms fiercely in his seat, all the while striking his tongue against my wrist in a vain and desperate attempt to stop what I am doing, but to no avail, for his tongue wouldn’t have been enough to stop me anyway, and also because it is already done. And his squirming frantically, trying to pull himself off from the restraints only serves to make what I just did a lot easier to pull off, though had he not been tied to the chair, there’d be no way in hell that Rodney and I would be able to hold him.

It’s done now, though. Had he not been in a panic, squirming and stirring and shifting around as he is, he might be able to somehow spit it out, but it’s too late now. For as I remove my hand-now slimy with spit and blood--from his mouth, his rancid meat that was his penis, scrotum, and the one testicle he has left are now firmly lodged down his throat. And still, he can’t believe that any of this is happening, cannot believe he is now about to die choking on his own genitalia. Rodney continues to laugh his ass off, and I feel the almost insurmountable urge to do so as well, but instead I just watch.

I half expect him to vomit his severed privates up any second; my heart now races in suspense. I know the chances of that happening probably aren’t very likely, but as I watch him suffocating, I can’t help but wonder if puking his cock and ball up aren’t exactly what he is about to do next.

But instead, he gags on them, gasping for even an ounce of breath, trying to suck whatever air he can get through his clogged windpipe, and watch amusedly at the frightened, panicked eyes of his rise even higher as he comes to slowly realize that he can’t get any at all. I know this is sick, but I’m loving every minute of it anyway. I’m almost hoping that he does spit up the genitals, so I can go on torturing him, cut him up a little, slit his throat, or slice open his stomach and watch his guts spill all over the ground while he sits there helplessly writhing in pain. He’s in a lot of pain now, no doubt--suffocation is a horrible way to go--but he’s not screaming at all, only making this wretched gasping sounds, still struggling to breath even after realizing that that for him is an impossible feat. And as the tint of his face begins to turn a dark purple, and all of the veins in his head start to stick out like cords, I consider giving him the Heimlich maneuver just so we can carry out this torturous dance all throughout the night, but I don’t do that, only continue to stand and survey the progress of his asphyxiation.

Within a few minutes his sharp movements slow to a halt as he begins to lose consciousness. Rodney draws closer to me, and we both stare at him for a few seconds; I expect him to suddenly wake up and continue the struggle to free himself, but he doesn’t, just sits there, now motionless. “Is…is he gone?” Rodney asks as I feel the pulse. Not yet--not completely anyway. There’s still a slight pulse, but that too is fading fast, and we both know that O’Malley is as good as dead.

I feel his pulse again a minute later, and detect nothing. No pulse at all.

“He’s gone,” I say at last.

Rest in peace, Officer Jim O’Malley.

Forever may you rot in the fiery pits of Hell, you wretched bastard.

“Mission complete.”

Yes, Rodney’s right of course. Our mission has been completed, our goal attained, but I’m still not satisfied right now. For me, there is no sense of triumph, no gratification, no satisfaction whatsoever, not even an ounce of closure. Even with the death of Officer O’Malley, the night was still a disappointment. It was nothing like I’d hoped it would be, nowhere near as grand as my vengeful fantasies, and it now leaves me feeling nothing at all other than a bleak sense of emptiness. All the pain, all the suffering and torment we dealt O’Malley this night pale’s in comparison to what he truly deserved, and doesn’t even come close to compensating my loss; doesn’t’ even scratch the surface of that one.

The only satisfaction I receive whatsoever from what we did is that O’Malley can never again hurt anyone else. And even that is blotted out by the vision of my wife, the image of her beautiful face forming in my mind…oh God how I miss her, how I yearn to hold her in my arms once more, even after all this time, after all that has happened. I bend my head sorrowfully, on the verge of tears now, with the sickening knowledge gnawing away at my heart once again that no matter what I do, I can never regain that which has been cruelly taken away.

We torture and murder O’Malley for a sense of justice, a sense of peace, only to come to realize afterward that in this world there is no justice at all.

“So where does it go from here?” Rodney inquires.

Good question. We dispose of the body by throwing it off the edge of the nearest bridge, naturally enough, and do it in such a way so nobody sees what we’re doing or even knows that we were ever there. And then what? How can we go back to our old lives and face up to the fact that what we did amounted to absolutely nothing. No matter what kind of show Rodney puts on, I know full well that this wasn’t anything like what he had hoped it would be either.

Very little if anything at all has been resolved tonight. O’Malley killed Missy, and O’Malley’s now dead as well. But there were other guilty parties as well, other corrupt officers whom O’Malley had trusted and confided in, who were all too willing to lie, destroy evidence, whatever it took to cover O’Malley’s ass. Sure, there are plenty of decent officers, honest ones who serve and protect, rather than abuse their power. Like all groups, there are plenty of good ones and bad ones as well. The problem is that there are just too many bad cops out there, abusing their authority and breaking the very same laws that they’re supposed to enforce, all the while remaining nice and safe from any and all punitive repercussion, protected by their fucking code of silence.

My eyes meet Rodney’s, and for that instance, there is a mutual understanding between the two of us and a pack is reformed through tacit agreement. With the death of Officer O’Malley, we become the avenging angels of all those wronged by those bigots and psychos hiding behind badges as they belligerently abuse their authority. It’s high time someone took it upon themselves to put a stop to this. I slip my knife back into my pocket, knowing that it’ll one day be used again…and very soon at that, more likely than not. For God help us both, it’s not over yet, not by a long shot.

This is only the beginning.

 

The End.

March 30, 2001
July 31, 2001