Chapter 20 Halo
Chapter twenty
Halo
“Necessary Evil”
He fucking touched her.
I kept thinking about the way that, even at a distance, I could see the way his hand curled around her arm, applying pressure.
She tried to hide it, putting on a brave face, but I saw the way she had winced in pain.
I saw everything from across the street, through panes of glass, and I struggled with every cell of my body not to kill him on the spot.
I could have ended him right there, but I didn’t. Eden was watching; that kid was watching. It would have made a mess that bled onto her shoes.
The moment Eden was inside her apartment and safe that night, I went to find Detective Parrish.
He wasn’t hard to locate, even easier to keep up with.
He was loud, irritable, cocky. An angry man who wanted to pick a fight with everyone he could.
He hid behind a gun and a badge and used and abused the very people he, as a public servant, had sworn to protect.
I had no room to talk – I was no saint – but I also didn’t pretend to be good.
Everything was transactional, necessary and cold.
I took no pleasure in it. I didn’t get off on hurting good people.
I would get off on hurting him.
I sat in the dark, engine idling, as I sat in the back parking lot of a strip mall a few blocks from the coffee shop.
Across the street, Parrish was inside a liquor store, talking to someone that a cop had no business associating with.
He was handing the man a baggie, and even with my binoculars, I couldn’t see what it was for sure, but I had no doubt it was drugs skimmed from evidence.
The man handed him a brown bag. He was jumpy and nervous.
I watched the twitch in his hands as he loaded the passenger seat of his cruiser with an assortment of items: a crowbar, a mask not unlike my own, a canvas bag, duct tape.
No reason for him to carry that kind of gear unless he was planning something that wasn’t legal or clean.
I followed him for hours, into the late hours of the night as they bled into morning. I’d been looking for a quiet place, a moment when I could make him disappear without a trace. I had my rifle in the trunk, but part of me wished I would have the opportunity to kill him with my hands.
He never stopped moving, and he was constantly looking over his shoulder or glancing in the rearview mirror, like he could feel my teeth at his heels.
Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. He pulled into a house near the rec center that could have been a traphouse by appearances.
Another vehicle was parked there, one that was unmarked, burgundy with serious damage.
It had expired plates, and one of the windows had been duct taped shut.
There weren’t many good places for me to pull in with the car where he wouldn’t notice me.
I parallel parked on the street, a few houses down, across from a house with an empty driveway, shutting my car off and keeping my eyes on the cars.
A strip of neglected bushes obscured my view, but I could see the fenders of both vehicles and would notice the moment either of them moved.
Thirty-two minutes passed before I saw something move behind the foliage.
Someone exited the house and got into the beat-up car, backing out and heading down the road.
I waited a few beats to see if Parrish would come out and follow, or go his own way…
but nothing happened. I leaned over and pulled my suppressor out of my glove box, attaching it to the end of my glock before exiting the car and carefully making my way towards the house.
I moved across the street like a shadow, staying close to fences and tree lines.
A second-story window was lit and there were voices: muted, slurred, volatile.
The front door was cracked, so they weren’t worried about having company.
I slipped in, stepping over a pile of crushed beer cans and what might’ve been a vomit stain.
The smell of sour body odor and old food was noxious, but I didn’t let it distract me as I moved from one room of the dilapidated house to another.
I went upstairs, clearing those rooms one at a time until I heard movement in the room where the light had shined through the window.
I kicked the door in, but it wasn’t Parrish standing there…
it was two skeletal addicts, one with a needle still halfway in his arm.
They both flinched at the sudden noise, and the woman scrambled backwards on her hands and knees.
The man dropped his needle, diving for something under a couch.
Blood and black fluid dripped down the puncture on his arm.
“Don’t,” I warned, voice calm and quiet.
He stopped, and the two of them just stared at me.
“Where’s the other man?”
No response.
“The dirty cop, his car is out front. Where is he?”
“He’s not here,” the woman sobbed. “Please don’t hurt us.”
The guy swallowed, licking his cracked lips. “He said he just wanted to borrow our car. Gave us a bump just to borrow it. Said he’d be back in an hour. We ain’t hit it yet if you’re after the drugs.”
“He left in the car?”
Fuck.
I spun out of the room, ignoring their begging, heading for the front. I almost made it out… almost. I soberly realized that they saw my face. Not only that, but they knew I was after Parrish, and they would roll over for nothing.
Loose ends.
I turned and walked back into the room. Two shots.
One for each, between the eyes. They looked right at me, the deer-in-the-headlights gaze.
It made lining up the shot so easy. They went down instantly, slumping over on the floor together.
Under the window, they had a small flame going for their spoons.
I kicked it into the couch, allowing it to light the room on fire.
Then I jogged to my car, tires screaming against broken pavement as I peeled out of the neighborhood.
My fingers shook as I dialed Eden’s burner number.
I was never shaky; that had been one of my most valuable traits: my unwavering steadiness, even in the face of danger.
This guy had a headstart on me, though, and I had a terrible feeling that he was heading straight for Eden’s apartment.
Voicemail.
I dialed her again but was greeted once more by the voicemail.
“Pick up,” I muttered. “Pick up the fucking phone.”
I called again, but still nothing.
I hung up and hit the gas harder, heart slow and consistent which seemed to make my stress even more exaggerated. If he laid one more hand on her, if he hurt her…
No, I wouldn’t be too late. I couldn’t be. Not this time, not yet.
I parked in front of the apartment complex and bolted through the front door and up the stairs.
The elevator might have been faster, but I couldn’t have stood still as it ascended to her floor.
When I reached her hallway, all was quiet, and I didn’t like that.
All of the apartment doors were shut, and there were no corners or dark spaces for anyone to hide.
Parrish wouldn’t be expecting me either, which meant that I had the upper hand, as long as I kept moving forward
I approached her door and didn’t knock or shout her name. I didn’t hesitate. I kicked it in. Two well placed kicks had the door flying open, shards of the door facing flying into the air as it broke free. Shitty fucking door.
Inside, the apartment was a wreck: couch shoved crooked, one of the end tables toppled, a lamp shattered. I heard her screaming before I saw her. It wasn’t just fear, but fury. I walked straight ahead into the bedroom, and there he was.
Parrish was on top of her, grinning like he had won something.
One hand fisted in her hair, the other reaching for something on his belt: a zip tie, maybe a gun.
I didn’t care what his plan was. I don’t know how, but he hadn’t noticed the sound of me destroying the front door.
When he saw me looming in the bedroom doorway, he looked stunned. He didn’t know who I was, I realized.
I cleared the bed and pulled him off her, using all of my strength to shove him into the wall.
He swung at me but missed. I didn’t even have to dodge the strike.
He wasn’t used to someone fighting back, I could tell.
He had claw marks on his face and neck, no doubt where Eden had tried to fend him off.
This only fed the infuriated haze I found myself in.
I punched him, and he immediately slumped, blinking at me. His eyes rolled, and he tried to slide down the wall, but I held him up with my other hand as I punched him again.
Over and over, until the blood on my hands wasn’t just his. I kept beating him until the drywall behind him cracked. His body had become dead weight, and I was forced to follow him to the floor, but the repetitive motion of punching him was comforting. Like popping bubble wrap or twirling a pencil.
His face didn’t resemble a person’s anymore, and it had grown soft against my knuckles. I couldn’t feel the support of bone anymore.
“Stop!” Eden screamed behind me, her voice shredded with panic. “Please! You’re killing him!”
I felt her hands on my shoulder, pulling on my jacket and somehow on my soul, but I was somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Her voice tethered me, brought me back piece by piece.
“Please,” she begged again, “Halo.”
I stopped, leaning back as she tugged me one last time.
Even with the sound of her muted sobs, I could hear the gentle popping click of oxygen leaving his lungs through what was left of his nose: bubbling on the surface.
His head was concave: a bowl holding the soupy pieces of his lips and nose and teeth.
I shrugged her hands off, stumbling back away from her.
I had trapped myself in a corner now. My hands were still numb fists at my side, blood dripping off of them onto her floor.
My vision was tunneled, focusing only on her as she stared at me from the other end of the bed, but I knew that Parrish wasn’t moving. He was dead.
Some terrified cocktail of panic and shock covered Eden’s as she stood there. I wiped a hand down my face, smearing red into my stubble, through my hair.
“Don’t look at me.” My voice cracked. I couldn’t meet her eyes now, couldn’t bear what I might find there. “Don’t look. Just— just go into the kitchen.”
But she didn’t go. She had stopped crying and was taking slow steps towards me, her bare feet leaving bloody footprints on the floor.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered.
I looked up.
She was. She was shaking, trembling from the aftermath of what she had witnessed. Her hands reached for mine anyway, those same hands he had tried to pin down.
I let her take my hand because I owed her that.
She dragged me to the bathroom, and I followed like the floor might give out beneath me if I resisted.
She turned on the shower, leaving it on the hottest setting.
I didn’t know what she was doing, what she had planned.
She dropped to her knees in front of me and started untying my boots.
When she looked up at me – eyes still puffy with tears – and smiled, I could have kissed her against the floor right there.
I couldn’t admit that, not to her, but this was a position I would like to have her in again…
when I hadn’t just killed someone in her bedroom.
When my shoes and socks were removed, she took me by the hand again and pulled me into the shower. I hesitated, watching as the spray of the showerhead soaked her from the head down. Where our hands met, dirt and blood poured from her skin, but the rest of her was so clean and pure.
I stepped in with her, fully clothed, just like she was. Water poured over us both, too hot and weighing our clothes down, but I was going to stay as long as she wanted me to.
She looked at me again, water beading off of her eyelashes and running down her lips.
“It’s okay,” she said, as though I needed reassurance.
Like there wasn’t a dead man on the other side of the wall, bleeding on her floor.
Like she hadn’t just been attacked and nearly killed just moments before I had gotten here.
It made me wonder if any of it had happened at all, or if she was just crazy.
I nodded once and repeated the affirmation back to her. “It’s okay.”
Her arms wrapped around me like an instinct, and I wanted to sink into it like drowning.
She pressed her cheek to my chest, right over my heart.
She cried, and I knew that she wasn’t okay.
I didn’t put my arms around her as she hugged me, but I didn’t pull away from her either.
I stood there with her beyond when the water cooled.
No, she wasn’t okay but this was the smallest proof that even when I tried to vanish into violence, she would follow me into the dark, and hold me there.