Chapter 5
Michael Hanks
“Why do you keep looking out of that window like that, Tom? I’m trying to calm down myself, but every time you get up to look out of the window, you make me nervous all over again.
Can you please put the gun down, and get in bed with me?
Let’s watch a movie or something. Let the movie be our distraction,” my wife Cathy said to me from the bed, looking up from the word puzzle that she had in her lap.
We were staying at my childhood home in Pensacola.
I’ve told a lot of lies over the years, had to cover up who I really was, but this part of my life was true.
Pensacola is where I was born and raised.
I didn’t move out to Miami until after high school.
Had a few family members out that way that I decided to move in with, while I did my time in the police academy.
I’ve always known that I wanted to be a police officer.
Something about that power. Something about the respect that you would get from the community.
Since a little kid, power and respect were the two things that I dreamed of having one day.
Those things had never been offered to me.
I grew up a fat, white, poor kid from Pensacola, and if I wasn’t getting bullied at school, then the bullying was taking place at home.
My dad was my first bully. I didn’t take after him in stature.
My dad was a tall, slim guy. My mom was petite.
I remember my dad cracking jokes, saying that I had to be the neighbors son, who was a pudgy man, just like I was.
I had siblings. A big brother, who took after my dad in stature, and a little sister who was petite like our mom.
I was bullied by my siblings too, especially by my big brother, who has always been a hunk, and someone that the girls would flock after.
I saw an opportunity to get the hell out of this small, country ass town after high school, and I took it and ran.
I only came back twice, and both times happened to be when my parents passed away.
My dad passed first, and my mom followed behind him seven years later.
I never shed a tear at any of their funerals. It didn’t hurt me that they passed.
When I left this town, I cut off the relationship that I had with them, so when I attended both funerals, it felt as if I was attending a funeral of a stranger.
I didn’t have a relationship with my siblings, either.
My big brother moved out of the country.
He’s up in London. My sister is in New York, last I checked.
All I know is that this home was fully paid off, and even though I hated my parents for the way they treated me as a kid, I always remember them telling my siblings and I that they worked their asses off to pay this home off, telling us that when life got hard for us, and we ever found ourselves running, that we could always come back home.
I knew where the spare key was. Most people would keep a spare key in a flowerpot or something, but that wasn’t the case here.
I remember my father tucking the spare key away in a fake rock, that was near the side gate, half- hidden beneath the grass.
My wife and I had been on the road for over ten hours, and during our ride here, all I had was hope that the rock would be there.
It was, and once I granted us entry into the home, it felt like all the problems that I left back here years ago had resurfaced.
No idea why I thought coming back to a place that held so much trauma, and dark times in my life would be the best answer for me. I guess now, anything was better than staying in West Palm, and risking getting killed.
“You know why I keep looking out of this window, Cathy. I’m paranoid,” I responded, walking away from the window, but still holding the big rifle in my hand.
My wife had a look in her eyes as if she was defeated.
It was the same look that my ex-wife, Lauren gave to me before she woke up the next morning, with a note on my dresser for me, telling me that she could no longer stay with me because she feared for her life, and she didn’t want to die behind my fuck-up.
The fuck up she was referring to was the morning that I killed Maverick St. James, better known as Grim. Back then, we all knew who Grim was at the department. He was young, very flashy with his money, and him, and everyone involved in his camp all felt that they were untouchable.
Grim was only in his early twenties, and I hated the way he was able to move through Miami like he owned the fuckin city!
He pushed whips that I probably didn’t even know how to pronounce.
Back then, cops weren’t making shit. Me, and Lauren wanted kids so fuckin bad, but whenever we sat down and looked at our bills, and the pennies that we were both bringing in, we knew that it would be selfish to bring kids into struggle.
Meanwhile, I’m hearing about these drug dealers on the streets that have the kind of chains around their necks that cost more than our yearly salary.
I hated drug dealers. It wasn’t just Grim that I hated. I hated every single last one of them.
The morning that I pulled him over, it wasn’t to target him. I’ve never had any past encounters with Grim, but his name was always talked about back at the precinct because we all wanted to take him down, but were never able to make anything stick, so we couldn’t come after him.
My reasonings for stopping him that morning were valid.
His music was very loud, damn near shaking the block, and the tint on his windows were illegal.
People can say whatever they want to say about this situation, but I didn’t kill that man purposely.
I wouldn’t willingly take him away from his family like that.
For crying out loud, he had a baby in the backseat.
I did what I was trained to do, which was to kill whenever I felt like my life was threatened.
There was a Glock in his glove compartment, that I thought he was going to use on me.
I shot first, and asked questions later, which is what I had been trained to do.
God, the backlash that I received from that shooting was crazy.
Even though the shooting was found to be justifiable, especially after the footage was released, and everyone was able to see the gun that Grim had inside his glove compartment, I was never fired from my job or sentenced any jail time.
The black community hated me for what I’d done though.
I was receiving all kinds of threats. I’m talking, people were driving by my house, slashing my tires, and even a few anonymous letters were left in my mailbox, threatening me.
My ex-wife had become a target as well. She was a teacher at the time, and folks were calling out to the school, making threats.
She was followed home a few times, and parents started giving her a hard time.
Too many incidents caused her to leave me.
I couldn’t blame her for leaving me because our lives were in danger, but it was nasty the way she went about it.
I knew that if I stayed in Miami, that I was going to die, so I decided to step down from my position. I took an early retirement and collected my pension. The reason I gave was the pressure that I was getting with all of this.
I could have moved anywhere in the world, but I was a Florida boy, which is why I chose to relocate to West Palm Beach.
Bought a beautiful home out there. I invested so much money into that home, which is why I’m pissed that I had to walk away from it for a little bit, just until all of this slowed down.
I changed my entire identity in West Palm.
Dropped the name Michael, and I started going by Tom.
Had weight loss surgery, which is how I lost all the weight.
Got a nose job too because that was another thing that my siblings would bully me about.
They used to call me fat nose. Changed my hair color. Just changed it all.
I met Cathy three years into my stay, and I never told her the truth about anything until maybe three years into our relationship.
It was a lot for her to take in, especially since I had pretty much lied to her about everything.
Of course, she was upset at first, but she eventually came around, and she stuck through this with me, like how I would have expected Lauren to stick through it with me.
Now, shit was tough, I had Grim’s daughter on my back, so I was curious to see if Cathy would stick this thing out with me, or if she would run off, and do me the exact way that Lauren did.
“Nobody can find us here! We are literally in the middle of nowhere. The service sucks, so I had to hook my iPad up to my hotspot on my phone. You didn’t tell anyone where we were going. Can you please just sit down? Please?” she asked me, patting the spot next to her on the bed.
I sighed, dropping the gun down on the floor, and then I walked over to her. I really couldn’t sit right now, so I chose to just stand next to her. When I did that, she turned to face me, put her hand on the side of my head, and she gave me a small smile.
“Honey, you need to relax. Not to sound out of touch, but I personally feel like if something was going to happen to you, it would have happened to you already. You were face to face with Grim’s daughter over a week ago.
It’s been quiet. We’re safe. Please. Please let’s just put a movie on, and try to forget about this,” she suggested.