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he’d picked up from the Chinese restaurant a couple of days
earlier. On the bottom shelf, he saw food stains and he felt like
crying again, because it made him think about Erin’s screams and
the way her head had sounded when it had hit the edge of the
table after he’d thrown her across the kitchen. He’d been slapping
and kicking her because there were food stains in the refrigerator
and he wondered now why he’d become so angry about such a
little thing.
Kevin went to the bed and lay down. Next thing he knew, it was
midnight, and the neighborhood outside his window was still.
Across the street, he saw a light on in the Feldmans’ house. He
didn’t like the Feldmans. Unlike the other neighbors, Larry
Feldman never waved at him if both of them happened to be in
their yards, and if his wife, Gladys, happened to see him, she’d
turn away and head back into the house. They were in their
sixties, the kind of people who rushed outside to scold a kid who
happened to walk across their grass to retrieve a Frisbee or
baseball. And even though they were Jewish, they decorated their
house with Christmas lights in addition to the menorah they put
in the window at the holidays. They confounded him and he
didn’t think they were good neighbors.
He went back to bed but couldn’t fall asleep. In the morning, with
sunlight streaming in, he knew that nothing had changed for
anyone else. Only his life was different. His brother, Michael, and
his wife, Nadine, would be getting the kids ready for school
before heading out to their jobs at Boston College, and his mom
and dad were probably reading the Globe as they had their
morning coffee. Crimes had been committed, and witnesses
would be in the precinct. Coffey and Ramirez would be gossiping
about him.
He showered and had vodka and toast for breakfast. At the
precinct, he was called out to investigate a murder. A woman in
her twenties, most likely a prostitute, had been found stabbed to
death, her body tossed in a Dumpster. He spent the morning