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of the cottage and got out. A hawk circled overhead, and he heard
cicadas humming, but otherwise the place seemed deserted. He
started toward the house but could see already from a distance
that there was no bicycle parked out front. No lights on, either,
but it wasn’t dark yet, so he crept to the back door. Unlocked, just
like before.
She wasn’t home, and he didn’t think she’d been home since he’d
been here earlier. The house was sweltering, all the windows shut
tight. She would have opened the windows, he felt sure, would
have had a glass of water, might have taken a shower. Nothing.
He left through the back door, staring at the neighboring house. A
dump. Probably deserted. Good. But the fact that Erin wasn’t
home meant she was with the gray-haired man, had gone to his
house. Cheating, pretending she wasn’t married. Forgetting the
home that Kevin had bought for her.
His head throbbed in time with his heartbeats, a knife going in
and out. Stab. Stab. Stab. It was hard to focus as he pulled the door
closed behind him. Mercy of all mercies, it was cooler outside. She
lived in a sweatbox, sweated with a gray-haired man. They were
sweating together now, somewhere, writhing in sheets, bodies
intertwined. Coffey and Ramirez were laughing about that,
slapping their thighs, having a good old time at his expense. I
wonder if I could do her, too, Coffey was saying to Ramirez. Don’t
you know? Ramirez answered back. She let half the precinct do her
while Kevin was working. Everyone knows about it. Bill waving from
his office, holding suspension papers. I did her, too, every Tuesday
for a year. She’s wild in bed. Says the dirtiest things.
He stumbled back to his car, his finger on the gun. Bastards, all of
them. Hated them, imagined walking into the precinct and
unloading the Glock, emptying the clip, showing them. Showing
all of them. Erin, too.
He stopped and bent over, vomiting onto the side of the road.
Stomach cramping, a clawing in his gut like a rodent was trapped