Chapter 49: Chapter forty-eight

Present day.

 

Mike sat in his car feeling sorry for himself and hating himself for it. He didn’t deserve pity, not even from himself. What he deserved was prison. He was a corrupt cop, which to his mind was about the worst thing you could be besides a child killer. He had known the excuses he made for himself were bullshit when he made them, that he wasn’t hurting anyone, that it would only be the one time. But it hadn’t stopped him ignoring leads, concealing evidence, and even tipping criminals off about his case, all to pay off some damn loan shark. He was a bad cliché. He had known what he was doing was wrong and done it anyway because he was a coward. But this, this was worse.

His car was parked outside the motel Alesha was staying in, and he was holding a gun.

When they had told him to kill his partner his first thought had been to turn himself in. He had no illusions about what would happen to him, but better an old, corrupt cop die in prison than a young, clean cop get murdered by the one person she should be able to trust. If it had just been his life they were threatening, he would have done it. Or he would like to think he would have done it. If he was being honest with himself, he would have probably confessed in a suicide note and taken the cowards way out. But one way or another, he would never have hurt Alesha.

But they had threatened his daughter. How they even knew he had a daughter he had no idea. He hadn’t seen her in years and knowing her mother felt like a lifetime ago. But they had found her and told him that if he didn’t kill Alesha, they would kill his kid.

Mike shivered at the memory of the phone call. He had recognized the first voice he had spoken to as Gino, his loan shark, but the second… The second voice sounded like the devil himself come to collect on his soul.

“You are likely thinking about turning yourself in rather than doing this,” the voice had said. “Or perhaps eating a bullet, but you’re not going to do either of those things. You’re not going to doing either of them because I know where Tabitha lives and where she goes to school. If you do anything but kill your partner quietly and efficiently, I will send men to her. The men I will send will not be professionals, they will be monsters, they will be the worst humanity has to offer and they will make her suffer in all the ways you fear she might and a hundred others you won’t be able to imagine until you find her body. If you try to warn or protect her, I will know about it and it will not save her from what is coming. She will die screaming in the dark unless you do precisely what is asked of you. That is all Mr. Jones.”

Mike had wept openly for almost an hour afterwards. He believed the man on the other end of that phone call, believed he would do exactly what he said he would if Mike didn’t kill his partner. He had no choice, but that didn’t make him any less of a monster, or make him hate himself any less.

Mike eventually judged that everyone would be asleep and that he couldn’t put off what he had to do any more. He took a big swig of whisky to stop his hands shaking so much, concealed his gun, and stepped out of the car. He didn’t bother attempting to pick the lock. He didn’t need to, she had given him a key for emergencies. The weight of it in his hand made him feel like he might be sick, but he fought the nausea down for his daughter’s sake and opened the door.

At least I can make it quick for her, at least I can give her that small mercy, he thought and then immediately hated that he was trying to console himself about the terrible thing he was doing.

You shouldn’t have any consolation for this, he thought fiercely. You’re a fucking monster.

He entered the room silently, fighting back tears and trying not to throw up. He felt angry at himself for this too as if someone saw him crying and puking his guts out, they might think he was a victim here too, and he knew better than that.

Mike stood over Alesha’s bed. She looked to be sleeping.

He raised the gun.

He squeezed the trigger.

A gunshot, and Alesha was dead.

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