The Wisdom of Evil (13 page)

Her
eyes were as wide as saucers.

“Gimme all the cash in the drawers an’ safe an’ then I’ll let her go.”

The other two men stood on each side of him. They both had guns as well.

“Glory, get ‘em the money,” Michael said.

Her hands shook as she emptied out the cash drawer and the small safe.

One of the men came forward, roughly grabbing the cash from her hand.

“That’s it? All of it? There’s only a couple hundred bucks here!”

“We don’t keep much cash here. Goes t
o…the bank for deposit every night.”

“Well, you
beddah fuckin’ find me some more, bitch,” the man holding Kate hostage said. He pressed the knife into her throat, the tip of it piercing her skin. Blood appeared from the tiny wound. The other two men had their guns pointed at Michael and Glory both. Mickey stood to the back.

“I suggest you boys drop your weapons, now
, while the lady here goes in search of more cash. Oh, an’ while you’re at it, empty out all the drugs. The ones locked up, the good stuff.”

Michael and Mickey dropped their guns
. They made a loud clatter as they hit the floor.

When Glory came back, she had drugs only, no cash. There simply wasn’t any more!

“That’s
it
?”

The other two men were getting
antsy. “Let’s go,” one of them whined.

“Al
l right already, we’re goin’.”

The filthy one holding
Kate dragged her along with him to the door and kicked it open.

“Just so yah know
; we aren’t happy with the service we got here.”

In one incredibly swift motion, he slashed
Kate’s throat from ear to ear. Her mouth opened in a look of utter surprise, her mouth forming a perfect “O” shape. She fell to the floor, grabbing frantically at her neck as the blood sprayed everywhere. Her eyes met Glory’s for a split second, a gurgling sound emitting from her mouth. An enormous amount of blood gushed out, making the wet, gurgling sound even more awful. Glory was mortified! They all were! What reason did this man have to do this? What possible purpose could it serve? In a few torturous moments, Kate’s struggled sounds stopped and the horror of it was over. She slumped up against the wall, eyes empty in death.

A
s the intruder was leaving, Mickey dove for his gun, shooting off rounds aimlessly until he finally hit his mark. The man went down. The other two men, hearing the shots, ran back in.

After that, al
l became chaos. Michael took aim at one of the two, taking him down swiftly with a bullet to the head. But the other guy kept on coming and shooting at them.

Jesus Christ
! A bullet was headed right at Glory, would have hit her if Michael hadn’t stood in the way and fired. He missed.

Glory watched it all as if in slow motion. She hadn’t been shot, but Michael had!

“You motherfucka!” Mickey yelled. Using the shotgun, he blew the man’s head clean off.

The damage done was
that which only a shotgun at close range could produce. The man’s head was nothing but a jumbled mess of bone, blood and muscle. The doorway to the hospital now resembled a slaughterhouse. Swiftly and silently, they went to out to the police cruiser, leaving the Jeep behind.

“Fuck it,” Michael said. “We’ll be safah travelin’ together.”
He limped, holding a hand to his stomach, blood oozing steadily from the wound. The pale blue color of his uniform shirt grew crimson-colored where he’d been hit.

Mickey took the wheel
. Glory sat in back with Michael. They headed for home, knowing they’d have to go back over the bridge. This night was far from over.

Chapter
17

Michael had been wounded, of that there was no doubt, but how badly Glory did not yet know.

The moon was in its quarter phase and the sky was overcast.
It looked as if the summer thunderstorm channel six news had predicted this morning was going to prove accurate. One never knew in New England. New Englanders had the “wait and see” approach when it came to weather predictions.

The night was dark, ominously so
. The scene in the car was even more foreboding. Glory finally got a look at Michael’s wounds. As the vehicle moved forward, their eyes becoming accustomed to the dark, she was able to see it clearly. The entire front of Michael’s shirt from the waist down was covered in blood. In the gentle light of the car’s interior, she unbuttoned his shirt and gasped. Her stomach lurched, her heartbeat so fast that the very arteries in her neck pulsed in a hard rhythm. She thought they’d rip right through her skin.

Mickey looked into the rear view mirror
and caught her eyes. They were wide, solemn, more telling than words of the very gravity of the situation, of the wound itself.

“Do yah want me to pull over, Mom?”

“No, Mickey, just…drive. Get us the hell outta here.” Michael answered him, struggling to get the words out as a flesh glut of blood, murky and black-red in color, ran out of his mouth and down his chin.

“Should we go
to the hospital, Dad?” At that moment, Mickey did, in fact, look and sound like a ten-year-old boy, afraid and relying on his father’s judgment on what he should do.

Michael’s breathing was ragged
-sounding.
He’s punctured a lung
was her first thought. After which she thought of how very much she needed him. Her life had begun when she met him.

She
carefully laid open his shirt and began to clean the blood with the cloth from the first aid kit kept in the back of the cruiser. And there they were—a wound to the upper right arm, one just below the neck. Both nasty to be sure, but she felt certain she could tie them off and stop the bleeding, then stitch them up later. Even though he should go to the hospital, he wouldn’t. The only help they’d get was her meager skills as a veterinary technician.

Glory thought of
Kate, propped up back at the animal hospital, staring at nothing. The guilt of it was overwhelming. She should never have involved her. Should never have risked everyone’s lives on this fools mission, should’ve used her head instead of her heart. Haley had been beyond saving before they’d even left the house. Now, because of her, their very lives were on the line!

Upon further examination, she believed Michael did
indeed have punctured a lung. However, that proved irrelevant as Glory examined the last of Michael’s wounds. This was the one. Now she understood the reason Michael didn’t want to go to the hospital. Because he knew it was too late.

This was the injury that would
be fatal; it was just a matter of time. There was nothing she or anyone else could do about it. The wound would prove to be the ultimate irony. The bullet had found its final resting place in Michael’s stomach, a penetrating trauma where an object entered the tissues of the body and did not exit. The injury was more commonly called a gut shot. The stomach was perforated, allowing the contents to spill into the bloodstream, causing sepsis.

The bottom line
was, Michael would suffer a slow and agonizing death as his body’s immune system went into hyper drive to attempt to fight the infections caused by the foreign matter, the bullet in his body. The fight would be futile and the end result would surely be death.

Glory’s
heart and mind could not even comprehend losing Michael. She’d lost many others and she still had Mickey, but Michael was her life partner. He was always there. Children grew up and left, parents died, pets died, but Michael had been there through all of it, always beside her. He was her best friend.

Losing Olivia was the worst thing she’d ever
endured, but even that she had not endured alone. Even Mickey would be unable to provide what Michael did. At times, no exchange of words was needed between them; so well attuned were they to each other’s emotions. It had taken her a long time to trust anyone as it was, but in time, she came to realize that she was one of the fortunate ones who’d truly found her soul mate. Where would she ever find that kind of love again? Her heart was not just breaking; it was being torn inside out. And his pain! He should never have to suffer like this.

“Glory…I feel…cold
.” Michael was shivering uncontrollably, his lips turning an unnatural shade of blue. The color crept up to the area beneath his eyes, a grayish blue color like that of an angry winter ocean. Although he felt cold, his body was drenched in sweat.

She
wrapped him in the old army blanket, which was kept in the event of a breakdown during one of the bitter cold winter days and nights, or during one of New England’s many nor’easters.

“I need
a tell you some things. You an’ Mickey both. Things…one thing I have ta tell you before….” His breathing was labored, every word an effort.

“
Sshh... Try to stay quiet, Michael.” Glory wrapped his midsection tightly to cut off the flow of blood. It might buy him some time. Time to get to the place he loved most in the world, home.

“You’ll be okay, Michael. Don’t you dare leave me, you hear me?” Maybe if
she said it and believed he’d be okay, it would be true.

“Glory, I did somethin
’. Somethin’…really bad. I don’t know if I should tell you or if it’s selfish of me to burden you with it.” He was lucid, not in the least bit delirious, his voice clear and strong. But how long he would be capable of speech, no one could say. So, she understood she had to listen to what he was saying, that it was
important
to him.

“The gun, the .357 Magnum
,” Michael said.

“I never saw that gun before, Michael.”

“I know. I kept it hidden undah the floorboards of the cubby hole in the basement. I only used it once.”

“I don’t understand, Michael…when…”

“Glory, just listen to me please. The agony I feel in my body isn’t even comparable to that which I feel in my heart, my soul. I lied to you and I’m sorry. I had to. You see, it ate away at me. I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about it; there was no peace, just misery without end. Olivia…she looked like you, you know. She was…as you were when we first met. So…beautiful, so
alive
! You stole my heart the very first day I saw you and you’ve held it captive all these years. I couldn’t let it go. I had to make things right. Every time I looked at your beautiful face, it reminded me of her. The lines of misery and grief on your face, the emptiness in your eyes, it was…unbearable to see you that way. All of your passion, one of the things I loved so much about you, it was gone. No, not gone…
taken
. I hated Ted, hated Sean. Hadn’t you suffered enough in that horrid family? And now, I suffered too. To lose my little girl! But now…I’m gonna die and I can’t go to my grave as a coward and a liar, not to you, not to Mickey.” Tears flowed unchecked down his face. She went to wipe them off and he pushed her hand away. He
needed
to cry.

He cried for all they
’d loved and lost, for the unbearable grief of losing their daughter and so many others. He cried for what their life had become, what was going on in their own home town. He cried for the future he could not even hope for anymore. But most of all, he cried for
her
; tears she wouldn’t allow to flow, preferring the numbness.

“There was no justice
, it seemed, no divine intervention from God to save our little girl. The universe didn’t notice or care about a young girl who made one fatal mistake. Who now lay dead in that morgue. But you cared, Mickey cared, and I cared. I thought I’d go mad until I decided to be her justice, to be
your
justice.”

“Michael, what are you saying?”
Glory said in a stunned whisper.

“
Your heart was broken, no, not broken, shattered in a million pieces, and I wanted to fix it. I’ve always tried to take care of my family. I did the best I could, didn’t I, Glory? I had to fix things, make them right again for you, for all of us. That was my duty as a good husband and father, wasn’t it?” His eyes pleaded with her to tell him he’d done the right thing by them.

Just then, ever
ything clicked together. The nights he had been gone, the unknown gun, his anger, and she knew what she didn’t want to know, was hearing what she didn’t want to hear.
Please, Michael, do not say it,
she thought.

“No, Michael, it can’t be true
. Not you. You didn’t…”

“I did, Glory. So help me God, I did
. I wish I hadn’t. I’m no beddah than the common criminals out there. I was incapable of controlling the rage that rose inside me. It was the only way to tame it… I thought…to set things right.”

Mickey had been listening intently without interrupting.
He watched the road as he drove, making furtive glances in the rear view mirror. His emotions were revealed only in the tightness of his jaw, the tension flexing in his cheek muscles.

“I need to hear you say it
, Michael. Tell me…tell me what you did.” She whispered into his ear as if there were some unseen force listening to the tale he would tell.

“Remember when you used to ask me where I went on all the long drives I took and I told you I was visiting Mom’s grave?”

She nodded but said nothing.

“Well, I did do that…a lot. I talked to Mom, hoping that by revealing my dark thoughts about Sean out loud, I could
exorcise them from my mind. I guess I thought, somehow, Mom or maybe God himself would give me a…sign. To tell me what to do to make it go away. But, I found no answers, no peace. That was my answer…that there were no answers. I had to use my own free will to decide what to do.”

He took a deep breath and
she could hear the rattling in his chest. This was taking a lot out of him, but she supposed it really didn’t matter anymore.

In Michael’s condition
, they had precious little time left. The time for secrets was over.

“One night, I rode down t
o Boston. I didn’t feel anythin’ at all. It was as if I was operating on auto pilot and then….I was at the wharf on the Mystic, where that junkie haven of a bar that Sean used to hang out is. I saw him at the end of the pier, smoking cigarettes and laughing with a couple of his buddies. He was
laughing
, Glory! Fuckin’ scum bag was laughing while our little girl rots in the grave! Why on earth should he be allowed to live? So... I waited, hiding in the meager shrubbery underneath the pier until his buddies finally left. I think it was around two a.m., I don’t really know. I confronted him face to face. As soon as he saw me, I think he knew what I meant to do even before I did. He turned as white as a sheet, and then he saw the gun in my hand. His face turned a pallid gray, as gray as the world had become for me since her…death. I asked him why. He looked at me as if confused by my question. ‘Why what, Uncle Michael? I don’t…I don’t know what you’re asking me.’ He slurred his words all over the place, enraging me all the more, but I restrained myself from shooting him dead right there and then.

“
Don’t call me that ever again! You don’t mean nothin’ to me anymore, you hear me? Nothing! All I want from you is to know what really happened on the night Olivia died.’ And he told me. All of it. How she wanted to see what it was like, just once, a couple weeks before. How she liked it and asked that night if she might try it again. Sean said he tried to talk her out of it, but the choice was hers to make and in the end, he gave her what she wanted. After a while, he noticed she was nodding out and he kept on waking her up, but it became more and more difficult. Gradually, her breathing slowed. He said he kept checking her pulse; it was weakening. He suspected she’d overdosed and panicked, meant to bring her to a hospital, but he was high too and afraid he’d get in trouble, maybe even blamed for Olivia’s overdose. Selfish…prick. He drove around with her in his car until he came to the church. He placed her on the front steps, still alive, still breathing, and he…went home! Can you believe it? He went
home
like nothin’ ever happened!” Michael was beyond angry, coughing up fresh blood. Yet, he went on accounting the events of that fateful night.

“
’You cold hearted bastard. She loved you, Sean, and tried to help you, and you left her there, left my baby to die alone!’ I yelled at him. My hands shook uncontrollably. This wasn’t the same thing as defending myself as a cop on the job. Then…I put the barrel of the gun right up to his stomach and I…and I pulled the trigger. Sean’s eyes widened in surprise as if he didn’t really think I’d ever do such a thing; neither did I. But I did it. God forgive me, I was glad and relieved and at peace for the first time in ages. I turned and left, not even caring if anyone had seen me there.”

Glory
didn’t know what to say; this was just too much information to take in after what they’d just been through on this endless dark night.