Waist Deep

30

By the time I got home, I was shivering violently again.It took me three tries to slide my key into the door lock to open it and get into my apartment.

Once inside, I stripped off my clothes and stood under a warm, then hot, shower.I stayed there until the shivering had stopped and a dull, painful throb returned to my fingers and toes.I only turned it off when the water finally turned lukewarm.

After toweling off, I examined the injuries on my body.The bruises from Mullet-man at the hockey game were turning yellow. I could see the faint outlines of new bruising where Leon had kicked me.The back of my head had a small lump from the brick wall in the alley. The muscles in my stomach were tender where Grill had drilled me with his foot.The blisters on my feet from all the walking I did in cowboy boots were the size of quarters. My shoulder and arm ached where my old gunshot wounds were.Not surprisingly, though, the jagged, tearing pain in my knee was the worst of all.

I popped three pain relievers and collapsed on my bed, hoping sleep wouldcome. When it didn’t right away, I tried to wrap my mind around the case but the weariness of the day, the beating and the long walk distracted me from any critical thinking.

Instead, a mish-mash of images swam through my tired mind in no particular order.Mr. Jenkins and his arrogance.Rolo.Katie.Kris Sinderling.Grill’s fury. The kindly features of Marie Byrnes. Leon and his flat eyes.Kris again.Gary LeMond and the unsettling feeling he gave me.Tiffany the hooker and the fire she’d raised in me.Dookie.Clell and the odor of Old Spice and coffee.Then Kris again. Always her again.

She floated before my eyes, her eyes nineteen, her body twenty-one, her heart and soul only six years old.

Six.Just like Amy Dugger.

I pushed all of them away and eventually let sleep take me.