The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing there in his expensive suit with his gold-plated Rolex, and it was like the ghost of every CO, every commissioner or DA who’d reprimanded him for the last twenty years had reared up on him suddenly, and before he’d even known what he was doing, the guy was flat on his back, out cold with one punch.
    He figured Reardon was probably going to be pissed. Whatever angle he was playing, Mickey had blown it for him. And if he had enough money in the briefcase he’d taken from Marsh to pay off his debts and put himself in the clear, his instincts still told him to take the money and run, hotfoot it for the airport before everything started to catch up with him.
    But another voice whispered at him through those luminous brown eyes in the photograph. They were crazy eyes, he realized; something was missing in them, something was fractured. It wasn’t lust they stirred in him. More like some deep and inexpressible desire to make good on his life after throwing forty-three years away. What was the point in running away from San Francisco? Here the battle lines had been drawn, and here he would make his stand. Only he didn’t know yet what he was fighting—or what he was fighting for. He’d lost Sue years ago, and he didn’t know if it was too late even to win Karyn back.
    He let it all tick over in his mind as he started the car, meandering out toward the Great Highway as the last of the day’s light burned out over Ocean Beach.
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    She was much smaller in person than he’d expected. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. And Christ, the woman could shop. He tailed her to the malls, the department stores, the high-end places downtown. She took it seriously. Like some people take food or professional sports seriously. She stalked the aisles like a big-game hunter, shrewd eyes goggling out of her childish face. He watched her trying on a diamond tiara at Saks on Saturday, twisting from side to side in front of the mirror in her designer jeans, and he thought of Wonder Woman.
    He staked out the house. He kept vigil. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed being a cop. However cynical you became, however arbitrary the designations seemed, by virtue of the uniform, you became one of the good guys. And you believed in it because it was all you had, because if you weren’t one of the good guys, the only thing left for you was to be one of the bad.
    Those days seemed simple to him now. It seemed to him they’d all been playing dress-up, like playing cops and robbers when they were kids. How many of his friends from the neighborhood had he put away over the years? And why them, when he was no different?
    He had the feeling he was broaching new territory, entering uncharted waters. If he no longer wore the uniform, if he no longer had the force of the law at his back, how could he know what was right any longer?
    He wasn’t going to kill her. He knew that now. He’d known it from the first, from the moment he’d set foot in the bar and seen Marsh slouched there in his custom-tailored suit. And before, when Reardon had called. He’d known he wasn’t going to be able to go through with it, even then.
    The house might have gone for a hundred grand five or six years ago, but if he had to hazard a guess, Mickey would have said half a million by now. It looked just like every other house on the block, and they were all butted right up against one another, one house stacked on top of the other like Dixie cups in a line all the way to the top of the street and the dun-colored hills beyond.
    If you wanted to know what kind of parents they were, all you had to do was look at the kids. The girl was your typical tortured adolescent—combat boots that reached her knees, hair dyed black with a flaming red stripe down one side. She carried a lunchbox to school, and Mickey wondered if he hadn’t done all right by Karyn after all. As for the boy,