Page 2 of The Art of Dying

I turned to him with a frown. “Karen Mackenzie?” I let her name simmer in my mouth.

“Just Mack, brother. I’m telling ya, she gets really pissy when you call her by her first name. She lives in a three decker a block over from your parents’ place.”

“She…? Since when? How do you know who she is, and I don’t? We didn’t go to high school with her, did we? It’s just townies and commuters here so she works in Boston, I guess?”

“Slow down,” he laughed. “She showed up with Mason Hughes after you left for boot.”

“Mason Hughes?” I repeated, my face screwing into disgust. “I thought that piece of shit moved away. Wasn’t he going to be a country singer or something?”

Sully laughed. “He was gone for a summer. Went to Nashville for a few months and quit when he realized his small-town charm only works in small towns. Came right back here to Quincy with Mack. He left again within six months, but she stayed. I hear she was glad he left, but now she hates every swingin’ dick within a hundred-mile radius. She’s clearly caught wind of your whore ways.”

“I didn’t touch Alecia.”

He nudged me with his elbow, hard, snapping me out of a daze. “You might as well give up now, bro. Get going before the rest of that stupid fuckin’ biker club shows up to avenge their mascot.” Sully slapped my shoulder and then walked away.

I took the stairs two at a time and pushed through the main door, my boots crunching against the gravel in the parking lot. No brake lights. She was already gone.

The low rumble of motorcycle engines was getting closer every second, so I scrambled to get my keys out of my jeans pocket as I jogged to my truck, hopped behind the wheel, and kicked up rocks as I tore away from the Tavern, toward my parents’ house.I’m no pussy, but I’m also not stupid.I had my Glock locked in my glove box, but I wasn’t trying to take anyone’s life over a stupid bar fight, and that was the only logical ending if I clashed with Cubby’s friends.

I blasted some Hank Williams to grace every neighborhood between the bar and my parents’ house with some decent music, turning it down just a tad as I pulled into the drive. The windows were dark. Expected, but still jarring. I stayed put, gripping the steering wheel as I stared at the chipped paint and the shutter hanging from the parlor window.

I’d let their house go to shit since the funeral. After years of neglect, I’d been home a full four days while on my month-long leave to move across country from Norfolk to Camp Pendleton in California, and I hadn’t done a damn thing to it. Feeling neck-deep in grief was no excuse to disrespect their home the way I had.

I slid out of the driver seat of my Chevy, slamming the door before trudging inside. Like every night, I found the clicker and turned on the television so the house didn’t seem so empty. An enlarged photo of my parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary hung above the brick fireplace.

“I’ll go get some paint tomorrow, Dad. And I’ll rehang the shutter, too.” I glanced over at the sink. “And I’ll do the dishes, Ma.”

A quick shower and a double whiskey to take the sting from my raw knuckles would’ve been a nice wind-down if someone hadn’t rapped on the screen door.

“Go away!” I yelled as I tightened my towel around my waist. Red and blue lights chased each other across the wood paneled wall. “Fuck,” I groaned, walking toward the door. I pulled on the knob. “Yep?”

A police cruiser sat behind my truck in the driveway, and Officer Kelita Vazquez was frowning at me from the other side of the screen door, her hand on her belt, her dark hair slicked back into a low, tight bun. She was four years older than me and had joined the Army right out of high school. The small scar on her cheek bone was a reminder of the mortar blast in Afghanistan that sent her packing. She was medically discharged, and not long after she healed from her injuries, she went the public servant route. Her puffy coat seemed to swallow her barely five feet, two-inch frame. She was all of a hundred pounds, her high cheek bones made her look more like a model than a cop, but if we got into a tussle, I knew I’d walk away limping. I’d seen her scrap enough in middle school and high school to know Kelita Vazquez fought dirty. No one dared to mess with her by the time she was sixteen, and now she had military training and a badge.

“Hey, Vaz.”

“Don’they Vazme,” she said, lowering her chin to look at me over her black-rimmed glasses. Her breath instantly crystalized in the cold, joining the steam coming off her cruiser in the atmosphere. “What happened to your knuckles? They look fileted.”

I opened the screen door and waited for her to step inside. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Well, there was a call about a fight at Bart’s Tavern,” she said, ignoring my offer to come inside. “Then we got noise complaints of loud music coming from a lifted white truck from houses between the Tavern and this area. What the fuck do you think?”

“I think I’ve been working on my truck’s busted radio today and skinned my knuckles more than once, so you’re at the wrong house, Vaz.”

She scanned me up and down with her narrow eyes and then peered around me to see the inside of the house. “Damn, Kitsch.”

“I know. It’ll be cleaned up tomorrow.”

“You have a frat party in here?”

“Just me.”

She peered up at me, then took a step closer. “Get your shit together. Your dad would have your ass.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I stared past her into the night, too embarrassed to make eye contact.

“And get that hand looked at. Cubby isn’t going to press charges, but they might come after whoever hit him.”

“They can try,” I said.

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