drive, especially after a combat situation in which they were triumphant. Faced with death, destruction, and horror all around, there can be a powerful life-affirming drive toward sexuality.”
I exhale slowly. “I thought I was some kind of a pervert. I… kill… and it makes me want sex.”
The doctor does that faint smile again, and sits back. “You’re not a perv, but you aren’t too far off on the rest of your analysis. Some psychologists believe that the enhanced need for sex by some just might be the drive of a male, having defeated another male in a mating battle, if you will, to claim his prize—the woman.”
I look at the doctor for a long moment as I mill that over. It makes sense, I think. I can feel a slow smile spreading across my tired face. “So, it’s sort of a perk of the job?”
“One they can’t tax.”
I laugh hard and reach for my coffee I’ve yet to sip. It’s cold but I don’t care.
“You ready to go back to work, Sam?”
Finally, the question, part of it, anyway. I can’t appear too anxious. “What do you think?”
She looks at her computer screen, scrolls down, and reads some more. “You’re sleeping better now.”
“I am,” I lie.
She scrolls again. “Still having nightmares, though they’ve changed of late.”
“Not as many. Maybe twice a week. And there’s that change of roles thing that started last weekend.”
“All normal,” Kari says, still reading the screen. “I’m so glad you don’t drink. How is your martial arts training going?”
“Great. I lost a few kids when the press attacked me. Concerned parents. But in the last couple of weeks I’ve gotten new ones to take their place. I’ve been doing extra training on the heavy bag. It seems to help. It… whatever it is… just pours out of me and into the bag.”
She turns to face me. “I wish all my patients chose exercise over intoxicants. So, are you ready to go back?”
I nod, though somewhere deep inside I feel a pang of reluctance. Fear of getting back on the horse she called it during our last visit. That, plus there’s something else that’s been bothering me.
“I’m ready. Yes.” That sounded squirrely.
“Okay,” she says. She leans toward me. “One more question.”
Part two of the question.
“You’re out on the street and things turn to shit again. You got no choice but to blow some son-of-a-bitch to hell. Can you do it?”
I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. Once again, the faces—the elderly Jewish man and the tweaker—emerge out of the darkness:
The old man’s eyes are large with fear, his body writhing on the floor, his face bleeding from where the hold-up man struck him with his pistol. The tweaker’s eyes are glassy, crazed, his teeth and facial skin rotten from meth. He glares at me with stupidity and defiance, his long-barreled revolver jutting obscenely toward the whimpering old man.
“Shoot me, you fuck,” he spews through blackened and broken teeth, his dead eyes struggling to focus on the big hole at the end of my semi-auto.
“Listen, pal,” I say in a surprisingly calm voice. “Put your weapon down and let’s talk. You don’t have to—”
“Shoot me and I’ll shoot this old Jew as I die.” His gun hand trembles so hard that he will likely shoot the man before he intends to, anyway. “Come on, shoot me and—”
I fire.
The 9mm round punches a neat hole just below the shitbird’s nose, smack into his medulla oblongata. The bullet kills his sad brain and stops his heart instantly, dropping him like the bag of bones that he is, his muscles unable to fulfill his promise to shoot the old man.
I hold my Glock on him until the just-arrived uniform officers move in and handcuff him. “What a shot!” one of them says, as I holster. I ignore him, walk calmly out of the secondhand store, and sag helplessly to my knees. The shaking begins in my arms and spreads rapidly to my entire body. I struggle to my feet only to slump against the shop window, my body covering the “Get” on the sign Get More Bang For Your Buck.
I look up at Kari who is again giving me another of her field mouse-hunter looks. She knows where I’ve just been. I once partnered with an older guy for several weeks before he commented that he had spent eighteen months in Vietnam. When I asked when he was there, meaning what year, he looked at his hands for about a half minute. Finally, he said, just above a whisper, “Last night.”
“Sam?”
“Like we’ve talked about, Doc, it was never about pulling the trigger. All my martial arts training kicked in and I was amazingly calm. The aftermath, though, that was the hard part. The nausea, sleeplessness, agitation. The guilt. And feeling different from the other cops.”
“All normal.”
“Yeah.”
“Not pleasant, not fun, just normal.” She drinks the last of her coffee and sets the cup down. “The press is no longer attacking, eh?”
“I’m not complaining. Bastards.” The first newspaper headline after the shooting read in large print: Police Detective Shoots Teen. Then for the next two weeks, there were articles demanding a thorough investigation, and several additional stories about the “boy’s” hard life and how he had been turning it around. Two stories included photos of the nineteen-year-old as a toddler sitting by the family Christmas tree. Then when the media found out that I was a high-ranking martial artist and a past champion of full-contact fighting, they asked in their editorials why I hadn’t I kicked the gun out of the boy’s hand. Why, when I had options other than shooting, did I choose to shoot?
Same thing Tiff asked.
“Do you want to give me your answer now, Sam? You don’t have to. You can wait another week. You know I can’t release you to go back to work unless you can tell me that, should a situation call for it, you could use deadly force again.”
“What are the odds?” I ask rhetorically. I know there’s no answer, but that doesn’t keep me from asking myself that twenty times a day, and every night at two am and at three. And four.
“You know the answer, Sam. The chance of it happening again is no greater than of it happening the first time. But the department doesn’t—”
“—want an officer,” I say it with her, “on the street who would hesitate and risk his life, or the life of another officer or citizen.”
“Exactly,” she says.
“Yes, I can do it. I just don’t want to go through all the shit again.”
“That’s part of… ‘the game,’ to use your words from a couple of weeks ago. Right?”
I nod and look out the window again.
“Tiff
