The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(65)

Mickie shook her head. “Can I ask you something?” This made me laugh, Mickie asking permission. “Why do you put up with it?”

“With what?”

“With her bullshit; why would you let her convince you to do that?”

“I love her. At least I thought I did. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I just felt lucky to have someone like her . . . like me.”

Mickie looked like she’d sucked a lemon. Whatever she wanted to say, she held it in with great effort. She held up the bottle. “What is this all about?”

“I had a bad dream that turned out to be real.” I didn’t know where to begin, and I had to pee like a racehorse. “Hang on.” I managed to stand and immediately grimaced. The backs of my thighs burned. I made it halfway to the bathroom before Mickie spoke.

“Jesus, what the hell happened to your legs?”

“Nightmare,” I mumbled, not bothering to turn around. “I need a shower.”





2

After my shower, I provided Mickie with an abbreviated version of David Bateman administering a whack with his billy club across the backs of my thighs, and Mickie helped me smear Vaseline on my welts and wrap them in gauze.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You have to report it, Sam.”

“To who?”

“He has to have superiors. This is assault and battery.”

“It’s more than that. It’s psychotic. That’s what I’m worried about.”

“Exactly why you have to report it.”

“I’m afraid it would only make things worse for his wife and daughter.”

“So you’re not going to do anything?”

“At the moment, I’m just trying not to throw up. Listen, this isn’t like when I was a kid. I’m not afraid of David Bateman”—though in a sense I guess I was more afraid of him as an adult than as a child—“but reporting it would only help my ego. It wouldn’t solve the problem. This isn’t about some welt on the back of my leg. That will heal.”

“No, but it might get him kicked off the force and prevent him from doing it to someone else.”

“But not to his ex-wife or his daughter,” I said.

Mickie sat again.

“As much as I’d like to hurt that asshole, this isn’t about me,” I said. “It would be the selfish thing to do. You know how this goes. She’s too afraid to do anything, so she’ll deny it. If she did, by some miracle, agree to back a complaint, Bateman would deny it. I need to outsmart him. I need to find a way to end the abuse for them, not for me.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, Sam.”

“You mean more hurt, I presume? First thing we need to do is correct that little girl’s eyesight. Then we need to figure out a way to get them away from that psychopath for good.”

“Any idea how to do that?”

“Not yet.”

Mickie left me to dress. I found a pair of shorts baggy enough that the material didn’t grip my thighs but long enough to cover the gauze. I slipped my feet into sandals and pulled a gray Stanford T-shirt over my head. As I dressed I smelled spices wafting up from the kitchen—the pungent odor of garlic and the sweet smell of pepper and onions sautéing made my mouth water.

When I made my way downstairs, Mickie stood at the counter, adding ingredients to what looked to be scrambled eggs and everything else edible in my fridge. I saw bits of potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and hamburger patty. Bandit sat beside her, licking his chops.

“I can’t eat anything,” I said. In response, she handed me a bright-red concoction in a sixteen-ounce glass. “What’s this?”

“The best hangover medication you will find anywhere. Drink it.”

“What’s in it?”

“I’m a freaking doctor. Trust me.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

“Drink.”

The first sip tasted awful. I groaned and put the glass down.

“You really are a baby. It’s supposed to taste terrible. It’s punishment for abusing your body.” Mickie had become a health freak. She didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. “Now finish it before I hit you across the backs of your thighs with this spatula.”

I downed the rest of the concoction, though not without further complaint. At first I thought I would throw it all right back up, but to my surprise, my stomach started to feel better. My head still hurt, but I hoped the Tylenol would kick in and at least dull the beating drums. “You should bottle that stuff,” I said. “We’d make a killing.”

“Old family recipe,” she said without humor.

She put a huge plate of food on the counter in front of me and found a fork. It dawned on me that Mickie had probably cooked more meals in my kitchen than Eva. As I sat at the counter eating, Mickie cleaned the pots and pans. “This is good,” I said. “Better than good.”

She poured herself a tall glass of water, grabbed a fork, and joined me, systematically swallowing a handful of pills and eating eggs. “So, you want to tell me the rest of what happened?”

“I told you what happened.”

“You told me about Bateman. You didn’t tell me why you tried to drink yourself into a coma.”