Page 31 of Nightfire

“Real love affair, huh.” Kelly’s voice was icy.

Mike’s teeth ground.

“The name Mila Koravich mean anything to you?”

Mila—Mike closed his eyes, tried to envision the woman’s apartment. Filth, disorder, rank smells. All he remembered was the stench and the sick feeling of drunkenness. Had her name been on anything? He scanned his memory behind his closed eyelids. Nope.

Mike’s eyes opened. “Sorry. I don’t remember her name. So what’s it matter to you?”

“You got rough with her, didn’t you?”

Shame flooded his system in a hot rush. Harry and Sam sat silently, watching him. In the drunken haze that was last night, the memory of holding her down, of seeing her red, slightly swollen wrists with the white marks of his hands circling them, stood out.

“A—a little. Nothing serious.”

“Yeah?” Kelly had been writing in his notebook but at Mike’s words he looked up, face clenched like a fist. “I don’t know what your definition of ‘a little rough’ is, Keillor, but it’s not mine.”

He reached into an envelope and pulled out some glossy 8 x 10s and tossed them down onto the coffee table. Mike leaned forward, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Red and black, misshapen flesh…then the image resolved itself into the shocking images of a badly-beaten woman.

He narrowed his eyes. Something about the badly-beaten face was familiar… Oh God. The woman he’d fucked last night.

Shocked, he looked up into Kelly’s angry eyes.

“Shattered jaw, concussion, broken forearm, three broken ribs, internal hemorrhaging it took surgery to stop and a crushed spleen. That’s not what I call ‘a little roughness’, Keillor.”

“Christ. I didn’t do that to her.” Mike stood, unable to sit still. “I couldn’t do that to any woman. The only thing I did was hold her down when she asked for it.” And well, fuck her harder. But she’d asked for that, too.

Kelly made an angry gesture at the spill of horrific photographs. “That looks like someone who was just held down? She was beaten half to death.”

“Christ, Bill.” A sudden shudder of fear struck Mike. He wasn’t used to fear, but this was a new type of fear he’d never encountered before. If Bill Kelly, who knew him, thought he was capable of doing this, what about other officers in the Violent Crimes Squad? All his dealings had been mainly in SWAT. But the SDPD was big. There were plenty of officers who didn’t know him and weren’t willing to take anyone’s word that Mike simply wasn’t capable of this kind of violence against a woman.

Against an enemy who attacked him, sure. But a woman? Never.

It was beginning to sink in that he was going to have to convince skeptical officers he wasn’t the one. And the DA. And—God—maybe eventually a jury.

Kelly gave him a hard look. “So you’re telling me you didn’t have sex with this woman? And be careful what you say because we found a used condom in the bathroom.” He snorted. “Used, not filled. You didn’t even come, you poor bastard. So—what’s the DNA test gonna show? And remember your DNA is on file.”

Every police officer had had their DNA tested via a cheek swab to establish a data file.

“Yeah, okay, we had sex.”

“Uh-huh,” Kelly said. “And?”

“And…I didn’t come. She was…asking me to be rough with her. Couldn’t do it.”

Now Kelly looked at him in pity. Kelly was a straight and narrow kind of guy who probably only got laid on St Patrick’s Day. Mike used to feel sorry for him but he suddenly realized the truth. Kelly was right and he was wrong. Fucking around was not good.

Kelly sighed. “The, ahm, lady in question used crack. We found it everywhere. You’re a former police officer. Former Marine. Marines and crack. That’s not a good mix, Keillor. You should have kept it in your pants.”

Mike closed his eyes. Kelly was right. He should have kept it in his pants.

“So…what’s your version? Tell me what went down.”

Mike clenched his jaws. Christ, he didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it.

Silence. Mike could hear his own teeth grinding.

Kelly sighed and stood. “Okay, if you’re not talking, we need to take it downtown, Keillor.”