Monk Addison sat on the front porch of his house. He vaguely remembered driving home, but he had no idea where his keys were now. The door was locked. His handgun was gone. The car was locked, too.
He sat on the Ikea rattan chair, his head in his hands, shuddering from time to time. His ghosts stood around him. Silent now. Shocked and frightened. As he was shocked and frightened.
Monk touched the bare spot on his chest.
It took him a long time to make his brain work right. To reconnect with the patterns of logic, of cause and effect, that defined him. There had been the guy at the bar. Something Duncan. Maybe Arnold or Andrew. The guy who lost the tattoo celebrating his wife’s remissions from breast cancer.
And there was Patty. She’d lost a tattoo, too.
But … of what?
It was a face, too, but it was gone. Whose face was it, though?
A name floated just beyond his ability to hear it.
The storm was worse now, and the wind slashed him with cold rain. That was good. That was fine. It felt like punishment. It felt deserved.
Though for which sins, he was not sure, and the night refused to share its secrets.
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A thick fly walking along the arm of the other chair. Bold as brass, the little fucker.
Monk’s hand moved at the speed of his fury and smashed the fly to paste.
“Fucker,” growled Monk, wiping his hand clean on his jeans.
Twenty minutes later he got up, walked through puddles down his side yard, and kicked in his back door. He propped it closed with a kitchen chair, stripped out of his clothes, and let the various pieces lay where they fell. He stood in the hottest shower he could bear for almost half an hour. Then crawled into bed and fell asleep almost at once.