The is my first posting to the Due South Fiction archive. I rate it PG due to violence. The crime mentioned is based on a recent case here in Ottawa....
The story is mine; Ray belongs to Alliance (and David Marciano) and no copyright infringement is intended. Comments can be sent to: ar895@freenet.carleton.ca
The amber liquid in the glass tempted him. It had been a long, hard day, filled with frustration and rage. The last straw had been the crime scene he had witnessed just before leaving work. Ray had seen many crime scenes in his years as a police officer and he usually could keep his emotions under control. But this one...
Two victims, a girl and a boy, neither of them over fourteen years old. The boy was, mercifully, dead. The girl wasn't so lucky. She was in severe pain, but she identified the bastards who had done this to her; identified the curling iron that mutilated her and the garotte that killed the boy. They had been kidnapped simply because the boy had once made a disparaging comment about the gang of sadistic punks.
Ray had taken the girl's statement, the one she insisted on making before she would let the ambulance take her to hospital. She was a street kid, all tough bravado. The kind of a girl who had been everywhere and was going nowhere. But she had taken one look at him and seen the rage in Ray's eyes that matched her own. She could barely speak through her pain and tears, but she had wanted him to know the nightmare she had suffered.
After she was sent to hospital, Ray had calmly finished his notes, put his notebook into his pocket, walked behind his car and threw up. Welsh sent him home.
He showered for a long time after he stumbled into the house, until Frannie banged on the bathroom door. Then he dressed and went down to Finelli's bar. He needed the anonymity of the bar, not his family.
He ordered a scotch and stared at it for a long time.
Ray didn't drink much. He confined himself to a beer or two, maybe a glass of wine. He never allowed himself to get beyond mild intoxication and he never touched the hard stuff. He had grown up with a drunk for a father; he knew the toll alcoholism took on a family. He also knew that he was a prime candidate to follow in his father's footsteps.
He swore to himself years ago that his family would never wait anxiously for him to come home, not knowing whether he would be sober or drunk. They would never again face the uncertainty of whether he would be maudlin or abusive and never again have to decide which was worse.
He had been tempted before. The peer pressure in high school, the first time he witnessed a murder scene, the first time he shot Fraser. But never before had he felt such need to forget, if only for a short time, the pain and ugliness his fellow creatures were capable of inflicting.
The boy had been a good kid, a smart kid, who had made one indiscreet remark. His death was agony and so very pointless. That hurt. And the girl, a little guttersnipe living on the streets, had tried to defend the boy and had gotten ruined by that one act of kindness. Her courage left him in awe and her rage and pain tore at his heart.
He picked up the glass, wanting the artificial oblivion more than he wanted anything in his life. Then he paused.
What had his father tried to forget? Why did he want to bury himself in a bottle? Was it the pain of forgotten dreams, the rage of knowing that his life was going nowhere? Was it oblivion his father was seeking? Or was it simply habit?
He put the glass down with a thud, dropped a bill on the table and left. The amber liquid was not the answer. It was not the answer to the rage, or to the pain. It would not fill the emptiness he sometimes felt, the emptiness of forgetting to hope.
The girl, mutilated and in pain, had used her rage to help find her torturers. She had, in the midst of hopelessness and despair, found the strength within herself to keep fighting. The strength that his father never had and the strength Ray wanted. If he couldn't always find that strength within, he would borrow hers.
He would find that gang. For her, for himself, for all the innocent victims like that boy. He was stronger than his father; he didn't need a crutch to face his world. He hoped that, one day, he would have the strength of that angry little girl.
Adrienne
ar895@freenet.carleton.ca