Broken by Matthew Storm

“You already
know what you’re going to do when you leave here. Why don’t you tell me about
it?”
    “I’m
going to work the case,” I said. “It is good, to be out there doing something
useful again. It makes me feel…I don’t know. Like my life matters.”
    “Of
course your life matters,” Molly said. “It matters whether you’re working cases
or not.”
    “I don’t
know.”
    Molly
sighed. “Nevada, I have to ask. Have you thought about A.A.?”
    I nearly
choked on my water. “Are you serious?”
    “I am.”
    “You
think I want to sit around and listen to a bunch of losers whine about how much
they miss drinking?”
    “I think
you’d find that’s not what twelve-step programs are about.”
    “No.”
    “They
have meetings for cops. You’d be talking to people that have had similar
experiences…” she cut herself off. “No, I guess that’s not true. But cops.
There’s at least some common ground there.”
    “I
really don’t see the point.”
    “Will
you come back and talk to me about it when you finish with this case?”
    “As my
friend or as my therapist?”
    “As your
friend who happens to be a therapist,” she said. “Not your therapist. I could
recommend someone else for that. I know a guy…”
    “I’ll
talk to you about it later,” I cut her off.
    “Promise
me a year isn’t going to go by before I see you again?”
    “Molly…”
    “Promise
me.”
    “Fine,”
I said. “I promise. Jesus. Everyone and their damn promises these days.”
    “We’re
going to save your life, Nevada. Mark my words.”
    I didn’t
reply. I just would have told her my life wasn’t worth saving, and then we’d
have had to go round and round again. We’d been there and done that before. But
I was glad I’d come to see Molly. I was going to have some bruises in the
morning, but I’d be proud of them. I’d earned them. Even if Molly hadn’t
made me promise, I’d have come back to see her. I missed her. I missed a lot of
things.
    I missed
my life.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 10
     
     
    After a
long shower I found myself wishing I had some clean clothes to put on. The
smell of the clothes I’d worn to the gym made me nauseous. I didn’t want to
drive home and do laundry, but there was no way I could keep this shirt on much
longer.
    There was a novelty t-shirt store for tourists two doors
up from Molly’s dojo. I went inside and picked out the first shirt that didn’t
make me want to punch someone. It had a cartoon of a surfing dog on it, which
was not my thing at all, but at least it was clean.
    I changed shirts in my car and tossed the dirty one onto
the back seat. That would do for now. New jeans and underwear could wait for a
while.
    Alan Davies’s card was still in my pocket. I retrieved
it and then remembered I still had no idea where my cell phone was. I’d never
bothered to look for it after Todd had shown up at my house and tried to kill
me. It hardly seemed worth driving back to Ocean Beach to make a phone call to
let him know I was coming. I’d just have to show up unannounced. Davies would
have to make the time to see me, provided he was home and not off at some
gangster business meeting. Was that something gangsters did? Go to meetings?
    My hands were starting to tremble when I reached for the
steering wheel and I realized my body was lacking both food and alcohol now. I
never ate that much anyway, but having vomited earlier meant I had been running
on empty for quite a while. I needed to get some calories in me before my body
started to shut down.
    I drove north as far as Del Mar before stopping at a
fast food place and hitting the drive-through. As I was waiting for a
hamburger, I realized something was still nagging me. I was missing something.
Working a case could be a lot like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes you were
missing pieces, but I had the feeling I was missing a piece I’d already seen
and just misplaced somewhere. It was starting to drive me