No Way Back（Jack McNeal #1）
J. B. Turner
She felt her body being dragged through woods. The necrotic aroma of leaves. Bone-dry earth. Scorched grass. Branches scraping her skin. She realized she was breathing faster. And faster. Then she sensed she was in water. The Potomac. Cold water. Paralyzed with fear, she tried to open her eyes, but try as she might, she couldn’t. She attempted to scream. But no sound came, like in a bad dream.
The screams echoed only in her head. She wanted her husband to hear her. The cold, dark water began to wash over her skin. Her body began to shake. She tried to struggle. Her mind implored her to move. To lash out. To fight. But there was nothing. She couldn’t move. She floated.
The voice whispered in her head. Time for a long sleep. Don’t be afraid.
She somehow opened her eyes one last time.
The man wore a mask, assessing her; his eyes were cold, wide, and demonic. A whiff of strong cologne. She wanted to panic. Her body slipped under. Gulps of water. Lungs ready to burst. Throat compressed. Choking.
He was holding her down.
She tried to move her head but couldn’t. Frozen. Her mind willed her to move again. Then a dark screen slid over her eyes. Like a black curtain.
Her lungs filled up. No air left.
The man’s hands pressed down onto her chest.
She looked up, saw tears in his eyes and slivers of silvery moonlight above the water.
One
Jack McNeal held up the photo of the swollen, bloodied face of the boy. “He was unconscious when they brought him in. Broken jaw. Detached retina. Lacerations. Psychological trauma. You got anything to say?”
The cop sat curled into himself, shaking, his hands trembling in his lap. His attorney took copious notes. The cop said quietly, “I had a blackout. I can’t remember.”
McNeal put down the photo. His colleague, Sergeant Aisha Williams, shifted in her seat as she scribbled new questions on NYPD Internal Affairs–headed notepaper.
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” McNeal spat out. “You were drunk. Blind drunk. Your wife told us where you had been drinking. She’d been calling you. You didn’t want to come home. But she insisted, didn’t she?”
“She never lets up. She never gives me a break.”
“So, you reached your breaking point?”
The cop glanced at his attorney, who didn’t look back. “We all have our breaking point,” he muttered.
“She told me that you were having money worries. You were spending a lot of money on liquor. Gambling at the track. And, to top it all off, with your new lady friend. A fellow cop—a married cop, like yourself.”
“That’s got nothing to do with this.”
“It doesn’t?”
“I haven’t been myself. I can’t remember what I did yesterday.”
McNeal gazed at the photo of the boy’s battered face. “I’m not buying it. I think it’s bullshit. You’re an animal. How very convenient that you can’t remember what happened.”
“It’s true. I can’t.” The cop’s attorney scribbled on the legal pad, his face like stone. “I have episodes.”
McNeal’s stomach knotted with fury, gnawing away at him. “Three fucking witnesses! Your wife, your sister-in-law, and your twelve-year-old son, Steve. You beat your son to within an inch of his life. The surgeon said it was the worst case of child battery he’d seen.”
The cop shrugged as his gaze wandered around the windowless interview room.
“You sent him to the hospital. You are responsible. How does that make you feel?”
The cop blanched. “I’ve got a problem. I know that.”
“Damn right you’ve got a fucking problem. You call yourself a father?”
“I said I can’t fucking remember!”
Williams intervened for the first time. “You can’t remember or won’t remember. Which is it?”
The cop closed his eyes for a brief moment.
“Let me jog your memory,” McNeal said. “You grabbed little Steve by the hair, and you smashed his face through a glass door, driving shards of glass into his eyes.”
The cop scrunched up his face, not wanting to hear any more.
“He was motionless. Instead of calling an ambulance, you punched his mother, pushed your sister-in-law to the ground, and lifted up your semiconscious son before proceeding to pummel him with your fists until he blacked out, breaking his jaw. A child. Your son.”
The cop shook his head.
McNeal held the picture up to the cop’s face. “This is what you did. We have witnesses.”