Through his nose Jesse took a long inhale and a long exhale, and pursed his lips. His right hand rested on the tabletop and he tapped it several fiaes, as if listening to music that Abby couldn’t hear. She waited. ‘
“On the one hand,” Jesse said,
“Jo Jo’s big and strong and stupid and mean and he’s mad at me. I’d be an idiot not to be scared of him. On the other hand, if I have to, I can shoot him just as easy as if he were small and weak and smart and kindly.”
“And you’d be willing to do
that?” Abby said.
“I’d be willing,” Jesse said.
“You ever shoot anyone?”
“Yes.”
“Kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
Jesse shifted uncomfortably.
“He had a machete,” Jesse said.
“Nine years ago.”
“You would have been, what? Twenty-six?”
Jesse nodded. Abby waited. Jesse didn’t continue.
“So you shot him dead?” Abby said.
“Yes.”
“Did you mean to?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t try to wound him, you know, shoot him in the leg or something?”
“You shoot, you always shoot to kill. It’s not the movies.
You’re in a crisis situation, you got about a half second to do what needs to be done. Your heart’s pounding, you can’t swallow. It feels like yOU can’t get your breath and you got some guy with a machete. You aim for the middle of the mass and you try to remember not to jerk the trigger.“
Abby nodded slowly as she watched his face.
“Listening to you talk,” Abby said.
“It’s in there.”
“What exactly?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know exactly. I sensed it when we made love.
I guess I thought of it as, you know, ‘My he’s strong,’“
Abby said. “But that wasn’t really
it.”
“Jenn said I was very fierce.”
Abby nodded. “Something like that. I suppose you need to be that way if you’re a policeman.”
“Maybe I’m a policeman because
I’m that way,” Jesse said.
“And that’s why you’re not
scared of Jo Jo.”
Jesse smiled.
“It is prudent to be scared of Jo Jo. It would also be prudent of Jo Jo to be scared of me.”
eleven-to-seven shift and parked the cruiser out front and went in to log off. There were three steps up to the front door of the police station. The cat was on the bottom step, dead, with a small sign hanging around its neck. On the sign was written SLffr in black Magic Marker. By the time Jesse got there most of the police had heard about Captain Cat and several of them had come in, though they weren’t on duty. Nobody said much. He was after all, only a cat.
But he had been their cat and they liked him and they all could see that his death was about them.
“I find the little punk asshole that did this,” Suitcase Simpson said, and realized he didn’t quite know what he’d do and so
didn’t finish the sentence. But his round face was bright with anger.
“What the hell does ‘slut’
mean?” Pat Sears said. “For crissake he’s a male cat.”
Jesse picked up the cat and his head flopped loosely.
