Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

gravest sin. That he would go straight to the depths of hell, where he would be raped by every demon up to Lucifer himself.
    So he chose to live rather than die, although it seemed to him that there was little to choose between one and the other.

    L YING JUMBLED IN the alley, the truth of what’s done finally descends on you, soft as snow.
    You see the lights of passing cars, buttoned tight, oblivious. Flashes of colored sound made distant by the glass wall of your dysphonia. Out of reach. Out of touch.
    You are nearly out of time.
    But still you grip to the coattails of life with the stubborn savagery that is your nature. Logic tells you that you should already be dead, that somehow the blade has missed the vital vessels. You have gotten away with too much to believe you will not get away with this, if you want it badly enough.
    After all, by will and nerve you have survived exposure, excoriation, excommunication.
    Someone will come.
    A stranger, a Samaritan. Someone who doesn’t know you well enough to step over your body and move along through.
    If
he
doesn’t come back to finish you first.
    Only a fatalist would believe this is some random act of violence, but not knowing
who
scratches at the back of your mind. There have been too many likely candidates to narrow it down.
    You are troubled that he did not speak. You expected the bitter spill of self-righteous self-pity. Of blame.
    See what you made me do, old man.
    Killing you without triumph is pointless.
    But the face … you don’t remember the face. You are not good with the faces of men, although it’s different with the boys. Unformed and mobile, fresh. You have never forgotten one of your boys.
    Your special boys.
    It tore your heart out to have them taken away from you. To be taken away from them. But they underestimated the number, and few came forward to be counted.
    They called it shame.
    You call it love.
    Maybe that is the reason you are lying here, bleeding out into a rain-drummed puddle smeared with oil, in an alley, in the dark, alone.
    Maybe he loves you too much to see you with anyone else.

    H E IS ON his knees when the cops come for him. They shuffle into the church snapping the rain from their topcoats, muting radio traffic, hats awkward between their fingers. Like they’ve seen too much to believe in the solace of this place. Like they’re embarrassed by their own lack of devotion.
    For a moment panic clenches in him and he teeters on the cusp of relief and outright despair. He should have anticipated this.
    He rises, crosses himself — a reflex of muscle memory — and turns to them with empty hands.
    The cops don’t need to speak. Their faces speak for them. It is not the first time they have come for him like this. Not here. He doesn’t stop long enough to pull on a coat before they hustle him out, through the slanted rain to the black-and-white angled by the curb, lights still turning lazily.
    The ride is short. The cops exchange muttered words in the front seat. He reads questions in their gaze reflected from glass and mirrors but has nothing to say. This is the place of his choosing, and they cannot understand the choice.
    He stares out through the streaked side window at the passing night, at the tawdry glitz of hidden desperation.
    The rain comes down with relentless fervor. Water begins to pile up in the gutters, flash-flooding debris toward the storm drains.
If only sins were as easily swept clean away.
    The car slews to a halt beside two others just outside the crime tape. The lights zigzag in and out of sync with more urgency than the men around them.
    Hope plucks at him.
    The cops step out; one opens his door. They lift the tape to duck inside the perimeter, though there is nobody to keep at bay. Violence is too common here to draw a crowd in this rain.
    A detective intercepts them with a doubtful glance, hunched into the weather. He has a day’s tired stubble above his collar, and a tired suit beneath his overcoat.
    “This him?”
    One of the cops nods. “All yours.”
    “Let’s go.” The detective steps back with a spread arm, an open invitation tinged with mocking — for what he is, for what he represents.
    “Wallet was still in the vic’s hip pocket — how we knew he was one of yours,” the detective says as they walk toward the alley. “But we would have made him sooner or later.”
    The detective waits for a response, for a simple curiosity that’s not forthcoming.
    “I do what needs to be