“And it was probably gonna kill me someday.”

“What was your drink?” Matthews asked.

“Scotch and beer.”

“Ha! Mine too. Dewar’s and Bud.”

Konnie’s eyes grew troubled. “So you ‘hat?” The cop nodded at the tall-neck hot tie. “What happened? You fell off, huh?”

Matthews’s face turned reverential. “I’ll tell you the God’s truth, Konnie.” He took a delicious sip of beer. “I believe in meeting your weaknesses head-on. I won’t run from them.”

The cop grunted affirmatively.

“See, it seemed too easy to give up drinking completely. You understand me?”

“Not exactly."

“It was the coward’s way. A lot of people just stop drinking altogether. But that’s as much a failure to me… sorry, don’t take this personal.”

“Not at all, keep going. I’m interested.”

“That’s as much a failure to me as somebody who drinks all the time.”

“Guess that makes some sense,” the cop said slowly Matthews swirled the beer seductively in his glass. “Take a man addicted to sex. You know that can be a problem?” “I’ve heard. They got a twelve-step for that too, you know?” “Right. But he can hardly give up sex altogether, right? That’d be unnatural.”

Konnie nodded.

Oh, he’s with me, Matthews thought. Hell, this is like sex talking your way into a man’s soul. He felt so high. “So,” he continued, “I just got back to the point where I could control it.”

“And that worked?” Konnie asked. The toady little man seemed awestruck.

“You betcha. I stopped cold for two years. Just like I told myself I’d do. This was all planned out. Sometimes it was tough as hell. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. But God helped me. As soon as I had it under control, two years to the day I stopped, I took my first drink. One shot of Dewar’s, Drank it down like medicine.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Felt good. Enjoyed it. Didn’t have another. Didn’t have anything for a week. Then I had another shot and a Bud. I let a month go by.”

“A month?” Konnie whispered.

“Right. Then I poured a glass of scotch. Let it sit in front of me. Looked at it, smelled it, poured it down the drain. Let another month go by.”

The cop shook his head in wonder. “Sounds like you’re one of them masochists or whatever you call ‘em.” But there was a desperation in his laugh.

“Sometimes we have to find the one thing that’s hardest for us and turn around and stare right at it. Go deep. As deep as we can go. That’s what courage is. That’s what makes men out of us.”

“I can respect what you’re saying.”

“I’ve been drinking off and on for the past six years. Never been drunk once.” He leaned forward and rested his hand on the cop’s hammy forearm. “Remember that feeling when you were first drinking?”

“I think-”

“It made you relaxed, peaceful, happy? Brought out your good side? That’s the way it is now.” Matthews leaned back. “I’m proud of myself”

“To you.” The cop swallowed and tipped his milk against the beer glass. His eyes slid over the golden surface of the brew.

Oh, you poor fool, thought Aaron Matthews. You don’t have a soul in the world to talk to, do you? “Sometimes,” he continued pensively, “when I have a real problem, something eating at me, something making me feel so guilty it’s like a fire inside… Well, I’ll have a shot. That numbs it. It helps me get through.”

“No foolin’.” The fork probed the diminished pile of potatoes.

Let’s go deep.

Touch the most painful part…

“If I found myself in a situation where there was somebody I loved and she was drifting away because of the way I’d become-well, I’d want to be able to face whatever had driven her away. I could show her I was in control again and-who knows?-maybe I could just get her back.”

The cop’s face was flushed and it seemed that his throat had swollen closed,

Matthews sipped more beer, looked out the window, at the dusk sky. “Yes sir, I hated living alone. Waking up on those Sunday mornings. Those March Sunday mornings, the sky all gray… The holidays by myself… God, I hated that. My wife gone… The one person in the world I needed. The one person I was willing to do anything for…

The detective was paralyzed.

Now, Matthews thought. Now!

“Let me show you something.” Matthews leaned forward, winking. “Watch this.” He waved to the waitress. “Shot of Dewar’s.”

“One?” she called.

“Just one, yeah.”

Numb, the cop watched the glass arrive.

Matthews made a show of reaching down and picking up the brimming glass. He leaned forward, smelled the glass, then took the tiniest sip. He set the glass down on the table and lifted his hands, palms up.

“That’s it. The only hard liquor I’ll have for two, three weeks.”

“You can do that?” The cop was dumbfounded.

“Easiest thing in the world. Without a single problem.” He returned to his beer and called the waitress over. “I’m sorry, honey. I’ll pay you for it but I changed my mind. I think I better keep a clear head tonight. You can take it.”

“Sure thing, sir.”

The cop’s hand made it to the glass before hers. She blinked in surprise at the vehemence of the big man’s gesture.

“Oh, you want me to leave that after all?”

The cop looked at Matthews but then turned his dog eyes to the waitress. “Yeah. And bring my friend here another beer.”

A fraction of a pause. Their eyes met. Matthews said, “Make it two.”

“Sure thing, gentlemen. Put it on your tab?”

“Oh, no,” Matthews insisted. “This’s on me.”

Matthews, wearing his surgical gloves, drove Konnie’s car out of the parking lot of the strip mall and toward the interstate. The cop was in the passenger seat, clutching a bottle of scotch between his legs like it was the joystick in a biplane. His head rocked against the Taurus’s window. Spit and liquor ran down his chin.

Matthews parked on a side road, not far from Ernie’s, lifted the bottle away from Konnie and splashed some on the dashboard and seat of the car, handed it back. Konnie didn’t notice. “How you doing?” Matthews asked him.

The big man gazed morosely at the open mouth of the bottle and said nothing.

At the strip mall where they’d bought the scotch Matthews had pitched out a trash bag containing the tire receipts and all the rest of the notes on the Megan McCall investigation. The doctor now climbed out of the car, pulled Konnie into the driver’s seat.

Konnie gulped down two large slugs of liquor. He wiped his sweating, pasty face. “Where’m I going?”

“You’re going home, Konnie.”

“Okay.”

“You go on home now.”

“Okay. I’m going home. Is Carol there?”

“Your wife? Yeah, she’s there, Konnie. She’s waiting for you to come home. You better hurry.”

“I really miss her.”

“You know where to go, don’t you?” Matthews asked.

“I think His bleary eyes looked around. “I don’t know”

“That road right there. See it?”

“Sure. There?”

“Right there,” Matthews said. “Just drive down there. That’ll get you home. That’ll get you home to Carol.”

“Okay.”

“Good-bye, Konnie.”

“Good-bye. That road there?”

“That’s right. Hey, Konnie?”

Matthews looked at the rheumy eyes, wet lips.

“You say hi to Carol for me, won’t you?”

The cop nodded.

Matthews flicked the gearshift into drive and stepped back as Konnie accelerated. He was driving more or less down the middle of the road.

Matthews was walking back to Ernie’s to pick up the Mercedes when he heard the sudden squealing of brakes and the blares of a dozen horns, signaling to Konnie that he’d turned his dark blue Taurus onto the exit, not entrance, ramp of I-66 and was driving the wrong way down the interstate. It was no more than thirty seconds later that he heard the pounding crash of what was probably a head-on collision and-though perhaps only in his imagination-a faint scream.