Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

his mother left behind had remained, putrefying. The cops took the gun and the ME took the body, but nobody had cleaned.
    Aunt Betty didn’t. To hire a company to clean the mess hadn’t occurred to her because she was in shock. Even if she hadn’t been, there’d been no money to pay anyone else. And she couldn’t have cleaned it herself – she was too old by then to climb down the ladder. Which was why she’d given Cole the lock combinations in the first place – their mother had been missing for four days and her fits of alcoholic depression down in the shelter had never lasted so long before.
    So the cleanup had fallen to Mitch and the memory of that day was never far from his mind. For a long, long time Mitch hated his mother for being a drunk, for taking the easy way out, for leaving her body for her little boy to find. For me to clean .
    He’d hated his stepfather for breaking her heart and driving her to suicide, for refusing to acknowledge Cole as his son. After having cheated on her for years , his mother’s husband had accused her of cheating.
    It wasn’t true. Mitch knew his mother would never have done such a thing. But even if it were true, Cole was a child, undeserving of the cruelties heaped on him by the man Mitch’s mother had loved to distraction long after he’d cast her aside.
    But Mitch had picked up, moved on. He’d had to – there was a small boy who’d needed him. He’d finished the last few months of his army tour and had come home to care for Cole, getting him counseling, trying to be both mother and father to the boy.
    And through those horrible years, Mitch had learned a lot of things the hard way.
    Like what he thought was hate for his mother was really grief and that time did heal. Eventually the grief of losing his mother had dulled, the hate softening to anger, then to sad disgust for a woman who’d loved a man who never wanted her.
    He’d learned that sometimes people aren’t as bad as they seem – they could be worse. This was definitely true of his stepfather.
    Mitch had returned home from Iraq to a horrible economy. In desperation, he’d accepted what was to have been a temp job from his stepfather. Mistake number one.
    Mistake number two was learning the true nature of the family business and not running like hell the other way. Drugs are bad, Mitch , Aunt Betty would say with a wag of her finger. Just say no . Man, did he ever wish he had.
    Because mistake number three had been the biggest one. Lured by the promise of a fast buck, Mitch had actually believed his stepfather would allow him to make a place for himself in the family drug empire. Mitch had considered the temp job a foot in the door. Then once he had a toehold, he’d find a way to take it all, leaving the bastard crying and alone.
    He’d had time to reflect on the colossal stupidity of that third mistake. Three years, to be exact, as he’d served his sentence for distribution.
    A delivery had gone bad and Mitch had been caught. He hadn’t been worried at the beginning. Employees – even ones without family connections – got the company’s legal support. But no attorney showed up for Mitch. Just the public defender. And me .
    Mitch’s revenge had taken root the day he cleaned his mother’s blood and brain from this very room. It had taken form and substance as he’d listened to the jury declare him guilty of possession with intent to sell. It had become a fully fleshed out plan during the years he’d been incarcerated. His endgame – to see his stepfather suffer, excruciatingly. And to see him dead.
    To jumpstart his plan he’d needed a little spending money. Fortunately prison was chock full of guys with connections. Mitch had landed a highly illegal, but highly lucrative job on the outside before he’d walked through the prison gates, a free man once again. But first he’d come home, to this house. He loved this house.
    What had greeted his eye only served to harden him further. Betty had grown too old to properly care for a growing boy and Cole was thin, hungry, and dirty. Mitch had arranged for a neighbor to check on her and then taken the boy with him, settling in Florida to implement the first phase of his revenge. Building his nest egg.
    But things had gone wrong once again and he’d had to run from the law to avoid another prison sentence. He’d come home once again. This time to his house. Mine . Because a week after he came home, Aunt Betty had died peacefully in her