Kiss the Girls

was a hard shot, a crushing, heavyweight-caliber punch.
    Sikes went down on one knee, but he came back up in a hurry. I grabbed the front of his jacket and bounced him off the wall of the house. His arm cracked against the shingles and the handgun fell loose. The ground was firm under my feet, and I moved in on him again. The moment had the feeling of a good old-fashioned streetfight. I wanted it. My body ached for physical contact and release.
    “C’mon, fucker,” he challenged me. He wanted me, too.
    “Oh, don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m coming.”
    Another light flashed on inside the house. “Who’s out there?” The sound of the woman’s voice caught me off guard.
“Who is out there, please?”
    He threw an arcing roundhouse punch. Pretty good speed and aim. He was a decent fighter, not just a lover. I remembered that Kate said he was scarily strong. I didn’t plan to spend a lot of time in his killer’s grasp, though.
    I caught his punch on my upper arm, and it instantly went numb. He was powerful, all right. Stay away from his strength, I warned myself. Hurt him, though. Hurt him a lot.
    I fired a hard right uppercut into his lower stomach. I thought of Kate and the beatings she had taken for being disobedient. I vividly remembered the final beating she’d gotten.
    I crunched another right hand into his stomach. I felt the stomach soften. I think I hit him below the belt. Sikes groaned and slumped over like a badly beaten club fighter. It was a trick, a slick feint on his part.
    He fired a punch and caught the side of my head. He rang my bell pretty good. I snorted, bobbed a little, showed him he hadn’t hurt me. This was streetfighting, D.C. style.
C’mon, white boy. Come to me, monster man.
I needed this time with him so much.
    I slammed my fist hard into his lower stomach again. Kill the body, and the head dies. I wanted to mess up the head, too. I hit him for good measure in the nose. My best effort so far. Sampson would have been proud of the shot. I was.
    “That’s for Sampson,” I told him through gritted teeth. “He asked me to give you that. Hand-deliver it.”
    I hit him in the throat and he started to gag. I continued to bob. I didn’t just
look
a little like Ali, I could fight like him when I had to. I could defend what needed to be defended. I could be a street tough when it had to be that way.
    “This is for Kate.” I hit Sikes in the nose again, right on the button. Then square in the left eye with another right lead. His face was puffing up nicely.
Drive a stake through his heart, Alex.
    He was strong and well conditioned, and still dangerous, I knew. He came at me again. Charged like a raging bull in the
plaza de toros.
I stepped aside, and he forearmed the wall of the house as if he were trying to level it. The small house rumbled and shook.
    I punched Sikes hard on the side of the head. His head snapped back so hard against the house’s aluminum siding that he left a dent in it. He was weaving now, his breath coming in gasps. Suddenly, there were wails of sirens in the distance. The woman inside must have called the police. I was the police, wasn’t I?
    Somebody hit me from behind, hit me real hard.
“Oh, Jesus, no,”
I moaned and tried to shake off the hurt.
    This wasn’t possible! This couldn’t be happening!
    Who had hit me? Why? I didn’t get it, couldn’t understand, couldn’t clear my head fast enough.
    I was dizzy and hurt but
I turned,
anyway.
    I saw a frizzy-haired blond woman wearing an over-sized Farm Aid T-shirt. She was still holding the work shovel she’d just clobbered me with.
    “Get off my boyfriend!” she screamed at me. Her face and neck were beet red. “Get away from him or I’ll hit you again. You get away from my Davey.”
    My Davey?… Jesus!
My head was spinning, but I got the message. I thought I did, anyway. Davey Sikes had come out here to see his girlfriend.
He wasn’t hunting anyone. He wasn’t here to murder anyone. He was Farm Aid’s boyfriend.
    Maybe I’d lost it, I thought as I backed away from Sikes. Maybe I was finally burned beyond a crisp, beyond recognition or redemption. Or maybe I was like almost every other homicide detective I knew—overworked and fallible as hell. I’d made a mistake. I’d been wrong about Davey Sikes—I just didn’t understand how it had happened.
    Kyle Craig arrived at the house in McCullers within the hour. He was as calm as ever, completely unruffled. He spoke quietly to me.