Time Clock Hero by Spikes Donovan Read Free Book Online Page A

appearance of something freshly mauled.
    Nurses, all of them in various states of frazzle, came running.  Not a one dared to step into the bathing room. 
    Phoenix hadn’t looked into the room, hadn’t even taken a quick glance.  Instead, he kept his eyes down, and he yelled, “Tracy!”  But no one responded.  He pulled back the hammer on his thirty-eight.  He heard it click, and then he heard a shuffle and then another sound – a sound he recognized to be the voice of his wife.  No words of greeting, no words of reprimand, however much he may have deserved them, no words wishing for him to have a wonderful day, which he felt sure he would never have again.  All he heard was a soft, mindless sound, the sound of moaning, or maybe a kind of cry – just like he’d heard coming from June Buckner. 
    The note in Phoenix’s pocket was right.  Tracy was missing.  Like June Buckner, and just like Dr. Albin Demachi, all that was left of Tracy was a body – and without her mind, her body was just that, a body and nothing more.
    Phoenix looked up.  Tracy’s once long, blonde hair, past her waist when they first married, but recently cut short, would never grow out again.  He could barely see it now, matted as it was with thick, wet blood.  Her face, once heart-shaped, almost angelic, with eyes as bright blue as the deep sea, was not recognizable through the gore that covered it.  Her body, once thin and petite, now dressed in a soaked hospital gown, might have been the body of any woman.
    Phoenix raised his pistol, aimed, and fired.  Tracy fell.
    Nothing really changed for Phoenix when he pulled the trigger, thanks to his inhaler.  He knew that, because of his fidelity issues, he had already killed their marriage and, at the same time, had killed his wife.  Could she have come back from her coma?  Probably not.  Could they have reconciled if she had?  Yes.  He would’ve repented, and truly so.  But he’d done it – killed her – and he’d done it long before a fire-propelled piece of metal left the barrel of his gun and slammed into her lovely, precious face.
    Phoenix didn’t know how many dead lay in the bathing room.  Right now, he didn’t care.  He’d walk away.  NPD, or at least Cobb, would understand.
    Dr. Elkins, speechless, incoherently trying to piece together what exactly had happened, tried to make sense of the slaughter.  But he just stood there, looking first into the bathing room and then at Phoenix.  The nurses standing in the hall, all of them frightened into silence, tended the nurse Phoenix had dragged out of the room.
    “Call NPD,” Phoenix said to the doctor.
    The nurses, suddenly remembering their jobs, rushed into the bathing room.  One of the nurses who had followed Phoenix down the hall only moments before tried to shore up Dr. Ellis, who seemed to be teetering in shock.
    “We called,” the nurse said.  “911 just put us on hold.”
    Phoenix reloaded and then holstered his thirty-eight.  He walked back up the long, white hall of the facility towards the bank of elevators with his hand running along the wooden bumper on the wall.  Tracy was gone – she had been for some time.  Now, there was no chance she’d ever return.
    She would have wanted him to do it, would’ve begged him to pull the trigger, or she herself would have done it had she known the end that awaited her.  In another few weeks, there’d have been a living will to deal with anyway, a will she’d drawn up less than a year ago.  Whether or not Phoenix agreed to go along with that will was beside the point. It was irrevocable.  She’d die anyway.
    Tracy was dead.
    And so was Phoenix, emotionally and spiritually, but not dead enough to know that someone had done something to Tracy, and that that someone needed to pay for what they’d done.
    Phoenix, eager to set Chief Cobb straight about what needed to be done, whether or not he agreed to it, pulled out his phone and called him.
    “Where are