I tried not to think. It didn’t happen. It was a bad dream.

Uttley thanking me. Telling me to go home and get some sleep. Edwin standing there with that lost look on his face. For once all the money in the world wasn’t going to make a problem go away. Chief Maven, playing his little hard-ass games with us. I had known so many cops just like him.

Way back when, Alex. Back in Detroit.

Stop right there. Don’t think about anything else. You didn’t really go into that motel room. You didn’t really see it. The red, the red, all that red.

I tried to stop the next image from coming into my mind, but I could not. I saw the blood again. A vast shivering red lake of blood.

That day in Detroit. I am there again. The blood, just like tonight. The same color. The same quality. Blood is always the same.

Franklin is down. My partner is down. My partner is bleeding. Do something. There’s too much blood. Get up. Get up and help him.

Am I bleeding, too? Is this my blood? Does it even matter? Blood is the same. It is always the same.

Goddamn it. I thought I was over this. I thought it was gone.

As I pulled into my driveway, I tried to remember where I had put those pills. I hadn’t taken them for so long. And only on the bad nights. Just to get through those bad nights.

I had to find those pills. Just this once. One more time. I needed to sleep. Just a couple hours. I needed to close my eyes and not see Franklin on the floor next to me.

I found the pills in the back of my medicine cabinet. Without looking at myself in the mirror, I took one, and then another.

The pills will help you one more time. Like an old friend. They’ll make everything go white. No more blood. The red will fade away. From red to pink as you go higher and higher. And then the pink will fade away into pure white as you reach the clouds.