Killing Me Softly (#Wattys2016)

SIXTY-EIGHT

SIXTY-EIGHT

Don Keegan shook his head as he watched the Channel Four news and the exposé of the Tracy Ellis/Carol Henderson debacle. He knew Phillip Pearson was a sick fuck, but he had no idea just how deep it ran.

Don would forever rue the day he got mixed up with that guy.

Years ago, he'd been a high-flying psychiatrist with a thriving private practice, a Lincoln Park mansion, a Porsche in the garage and a bevy of hot blondes for each arm.

He also had a raging drug addiction, courtesy of a back injury from slipping on pool tiles during a vacation in the Caymans. Physical therapy wasn't cutting it and surgery made him skittish-hence why he wasn't a surgeon. He started with Vicodin, moved on to Percocet, before falling prey to Fentanyl. He became desperate in his attempts to secure drugs, going so far as to falsify prescriptions using aliases, multiple addresses and skipping around to different pharmacies in the suburbs and city. He stuck to large pharmacies, where no one was likely to remember his face.

Except he'd tripped up and gone to Phillip's pharmacy twice in one week.

Phillip threatened to turn him in and a terrified Keegan had begged him to keep quiet, swore that he'd get help if Phillip kept his secret. Phillip agreed, but promised he'd be calling on him for a favor one day. A desperate Keegan agreed to the terms before he checked himself into rehab the next day.

Rehab had been a grueling exercise that alternated between humiliation and torture. By the time he was done, his life was in shambles. He'd been away from his practice too long, resulting in lost patients, lost income, and lost reputation. Patients who'd caught a whiff of his troubles started to sue, claiming a hopped-up shrink was unfit to provide competent medical care. The lawsuits had grown to impressive levels, and time he could have spent rebuilding his practice was lost to long sessions with his attorneys trying to settle the damn things. The Lincoln Park mansion fell into foreclosure and the Porsche was repossessed. He'd barely escaped homelessness by convincing one of his old bedmates to let him bunk on her couch for a few months.

Once he'd made the last settlement, a med school buddy was able to get him a position on staff at a mental hospital in Berwyn of all places. He hated the suburbs. And the work was everything he vowed he'd never do. It made him long for the days of listening to Gold Coast socialites drone on about their prick lawyer husbands putting them on a shopping allowance and their lovers' demands for more spending money.

He knew he wouldn't do it forever. Still, it had gotten him back into treating patients and allowed him to begin rebuilding. He'd even managed to get back into Lincoln Park, even if it was a one bedroom apartment. It was a start.

The jungle drums had told Phillip where Don had landed and on that cold January night three years ago, he'd made good on his promise to cash in his favor.

It wasn't until Don saw the photographs of Tracy Ellis and Carol Henderson splashed across the front page of the newspaper that he'd put two and two together.

Sick fuck, indeed.

Don picked up his cell phone from the small glass coffee table in front of him. He twirled it in his hand, his eyes still trained on the TV, which had now moved on to weather. It would be sunny, a high of eighty-five.

Maybe he could make it rain on Phillip tomorrow.

Don punched up the Channel Four website on his phone in search of the station's phone number.