It's not much comfort to a kid getting pushed around on the playground, but most bullies eventually run into someone bigger and meaner than they are.

Coleman was a bully.

Before the authorities showed up, roiling flames turned Greg Coleman's house into an inferno. The meth lab in the kitchen exploded in the first few minutes of the blaze, providing ample fuel for the fire to burn hot and fast. The fire department didn't even start to get it under control before two neighboring houses also burned to the ground.

Only one man died in the house. A member of Coleman's crew, shot through an upstairs bathroom window when he tried to escape the fumes of the fire.

Seven more of Coleman’s boys lay scattered outside the house with bullet holes in them. No matter which direction they chose for escape, death met them and claimed them.

One man remained alive long enough to receive medical treatment. They found him in the driver’s seat of a car parked across the street. Glass shards and buckshot had sandblasted the left side of his face and neck. With blood slowly seeping from his choroidal artery, his breathing became more and more labored. His heartbeat slowed. He died en route to the hospital.

Greg Coleman nearly escaped, or so the police assumed. They found him across the street in a park. He sat upright, his back propped against a tree. His empty eyes stared endlessly at his burning house. Someone blasted a chunk out of his hindquarters before executing him where he sat. A pool of blood surrounded him under the weeping willow. The fire reflected in the black puddle spreading around his body like a window straight into hell.

Nine bodies. A house lit up like a Christmas tree. The neighbors only heard three or four shots, and didn't see any strange vehicles go by.

The police arrived in time to apprehend a single suspect halfway down the block, heading east in blood-soaked clothes and a Kevlar vest. That was me, by the way.

I’m Jesse Shay.

They didn’t want to contaminate the evidence—a.k.a. my clothing—so I got to put the Kevlar back on after I took it off for a pat down. The cops threw me in the back of a police cruiser with my hands cuffed in front of me. An officer sat in the front seat with the partition window open so he could talk to me.

"You got a name?" he asked, flipping through his paperwork. He licked his thumb, and continued leafing through the mostly blank pages on his clipboard. “I can’t believe you want to be known as Doe, John, Caucasian male, mid-to-late twenties with short brown hair, brown eyes, of medium height and build. Seems a little boring for a stylish guy like you.”

I slouched with my shoulder braced against the door frame and remained silent.

"Don't got a name, huh? Don't got no ID either. What about that shotgun we found next to the body in the park? You think we won’t get your name when we run the serial number on that thing?"

Jesus couldn’t pull a serial number off that thing, so I didn’t give Chicago PD good odds.

"Or what about when we run your prints off it?"

Good luck trying to find one.

"You probably think you wiped it down, but we'll find a print somewhere. A professional like you doesn’t go into a job like this with a dirty weapon. All it takes is a partial off the firing pin assembly, and we'll have an air tight case. Might as well save us the trouble, maybe save yourself the death penalty."

They wouldn't find prints on that gun.

"So what went down tonight? You a rival dealer? Rival gang member? Come on, man. We've got you at the scene with blood all over you, wearing an old SWAT vest."

I stayed quiet, and soon he got bored asking me questions. After a few more minutes of scribbling with a pen he got out of the car, talking with some other officers while watching the fire burn. The fire engines blocked off the street, and a huge crowd stood beyond them watching the fire burn, so he couldn't take me back to the station yet.

I sat back and got comfortable.