by Chris Culver
Helen never became a great softball player, but those were the happiest memories Glenn had of his father and sister. Edward had even smiled then some. Nothing had felt as good as making his dad smile. Those were the good years. Edward stopped smiling after Helen was murdered. He killed himself two years after that. Today was about making that right.
Since he couldn’t find a spot at the pool, Glenn parked off the side of the road near the playground. A man in his early twenties pushed a red-haired girl in pigtails on a swing. Freckles dotted her pale skin, and she laughed with the carefree joy of a child ignorant of the world’s terrors. He hoped Mary Joe wouldn’t make him kill her.
Mary Joe stepped out of her side of the car and waved to the little one. Glenn expected the girl’s father to notice the beautiful woman waving at his daughter, but he only had eyes for his little girl at the moment. It was nice to see.
“Where should we set up?”
Mary Joe swept the park with her eyes. The park’s landscape swept from a hill near its eastern entrance to a flat plain in its center to another downward slope on its western edge. A canopy of leaves and enormous trees covered everything but the pool and part of the basketball court. The trees would give him plenty of cover if someone shot at him, but they limited his view of strategic areas.
“Let’s walk,” she said. “We shouldn’t stay still too long.”
Glenn nodded and grabbed the duffel bag with his stolen rifle and ammunition from the back of his car. Mary Joe headed toward the pool. Hot sunlight broke through the trees, beating down on the blacktop parking lot in front of the pool and making the asphalt almost gooey. He smiled at a mom struggling to carry two small children and a giant canvas beach bag.
“It would be ideal if we could block the exit or collapse the locker rooms,” said Mary Joe, her voice low. “We can’t do that, though.”
Glenn nodded and waited until the mom and her kids passed before speaking. “Even if some people escape, we’ll have plenty of targets.”
Mary Joe nodded and crossed in front of the pool’s entrance on her way to the basketball courts. This evening, teenagers would line up to play, but in the heat of the day, the court was abandoned. They walked for another five minutes to the base of a steep slope on the park’s eastern edge. Above them, a dense thicket of scrub brush and trees separated the park from the road, while the plain opened before them.
Mary Joe pointed toward a black gum tree about halfway up the hill.
“There’s your spot,” she said. “The tree trunk will give you concealment and cover from the front. The brush behind you will give you concealment from the road. If they try to approach you from the north or south, you’ll have plenty of time to pick them off.”
It was a good spot, so he nodded. The slope was about forty degrees, so he took lunging steps to reach the tree. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach, and his throat felt tight. He knew what to do and why he had to do it, but he felt the first twinges of remorse anyway. Mary Joe scampered up the hill beside him and gave him a sympathetic look.
“You’re doing this for Helen,” she said. “You’ll see her soon.”
He nodded and unzipped his bag. The black tactical rifle looked almost wicked.
“Will I see you again?”
Mary Joe looked out over the park. From their vantage, they could see clear to the batting cages on the park’s western edge. She shook her head.
“No, but you know that.”
He looked down to the pool.
“You don’t exist, do you?”
She humored him with a smile. “No, but you know that, too.”
He looked toward the pool. “Helen existed, though.”
“At one time,” said Mary Joe, her voice low. “She died, though.”
“So what are you?” he asked. “A figment of my imagination?”
“I’m a wish made real,” she said. “I’m here to help you.”
“Then help me,” he said.
Mary Joe nodded and reached for Glenn’s hands. He allowed her to move him like a puppet. Together, they reached into his duffel bag and removed the rifle.
“Your targets are between three hundred and four hundred yards away,” she said. “The wind and humidity are negligible. The conditions are right. Do this for your sister.”
Glenn knew it all even before she spoke. He grasped the weapon. As he looked to his left, he caught the last image of Mary Joe fading away like smoke from a candle. He closed his eyes and held his breath as he listened. He heard nothing. The voices he had lived with for so long had disappeared. He was free.
Glenn drew in a breath of sweet, fresh air and rested. Birds sang nearby. Insects buzzed. Children laughed and played. Somewhere distant, a kid thumped a ball against the ground.
He could run. Helen was gone. His shadow had disappeared. No one would stop him. His car had a full tank of gas, so he could drive for hours. He could go anywhere. Without the voices, he could start over. He could stop hurting.
Only he wouldn’t.
For years, he had pretended Helen had run away and then returned. But she hadn’t. His beautiful sister had been a child younger than most of his students when she died. The woman he knew, the woman who had lived with him, was a dream constructed by his heart and given life by his grief-stricken mind.
Glenn had knowingly lived a lie for most of his life. His father had told him the truth before he died. An evil man had raped and murdered Helen. The police tried to build a case against him, but they failed. To make it up to the family, a relative of that evil man had made Edward’s lifelong dream come true. She gave him the money to start his own business. It was supposed to be a fresh start. Instead, it became a punishment.
Edward quit his job at Pennington Hotels and opened his own furniture-making shop. Every day he had gone into work, and every day, he had known his daughter’s blood paid for his dream. Edward had tried to be a good father, but Helen’s death had broken him. He killed himself. Before then, though, he had passed the torch on to his son.
Unlike his father, Glenn was strong. He would finish the job his father never could. For years, Glenn had refused to face the reality of his task, but he couldn’t ignore it any longer. The people of St. Augustine refused to give his family justice. Now, they would feel his family’s vengeance.
Cold like he had never felt swept over him. His hands steadied, and his heart hardened as he inserted a magazine and chambered a round. Glenn brought the weapon to his shoulder and looked through the scope. Even at four hundred yards, his targets appeared before him, fat and ripe.
Glenn adjusted the sight. He had no one to call out targets today, but he didn’t need a spotter. Hundreds of targets lay before him. He chose a fat little boy in blue swim trunks and centered the reticle over his chest. Then, he took the slack out of the trigger but didn’t fire.
“Now cracks a noble heart,” he whispered. “Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
Since my truck didn’t have lights or a siren, I kept my hand on the horn and my foot on the gas the entire drive to the pool. Most people got out of my way. I screamed at the recalcitrant few who impeded me, but there was little I could do otherwise. I reached the outskirts of Sycamore Park four minutes after I left the Berrys’ house.
By the time I saw the pool, we were too late. Even from the park’s entrance, I saw that blood had stained the water pink. My heart hammered against my breastbone, and my breath stopped in my throat. Cars occupied every parking spot in front of the pool’s main building, so I braked hard and skidded to a stop on the roadway near the front entrance.
I opened my door and stepped out onto the running boards, frantically looking for our shooter.
Four shots rang out. My eyes shot to the north in time to see a single man scrambling across a grassy field toward the pool. He held a black tactical rifle in his hands. After running fifteen or twenty feet, he slowed and brought his rifle to his shoulder. He was two hundred yards from me. If
I fired toward him and missed—which was likely at that distance—I could hit somebody at the pool.
I couldn’t let him shoot somebody, though, so I swiveled and fired twice at a nearby hill to get his attention. The rounds penetrated with a dull thump. Saunders lowered his rifle and turned toward me. For a split second, our eyes locked. He raised his weapon toward me.
I jumped back in my truck and put the car in gear. The lawyers wouldn’t like it if I ran Saunders down with my truck, but he’d be just as dead of an impact with my bumper as he would be if I shot him. I floored the accelerator. My old truck roared to life, and the front tires hopped the curb. I bounced out of my seat and nearly hit the roof, but I held onto the steering wheel so I didn’t fall.
“Come on, baby. Come on, baby. Come on, baby.”
I kept repeating it as my tires tore into the countryside. Saunders fired. The sound boomed around me. A round smashed through my front windshield and thumped into the vinyl seat beside me. Tiny shards of glass hit my hands and tore into my cheeks, but the now shattered window held in the frame. I could hardly see, but I didn’t dare slow down.
Saunders fired twice more. This time, the rounds pinged against the undercarriage near my feet. He was trying to hit my tires. I had momentum on my side, though. Even if he took out my tires, I’d take him out with me.
He fired again. Four shots, this time. They hit the engine block with four wrenching thuds. Detroit cast iron stopped the rounds, but already my old truck felt and sounded different. Something—the radiator, if I had to guess—whistled.
Saunders ran for a tree. I whipped the wheel and let off the gas. The back end of my truck fishtailed, and the wheels on my right side lifted from the ground.
“Please don’t flip. Please don’t flip. Please don’t flip.”
I held my breath and felt gravity pull me back to the ground. My wheels hit hard and bounced as my old truck slowed. I slammed my foot on the brake, bringing the heavy vehicle to a rest. The engine throbbed and then died.
Saunders darted from behind the tree and fired into the cab. I ducked low so he couldn’t see me and jumped out of the driver’s door as round after round slammed into the vehicle. The engine block gave me limited cover, but he had me far outgunned. This was a losing position.
My backup was coming, but they were still likely a few minutes out. Saunders could have brought two or three hundred rounds. My truck couldn’t stop all of them. I balled my hands into fists and bit the knuckle of my left index finger. I had to think this through.
Saunders felt angry and betrayed. Someone hurt his sister, and the police refused to do anything. He recreated Helen’s death, probably to gain control over his life. He contacted me twice and went to my house. He liked me…or at least he felt something toward me.
I covered my face with my hands and squeezed my eyes tight.
“Joe, this is a terrible idea,” I whispered before drawing in a deep breath and shouting, “Glenn, I’m here to help you!”
As if to answer my request, he squeezed off four rounds. Each hit my car and made my ears ring and my gut twist.
“I know about Helen.”
I gritted my teeth, expecting gunfire. Saunders didn’t shoot, though. I peeked over the hood of my truck. He stood beside a tree about forty feet away with his rifle pointed in my direction. It was a good position. The tree gave him cover from my direction, and a hill behind him gave him cover from the rear. If I could get to his flanks, I could take him out, but I’d need help for that.
“Helen didn’t deserve what happened to her.”
Again, Saunders said nothing. Beads of sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes. My heart raced, and my hands trembled.
“I want to help!” I shouted again. “I know what happened, and I won’t cover it up like they did before. We can find the guy who killed her and make sure he can’t do it to anyone else.”
“He’s already dead,” said Saunders, his voice a snarl. I winced.
“Shooting up a pool helps no one,” I said. “I get shooting your boss. These are kids, though. They’re innocent. They’re like Helen.”
I counted to ten and then twenty, waiting for his response. Nothing. I peered over the hood again. Almost instantly, Saunders’s rifle boomed, and a round skipped over my head with a tight buzzing sound. I popped back down, gasping. My hands trembled. He had me dialed in well, so I doubted his next shot would miss.
“I can’t help you if you shoot at me.”
“I don’t need your help. And the kids in this pool aren’t innocent. Nobody is. Everybody in this godforsaken county has blood on their hands.”
I didn’t know what he meant, but it didn’t matter. Already, I heard the faint warble of distant sirens. I needed to keep him talking for a few more minutes.
“Help me understand,” I said. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because they deserve to die. And so do you.”
He opened fire on my car. Rounds struck the other side. A tire popped, and glass shattered. The truck rocked on its shocks, but the engine block caught everything directed at me. Those distant sirens grew louder and louder until they seemed as if they were on top of us. Then, all at once, the shooting stopped. I looked beneath the truck this time, but I couldn’t see Saunders. He must have gone behind the tree.
Moments later, the first cruiser turned into the park with its lights and siren blaring. Saunders opened fire. The front window shattered. I couldn’t see who was driving, but he had no cover at all along the road. Saunders kept shooting, and the cruiser kept rolling down the hill until it slammed into a car parked alongside the road. After what had happened on the water tower, we knew Saunders could shoot. He had probably just killed one of my colleagues.
I sprinted north, away from the cover of my truck’s engine block. The second cruiser screeched through the park’s entrance, its lights blaring. Saunders opened fire once more. He was so focused on killing my colleagues that he didn’t see me running. Once I had a clear shot at his back, I raised my weapon and squeezed the trigger until the weapon ran dry.
Half a dozen rounds caught him flush in the back. The weapon dropped from his hands as he fell.
A third cruiser and then a fourth came careening around the corner as I reloaded and ran forward. Saunders lay on the ground faceup. He was blinking. I kicked away the rifle and held my weapon on him. After everything he had done, I wanted to put another round in his skull, but it wasn’t necessary. Blood trickled down his chin. If I thought I could save him, I would have called for an ambulance, but he was dying. People screamed all around me, but I focused on Saunders.
“Helen?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “Is that you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m Detective Joe Court with the St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department. You’re under arrest.”
He tried to say something, but blood instead of words poured out. A uniformed officer ran to me, his weapon drawn.
“Joe, you okay?”
I glanced up to see Marcus Washington, one of our uniformed officers.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “This guy’s dead, but call for every ambulance you can get. We’ve got casualties.”
Within moments, dozens more police cars arrived and ran toward the pool. The first wave of ambulances came shortly thereafter. Paramedics pulled Bob Reitz from the first cruiser Saunders had fired on. His skin was pale, but even from a distance, he looked alert. They strapped him onto a gurney and drove him away. A second pair of paramedics came to me, but I was fine, and Saunders had died.
It was over. Now, we had to tally the dead.
43
When he saw me, Sheriff Delgado ordered me to go to the hospital so the doctors could check me out and make sure I wasn’t in shock. Even in my condition, I saw what he was doing: He wanted me out of there before the media arrived. He needed a win, and I had given him the biggest win of his career. The Apostate was dead, and every news outlet in the country would run the story. I didn’t care. I had done m
y job.
A nurse in the ER cleaned up my cuts, and a doctor examined me for shock, but I was okay. Mom, Dad, and Dylan—my brother—waited for me in the lobby when the doctors released me. I didn’t realize I had needed a hug until the three of them crowded around me. Then, I broke down. They must have driven me home because the next thing I could remember was unlocking my front door.
Dad and Dylan went grocery shopping, while Mom and I sat on the couch in the living room. We didn’t talk, but it was comforting having her there. After a while, Agent Costa picked me up so I could go over what happened. For almost four hours, I answered questions and led a team of FBI investigators through Sycamore Park to show them what I had done and when.
While there, I saw my truck. Bullet holes riddled the exterior. Saunders’s shots had broken every window and shredded two tires. The ground around it smelled like diesel, most likely because a round had punctured the fuel tank. I was lucky to be alive even if my truck had driven its last mile.
We got lucky at the pool. The lifeguard staff sounded the alarm as soon as they received word of a potential emergency and were already starting to get people inside by the time Saunders fired his first shot. He shot a lifeguard in the shoulder as she tried to climb down from her stand. Thanks to the quick and courageous work of two other lifeguards, she made it to the relative safety of the locker room, where their supervisor—a part-time paramedic—kept her from bleeding out. He shot at others, but he didn’t hit them.
News crews from St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, Memphis, and half a dozen other locations parked everywhere around town. At a little before six, Agent Costa drove me home. I had dinner with my family. Dylan told me about a girl he was dating, and Dad told me about his first ever trip to a lumberyard. Mom held my hand under the table and said nothing the entire meal. I needed that.
Dylan had to work the next day, so he and Dad went home. Mom stayed with me and slept on the couch, which I appreciated more than I could say. I didn’t want to be alone.
