Sunken Graves

by Alan Lee

  Poor Deputy Rowe was forced to fish it out later, trying to delay his tears.

  46

  Jennings used a tooth pick to scrape dried mud from his phone’s charging connector. He tried for an hour to get the phone to power on, but it never obeyed. The device was dead. He used the apartment’s phone to call his insurance for a rental car.

  He was setting the dirty prosthetic into the bathtub for cleaning when his computer beeped with an incoming email.

  He had a message from the local gun dealer.

  The shotgun suppressor Jennings ordered had arrived and was ready at the gun dealership. He’d forgotten about it.

  A man at Enterprise called to say he was in the parking lot with a rental car. Jennings attached his running prothesis—the blade—and walked out to sign papers. The blade made people uncomfortable, he knew, but it was better than crutches.

  He drove the little Nissan to the gun dealership on Peters Creek Road. The man behind the counter threw him a nod. He wore a veteran’s vest and hat.

  “Where’d you serve?”

  “Afghanistan,” said Jennings. “You?”

  “Caught the last part of Vietnam. Didn’t have to go through hell like some of the boys. Are you in a group?”

  “A group?”

  “Support group. For veterans and…” The man nodded at Jennings’ prosthesis.

  “I’m not in one.”

  “Come back when you’re ready. It helps.”

  Jennings pressed on quickly, his frame of mind not robust enough to swap stories. “I have a shotgun suppressor waiting.”

  “Oh, that’s you. I thought it seemed odd, the short ATF wait. Special forces?”

  Jennings presented his DD 214 and drivers license to the dealer. His status as retired Green Beret cleared a lot of red tape.

  “I was just looking at your new toy.” The man slid off his stool and walked stiffly to a safe room behind the counter. “I never tried a suppressor on a shotgun, you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t work as well as a pistol’s, what I hear.”

  “I don’t need the shotgun silent. Just reduced,” said Jennings. “I need a barrel threading kit, too.”

  “What model shotgun?”

  “BT-99.”

  “Well, son, I’m not sure that’s gonna work. A BT-99’s got a rib.”

  “Just the same, I’d like the threading kit if you have one.”

  Jennings ducked the man’s further questions about his shotgun and the war in Afghanistan. He paid and got back into his car, fighting down agitation. All the guns and knives on display stirred his insides.

  He heard gunfire during the entire drive home.

  Using his apartment phone, he called Hathaway and she answered on the first ring.

  “I was going to leave a voicemail,” he said.

  “I’m between classes.”

  “It’s been a long couple days and I need to think. Can we meet tomorrow instead?” he said.

  “I moved too quickly. I shouldn’t have kissed you. That was aggressive, I know.”

  “The kiss was great. Perfect. And I formally request more. A lot more. But until I deal with Peter Lynch, I’m no good to anyone.”

  “It’s probably best if I didn’t come by later today, anyway. I’m just coming out of a long-term relationship, so kissing isn’t a good idea for a while,” said Hathaway.

  “Rats. How long?”

  “At least until you work up the courage to ask me out on a real date.”

  Jennings smiled at his phone.

  She continued. “You’re going to deal with Peter? That makes me nervous. What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  Once I figure it out.

  On his kitchen table, the shotgun suppressor box was ringing like a silent alarm.

  47

  That evening Jennings sat on his bedroom floor, surrounded by his disassembled prosthetic leg, his shotgun, and the pieces of his new suppressor.

  He’d cleaned mud from the prosthetic socket, rinsing out the lock, and scrubbed the shin tube and the foot. Both his sneakers were washed and drying in the kitchen. He rolled a new liner up his sore left leg, followed by a sock to compensate for muscle atrophy. He rose to sit on the bed. Slid the socket over the leg/liner/sock. Stood and stomped the artificial leg until it clicked into place. It was locked in, hard to dislodge unless you wrestled a giant in the mud.

  He walked the apartment and heard some grit in the joints. Took a rag and pot of warm water to his room, sat down, unscrewed the shin tub from the foot and socket, and cleaned both ends. Set the shin tub aside to dry. The sight of his leg lying in pieces still churned his stomach.

  President Gerald Ford’s left leg was artificial, Jennings reminded himself. Stonewall Jackson had fought in the Civil War without an arm. And Franklin Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down. He could do this.

  He turned his attention to the shotgun suppressor, which he’d taken apart to examine. He was pleased with the quality of the materials—stainless steel and aluminum. The assemblage was thicker than a pistol or rifle suppressor, but the principle was the same; hot gas erupting from the barrel was given extra room inside the suppressor to expand, reducing the pop. He reassembled it, inserting rods into the alignment notches, sliding the baffles into place, and tightening the caps.

  Now the suppressor had to be attached to his grandfather’s shotgun. Defacing a Browning purchased in the 60’s was absolute sacrilege but his mind was set.

  Jennings crutched through the cold dark to the maintenance workshop across campus. He searched through the tools until he found what he needed, locked up, and crutched back.

  He removed the long rib above the shotgun barrel and set it aside. Using a hacksaw, Jennings cut off the front rib post. He sanded the remaining burrs with a file. Next he fitted the sharp angular cutting tool into a wireless drill. Ideally he’d use a workbench and vise but he made do by pinning the gun between his mattress and box spring. The drill bit didn’t remove metal from inside the gun barrel but rather the outside, thinning it. He went slowly, keeping the bit and the barrel well-oiled, shaving off half an inch. The final step was threading the outside of the newly-shaved barrel with a die cutter. A pivot tool kept the die cutter on track, evenly carving the outside like a screw so the suppressor could be twisted on.

  The finished product looked…passable. The shotgun would never be beautiful again but now it would take a silencer.

  Your grandfather must be turning in his grave, Daniel.

  Holding the shotgun vertically, braced on the floor, he seated the suppressor and used a spanner to tighten it to the barrel.

  The shotgun, a historic hunting heirloom, took on a mean look. A tool of war now. Utilitarian and brutish.

  Jennings felt the urge to declare his intentions out loud. He needed to say it, needed to hear himself.

  “I could kill Peter Lynch with this.”

  What he should have done then was go to sleep. The spoken words should have shocked his senses, but it’d been days since he’d slept well. He dreaded the nightmares, the hissing PTSD in the dark.

  That night, fighting in the mud, Lynch was changed. He lost his sanity. But maybe you did too. Maybe your need for sleep is desperate.

  Instead of getting into bed, Jennings dwelled on Peter Lynch burying him alive in the mud. On those sunken spots. On aiming at the man and pulling the trigger with this very shotgun. It would tear a hole through Lynch he couldn’t survive, fired close. And if it was quiet…

  But the weapon was too long, too unwieldy.

  Sitting on his carpet again, he unscrewed the silencer. Did some measuring and wrote figures on a notepad. Measured again. Asking his grandfather for forgiveness, Jennings began cutting off fifteen inches of the barrel.

  48

  Peter Lynch preferred working late. The best things transpire in the dark. He sent emails like scud missiles at midnight, destructive legal motions so th
e opposing counsel had a bad morning. When the other side’s attorneys pissed him off, he’d place untraceable calls at godforsaken hours so they got no sleep. His employees knew to respond to his texts in the middle of the night or risk termination. Though his rampaging work ethic had slipped of late.

  His office was a small palace on Franklin near Lawyer Row, a collection of firms that he harassed. His office was the grandest and biggest, subject to frequent egging.

  That night Lynch was writing a brief, moving to dismiss a case. His client was the wife of a respected neurosurgeon, one of the school’s titans. She’d been driving intoxicated, blood alcohol level .27, reaching eighty in a forty-five at eleven in the morning and she’d driven into a tractor, half killing the farmer. A slam dunk, the farmer’s lawyers grinning and drooling. But Lynch had pored over the paperwork and found a missing signature on the complaint. He’d stalled to let the two-year statute of limitations expire, and now it was too late to amend—a legal nullity. A ludicrous loophole that he would exploit. He could hear the judge and opposing counsel groaning, the farmer crying, but the case would be dismissed. His fingers pounded on the keyboard with mad glee.

  Despite his best efforts, his eyes kept drifting to two monitors he’d installed earlier that day. The monitors displayed the feed from two distant nanny-cameras but nothing moved at the moment.

  He was wishing something would move when his brother, Francis, knocked on the door to his inner office. Peter glanced up and flinched.

  “Got’damn, Francis, why’re you so spooky.”

  “I mastered moving silently. You never did, wouldn’t learn your lesson.”

  Above the doorway was a framed quote by Nietzsche— I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

  Peter liked to see that quote when someone entered.

  He muted the two monitors. “The chief was here earlier.”

  “He told me.”

  “The old bastard is disowning us. Or me.”

  “That’s not accurate.”

  “You’re right. He can’t. He never really adopted us,” said Peter. “The Chief had no idea what he was getting into, did he. Us two little boys, with all our brains and sin.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “His standard mundane rigamarole. I must grow up and this is my final chance. He can’t keep cleaning my messes.”

  “Have you noticed he’s sick?”

  “He looked like shit.”

  “Speaking of, what happened to your office? It’s ransacked.”

  “I sent my staff home. Worthless cowards, they don’t have the killer instinct.”

  “You threw furniture at them,” said Francis.

  “Work for a genius, deal with his whimsy. They’re paid to endure it.” Peter watched his brother’s eyes walk around the lavish office. “It galls you, doesn’t it, how much money I make.”

  “It does.”

  “You craved success, played things innocent, never got caught, yet I’m loaded and you’re a public servant. The irony.”

  “Your face is bruised. The recent battle?”

  Peter stood. “I destroyed a Green Beret. Had him begging, the runt of the Jennings lineage. You should have seen me, Francis.”

  “But you didn’t kill him.”

  “He’s only alive because of pure luck.”

  Francis drew himself higher. “Peter. You’re losing control.”

  “Watch your mouth, brother. You’re drooling.”

  “That happens. When I’m worried. I want you to check yourself into Carilion. You need immediate therapy.”

  “What a cowardly little bitch you are. You came here to wipe my ass.”

  “You sound like the chief. It doesn’t become you.”

  Peter covered his smile with his hairy fingers. “The hospital. And do what? Talk to a quack about our childhood? Talk about rabbits and phonebooks and Zippo lighters? Take pills? Lithium and Phenytoin?”

  “That’s exactly what you should do.”

  “Exactly what I should do.” Peter giggled.

  Francis snapped a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his lips. “You’re a lunatic.”

  “I have cocaine in my top drawer, how about that? Or maybe Desipramine. Maybe we hammer my personality until I’m gone.”

  “Your mental stability is deteriorating. Hammering might restore it.” Or kill you, either way is fine, Francis didn’t say.

  Peter picked up a heavy paperweight from his desk, a glass globe the size of a softball. “Medicate until I’m gone. That’s what you’d like. Like when you wanted me in a fucking straitjacket as a child.”

  “Perhaps you’d be healthier now.”

  “You were no angel, Francis. Your penchant was for the neighbor boys, remember.”

  “I’m adult now, not a curious teen. And it’s time you grow up too.”

  “How about Craig Lewis, brother? Was he a curious teen?” said Peter.

  “That’s not germane to our conversation. And you had no right to do—”

  “What a scandal if that came to light.”

  “I’ve seen the tapes. I know it was you. So does the chief. The police might catch you and then where would our stunted little family be?”

  “You should have felt him crying…”

  “DAMMIT, Peter!”

  Peter Lynch ducked from the shout. His face twisted and he threw the glass globe like a fastball. His aim was poor and he hit the doorframe. The earth shattered into slivers. Francis, ducking, was cut across the cheek by sharp wedges.

  “DON’T shout at me!”

  Pale and trembling, Francis said, “He knows. Daniel Jennings knows, Peter! He was in your godforsaken field and he knows!”

  Peter bent as if struck from behind. Hands bracing on his desk, staggering, and pushing papers off the far side. The fingers of his right hand curled around a twenty-inch saltwater hook. Stainless steel, massive, used to catch five-hundred pound tuna and alligators. Six of them lay on the desk.

  “She told him.”

  “I can’t hear you,” said Francis. Crimson trickled from two cuts under his cheekbone.

  “She told him. That’s the only reason Daniel was there.”

  “You mean Daisy Hathaway?”

  “I…I told her about the field. I don’t know why, I was…out of sorts. I was happy and I confided in her and she betrayed me.”

  “This woman has driven you mad. Literally mad. In each instance you think you’ve found a replacement. But she’s fool’s gold.”

  “A replacement?” said Peter.

  “Someone to love you. Accept you. You’re trying to fill the void where a mother should be. But these nubile girls aren’t it. You’re conflating desires.”

  In Peter’s frazzled state, he had no chance to absorb the diagnosis. The truth of Francis’ words fell like bags of cement between them.

  “I can fix it,” said Peter.

  “How?”

  “She’ll marry me.”

  “No.”

  “I’m proposing. In two days, at the Christmas party.”

  “No, Peter, God no.”

  “In front of everyone. So they can all see the kind of man I am. That I don’t lose,” said Peter.

  “That will fix nothing.”

  “That will fix everything.”

  Francis cast a glance at the ceiling, as though an answer could be found in the heavens. He told himself, “I was born into a family of mental illness. And then adopted into another with the same condition.”

  “She loves me, Francis.”

  “The girl won’t fix you. We were abandoned by our mother. Saying it out loud might be therapeutic.”

  “You’re the one bringing up our mother, not me. I want to talk about Daisy.”

  “Daisy ripped out your face,” said Francis.

  “Daisy was scared, I moved too quickly. She showed spirit.”

  “You marry or rape or kill anyone that interests you. Use them and abandon them
before they abandon you. And that lifestyle must end.”

  “This one is different.”

  “Can you truly not see the pattern, brother? With every woman or man who intimidates you, the process begins again. Currently it’s Daisy and Daniel. It’ll be someone else next. This is the mess the chief meant. You should listen to your parent, just this once, no matter his flaws.”

  As Francis spoke, Peter was grinding his teeth. Blood leaked from his mouth and spattered on a printed court order beneath. “She’ll marry me or she’ll wish she did.”

  “She won’t say yes.”

  Peter righted his spine. Wiped his mouth. Held up the hook and pressed his thumb into the wicked barb. Enjoyed the pain. “She will eventually.”

  “You are deep into an antisocial personality disorder and you need immediate medical attention. Hell, you might need an ambulance.”

  “Time for you to go, brother.”

  “This is my final offer. If you refuse aid, you won’t see me again.”

  “Keep your mouth closed about the proposal. And about your gay lover and everything else. Keep it closed or I’ll staple it closed. It’ll be nostalgic.”

  Francis nodded, as though a matter was settled. “Very well. I’m sorry, Peter.”

  “You have to keep your lopsided mouth closed. Because if you don’t, I’ll tell everyone. Imagine the fucking headlines as everyone’s favorite judge is charged with felonies.” Peter came around the desk. Waggled the heavy hook. “It was a riot, Francis. Daniel hurled himself into his own grave, the one I was digging for him. What are the odds? Maybe I’ll bury you next to him if you don’t get out of my got’damn office this second. Run away, big brother.”

  “Peter—”

  Peter getting closer. “Run.”

  “You’re insane.”

  But Francis ran.

  49

  Dean Gordon rang Jennings at seven Thursday morning.

  “Mr. Jennings, I apologize for the early call.”

  Jennings sat up and rubbed his eyes. Checked the clock. He’d managed one hour of sleep. He was falling apart. “No problem.”