by Alan Lee
“I want to touch base, clarify where we’re at with this whole thing. It’s been a tough week.”
Jennings didn’t respond.
“It’s been rough for you too, I’m sure. How you holding up?” said Gordon.
“I’ll get through it.”
“I’ve gathered information on your arrest earlier this week. The charges against you are…well, Mr. Jennings, they’re significant and disturbing.”
“Have you spoken to Peter Lynch?”
A pause. “He hasn’t returned my calls or emails.”
“The cocaine charge is ludicrous. I passed a drug test at the jail and I’ll keep passing them. The cocaine was planted in my truck,” said Jennings.
“By who?”
“You know who. Maybe we don’t say things out loud so you have some plausible deniability.”
“Is that necessary?”
Jennings was exhausted, weary, feeling mean. “Mr. Gordon, you know exactly what’s going on. I think you’re aware of the powerful forces fighting against me, against Daisy Hathaway, against Craig Lewis. It’s hard for you to act because those forces are somewhat in your corner. But let’s not pretend you’re innocent or ignorant.”
Silence rang loudly through the phone. After a moment Jennings detected a tortured sigh on the other end.
“Are you sleeping well, Mr. Gordon?”
“I am not.”
“Because you have a guess about what happened to Craig Lewis. And what happened to Daisy Hathaway and to Peter Lynch’s beard and what happened to me.”
“As I said, I’m… I gathered the information—”
“Gathering is the easy part."
"Do you have anything else to add that isn’t in the police report?” said Gordon.
“You have a big problem on your hands. It isn’t me. I’m just a guy easy to get rid of.”
“Be that as it may, I have a substitute teacher secured to teach your class today and tomorrow. Ms. Pierce will handle your after-school responsibilities. And we’ll talk soon about long-term plans. Do you understand?”
“I understand more than you wish I did, Gordon.”
Jennings hung up.
The SafeSide Tactical shooting range was monitored by security cameras Jennings wanted to avoid. Instead he browsed the internet and found Potts Slope Shooting Range in Craig County. The drive took him forty minutes and he found it vacant. Early December was a lull between hunting seasons.
He limped to the first bay with the shotgun bag, knee still sore. Unzipped the bag and took out the Browning, ridiculous in appearance now; even with the silencer it was shorter than before.
He chose a 00 buckshot shell. They were subsonic, a quieter load, purchased to reduce noise inside the confines of a firing range. Perfect for his purposes.
Jennings pressed the top lever to break open the action. Inserted a buckshot cartridge. Closed it, the lever snapping back into place. Raised the gun, pulled the recoil pad hard against his shoulder. Didn’t bother resting his face on the cheek piece to aim. Held his breath, the fog from his mouth vanishing upward. Squeezed the trigger.
A shotgun blast shatters the air and hurts your ears. The Browning, however, merely startled the range. Much of the pop was swallowed up in the suppressor baffles. It was loud but Jennings’ naked ears felt okay. The echoes came and went, came and went. Oddly he missed the heavy boom, a familiar childhood memory of the gun fired in sport. The new sound was foreign, sinister.
Jennings stood a long time, glaring down the range at piles of earthen backstops and lamella traps. He broke open the action and the shell ejected. Made a hollow thunk landing at his feet, hot, spent, empty. Ready for the garbage.
He didn’t fire another round. Didn’t need to.
50
That evening Jennings was sitting on his floor again. His prosthesis lay beside him so his throbbing leg could heal.
He’d cut the shotgun barrel again and still he thought it was too long. He’d already removed the takedown lever. If he cut anymore, the suppressor would be flush against the chamber and the shell exposed.
If he owned an unregistered pistol, that would’ve saved a lot of work. On the bright side, with a shotgun there was no chance of Lynch’s survival. The man was a bear and bears required stopping power.
What if he cut…
What if he cut off the stock?
Of course! Why hadn’t that occurred to him before? He wouldn’t be holding the gun to his cheek.
The shotgun was short enough now that pinning it between the mattress and bedspring was awkward. He sat on top to provide stability and sawed downward with the hacksaw. The teeth were growing dull and his arm burned, the gunsmith surgery requiring fifteen minutes.
When he finished, the stubby gun lay on the carpet and looked obscene. Once beautiful, now deformed and stunted. He stood up, grabbed his crutches, and leaned on them. Looking straight down.
It was short enough now. Right…?
He’d been in the position, vision blurring from exhaustion, for two minutes when the idea struck him. It hit him hard enough that he fell backward onto the bed.
“Oh man,” he whispered. “Oh man, ohmanohman.”
It might work.
It might work.
If the maintenance shed had the right tools…
Jennings was racing on crutches across the campus, billowing steam. Blind with exhaustion.
He returned and the apartment telephone was ringing. In his delirium he didn’t understand the noise. He swatted at the device to make it stop, knocking the receiver off the wall. A man’s voice buzzed from it.
“Jennings? Yo? You there?”
He picked the receiver up. “Lynch?”
“No, man. It’s Coach. Coach Murray. Where the hell you been?”
“My cell phone is dead.” Hopping on one leg, Jennings maneuvered himself into a chair before falling.
“Daisy said you went to kill Lynch Monday night. That true?” said Murray.
“It’s true.”
“Jennings, you can’t go all lone wolf like that shit.”
“I found graves in his field.”
“Like a cemetery?”
“We fought and he told me he buries the bodies deep to avoid detection but the deeper the grave, the deeper the ground depression afterward.”
“Oh damn. He confessed,” said Murray.
“Yes.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know yet.” Jennings heard the words, but wasn’t confident he’d uttered them.
“The chief of police is corrupt. He’ll just arrest your ass, right?”
“So I’ll just kill Lynch.”
“Nope. You’re not thinking straight, Jennings.”
“Everything changed. I thought he hit his kids. I thought he bullied reporters and bribed his way out of trouble. But it’s only grown worse. He killed Craig. Tried to rape Daisy. Admitted he buries women on his property. Everything’s changed.”
“Daniel—”
“Lynch told me he strings people up with fish hooks and buries them after.”
“What the hell does that mean?” said Murray.
“It means he needs to die.”
“All serial killers are white dudes, you ever notice that? What is wrong with y’all.”
“No one cares. Everyone is too busy. So I’ll do it. I’ll handle this like I should have last year.”
“What’s that mean? Last year? You were across the world last year.”
“The gunshot will be quiet.”
“No, man. You’ll go to jail. Forever jail, you get it?”
“He’s after Daisy, Coach.”
“Here’s an idea. You two go hide. Go hide and call cops until you find one who’ll dig those bodies up,” said Murray.
“I’ll kill him and I won’t get caught. But I need your help.”
“Bullshit my help. You’re talking like—”
“I know.” Like I’m insane too.
“You need
a doctor, Jennings.”
“There’s no time. It has to be me. I need to do this.”
“This is about your damn leg,” said Murray.
Jennings made a noise, sounded like he’d been punched. He flinched away from the phone, scalded by the hot truth.
“This is special forces PTSD shit, Jennings.”
Jennings’ missing foot shouted at him with phantom pain. The hurt grabbed him, took him away. “I…”
“You still there?”
“I have to do this,” said Jennings.
“What? I couldn’t hear you.”
“I have to do this.” Jennings closed his eyes and tasted bile. “I have to. Have to.”
“No you don’t. You need help.”
Jennings felt the oncoming might of anxiety and rage. Weapons carried by his memories.
Murray was correct—the current danger had intertwined itself into his military service; his new friends had taken their place in Afghanistan, screaming at the rockets. He was a medic, he kept people alive, even at great cost. Somehow if he helped get Daisy and Coach Murray and Craig Lewis to safety, he wasn’t an irredeemable failure.
He’d lost one already. The enemy was free but in his crosshairs.
His friends, Jimmy Logan and Corey Lowe. Lying in pieces in the sand. His friend, Craig Lewis.
“Jennings. Daniel? Listen to me. Can you talk? I’m on the way over. Me and Daisy. You just stay alive until then. You got me? Daniel.”
Unwanted film played between Jennings’ ears, a projector he couldn’t stop. He turned his face against it. But the sound and noise swelled.
A sweet voice. Speaking to him, an angel.
A voice he knew from lifetimes past. A woman. She kept talking and he followed her notes. She spoke and darkness was forced to hide. The grief wasn’t destroyed but it was kept in abeyance.
Daniel opened his eyes.
He was on the bed. A woman sat on a chair beside him.
“Daisy.”
“I have water. And the bottle of Xanax I found in your bathroom, if you need it,” she said.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Coach Murray and I both came. He left ten minutes ago. If we go to the hospital, he’ll meet us there.”
Jennings sat up. Rubbed his eyes. Wondered if this was the afterlife. “What happened? What time is it?”
“Ten. At night. Daniel, when was the last time you slept?”
Jennings shot an eye to the carpet. The shotgun and his tools were in the corner, evidence of an unsound mind.
“I don’t know. Last week?”
“Should we go to the hospital?
“Maybe. If I can’t sleep tonight, yeah, I’ll go.”
“Good. That’s the response of a good and wise man. If you do, I’ll drive.”
He stood and crutched to the restroom. Splashed cold water on his face to wake up. Returning, he glanced in the mirror—a pale corpse stared back with sunken eyes.
“Are you hungry?” she said.
“Starving.”
“I have pizza baking in the oven. You look like you need some.”
He did.
They chatted at the table, the empty pizza box between them. Jennings felt reborn. He tried to remember his last meal and couldn’t. The same was true for a shower and a good sleep.
He produced the best grin he couldn’t. “This isn’t how I thought our first date would go.”
“This is our second.”
“At the coffee shop? That didn’t count.”
“It did to me, Daniel.” She played with a napkin. “How bad is it? Are you thinking of killing yourself?”
“I’m not suicidal. I wasn’t even depressed. But after Craig died I couldn’t think straight.”
She nodded, looking hopeful. “That’s understandable. Especially in light of your history.”
“Something about the wound not being healed yet.”
“Maybe that’s one that never will.”
“I have proof, Daisy. Do you remember the field Lynch mentioned on your date? He buries bodies out there. I found the sunken spots. He thought I was about to die so he confessed.”
“Are you sure? Can you trust yourself?”
“I’m positive. I told my attorney and we’re supposed to figure it out soon. I just…fell apart in the waiting.”
“You’re allowed to do that, I think. As long as you come back.”
Jennings took her hand and squeezed. She returned the pressure and neither released. Jennings wanted to tell her that she’d probably saved his life again, that he’d been on the verge of driving to Lynch’s and pulling a trigger, but that seemed too weighty and awful a truth to admit.
“What do we do?” she said.
“We don’t die.”
She smiled. “I like it.”
“We don’t die and we get you away from Lynch. Once we’re gone, I’ll call my lawyer and figure out what to do.”
“I’m not going to his Christmas party, that’s certain.”
Jennings’ blinks were longer, the pizza filling him with a fuzzy calm. “Agreed. We’ll be on the road by then.”
“You want to leave tomorrow?”
“Lynch is insane. Once you skip the party, he might come after you.”
“Let’s sleep on it. If you still want to in the morning, I’ll call in sick and pack.”
“I’m thinking clearly about this, Daisy. Finally. For a long time, this was personal. I made it personal, a fight between me and Lynch. It was about him, but it was about me and my issues, and it was about my past. I see it now. I was exhausted from teaching and Lynch rattled me and then Craig died and I…I lost control.”
“Do you believe you have it back now? You look better.”
“I feel better now than I have since before Craig died. I feel good enough to realize that I need a few more days. I feel good enough to realize we’re outgunned. We’ll be safer away from here,” said Jennings.
“I trust you.”
“Tomorrow.” He stood and crushed the pizza box and shoved it into the trash.
“Do you think Coach Murray is in danger?”
Jennings yawned so big his jaw cracked. “No. All Lynch wants to do to Murray is fire him. It’s you I’m worried about. Tomorrow afternoon we’re driving straight to a cabin in the Smoky Mountains and I’m not bringing you home until Lynch is in handcuffs.”
“It almost sounds romantic.” Her cheeks pinked. “If you didn’t smell so bad.”
“Nothing a shower can’t fix.”
“And sleep, Daniel.”
“I’m headed to bed. My eyes aren’t staying open. Do you mind?”
“No. But I’m sitting beside your bed until you fall asleep.”
“I can manage it on my own. I know I don’t look it, but I feel great.”
“I believe you but I’m staying anyway. You’ve become important to me, Daniel.”
He was moving on autopilot, getting into bed. He fell asleep the second after he’d pulled up his covers. Hathaway lowered into the chair next to his bed and placed a hand on his shoulder.
She cast her eyes back to the bizarre weapon in the corner. Jennings’ apartment was exceptionally neat, except for that area. Murray had located shotgun shells in his drawer and taken them with him. Just in case.
What would he have done with such a short gun anyway?
51
Byron Horton was sitting at the kitchen table when Hathaway returned home that evening. Her emotional guard came up immediately but she was exhausted, like a boxer in the twelfth round.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
Byron held a fizzing glass of Pepsi. “Nothing. I’m packed up, kid.”
“Oh. You’re done?”
“Surprise, right?”
“Are you leaving now?”
“Tomorrow, if that’s okay. Or after the weekend.”
“Tomorrow is fine,” she said. “What can I do?”
“Nothing.”
“What about
your clothes?”
“I hauled them to a storage unit today.”
Skeptically she peered down the hall. “I’ll wash your dirty—”
“I already did. Washed and dried and packed.”
“The master bath?”
“I got my stuff out. And scrubbed my sink.”
“You had boxes in the spare bedroom,” she said.
“Gone.”
“The basement is a disaster area. I’ll help down there.”
“Most of it’s already hauled. Got a few boxes left for tomorrow. The TV, my guitar, the XBox, stuff like that.”
“Wow, Byron.”
A lopsided grin. “I know. First time I’ve been an adult in a long while. And it’s too late.” He patted the table. “Sit down for a minute.”
She did. Perched on the edge of the chair, wary, ready to leave if he grew emotional or cruel.
“Listen, Hathaway. Daisy. I know I screwed this up. This’s on me and I own it. I’m sorry I got mad.”
Some of the starch in her spine softened. She searched his eyes for sincerity. “That’s okay. We were both holding it when it fell apart.”
“No, but I know. I know it was me. You tried and I didn’t. I think… I don’t know what I think. I wasn’t ready to grow up.”
“Neither was I,” she said.
“Yeah you were. But you were yoked to the wrong guy. Life is just bigger than I thought it was. Marriage is bigger. Jobs are harder. Self-management is harder, and I fumbled it. I’m looking in the mirror and realizing I still think I’m seventeen.”
Hathaway nodded, thinking about his words clanging on other parts of her life. “Life is bigger, you’re right.”
“It’s a big deal. And you made it hard to grow up.”
“I did?”
“You took care of everything, Hathaway. You cleaned, you cooked, you paid the bills. I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t have to grow up. So…I didn’t. Did you ever think about that? The downside to taking care of someone?”
“I thought about it every night.”
“Look at me.” Byron patted his protruding stomach. “I’m reverse aging. I even got my baby fat.”
Hathaway groaned. “Me too. I’ve been stress eating the past few weeks.”
