Sunken Graves

by Alan Lee

  “You need an ambulance. Right now, Mr. Lynch. You’re not in control.” Hathaway was speaking louder, confidence and anger growing. She wanted their congregation to hear.

  “Strap evil into a stretcher,” he said. “No I don’t think so, Daisy. I won’t be restrained. It’s not me who needs…who needs to be strung up.”

  Lynch’s other hand came out of his pants pocket. He held a large tuna hook.

  At that moment, Coach Murray’s voice reached across the room.

  “Um! Y’all, hey! Got a problem over here—”

  “Oh! Fire!” Someone else. “FIRE!”

  “FIRE!”

  The congested little hallway turned as one, startled by the cry. A painting above the fireplace was ablaze, the effulgence reaching for the ceiling.

  Panic caught more quickly than the stockings. Partiers began to scream. A flood for the doors. Calls to evacuate, calls for a fire extinguisher.

  Gibbs and Jennings were forgotten.

  “Did you do this?” Gibbs looked like a broken man.

  “How? Hell or high water, I’ve been with you.”

  “Peter wasn’t…he wasn’t going to kill her. He’s a big kid. He struggles with…” Gibbs trailed off.

  “It’s bad in the basement, Chief. As bad as it gets. You’re his father. Deep down, you know.”

  Screams in the great room intensified. Jennings could see the growing conflagration in the windows. Men and women fought each other for the front doors.

  “Let me go,” said Jennings.

  “No. You and I are going out the back.”

  No one was looking. Jennings brought his shoulder up and over Gibbs’ forearm. Swung and smashed his elbow into Gibbs’ face under the eye. The chief rocked backward into the wall behind, releasing Jennings.

  “Fucking…” One eye closed, Gibbs fumbled for his gun. “…dead sonofabitch.”

  “Chief, there’s a fire. Where is Ann?”

  Gibbs’ face paled, except for the vivid impact spot. “Annie.”

  “Is she upstairs? She’s in danger.”

  Gibbs turned away and ran for the rear staircase, ran for his granddaughter. “ANN!”

  In the kitchen, caterers filled pitchers of water to splash futilely on the spreading fire. Out front, an assistant football coach located a garden house behind the boxwoods but the pipe was sealed for the winter.

  In the raging great room, Lynch had Hathaway’s forearm in his mighty left fist. He dragged her against the crowd, pulling her deeper into the house. She screamed at him and hit him but Lynch had irrevocably lost his ability to reason. She’d rejected him. And seeing his house on fire, mirroring the halls in his mind, was the final tipping point.

  Her resistance infuriated Lynch. He squeezed and Hathaway’s ulna bone, thinner near the wrist, cracked. Her screams mingled with the others unnoticed.

  Fuck this. She rejected him publicly. She could pay the penalty the same way. With a hook in her, he could carry her easily like a big fish.

  Lynch pivoted and raised the steel. Aiming for her throat.

  Jennings hit him in the head from the side. A heavy bronze horse sculpture taken from a coffee table, swung for all he was worth. The impact knocked Lynch sideways. He fell slowly like a tree, jerking Hathaway down with him, swinging the hook without aim and catching nothing.

  Jennings dropped the sculpture with a clang. Drew a ragged breath and stepped forward to kill him.

  Jennings had the idea that morning as he packed. He’d paused to stare at the stunted shotgun next to the disassembled leg he’d been cleaning.

  The shotgun, missing its stock, chopped off and finished with the suppressor, was about the same length as his prosthetic shin tub and foot.

  He measured with the tape. From the tip of the suppressor to the ragged end of the shotgun’s grip, the weapon was seventeen inches long. The shin tub plus the prosthetic foot was sixteen inches long. A wild idea…could he disguise the shotgun? Use it as a prosthesis?

  He’d gone to the maintenance workshop with a satchel and came back with extra drill bits and bottles of superglue.

  Two hours later, the knee socket of his old prosthesis no longer fit the shin tube; instead the connector slid into a drilled hole inside the shotgun’s stock. He stabilized the assembly with two screws, fastening the ‘knee joint’ to the gun stock, and he set it aside for the glue to dry. He drilled four connecting holes into the hard foot, creating an opening big enough to fit the rectangular shape of the suppressor’s muzzle. He stayed up all night applying layers of glue. The final act was drilling a hole into his shoe directly below the barrel—if fired, the gun would shoot downward through the shoe.

  The final product was, he had a shotgun instead of a shin.

  It was weight-bearing to an extent; the shotgun barrel and suppressor were made of strong metals. In front of the mirror, wearing pants and the doctored shoe, he looked normal. Without the pants he looked like halloween and hardware.

  He spent the morning limping around his apartment. The shotgun was heavy and provided no forward support. He couldn’t run, could barely walk, would be forced to take stairs one at a time. If he pressed too hard on the toes, his foot would break away from the suppressor. If he had to quickly step sideways, he would fall. And after a while the extra weight hurt.

  The hurt was welcome, though.

  The shotgun had no hammer and no safety. After it was loaded, the trigger had merely to be pulled. But how?

  He tied two strings to the trigger and glued them fast. The strings were longer than necessary to avoid an accidental discharge. He ran the strings up his pant leg and through a rip in his pocket. Tied the strings each to a key, easy to grasp. Two strings and two keys for redundancy.

  Standing in front of the mirror again. He walked in place. Walked backward and forward. Turned carefully in circles. Stopped. Reached into his pocket, grabbed the key, and gave it a sharp tug. Nothing happened. Tugged harder and he heard the gratifying click of the firing pin. Had it been loaded, the shotgun would’ve discharged its payload downward through the hole in his shoe.

  Boom.

  Sweating, eyes on his shaking left pant leg, he’d whispered, “Oh man.”

  Coach Murray had taken all the shotgun shells from his drawer. But he found one final shell in the bag under his bed.

  He’d built the device on a morbid whim. But sitting in his car outside Lynch’s house an hour ago, he’d decided to attach it. He’d decided maybe it hadn’t been a morbid whim, but rather a premonition.

  Peter Lynch fell. He landed next to an overstuffed armchair, dragging Hathaway with him. No one noticed, the crowd in survival mode.

  Jennings dropped the horse sculpture with a clang.

  Lynch was dazed, blinking, and bleeding at the mouth. He hadn’t released Hathaway. In his confusion, he was still trying to skewer her with the hook. A man possessed.

  Jennings lifted his left leg. The weight of the shotgun pulled his foot downward at the knee. He lowered the shoe to rest on Lynch’s chest, over his heart.

  Fire crawling on the ceiling now.

  Hathaway screaming. The hook fell, barely missing her face, gouging the wood. Lynch yanked it out again. He turned to face Jennings, dimly realizing his danger, the foot on his chest.

  Jennings shoved his left hand into his left pocket. Fingers numb. Light headed. Fumbling and finding the key.

  An absurd thought in Jennings’ mind. He was poised over Lynch like Virtue over the vanquished Tyrant on the seal of Virginia. Sic Semper Tyrannis.

  He stepped up, his weight briefly pressing down on Lynch through the shotgun. Tugged on the string and felt it jerk against his upper thigh.

  Lynch’s final vision was Jennings above, tendrils of fire over his head.

  The trigger clicked backward. The 00 buckshot, a subsonic load, erupted.

  Lynch’s ribcage shattered into sand and fragments. His heart liquified. The exploding gases entered Lynch’s chest and blew a starburst around the ragged
muzzle stamp. Peter Lynch died with his eyes fixed hatefully on Jennings, his teeth forever locked together, gums and lips bloody, steel gripped tightly in his right fist.

  Questioned later, party-goers would say they remembered the crash. It had been heard but not understood. A shotgun blast? It was loud but not enough to be a shotgun. Besides, how would someone get a shotgun into the party unnoticed? Not even Hathaway, squirming free, dizzy with pain and fear, had recognized the sound.

  Hopping backward, Jennings struggled to believe it. His left tibia had absorbed the harsh recoil, a deep ache in his sore stub. The gun stock twisted inside the socket but the screws held. Heat off the suppressor melted some glue but not enough. The shotgun itself had never been visible.

  Screaming members of the delirious crowd, still surging toward the front door, began to trip on the body and step over it, unaware.

  Above the frantic noise, Hathaway said, “What happened?”

  Jennings held a greasy mixture of relief and disgust in his chest. Shock kept the full effect palliated. He hauled her up by her good hand. “Let’s go.”

  She kept the broken arm secured against her stomach and they joined the final rush escaping the fire. Jennings was hopping.

  “Are you hurt?” said Hathaway.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “He broke my arm. I’ll be okay.”

  Mr. Barry noticed Jennings struggling and he aided him through the door into the night air. Mr. Barry didn’t notice the blood dripping off Jennings’ shoe, nor the crimson footprints made by those who stumbled against the dead man.

  58

  Lynch’s house burned in the eyes of the partiers. The eastern corner of the house was engulfed, throwing light and shadow across the lawn. Officer Hudson shouting into his radio.

  Jennings found Coach Murray and his wife and they all stood together. Hathaway held onto him with her undamaged arm, they watched.

  The first sound of sirens reached them. Hudson had called the fire in quick.

  A silhouette in the smoke. Chief Gibbs appeared, his head wreathed, carrying a little girl. A tall, bearded man followed, crying as a child would. Gibbs’ face contorted with hurt, maneuvering down the porch steps.

  He set the girl onto the grass and straightened as best the gnarled pain would allow.

  “Chief!” Officer Hudson met him there.

  “Where’s Peter? Have you seen Peter?”

  Hudson said no. He took the girl by the hand and pulled her away from the heat and Homer followed.

  Gibbs searched the orange faces watching the fire.

  “Peter? Peter! Where’s Peter?”

  No one responded. Because no one knew.

  Hathaway squeezed Jennings’ arm. Whispered, “Don’t say a word. Please?”

  Gibbs looked until he found Jennings. They held one another there an instant until Jennings pressed his mouth into a grim line and gave a nod.

  Gibbs’ shoulders sank.

  He knew. In that flash, he knew everything. That he’d been too late, this his son’s life was over, that Jennings had been telling the truth about the lawyer in the basement, that everything, everything, was about to catch fire. He made a decision, that quick. High on pain and meds. He marched up the steps and into the smoke.

  The firetruck navigated the drive, airhorn blaring, the front bumper narrowly missing luxury cars parked by valets. Red warning lights painting the scene. The truck stopped in a hiss of brakes and men in turnout coats poured from the extended cab. The sirens cut off. Hoses were retracted and latched onto the pumps. Half a dozen cell phone cameras recorded the scene.

  The two squad cars parked as a firehose burst to life. A thick jet of water arced into the corner of the house.

  In the chaos, a sound rang above the rest. A gunshot. A blast from inside the house and the attending host flinched as one.

  “Oh no,” said Hudson.

  No one moved. Or breathed. They waited and waited and the chief of police never came out. He’d been swallowed up.

  More emergency lights coming up the drive, police and ambulances. As they arrived, there was an explosion from the bowels of the house. Fire had reached the jerry cans of gasoline in the basement, a final exclamation point on the life of Peter Lynch.

  In his car, Jennings followed the ambulance carrying Daisy Hathaway to the hospital. Lynch had drugged her and broken her arm, and the paramedics insisted.

  He made one brief stop, at a public dumpster in Roanoke City, seven miles from Lynch’s homestead. Into it Jennings deposited his makeshift left leg—his grandfather’s shotgun, his suppressor pieces, the ruined shoe, the modified foot and knee socket. The dumpster was due for collection on Monday.

  He hopped back to his rental car, closed his eyes, and savored the heavy weight removed.

  59

  Sunday afternoon, Jennings was sitting in Our Daily Bread reading the bakery’s newspaper. Peter Lynch’s obituary ran and Jennings was respecting the dead by marveling over the man’s accolades.

  He felt a cold detachment about that night. No relief, no satisfaction. Nothing beyond the guilt of Lynch’s children being deprived of their father. But, he told himself, they were better off this way, removed from their sociopathic guardian.

  And that, he told himself, might be bull. A shield to hide behind.

  What remorse he felt came from the loss of himself. Looking back on the previous two weeks, he recognized his own psychosis. He’d been a lunatic running on fear and memories and no sleep. Lynch had battered his body and his emotional stability, and Jennings hadn’t borne up well enough. The conclusion to their first conversation floated back to him…

  Not bad, Daniel. You reek of sweat and fear but you didn’t break.

  I don’t break, Mr. Lynch.

  In the end, however, it had taken a divine visit from Daisy Hathaway to save him. He’d survived through luck Lynch didn’t have.

  In the process he’d lost a man and he felt the lash of blame. Craig, he hoped, would consider the end result worth his sacrifice. He’d said as much. Yet it would be another thing hard to live with.

  No one gets out of these things unscathed. There were always consequences.

  Mackenzie August strode into the shop. He got a coffee and sat down.

  The private detective said, “Why’d you call me this morning, Jennings? And not a few days ago?”

  “My phone broke and I didn’t have your number. I wasn’t thinking straight and it all happened fast.”

  “You’re alive. Barely.”

  Jennings grinned. “That counts.”

  “I happen to have an intimate relationship with an attorney who is at the courthouse today. A Sunday. The place is nuts. She tells me charges against you from last week are being dropped. All of them, trespassing in Peter Lynch’s field, assault, cocaine possession, everything.”

  Jennings leaned back into his chair. He’d expected this but hearing confirmation made his ears tingle. “That’s great news.”

  “Your alleged victim, Peter Lynch, is dead. Without his eyewitness account, prosecution doesn’t have much of a case. The CA admitted he thought the cocaine charge was bogus. Even so, she’s going with you to the police station later to make another statement about Friday night. Just to be safe.”

  “I appreciate it,” said Jennings.

  “Lynch was aced with a shotgun. Killed in the middle of a party. No one saw it and no one heard it, or at least, they didn’t know what it was. And the murder weapon’s gone. You know what that is? That’s damn impossible.”

  “Or maybe, providence.”

  “It’s gotta be. I heard what happened to your previous attorney, Josh. A gruesome find, even for a former military medic.”

  “Lynch’s final victim.”

  “He was a buddy.”

  “I’m sorry, Mackenzie. I told Josh to stay away but he had stars in his eyes.”

  “I gave him the same advice I gave you.”

  “Stay alive? Don’t do anything stupid? Don’t me
ss with a murderer?”

  “That’s it.” Mackenzie was nodding. “But he didn’t take it.”

  Neither of us did, thought Jennings. But I’d been desperate instead of ambitious.

  “I was told to go over your story with you, before you meet with the police,” said Mackenzie.

  “Your intimate friend the attorney told you?”

  “She’s persuasive. And she wants to make sure you don’t slip up.”

  “You want the whole story?” said Jennings.

  “I want the story you’ll tell the police. After that, it’s up to you.”

  Jennings outlined his fight with Lynch in the field, the sunken grave discovery. And his conversations with Josh Dixon and the surprise visit from Francis Lynch. (At that, Mackenzie made a hmm’ing noise.) Jennings’ suspicion that Hathaway had been kidnapped and his discovery of Byron’s body at Hathaway’s house. And Josh Dixon in Lynch’s basement.

  “I was looking for a phone when the fire started. I saw Lynch about to impale Daisy with a hook, so I hit him with a horse statue. She and I ran out,” said Jennings.

  “You hit him and ran out.”

  “That’s what I’ll say, unless you advise otherwise.”

  “When the police ask about Peter Lynch being dead, how will you respond?”

  “The last I saw him, he was lying in the main room.”

  “He was shot. What will you say to that?” said August.

  “Like everyone that night, I was swabbed for gunpowder residue. Officer Hudson forced me to go first but released me. He said my hands were clean.”

  Mackenzie nodded to himself. “Hudson swabbed you and released you. Said you’re clean. That’s good.”

  A lull in the talk then, when Mackenzie wanted to ask how he’d done it, how he’d fired a shotgun without his hands being stained with microscopic residue, without people hearing or seeing. Jennings would’ve told him, the unimaginable irony of getting away with it because of his missing foot. The gunpowder residue being absorbed inside his pant leg, and him limping away with the murder weapon. But the question of how remained unspoken. There was no question of if, not between the two men.