Jury Duty (First Contact)

by Peter Cawdron

  Jury Duty

  Copyright © Peter Cawdron, 2021.

  All rights reserved. The right of Peter Cawdron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. First Contact episode XVII.

  The Universe

  “In all our searching,

  the only thing we’ve found

  that makes the emptiness bearable

  is each other.”

  Carl Sagan

  First Down

  “What the hell are you doing?” Nick says, leaning to one side on the old, worn couch, trying to see the TV. “Get out of the way, woman!”

  With a beer in one hand and the remote in the other, he turns up the volume. It doesn’t negate Sandra’s defiance. She stands there between him and the screen with clenched fists held by her side. A slight tremble betrays her nerves. Her knuckles turn white, but not from anger. There’s desperation in her eyes. She’s fighting her fear of confrontation. It would be easy to walk away. Nick would love that, but she’s not moving, which annoys him even more.

  At best, she can only block part of the widescreen TV, but it means Nick is missing the defense rush the quarterback.

  A ball sails into view on the screen.

  From somewhere up high in the stadium, a camera zooms in, tracking the ball’s motion down field. A wide receiver sprints toward the end zone, leading the throw without looking for the ball. He pulls up just short of the line and pivots, cutting across the field with barely five yards to go. Years of practice tells him precisely where and when the ball will arrive. The safety anticipates the wide receiver’s route, chasing him, watching the subtle motion of his helmet, knowing that will signal him turning for a catch. Rain blows in squalls, sweeping across the field. The wide receiver twists sideways, looking over his shoulder precisely as Sandra steps in front of that part of the screen.

  The commentator yells, “Intercept!”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Nick says, slamming the TV remote onto the couch beside him.

  Sandra has tears welling up in her eyes. “You need to read this. You can’t ignore it.”

  “Later,” Nick grumbles, unable to formulate an entire sentence. Anger seethes within him. On the screen, a tangle of bodies pile up at the twenty-yard line. The ball pops out, rolling on the grass.

  “First down!”

  “I’m leaving.”

  It’s only with those two words that Nick realizes Sandra has set a suitcase by the door. Her son is already in the car, just visible through the curtains. He’s sitting in the front seat with his smartphone out. He’s distracted, looking at something entirely meaningless that nevertheless demands his absolute attention. Fucking teenagers.

  “Come on, baby,” Nick says, struggling to suppress the anger he feels welling up inside. Although he’d like to think he’s desperately trying to hold on to their relationship, the reality is he’s at the limits of his interest. There’s a football game on. Sandra needs to calm the fuck down. She always does. Eventually.

  “You hit me,” Sandra says. Her long, blonde hair, normally so straight, is ruffled and in motion. She jabs at the air, pointing at him. “I told you, if you ever hit me it was over!”

  “It was just a push.”

  In the haze of his alcohol-soaked mind, Nick’s not sure if he’s lying. He’s belittling what happened, but what else can he do? He doesn’t have a time machine. He can’t undo the past. Goddamn it! She’s always going on at him about something he did last week or last month. He doesn’t care.

  Nick finds it impossible to take his eyes off the screen. The snap is called. Bodies collide. Arms push and shove. “I was rough—too rough. I said I was sorry.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “It was a mistake. Okay? I made a mistake. There. Are you happy now?”

  Happy?

  Nick’s deflecting her concerns as effectively as any offensive tackle cutting off a linebacker. This was never about happiness. Sandra’s not exacting revenge. She’s cutting her losses. Nick can’t help himself. He can’t leave his comments at that. Ego compels him to say more.

  “It takes two to tango, babe. You. You made me so angry. But you know I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never hurt you.”

  Sandra stops by the door.

  “Goodbye, Nick.”

  “And what’s this?” he finally asks, holding up the envelope. Based on the return address, it’s a formal notice from the county clerk.

  “Read it, Nick. Read it carefully.”

  Nick tears open the letter, but his eyes are on her.

  “You’re nothing without me. You know that, right? Look at you. You’re fat and old. Do you really think you can make it out there alone?”

  “I’m thirty-eight,” she replies, but her words ring hollow. His strike deep. There’s no denying her age or weight. Neither should count against her, that much is clear from the look of exasperation on her face, but society says they do. She wants to say something clever. The hurt shows in the furrows of her brow. She desperately wants a retort. She wants to say something that will negate his cruel jab, but her lips falter.

  Sandra walks to the door and picks up her suitcase. She’s careful not to turn her back on him. Tears run down her cheeks. Her hands are shaking.

  For a moment, she stands there staring at him. Why? What the hell does she want? Is she hoping for something more? In the blurred tunnel vision of his myopic mind, he’s already done everything he can and now he’s through with her. He just apologized. Again. But then he verbally lashed out at her, which is contradictory and yet surprisingly consistent for him. Is there any hope for them as a couple? Any hope for him? What could there be? Her bottom lip trembles. She goes to speak, but no words come out.

  With a half-empty beer bottle in one hand, Nick pulls the letter out of the envelope. He unfolds it and glances at the subject line. Nick doesn’t need to read the whole thing. The title tells him everything he needs to know.

  “You fucking bitch!”

  He throws the bottle at her, but his aim is lousy. Whether it’s the adrenaline coursing through his veins or the alcohol impairing his judgment, he misses. Back in high school, Nick was an outfielder on the baseball team. He could hit the catcher’s glove on home plate time and again, but that was twenty years ago. As much as he’d like to think he’s still in the groove, he’d throw his shoulder out these days. The bottle flies wide, hitting the door frame. Sandra barely has time to cringe. Glass shatters beside her, showering her with fragments. Fine splinters catch in her hair. Beer sprays along the wall.

  “Get out! Get the fuck out of my house, you goddamn whore!”

  Sandra runs for the car. She pops the trunk and tosses her suitcase in, slamming the lid shut. The young teen looks up in alarm.

  Inside the house, Nick kicks over the coffee table in anger, sending magazines flying. Empty beer bottles roll across the carpet. Screwed up in his left hand is an official court filing.

  18 USC 997 (v) Domestic Violence Firearms Surrender Notice

  “You want my goddamn guns?” he mumbles under his breath. “Well, you can have the fucking bullets!”

  A car door slams outside. In the kitchen, Nick yanks open a drawer. He lifts a tray containing tableware, exposing a hidden cavity. His fingers wrap around the pistol grip of an old nine-millimeter Glock.

  Nick marches to the front door with the gun in his hand. He pulls back on the slide, loading a round from the magazine. His bare feet pound on the wooden floor. Echoes resound through the empty house like thunder.

  The car engine roars to li
fe after a few false starts. Sandra throws the gear shift in reverse, but before she can peer over her shoulder and race down the drive, she sees Nick standing in the doorway. He raises his gun and stares along the barrel.

  “No, no, no,” she yells, pushing her son’s head down below the dash of her old convertible and reversing along the driveway.

  Nick has never shot anyone before, but he’s thought about it. A lot. He’s trained for this moment with paper targets at the gun range. They say killing someone is hard, but that’s a lie. It’s as easy as squeezing a trigger.

  His finger tightens on the thin, curved, precision-machined metal. In the movies, sweat breaks out on the shooter’s brow. Nick feels no such compulsion. His hands should tremble, knowing the pain he’s about to unleash, but they don’t. For him, this is revenge. She deserves this. This bitch has fucked up his life.

  As soon as he saw the domestic violence notice, Nick knew he was now on a register in some goddamn federal database somewhere. The US Government never forgets and neither will he. Nick waits, but not out of pity. He’s leading the shot, anticipating the motion of the car, making sure he’s not going to miss. That’s the problem with hatred. One shot on target is worth more than an entire magazine emptied in anger. This is no beer bottle slipping from his fingers in a fit of rage. No, this is calculated.

  His eyes shift focus, moving from the tritium sight running along the top of the Glock to her head. He lowers his aim, settling on her torso. A shot to the head is gruesome and a sure kill, but it has a high risk of missing. The kick of the gun, the precision of his aim, the speed of the car—these all contribute to his accuracy. A shot to the upper torso is better. Heart and lungs. Larger target.

  Is this who he really is?

  A murderer?

  Even he’s not sure in those few seconds. He’s slept with this woman for over five years. Are love and hate two sides of the same coin? They’re both the offspring of passion, but are they interchangeable? Does the fury of the moment outweigh everything that’s gone before? And what’s next? Killing is easy. Living with the consequences ain’t.

  Nick wavers. He hates himself for it, but life should be measured by something other than a mere eight grams of lead being accelerated to over a thousand feet per second.

  Fuck this shit! Pulling a trigger is simple. Killing someone shouldn’t be so goddamn easy.

  Sirens sound.

  The police are close. They’re already turning onto the street. The cops had to be waiting for him. Damn it! She set him up royally. Sandra glances back at him as the rear tires of her car hit the road. Her eyes—the intensity in them screams at him. They’re piercing, telling, knowing. She understands something crucial about what’s unfolding, something he missed.

  That bitch!

  Nick’s being played. She’s fucked him over. Five years of living together has taught him her tells. Sandra never was any good at Poker. He ejects the magazine from the gun. No bullets. She emptied the Glock before handing him that fucking envelope.

  Smart.

  All those times he whined about his old Glock—she was listening, thinking, plotting, planning. She knew the slide didn’t catch anymore. The worn springs. The bent mag follower. She’d seen him get frustrated with the damn thing at the range. She knew he wouldn’t realize the gun was empty.

  Police lights flash in the gloomy half-light of the coming evening. Red and blue lights flicker over the surrounding homes. An engine roars. A patrol car rides up over the curb, bouncing on spongy suspension. It races over the lawn, crushing a low wooden fence. Another police car races in from the other direction as a helicopter flies low overhead. Its rotor blades thrash at the air like a swarm of angry hornets, sending out a wall of noise. An armored SWAT vehicle clips the front of Sandra’s car, sending her skidding sideways as it pushes through toward him. It rides up onto the lawn, cutting him off from her.

  “What the—”

  Nick could run inside. He could dart out of sight in that fraction of a second before the officers pile out of their vehicles, but he stands there bathed in the headlights. He raises his arms, still holding the Glock and the empty magazine.

  “Drop the gun!”

  It’s empty, but he does as he’s told, giving both the gun and the magazine a flick. They land on the grass beside the concrete path. Nick is expecting the classic, “On the ground,” but with the Glock lying a few feet away, the officers have other ideas. One of them runs in with his gun drawn, pointing it at Nick’s chest. The other officer yells, “Turn around. Keep your hands in the air.”

  Nick complies, but not to be compliant as such. It’s a reflex response to authority.

  The sheer speed with which the officers move is overwhelming. He hasn’t had more than a few seconds to consider his options—of which there are none. Suddenly, his hands are twisted down and around into the small of his back. Handcuffs are locked in place.

  Nick is shoved inside. He stumbles and falls into the couch. The officer drags him onto the floor, pushing a knee into his back and pinning him to the carpet. The commentator on the TV yells, “Touchdown! The Bulldogs have done it! With 18 seconds on the clock, they’re through to the Sugar Bowl!”

  All Nick can see are boots and trouser legs rushing into his home. The knee in the center of his back pushes hard, applying pressure to his spine and ribs, squishing him against the carpet. There are dozens of police running through his house. They check the kitchen. Boots pound up the stairs as police check the bedrooms.

  “Nicholas James Ferrin? Born 14th August, Charleston, South Carolina to Jonathan Mark Ferrin and Elizabeth Jasmine Ferrin of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina?”

  Amidst the haze of alcohol and the blur of pain in his shoulders, Nick becomes acutely aware he’s never thought of his parents this way before. Johnny and Bee, that’s how they were known to family and friends, and only ever as Mom and Paps to him.

  “Ah, yeah,” he says as the fog in his mind slowly clears.

  The year was missing from their question.

  Why didn’t the police officer include the year of his birth? That seems like a surprising omission given the other details they’re focusing on. His date of birth is on the application form of every ID he’s ever had. It’s as though they’re acting on partial information. What the hell is going on?

  Nick is expecting them to read him his rights, not question him about his parents. Something’s seriously wrong. Something other than threatening to shoot his girlfriend.

  Would he have done it?

  Would he have gone through with shooting Sandra if there was a round in the chamber?

  Nick’s not sure, but it wasn’t murderous intent rattling around in his head, it was the desire for payback. It would have been easy. He can still feel the machined metal trigger beneath his finger, noting how the grooves felt against the soft flesh on the inside of his knuckle. He was overwhelmed with anger, with adrenaline surging through his veins. He would have hated himself afterwards, but even with his doubts, in the blur of the moment, it would have been all too easy to pull that goddamn trigger. She was right to remove the bullets.

  Nick’s waiting for the police to question him about Sandra and the gun, but all the talk within the room focuses on his identity, not on what he was doing when they arrived.

  Two police officers drag Nick to his feet, holding him by his shoulders. Another officer looks at a computer tablet, examining an electronic mugshot of him. Nick has been arrested before and charged with several misdemeanors, but he’s never been convicted of a felony. Not until now.

  “Let me see his face,” is spoken from somewhere behind him. The accent is European, the kind that reveals English as a second language. Nick barely has time to take in the stranger’s appearance as the man steps past the overturned coffee table. Whoever this is, he’s not a cop. He’s wearing an immaculate three-piece suit with a brilliant red tie, but he has a thick, full beard and straggly hair sitting just off his shoulders. It’s as though someone forced a
muscle-bound surfer into a suit for a day.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” the foreigner says.

  “Get him out of here,” the senior officer says with disgust. To Nick’s surprise, the handcuffs are removed.

  The police officer pushing Nick out the door says, “I don’t know what the hell you thought you were doing out there, but pulling a gun was all kinds of stupid. You almost got yourself killed.”

  A helicopter circles the house, bathing the lawn in a brilliant white light.

  Rather than being bundled into the back of a police car, Nick’s escorted to a military Hummer parked in the middle of the street. Two soldiers dressed in fatigues stand by the open rear door. They’re carrying side-arms. Nick never served in the military, so he’s unsure what the various designations mean on their caps. One of them has a dark badge with several chevrons pointing up. The other has a solitary bar reminiscent of the capital letter I. Neither of the soldiers is that old. They’re kids, to his mind at least. Teens. Maybe early twenties. Shaved heads. Barely shaved cheeks. Pale skin. Sunburnt necks. Their name tags are attached with Velcro:

  WILLIAMS US ARMY

  COOPER US ARMY

  Cooper’s a woman, although it took a second glance for Nick to realize that. Her eyebrows aren’t quite as bushy and her chest protrudes just a fraction more than Williams, while her shoulders are slight and her waist pulls in. Other than that, she looks like she could kick his ass down the street and back again, barely breaking a sweat.

  Williams gestures to the rear door.

  “Get in.”

  With all that’s transpired, Nick is sullen, shuffling rather than walking toward the olive drab Hummer. Five minutes ago, he was watching football, drinking beer and enjoying a lazy Saturday. Then Sandra left him. He flew into a murderous rage and would have shot her if she hadn’t outwitted him. Then the cops bundled him to the carpet, handcuffing his arms behind his back and kneeing him in the spine. Given what could have happened, his injuries are nothing, but the carpet burn on his cheek and the ache in his right shoulder are real. Now, the military is taking charge. Life is a blur.