Burning Heat

by David Burnsworth

  Ernest chuckled. “I needed leverage on those crackers.”

  When Ernest’s back was to the door, Trevor jumped inside, screamed “Killer!” and grabbed for the shotgun. Ernest hit him with the stock. Trevor fell backwards and Ernest spun around and shot him, coating the wall with his blood.

  Ernest rotated back around to cover me. I threw a punch. His nose exploded against my fist. The gun slipped out of his hands and I tagged him again. He shoved me backward with all his weight. I fell and he landed on me.

  We struggled and I forced my way on top of him. Seeing nothing but red, I grabbed the fallen shotgun and slammed the stock into Ernest’s face three times. As I raised the gun for a fourth hit, I noticed that his face was a mess—broken nose, busted lips, bleeding forehead.

  Ernest stayed still when I rolled off him and went to Trevor. He didn’t have a pulse.

  A quick search of the house and I found Warrez. She’d been stripped to her underwear, beaten, and tied up and God only knew what else. I untied her, grabbed the shotgun again, and headed back to Ernest. One pull of the trigger and his face would be wall art. For killing Mutt. For killing Willa Mae and Camilla. For everything.

  Just one pull.

  I racked the slide.

  Warrez staggered into the room. “Don’t.”

  My finger on the trigger. The barrel in Ernest’s mouth.

  I looked at her. “This is your one chance. No one else has to know.”

  “Leave him to the police.”

  Mutt stumbled in from the front porch, pistol drawn, his head bleeding. He looked at me with the gun in Ernest’s mouth, then at Warrez, then at Trevor, then back to me. “Don’t do it, Opie. He ain’t worth it.”

  Brother Thomas’s words came to mind. “Man cannot afford to lose his own soul while he trying to do right.”

  The paramedics took Detective Warrez away in an ambulance. While I was thankful to hear her say she hadn’t been raped, she did suffer from dehydration and bruising. Ernest didn’t fare as well. Especially after the police confirmed his connection with the gorilla that shot Crawford. Without benefit of immediate medical treatment for a broken nose and jaw, Ernest was handcuffed and thrown into the back of a patrol car by another set of detectives who arrived on the scene along with the uniforms.

  I hoped they didn’t end up killing Ernest by their negligence. We needed him alive to convict the Gardners.

  Trevor was taken to the morgue. Brother Thomas, who’d shown up when we called, volunteered to notify his family.

  EPILOGUE

  With Ernest in custody and cutting every deal he could to avoid the needle, Estelle Gardner realized the evidence was stacked against her and pled guilty to a whole slew of charges. She was sentenced to ten years for conspiracy to commit murder. Gardner lost the primary but managed to avoid indictment. He stood by his wife’s side through the whole thing, and now could keep all his money and his affection for young prostitutes while she was away. Personally, I think she was still covering for his sins.

  As if living up to the nickname copped from another man who’d died too young, Jon-Jon, on another DUI run, wrapped his Ferrari and a friend around a live oak. Neither walked away. I felt sorry for his friend.

  A bright side to this story was Rosalita Warrez’s daughter. The news of Jon-Jon’s demise gave her a peace she would never have been able to experience if he were still walking around. Rosalita resigned from the Charleston police department, collected her daughter from the institution, and moved them both to California to start over.

  After a few rounds of plastic surgery, Crawford recovered. The blast had taken out his right eye, but otherwise he would be okay. From what I could gather, he’d never carry a badge again, which seemed to suit Paige just fine. Love was in the air for those two.

  Sister Mary Ellen overdosed and was found collapsed on the floor in the women’s restroom of the Treasure Chest. I sat with Mr. Porter, her uncle, at the funeral, another one Brother Thomas officiated, and thought about the way crazy choices she’d made determined her destiny. At one time, I thought she was in danger by being associated with Willa Mae. She really knew nothing.

  Mutt broke the news to me that since he no longer had his bar, this seemed a good time to move closer to his daughter in Atlanta. He’d actually managed to insure that termite-infested dive and received a small check, though he wouldn’t say for how much. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to leave Charleston. His daughter was all he really had now. As a reward for helping me solve the murder of Willa Mae, I finished my uncle’s Cadillac and gave it to him. After all, a man needed a set of wheels and Mutt would love that car more than I ever could. He rode off to Atlanta in style.

  I didn’t think I’d ever understand how Trevor knew to show up that night. But at his funeral, the plump Treasure Chest stripper who’d been working the pole when I’d walked in for the first time with Mutt was in attendance. Mutt introduced me to her. She’d been a friend of Kali’s and told me, amidst a lot of crying, that she’d given Trevor Ernest’s location.

  Before D-Go could finish what he started with me, Shamiqua got her revenge for the gang-raping. When he and an accomplice, out on bail, tried to mess with her and her baby, she took an errant shovel and killed them. After I finished laughing at the story as Brother Thomas told it, we financed Shamiqua’s relocation from Charleston. D-Go’s fellow gang members would surely try to settle the score, especially for such an embarrassing death as being nearly decapitated by a workman’s spade.

  The Pirate’s Cove received an envelope from the state of South Carolina. In it was our replacement license to sell alcohol. I could only guess that the Gardners had lost their clout and whoever had been doing them a favor holding up our paperwork had severed all ties. Regardless of what really happened, Paige, who had turned down a very lucrative job offer to manage a chain of restaurants, and I were back in business. And I owed her big.

  Elizabeth must have gotten tired of waiting on me, if in fact she had been. I ran into her spikey-haired assistant at my bar and he’d informed me that she went on a two-month tour of Europe for the summer.

  Some things were better left unsaid. And right now my dog wanted a wrestling rematch.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Burning Heat is the second in David Burnsworth’s series featuring Brack Pelton. David graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. After fifteen years in manufacturing, he made the decision to write a novel. Southern Heat was his first mystery. Having lived in Charleston for five years, the setting was a foregone conclusion. He and his wife live in South Carolina.