by Sean May
She wished she could take it back as she felt the gun buck against her hand, the top half of it sliding back and popping a casing out of the side. She wished she could take it back as she watched flames erupt from the barrel of the gun. She wished she could take it back as she watched the kid's head blast into a thousand pieces and splatter against the automatic door that was still in the process of opening, leaving rusty red streaks on the glass and a spray of blood onto the concrete in front of the store. The kid, what was left of him, went down as dead weight, a slab of meat thunking on the floor in a puddle of his own blood and spilled Pepsi. The freezer full of ice cream, the display rack of chips and nuts, the ATM and Lynne were all covered in blood and bits of skull.
Lynne couldn't hear anything as she spun around to see the clerk, her pulse rattling in her eardrums. She didn't need to hear, though, to see the shotgun that he'd pulled out from behind the counter while Lynne was occupied with the kid. She seized up and stared down the two barrels ready to rain fire onto her. Lynne loosened her grip on the gun and tried to let "no, don't shoot" escape from her mouth, but before she could do anything she saw the barrels of the gun spring to life, blasting orange and yellow and unleashing a spray of lead. She was about six feet away from the counter, so the shot had time to spread out as it made the journey over to her. The shot shredded packets of cookies and chips all around her and sent fragments of the high-calorie snacks she'd never dare to eat flying all over the place. She felt the pellets tear through her Anne Taylor shirt, her Coach bag, knew they were piercing her iPhone and shattering the mirror on her Chanel compact. Then the pellets hit her in the stomach, tearing it apart and rendering all that time at Lifetime Fitness she'd spent honing her abs worthless. The lead came to rest in the middle of her stomach, working its way through most of her organs and severing her spine. She collapsed to the ground and just sat there paralyzed but still aware of what was going on. The clerk peered out from behind his shotgun to confirm his hit, and even as Lynne slipped away, staring at the slowly pulsing fluorescent bulbs of the Grab-n-Go, she couldn’t stop thinking about Hannah.
Litany
This is no way to treat a man of the cloth, a man who gave his life to God. To put me into an interrogation room, under these harsh lights and these harsh words from two detectives who want to see me behind bars, whether or not I actually committed any crime. They just have it out for me, seems like they have it out for priests in general.
Heathens.
"Father Thomas, I hope you understand the gravity of the charges being brought against you by these two young men. Children, really, the both of them." The detective, Stevenson, says...he's playing the good cop part of the act that all detectives put on. He thinks I don't see through it.
"Yes, detective, I am fully aware of the charges brought against me."
"Then why don't you just admit to them? We've all had our moments of weakness...and things happen. I figure that a guy like you, balls tied up in a self-imposed chastity belt for the rest of your life, you'd be pretty prone to moments of weakness." Douglas, the detective on the bad end of the spectrum says. I sit in the chair, my hands firmly planted on the table, my breathing regulated. They think they can break me, but I have more on my side than they do.
"Detectives, I will again say that I am more than willing to discuss any evidence you have against me in these accusations, but so far you don't have anything more than the chatterings of a few teenage boys."
"We're working on evidence, Father Thomas, but we thought we'd give you some time before we get everything back from the lab so you can maybe get some things off your chest. You must know that cooperation really helps in these kind of situations. The prosecution smiles on the repentant." Stevenson says, lying.
"The two boys, Tommy McCafferty and Kyle Thompson say they were back in the supply closet, organizing linens, vestments, whatever you guys keep back there behind closed doors. They say you made them go do this, and then they said you came back in there to 'help them'" Douglas makes air quotes, his sarcasm not lost on me "then they say you locked the door and did your little Moses impression by turning your snake into a staff."
"Detective Douglas, please." Stevenson restrains his partner.
"No, no please...this guy knows what he did, none of this should be shocking to him. You're probably even getting a little excited just reliving these events, aren't you?" Douglas slams his open hand on the table, an inch away from mine. I don't flinch. "All you priests, you're all the same. you think you're doing your Godly duty by introducing your little bit of the Holy Spirit into any little boy with low willpower and a weakness for authority."
"I do apologize, detectives, if these boys have lied to you about anything that may have happened inside my church. I assure you, I would never do something like that to a member of my congregation."
Stevenson stands up and sucks down the rest of a Pepsi, then throws it in the trash can in the corner of the room. "Father Thomas...work with us here. We know what we saw in the pictures from when they did the rape kits on these boys. We saw the horror that was rained down on them. A lot of bleeding, bruises, things tearing...if this isn't something you did, Father Thomas, you have to know who did it...this kind of horror doesn't just go down in a church without somebody noticing it." Stevenson crouches down to my eye level. "Help us out here, we need something to go on. For Tommy and Kyle's sake. We need to know what happened."
"What my partner's getting around to saying is where the hell were you on July 10th, around 6:30 at night?"
"I was..." I stop myself, smile, realizing. they hadn't told me anything about the date or time before. "...I was not at the church at the time, detectives."
"Where were you then?"
"...at home."
"And of course we're going to find out that nobody's going to be able to confirm that, right?"
"To be fair, isn't that your job to figure out, detective?"
Douglas seethes. Good.
"Stevenson. Outside." Douglas says, one foot already out the door. Both detectives leave me alone with my thoughts.
Those boys, the liars. To be completely candid, as much as I love every member of my flock, both of those boys were constantly creating trouble, writing crude passages in the back pages of hymnals, feigning ignorance when bottles of communion wine went missing, thinking I didn't notice when they snuck up into the bell tower with those whores from St. Martin's. I do apologize for making judgment, God, but I would have to assume these boys, these vile boys, did this to themselves to try to pin it on me so they could net a big lawsuit against my and the Archdiocese's perceived fortunes. Truly vile, both of them.
I think about my alibi, I know it doesn't come together, and I know for a fact neither detective believes a word of it.
Of course, would you want me to tell them what I was really doing then, God? Your work? I have to admit when you commanded me to drive thirty miles north to Manchester to perform your duties, I was a little shocked, but I see now that you were giving me a reason to be away from such vile things happening under my watch. When those disgusting boys were perpetrating their lascivious acts upon each other, you mercifully sent me away. I seem to recall that at 3:30, when these detectives said this took place, you commanded me to mercifully take Kelsey Hutton's life in that basement of that long abandoned house. I appreciated that, my God...I had begun to grow weary of the other things you made me do to her...things I will never understand but in your infinite wisdom I'm sure you had a reason to use me as a vessel for your work.
I will beat these accusations from these boys, God, if only to be able to perform more truly glorious deeds for you.
Amen.
Stay
1
"Bad day out there..." Braun, one of the prison guards said while looking through the barred windows to the howling snowstorm outside.
"Not bad enough to stop this, sorry to say." I said, filling in the last boxes and lines on the mountain of paperwork that had been put in front of
me two hours ago. The paperwork was the culmination of ten months of work on my part to get this damn thing done, to have it all over with. After all of the legal wrangling, after lawyers had tried to plead their cases and appeals, and after the media circus had hit critical mass, I was finally on track to put Terry Donovan on the table for his long-overdue lethal injection.
The bad weather Braun was referring to wasn't all that bad...it's not like these guys haven't seen snow before, they live in Missouri for fuck's sake. Plus, Terry Donovan had a ticking clock over his head. If we didn't get him over the state line into Indiana by midnight tonight, we'd have another stay of execution on our hands, and months of additional back and forth trying to take this bastard down.
My hatred for Terry Donovan was incredibly personal, and some might even say what I was trying to do constituted as revenge. It's why I took on the case in the first place. He's better known as being the most wanted man in the country for a very long time, that title being applied to him after he went on a killing spree at the Mall of America on June 21st, 2006. Over the course of three hours, his body count amounted to thirty-nine civilians, five mall security guards, nine local police officers, two state police officers, and in the course of finally escaping from the mall, two FBI agents. One of those agents was my brother, Eric. He was a damn good agent, and to have him taken down by a coward, a psycho with an M16, body armor and a supply of homemade gasoline bombs was the biggest shock, the biggest tragedy of my life. After Eric died, I needed a way to bring Terry to justice, to make things right for Eric. As a Federal Marshal, I wasn't going to be able to actually arrest him, but once he got into the system, I'd have him. I was worried that he wouldn't ever get caught so that we could have that meeting, but on August 19, 2009, he was brought in on, of all things, a minor moving violation. Expired license plates on a stolen car he was driving. By some stroke of luck, even though Donovan had a fully loaded .357 sitting in his passenger seat along with his infamous M16 underneath the bench seat of the car, the cop was able to get an upper hand on him before he could draw. After he was arrested, after the trial that sentenced him to death, and after the crack team lawyers his family employed were unable to get him to fold and go for the classic insanity defense, that's where I came in. It took a bit of coercion to have my boss approve the escort of a prisoner from Missouri to Indiana, even though I operated almost exclusively on the west coast, but having dinner with the right people and making some strategic contributions to a few re-election campaigns and you'll have all the doors in the world opened for you. But I only wanted one door to open for me, and it was opening right in front of me.
After a couple of buzzes and magnetic locks flicking open, Terry Donovan came through the doorway with a pudgy prison guard on each arm. He was a hulk of a man, standing six-two with two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle. But, with shackles clasped around his ankles and wrists, he wasn't exactly imposing. Also, further preventing his power to look imposing, he was haggard as hell, with a scraggly beard and a heap of hair shooting off in all directions. He looked more like Nick Nolte's mugshot than the worst spree killer in United States history.
"Marshal Joseph Logan?" The guard to the left of Donovan said.
"That's me" I said, getting up to shake the guard's hand. I didn't look Donovan in the eye, not yet. It's just not something I was ready for. "How're you doing today, officers?"
"Been better, no idea how I'm gonna get home tonight." The guard looked to the same window Braun had been looking out of. These guys were pussies. Try driving a Ford Explorer up the mountains of Washington in a whiteout before you get on me about how awful the weather is. It's completely flat around here, piece of cake.
"You guys done all you need to complete Mr. Donovan's transfer?"
"Vitals checked, the doc says he's alive, we cleaned out his cell, his cellmate's relieved to have this bastard out of there, so, yeah, he's good to go."
"Mind if I say a final farewell to my gracious hosts here in the Missouri Penal System?" Donovan growled, his whiskey and Marlboro groan familiar enough to my ears since I listened to hours of him testifying on the stand about how what he did was a great patriotic act, an affront to our consumerist culture. I looked up at Donovan for the first time to see a cracked smile spreading across his face.
"You've said your goodbyes, Mr. Donovan, and you're lucky you're getting a nice little lethal injection to end your life and not two bullets to the head. Fuck with me anymore and your luck might run out."
Donovan laughed and looked down at me. "A live one. I like that."
I wanted to say so many more things to Donovan, but the fact was that time was running short and we needed to be on the road as soon as possible, so the banter would have to wait. "Come with me, Mr. Donovan, you are now officially in the custody of the United States Federal Marshals to facilitate your transport to the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. You will comply with all orders given. If you do not, be aware that Federal Marshals are authorized to use lethal force."
"Hmmph." Donovan said.
I took Donovan by the arm and lead him through a set of doors and down the hall to the waiting armored van that would carry him to the facility. He tried to make small talk with me a couple of times during the long walk, but I wasn't in the mood to listen. I already had a five hour drive with the guy in my near future, and the less I talked to Terry Donovan, the better.
We emerged from the prison into the blustery weather that had been waiting outside. Me and the other four guards who were making this trip were dressed in parkas, but Donovan was more or less left out in the elements. I relished in that a little bit as we made the eighth of a mile walk to the van. He was going to suffer a little bit in the blowing snow and near-zero temperature. He needed to suffer, to feel pain, to have some sort of discomfort for all the things he did to all those people. Because of our overly-PC execution system, Donovan was getting off easily with this execution. The way they were going to kill him, with a shot of sodium pentothal, would lull him to sleep in a matter of minutes. I bet his victims would have really appreciated a few minutes to slip away into oblivion before they went, but when a 5.56 MM round cracks your skull and sends your grey matter all over the interior of your car, you don't exactly have a lot of time to make peace with your fate.
"Colder'n balls out here!" Donovan yelped, the wind cutting through his thin inmate uniform.
"Keep walking." I said. I saw the van just ahead of us through the snow, which was now whipping up from flurries to a serious snowstorm. It didn't matter, though. Terry Donovan was getting to that prison, one way or another.
Donovan and I got to the van and met up with the other guards. Two of them, Collins and Hamilton, were waiting at the back gate of the van, while I assumed the other two, Farris and King, were in the driver's compartment.
"Got 'm, Logan?"
"Affirmative. Let's get going, this snow's starting to worry me."
Collins and myself loaded Donovan into the van, making sure he hit his head a couple of times as we tried to shove him into the interior cage. We got in and secured Donovan into a harness for his transport. It was a mess of leather straps, fucking disorganized, but it was all we had, and someone as dangerous as Donovan had to be restrained for the whole trip. The last thing we needed was a breakout.
With Donovan in the harness, the three of us piled in. "Anyone wanna volunteer for shotgun duty?" Hamilton said, holding up a pump-action 12 gauge. In the cramped confines of the van, one blast would completely destroy a prisoner if he made even the slightest attempt at running for it. That's why we used it.
I raised my hand and reached for the gun at the same time. "I'll do it." Hamilton released the gun to me and got into a comfortable position inside the van. We didn't have the luxury of seatbelts in this, but with a vehicle that sported 3/4 inch steel plating on all sides, we were safe in the knowledge that if we came in contact with another car, our van would win.
"Marshal Logan, you sure you want
to go through with this? Snow's been kicking up for the past couple of hours, we could run into a whiteout at any second." King said from his position behind the wheel.
"This needs to happen now, Officer King, trust me."
"Can't we just wait until all this clears up next week or something?"
I gripped the trigger guard on my gun. Nervous habit. "Officer King, with all due respect, I outrank you in the grand scheme of things, and I'm saying we need to go ahead with the prisoner's transport."
"Aww, you two, fighting like an old married--"
"Donovan, shut the fuck up before I show you what this shotgun can do." I lifted the gun from my lap a little bit and tilted it his way. He looked at me, his eyes saying "You'd never do it". But he didn't know how much skin I had in this game already. Donovan was coming down, whether by my hand or the steady hand of the doctor administering the lethal dose.
Donovan turned away from me and looked toward King. "Any chance we can stop for some coffee and donuts, officer? I know it's a stereotype and all, but from my experience, you guys eat that shit up."
King said nothing, he knew instigating someone like Donovan would only make things on this ride that much more difficult.
"Aww, come on guys! I know none of you like me, but the fact is we're stuck here for a while, we might as well find a way to pass the time one way or another. So either you all can just sit there and stonewall me, or you can treat me to the last honest conversation with free men I'll ever have."
Hamilton looked like he was about to speak up, but I shot him a glance. That glance, though, was interrupted by a shuddering of tires, a crash of metal, and the vision of a guardrail crumpling in front of us.
