by Ethan Cross
He slid the gun across the table, and it came to a perfect stop in front of her. “You go first,” he said.
She trembled all over. Now was her chance, and she knew that there would not be another. She had to act. She reached out to pick up the gun. She stared at it for a moment before grasping it. It had taken on an eerie luminescence that must have been a symptom of her head trauma.
Do it. Do it now. And she did.
She seized the gun and brought it to bear not against her own head, but at the man who had invaded her home, the man who had murdered her husband and intended to force her into an act of filicide, the man who had destroyed the sanctity of her sanctuary.
She squeezed the trigger.
She squeezed, again, and again.
She repeated the motion in rapid succession and felt a wave of hopelessness wash over her as she realized that the gun wasn’t loaded. He had known what she would do. And now, she had broken the rules.
He stood up from the table and leisurely strolled around to the other side, where she sat in shock and despair. He reached out, took the gun from her grasp, and backhanded her across the face. The blow knocked the shock out of her and replaced it with an even greater sense of fear.
What have I done? I’ve blown our one chance for survival. If I had played the game, I would have had at least a one-in-four chance of Ackerman taking the bullet. Now, that hope is gone.
He walked back to his seat at the other end of the table. He sighed, reached out, and picked up the knife.
25
The Sheriff’s head rested against the passenger window of the cruiser. He looked over at Lewis Foster, who sat behind the wheel with a blank stare and a rigid posture. Always the good soldier. As he turned back to the window and watched the scenery rocket past, his uncertainties and fears swelled inside him.
He wanted to punch something and then burst into tears, but he had to carry himself with calm and confidence at all times when in the company of the men. He couldn’t let them see his doubt. He supposed that was an essential trait of a good commander, but it didn’t make him feel any less cold and robotic.
Ackerman had escaped. Marcus was on the run. He worried that events may soon escalate beyond hope of containment—but the train hasn’t left the tracks just yet. I can still set things right and accomplish my mission.
He wondered what his wife, Kathleen, would think of the man he had become. He supposed that it didn’t really matter. She was gone. She could no longer feel shame or disappointment anymore than she could feel pride or joy—at least not in the terms by which he understood the emotions. He was certain there was an afterlife, and he hoped to see her again. But he prayed that she wasn’t able to look down upon all that he had done and planned to do.
He didn’t kill in her name, but it was the pain of her death that gave him the strength to do what was necessary. Every time he doubted himself, he thought of her desecrated body and the look of terror in her cold, dead eyes.
His mind turned to the monster that had destroyed his world all those years ago. The police had eventually captured his wife’s murderer, but the man’s family hired a top-notch defense attorney. The slick lawyer tore the case apart and had the most damning evidence thrown out due to improper search and seizure.
Not guilty.
The investigators had still hoped to nail the killer on some of the other murders. But that wasn’t good enough for him.
He could still see the dingy hotel in vivid detail. The hall was dark and cool, the walls water-stained. The faint scent of mold and rot masked by cleaning fluid filled the space. Finally, he found room two-zero-eight. Time and lack of upkeep had tarnished the gold letters on the door. The zero had fallen away, but he could still see its outline.
He hadn’t bothered to knock. Instead, he picked the lock and let himself in. He found his wife’s killer sleeping in the bed. Torturing the man had been a consideration and fantasy, but he knew the desire stemmed from a longing for vengeance. And he didn’t want the act to be one of vengeance. He wanted justice. Most of all, he wanted to make sure that this man never harmed another living soul.
As the killer slept, he double-tapped two unsilenced shots into the back of the man’s skull. Then, he sat down in one of the room’s chairs and awaited the police. He had considered running or trying to cover up his crime, but in the end, he felt that he should be judged as well.
The image of the cell door slamming still resonated with him. He had been resigned to his fate and ready to serve out his punishment. He had even decided to waive his right to an attorney and plead guilty for his crime.
Fate had different plans for him, however. Within forty-eight hours, he was back on the street with a job to do.
26
Marcus learned that Allen and Loren had two children. Allen described Charlie as the typical rebellious seventeen-year-old and their daughter, Amy, as well on her way to becoming a fully-fledged drama queen.
Upon hearing the situation, Charlie shook his head in disgust. “What are you talking about, Dad? It’s almost midnight and you wake us for some crazy conspiracy theory. You’ve been listening to that Coast to Coast show too much. You think everything’s a conspiracy.”
Allen seemed to regard his son with annoyance for his naivety and lack of imagination and said, “That’s because everything is. No time to discuss this as a committee. I’m the dad, and if I say that we’re all getting up in the middle of the night to go dig up Jimmy Hoffa, then by God that’s what we’re going to do. And as long as you live under my roof, you had damn well better be there next to me with a shovel and rubber boots.”
“Fine,” Charlie said as he stormed from the room, “We’ll do whatever you want—no matter how stupid it is.”
Allen rolled his eyes. “That’s the spirit, son.” Allen turned to Marcus and said, “He’ll be a great man someday … if I don’t kill him first.”
Marcus smiled. He liked Allen more every minute he was around him. Allen didn’t pull his punches, and he respected that.
“It’s a tough age,” he said. “Looking back, I caused my aunt a lot of unnecessary grief for no other reason than to prove that I was a man. Now, I realize that nothing I did was very manly. Worst of all, I don’t think I ever really apologized for any of it.”
Allen patted him on the arm. “Trust me, son, you didn’t have to. She knew the man that you’d become, and it made it all worthwhile. I know the same thing with Charlie. It’s all just part of growing up. I guess it just gets those primal instincts in me going, and I don’t like anyone threatening my alpha dog status. Anyway, do we have any kind of plan here?”
“To be perfectly honest, all I’ve been doing is rolling with the punches. Beyond escaping with my life, I don’t have much of a plan. For someone to operate like this without any repercussions for such a long period of time, it means that the Sheriff is well connected somewhere. And there’s no telling how high this might go. I’m pretty confident that the President isn’t involved, but I don’t think he gives appointments to ex-cops and retired English teachers.”
“You never know. Maybe he could squeeze us in for a luncheon between the Prime Minister of England and the Ambassador of Kazakhstan?”
Loren walked into the room, frowning. “You could be a little more respectful to your son, old man. After all, he only acts that way because he inherited your bad attitude.”
Allen’s mouth hung open in shock. “He started it … old woman. But don’t worry about that, he’ll get over it. We’ve got more important things to discuss, and you’re interrupting. Marcus and I were just trying to determine what we’re going to do …”
“Why don’t we just go to the FBI office in San Antonio and get their help?” Loren said.
Marcus nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Actually, I’ve been thinking that I go to the FBI, and you guys check into a hotel and wait for a call from me that everything’s okay. If you don’t hear from me after a certain amount of time, then you go to t
he papers or the TV news—or both. But if I go into the FBI building in broad daylight and make sure that I’m seen and as many people as possible hear my story, it’s going to make it hard for anybody to cover it up—even if there are people there playing for the other team.”
Allen took a deep breath. “That’s about the only choice that we have, but never underestimate people’s capacity to look the other way. We live in a society governed by the Church of the Almighty Dollar, built upon the foundations of man’s greed and his never-ceasing bloodlust for power. It is a dark age in which we find ourselves; a time where doing what’s popular has become what’s right and doing what’s right has become very unpopular. I sometimes envy the days of Genghis Khan and Napoleon. At least their wars for power were fought out in the open. Now, we face a quiet war, and as you said, Marcus, we ‘roll with the punches.’ That’s all any of us seem to do these days.”
Allen shook his head while wringing his hands together. “We destroy without remorse. We kill without mercy. And in this age of progress, the ideas of justice, compassion, and goodwill toward men have become outdated and forgotten concepts. Worst of all, fewer and fewer people are asking questions … about life, purpose, everything. We have become complacent and apathetic, and we all see the problems, but no one tries to do anything about them. We just keep our heads down and roll with the punches.”
Marcus nodded, turned toward Loren, and said, “He’s one of those glass-is-half-empty kind of guys, isn’t he?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I’ve listened to this for the past thirty years. I keep telling him that, if things are so bad, he should run for President and do something about it. But does he do anything? No, he just sits on his fat ass, bitching.”
“I would my horse had the speed of your tongue,” Allen said.
“Quoting Shakespeare to me, huh. Couldn’t even formulate an original comeback. And isn’t it ironic that you would quote a line from a play entitled Much Ado About Nothing?”
“What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?” Allen said, quoting another line from Shakespeare.
“There you go again, letting someone else write your material.”
Marcus just sat there and smiled at the exchange. Despite the hardships he had endured, there wasn’t anything in the world that could keep him from smiling at Allen and Loren.
“Like usual, you’re wasting time when there is no time to waste. We need to get in motion, and we can’t afford to sit here and listen to you ramble on,” Allen said.
Loren sat dumbfounded, speechless. “ME?” was the only response she could manage.
Before Loren could regain her composure and mount any retaliation, Charlie ran in from the living room. “Dad, two cars are coming up the lane. They’re cop cars!”
27
Alice started to stand, but his words halted her.
“Don’t you move,” he said.
He stared off into the distance a moment, and then with a sudden jerk, he stabbed the knife into the tabletop. She couldn’t decide whether the blade was left shaking from the impact, or if it only appeared that way because of her own trembling.
He thrummed his fingers on the table in rapid succession and then stopped with a final pop that made her jump. “Maybe I’m going soft … or maybe I just can’t resist the chance to see you blow one of your own kids’ brains out, but I’m going to give you a second chance. If you don’t play nice this time, the strong sense of discipline that my father instilled in me is going to take over, and, as a matter of principle, I’ll be required to slaughter all three of you like the stupid cattle you are. Are you ready to play by the rules like a big girl, Alice?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then let’s start over. Maybe I didn’t adequately explain the rules of the game, so this time I’ll go first just to show you how it’s done.” Once again, he brought a bullet to the gun and spun the chamber.
Although he must have only pretended to insert the bullet for the last round of play, this time she was sure that there would be a life-ending projectile in one of the revolver’s six chambers.
He raised the gun to his head without any noticeable hesitation. The action seemed to conjure the same feelings in him that would be summoned when a normal person brushed their teeth or combed their hair.
He’s completely insane, she thought—not that this was the first time she noticed. It was merely a further affirmation.
As the gun clicked, her breath caught in her throat. There was no shot, no madman lying dead on the floor. Her odds of a good outcome to this game had just decreased by one sixth. Tears rolled down her face.
Ackerman slid the gun across the table to her. “See how it’s done. Just think of it as flipping off a light switch, only instead of cutting the power to a bulb, you’re extinguishing a person’s life. Not a big deal, really. I read somewhere that roughly one-point-eight people die every second. That’s over a hundred and fifty thousand people every day. If I kill all three of you right now, you just become another statistic, just another tally mark on the death list. You’re insignificant, times three. What does it matter if I kill you today, or if you die a year from now in a car crash … or twenty years from now due to lung cancer? In the grand scheme of things, is anyone really going to miss any of you? I’ll even let you choose who goes first. Sound fair? Just point and click. Like taking a picture, except someone dies.”
She stared at the weapon in front of her. Earlier, she had risked everything to get to the revolver in hopes that it would be her deliverer, but now it was her condemner.
“Pick it up.”
She knew the words came from right across the table, but they seemed muffled and far away. She felt dizzy. The world seemed to be growing and shrinking like there was a funhouse mirror on the back side of her eyes. Before she knew what she was really doing, she had reached out and picked the gun up from the table.
The choice was obvious.
I’ll go first.
She placed the gun against her head. As more tears rolled down her cheeks, she faltered for a moment and brought the gun away, but then she stiffened herself again.
She knew what she had to do. She had lost all concern for her own life. The only thing that mattered now was saving her kids. For some strange reason, she believed that if she were the one killed by the bullet, Ackerman would let her children go unharmed. Maybe it was some kind of intuition, or maybe it was her mind trying to rationalize the irrational and give her enough strength to maintain her sanity in an insane situation. Either way, the choice was clear.
She pulled the trigger.
She felt lightheaded, and a terrible cold sensation swept through her whole body. I’m dead. I have to be. She opened her eyes and peered around the room. Am I alive? She still wasn’t convinced either way. After all, she had never been dead before and had no idea what to expect.
Then, she realized that, from the moment she picked up the gun, she had been holding her breath. She released the held inhalation and gulped in a gasp of air. The light-headed feeling faded, and she realized that the cold sensation must have been a sudden rush of adrenaline or some other bodily chemical associated with extreme instances of fear.
She was still alive. She felt a great sense of relief, but it only lasted for a brief second. When she looked around at the other chairs, she wished that she were dead.
Then, she glanced down at the opposite end of the table and saw the smiling face of the madman. She knew that he was excited because the game was just now getting to the really interesting part.
28
Marcus watched as the two cars sped down the lane, the outline of light racks visible on their roofs. How did they find me? He had disabled the radio at the crash scene and smashed the cop’s cell phone. It didn’t matter now, but it still gnawed at him. The cop finding him along the road had seemed like a coincidence, but he wondered if there was more to it. Coincidence or not, he had put innocent lives in danger.
Still, the Sheriff couldn’t be sure that he was in that house. He could have just kept walking or abandoned the roads entirely. There would be no way for his hunters to track him to this point beyond a shadow of a doubt. If they played their cards right and put on a good show, they might convince the Sheriff. But that meant asking Allen to walk right into the Sheriff’s sights.
How could he ask Allen Brubaker to walk out there, greet the Sheriff like an old friend, and convince the man that everything was business as usual? If the Sheriff held any suspicions and the rumors that Allen had heard were true, his new ally would be a sitting duck. How can I ask a man I’ve just met to put his life on the line like that?
He turned toward Allen, and their gazes locked. Allen nodded, and he knew that he didn’t have to ask. Allen knew the score and would do what had to be done.
The older man reached into his pocket, removed the FNP-9, and handed it to Marcus. “Charlie, run up to my bedroom. The case for my gun is lying on the bed. Bring it down here, quickly.” The boy bolted from the room. “There are two more loaded magazines in the case—sixteen shots per magazine. Hopefully, you won’t need any of them, but … take care of my family … if …”
“Allen, I—”
“You just be the good man that your aunt knew you’d become. The rest’ll work itself out.”
The two cruisers came to a stop in front of the old Victorian home. The Sheriff, Lewis Foster, and three other deputies exited the vehicles.
Allen crossed the threshold of his front door, leaving the safety of his sanctuary and venturing into the cold unknown of the world beyond. He walked down the steps, smiling at the Sheriff and his men. “Good evening, Sheriff,” he said. “Is there some kind of a problem, or something I can do for you?”
The Sheriff was calm and confident, and he spoke in a way that was friendly and yet demanded attention. The man was intelligent and collected in a way that made Marcus uneasy. “Good evening, Allen. We’re just stopping by all the homes in this area to make sure that everything’s okay. There’s a dangerous fugitive on the run somewhere in this vicinity, and we just want to make sure that everyone is safe and secure. Have you seen or heard anything unusual tonight?”
