by Jim Heskett
“I’m sorry about George. He was a real shit.”
When Layne realized what she’d said, he cackled. Not that it was funny, but it had been such an unexpected sentiment to announce about the recently departed.
“Yeah,” Layne said, “he definitely was a real shit. I can’t argue with that.”
“He used to come into the range to shoot up until about a year ago, and half the time we’d have to toss him out for starting fights with customers. I don’t think he’d ever met someone he couldn’t complain about.”
Layne nodded, still trying to peer through the light. “I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry about Keegan and all of it. I’m sorry this had to happen in our town.”
Molly leaned over toward him and tried to squint at the cabin, then she reached into her bag and pulled out a .22 pistol with a noise suppressor threaded on the end. “It’s for squirrels.”
“You hunt squirrels?”
“No, they come into my garden and try to eat my raspberries. Sometimes they take my carrots. I don’t hunt them; I’m defending my property.”
Layne accepted the pistol and aimed it out the window. “I didn’t know you garden,” he said, then pulled the trigger one time. The pistol whistled, the glass around the light shattered. A moment later, his night vision returned.
“Wow, nice shot,” Molly said.
“Thanks. I’ve spent some time at the range, myself.”
Now he could clearly see the car, but nothing else. It looked as still as could be. No movement in the windows, no shadows near the edges of the building, the shed behind it, or on the rooftops. The house butted up to the foothills of the mountain, with nowhere to go behind it. The rocks would be too slick to climb for a sniping position.
“I still don’t see anything,” Layne said. “If there’s someone here, that person might as well be invisible.”
“Me either. Our car owner is probably in the cabin itself.”
“Or the shed. Let’s go.”
They left the car and hustled across the street, onto the area in front of the house. Normally dirt, now it had turned into frozen mucky mud, and their boots suctioned in and out with every step. Layne held his Mossberg and Molly her AR-15, and they separated twenty feet from the cabin. He moved toward one corner of the porch, and she effortlessly drifted toward the other.
He nodded at her across the space, and they moved in sync as he waited for her to approach the rear of the house. Quiet, smooth, but fast. He pulled back the front door as she did the rear.
Layne jumped inside to see an empty living room. His father’s chair, with a slight impression, carving the cushion to his body.
Layne blinked and took a breath to focus. “Living room is clear.”
“Back room is clear,” Molly said from the other room.
Layne pushed through the hallway to check the bedrooms. Nothing there, either. He met Molly in the kitchen, and he tilted his head toward the shed out back. Last place to check.
George had always called it a “shed,” but it had power and heat to keep the contents from freezing. The old man used to watch baseball games out there, when he couldn’t stand being in the same room as his family. Layne, his mother, and brother had all let him do it. They all knew it was better to let George have his alone time when he wanted it.
Layne and Molly met at the singular entrance to this little structure, and Layne gave her a silent three count. Eyes locked, limbs poised to burst into action at the same time.
He opened the door.
And found nothing inside. Just a dark and gloomy little room, lit only by a shaft of moonlight entering via the now-open door. It contained all the same stuff that had been here forever: the rug on the floor, the shelves, his dad’s newspaper clippings, an old TV, the 1881 Springfield Trapdoor Shotgun on the wall.
Layne eyed the shotgun for a moment as he closed the shed door behind them. It was a rare antique his father had fawned over for years. He would let the kids into the shed to see it only for glimpses, and then only on rare occasions. He treated it as something special, not for their eyes. Certainly, they had never been allowed to touch it.
And now, it seemed strange, hanging there. Like it didn’t belong, for some reason.
Layne looked at the shotgun. Then he looked at the rug on the floor.
“What are you thinking?” Molly asked.
“I think we just found Shotgun Mine,” Layne said. He whipped back the rug to see a depression in the floor. A large hunk of plywood covered it. His heart thumped in his chest as he reached down to grab it.
He pulled the plywood up and set it aside.
“I’ll be damned,” Molly Waffles said.
They both leaned over to gaze down into a mine, underneath the shed. It was about four feet by four feet wide, and it looked around fifteen feet down to the bottom. He could see the floor, barely, and a passage to the north from that small landing space below. No ladder or rope, though.
Layne clicked his teeth together. “Is this what we’ve been looking for the whole time?”
He saw a flash out of the corner of his eye, a split second before he heard it. The shed door whipping open. The crack of a bullet.
Molly exclaimed and then fell backward, toward a collection of hardware store buckets and dirt rags. Her AR fell from her hands and skittered across the floor, landing out of reach.
Layne spun around to see Molly with a hole through her thigh, backpedaling and inadvertently kicking buckets and rags out of the way as she crashed into the shed wall. And then, a man emerged through the door.
Jordan Beckett, the mayor’s assistant. A Ruger in his hand. No tattoos, but Layne knew right away the man’s identity. He was the local Disciples boss who had been the organizer of all the chaos in town. It had to be him.
Layne whipped up his gun and moved his finger toward the trigger, but he was a hair too slow. Beckett’s gun went off again. Layne felt something hot near his foot, and his sense of balance disappeared. He slipped back into the open mouth of the mini-mine shaft. Air whipped by his ears.
Layne snapped his head forward to correct his momentum and pushed his hands out. He grabbed the edges of the hole in the ground, and then his feet smacked the inside below him. A pulse of pain shot up his back, but he didn't let go.
He could feel the hole in his boot where Beckett had shot at him, but he didn’t feel pain. Maybe the bullet had gone through without hitting him?
But he also felt the SIG Sauer in his hand slip free. It fell and clattered onto the rock fifteen feet below him. That meant Layne had one left.
Layne looked up to see Beckett standing over him. He dug his toes into the sides of the shaft, trying to take some of the pressure off his fingers, which were supporting his entire weight.
“You’re Layne Parrish,” he said. The former pretty boy now looked like shit. Like he’d been in the gunfights in town, and had barely made it out. He had scrapes down half of his face, blood drenched his shirt. He was missing a tooth. “I know who you are. My bosses know who you are. I wonder if I bring you to them in a body bag, if all will be forgiven? It’s worth a try.”
“Molly Waffles?” Layne said, trying to reassert his grip and not doing very well. If he didn’t climb out soon, he would slip. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, grunting. She was on the ground, with a sea of shed flotsam all around her. “I’m bleeding a lot, though.”
Beckett pointed his gun at Molly and said, “Let’s do this: first, Layne, how about you climb out of that hole, and in return, I won’t shoot your friend in the stomach. I’d rather kill you up here than come down there to get you. It’s the best I can do.”
Molly looked over at her rifle, inert on the ground. He could tell she was thinking about trying to reach for it. She wouldn’t make it. Beckett had the advantage.
“It’s okay, Molly,” Layne said. “You sit tight. I got you covered.”
Beckett took a step back, and Layne wrenched himself up and out of the hole. He flexe
d his hands, already aching from holding onto the frozen ground at the lip of the shaft.
For a moment, they all stayed in place, eyes flicking around, waiting for something to happen.
Then something in the air changed. Layne watched Beckett realize it, but he was a tick too slow. A figure appeared in the door behind them. Layne leaned his head past Beckett to see, and Beckett turned around, and then Layne saw a baseball bat swinging down.
It hit Beckett in the shoulder. Layne heard a crack.
Only now did Layne see the owner. Paul Clausing, holding the bat, wide-eyed and ferocious with one foot inside and one foot outside the shed.
The next several events occurred in the span of less than one full second.
Beckett stumbled, but the attack didn’t take him to the ground. Molly’s hand whipped forward, and Layne watched a short blade fly through the air and plunge into Beckett’s stomach. He bumped into the wall and put one hand on the knife.
But Beckett wasn’t dead. He twisted his arm to aim the gun at Paul. Paul retreated from the shed and ducked right, putting himself out of Beckett’s range.
The member of the Disciples of the True America faced Layne. He still had the gun in his hand. He lifted it.
Layne plucked the P320 from the back of his waistband.
And Layne put one right in Beckett’s temple. A quick and clean shot, it punched a hole through the back of his head.
The man slumped to the ground.
For half a second, Layne waited to make sure the bullet had done its job. Layne had seen people take a round to the head and keep right on fighting. But, with his eyes open and staring at the ceiling, he knew Beckett had no fight left in his dead body.
Time for an injury check.
“Paul? You okay out there?”
He returned to the doorway, blankly nodding. “I’m okay. I’m not hit.”
“She needs help,” Layne said, ushering Paul inside the shed. “Get her to the hospital, now.”
“Now you wait one god damned minute,” Molly said, shooting lasers from her eyes at Layne as she labored to rise to her feet without help. “You get your ass down in that hole and find out what that key unlocks, then you come back and tell us, and then we’re going to the hospital. I have to know.”
Layne looked at the blood around her, then at the determination on her face. Paul stood next to her and raised his eyebrows. He seemed too upset to speak, but he clearly also had a burning desire to know.
“I’ll hurry,” Layne said.
He turned and dropped into the hole, bending his knees right before he hit. A cloud of dust jumped up around him, and he flicked on his flashlight. What had looked from above like a tunnel was actually only an alcove, about ten feet deep and five feet wide. And there was a desk at the end, and a picture frame. Layne approached it and picked it up. Him, his mother, father, and brother, at the Sand Dunes near Alamosa.
And then, Layne noted the black cloth covering the table. He whipped it back to reveal a lockbox, about eighteen inches long and twelve wide. He tried to lift it and found it surprisingly heavy.
Layne removed the key in his pocket, heart pounding. He inserted it and gave it a twist.
He lifted the lid. There, in this rusty metal box, were more than a dozen gleaming gold bars.
48
Two days passed. Layne packed things in his father’s cabin. Top to bottom, from one end to the other, Layne inventoried every single object of value inside the house and shed.
The old man had no will, and as the last living heir, Layne had a lot to manage. More than he wanted, but he had expected this. When Layne had heard about his father’s lung cancer diagnosis, he had planned this trip to Shotgun knowing this might be the outcome.
Just as George had said about his own parents, Layne had known a day like that had been coming for a while. He’d pictured the circumstances leading up to this day quite differently, though. He tried not to think of an adult Cameron doing this same thing for him one day; poring through the drawers in his Boulder condo, wondering about the man who had been her father.
Layne made arrangements for more than one funeral. And he took time to consider what to do with the gold he’d found in the mine underneath his father’s house. A few hours of research into the darker corners of the town’s history revealed clues, but nothing concrete. Layne wanted to be sure before he took any action.
On the morning of the third day, Layne made a breakfast of eggs and sausage, then he packed up his gear and the lockbox. He loaded his car and then locked the front door of the cabin, then dropped the key underneath the mat.
A quick exploration of the grounds yielded no final surprises. He backed away from the cabin, his eyes trailing over it. He fully expected for this to be the last time he ever laid eyes on this shoddy structure.
Layne drove to town and parked in front of city hall with the lockbox in hand. When his feet touched the ground, he frowned. His new boots were still too stiff, but Jordan Beckett had shot a hole through Layne's last pair, so they weren’t much good any longer. Lucky only a pair of Carhartts were lost. It could have been some or all of a foot.
The morning air was crisp, with no clouds in the sky and no breeze in the air. For October, the weather didn’t get much better than this. Too bad he was on his way out of town. He’d wanted to hike the waterfall trail for a hit of nostalgia. But, probably better if he got on the road. Cameron’s mother was expecting him by this afternoon.
He smiled when he saw Molly Waffles using a pair of crutches to join him at the steps. Her pincher clicked against the metal while the crutches’ rubber nubbins made thock sounds with each landing.
She looked well, despite the limp and the black eye. For someone who had endured the same hardships as Layne the last few days, she had a light in her eye that warmed his heart. “You sure you’re okay to be up and around?”
She showed a hint of a smirk. “You calling me a sissy?”
“I wouldn’t dare. Just want to make sure you’re not setting yourself back.”
“Layney,” she said, sighing, “always taking care of everyone else.”
“I figure it’s just part of my job as a human.”
“Your visit home has been as eventful as I’d expected. But it was always pretty eventful with us, wasn’t it?”
“I remember less shooting. But it’s been good to see you again, Molly Waffles. Really. I mean it.”
“You too, Layne Parrish. Pretty-much, you grew up to be exactly what I’d pictured. You have more tattoos than I was expecting, so that was a nice surprise.” She paused for a second, then smiled. “You don’t have to say the same about me. You probably expected me to look a little different.”
Layne turned up his palms. “Now that I know, I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “You are so cheesy, Layne. That hasn’t changed, at least. But can I ask you something?”
“Go right ahead.”
“Did your dad steal that gold? Did he rob Shotgun Bank fifty years ago?”
Layne sighed as he considered the question and his research into this topic over the last few days. “I think maybe he did. The papers and everything I’ve found about it said there were two bank robbers. Eddie Mooney—the guy my dad talked about at the cave—was a suspect. His wife provided an alibi at the time, but that was probably bullshit. And it’s been unsolved up until today. I think George and Eddie robbed the bank, and then stashed the gold. The irony is they probably couldn’t ever figure out what to do with it. It’s hard to sell something like that when you don’t have a criminal background with the right contacts. You can’t walk it down to a pawn shop, you know?”
“Right. So they just sit on it and it becomes another thing in the shed, taking up space.”
“But after everything I saw from him the last few days, I think he had all the answers from the beginning, wrapped up inside his head. But his memory was shot, and he had so much trouble talking…”
Layne cleared
his throat as he decided not to finish the sentence.
“The Disciples didn’t pick this town by accident, did they?” Molly asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. I found out the missing guy at the center of all this was named Chris Charles. The Disciple who was killed by one of their own, then he left his truck at the hardware store. Not that you need to know his name, but I had to find out. I had to know who started all this.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for telling me. It’s not quite justice for Keegan, but it’s a good start.”
Layne nodded in agreement. “A good start.”
“You ready to go in?”
He offered to help her up the steps, which she of course refused. They proceeded down the hall to Mayor Caldwell’s office. This was her first day back at work after the incident at the BCS. The interior of the building felt tense, for some reason. Layne’s first time inside since he’d stared down a panther. Of all the crazy events in his life, coming face to face with that hulking shadowy beast had to rank up in the top five. Maybe top three.
When they entered Winnie’s office, she looked like someone who’d been through a trauma. Her eyes were down, her hair not quite put-together. She had missed a button on her blouse.
Still, the mayor smiled as they entered her office. She cleared her throat and blinked hard a couple times. “Hello. You two were the… the ones there with Jordan, at the end.”
Layne dipped his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I can’t believe I had no idea who he was, this whole time. He seemed like such a nice guy.” She drifted off, staring into space. Layne could imagine the shock of learning your closest professional confidant was secretly a white supremacist gangster. Her eyes unfocused while staring toward a little kitchenette in the corner of her office.
She snapped back a second later and asked, "What can I do for you?”
Layne hefted the weighty lockbox on her desk. “I recently found this on my property. This may or may not be the gold stolen from Shotgun Bank a little over fifty years ago. But seeing as how it was on land I’ve inherited, I’ve decided to donate this to the city of Shotgun, to help with legal fees and any damage from the attack.”
