Gun Church

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Fifty-Three

  His Monster

  Between the darkening clouds and the canopy of the trees, I could not use the position of the sun to judge direction or the passage of time. My internal sense of time was utterly distorted by the alternating rushes of panic and calm. Much like that day in class with Frank Vuchovich, the world would suddenly speed up so that I felt I would almost fly off into space and then, just as suddenly, slow down so that each of my breaths and heartbeats seemed to have distinct histories. Only in the woods can you understand that shadows are as much a product of state of mind as light and the things that stand in its way.

  I had no intention of killing Renee, but I couldn’t be sure of her intentions. She seemed angry enough down in the clearing to kill me right then and there. I didn’t blame her really. My narcissism was apparently so insidious that I was like a man who jumped a puddle and thought he’d crossed the Atlantic. I had never asked Renee anything about herself and the only things we shared were things about me. From the moment I walked back into the woods, I was determined to play keep-away until I could get a handle on what Renee had in mind.

  Stopping every few yards to listen for her, I’d done a kind of zigzag pattern through the horseshoe-shaped woods. I was no outdoorsman, not by a long shot, but all my time with Jim in Brixton had taught me some important lessons. For one thing, forests can be very noisy places in their way. Swaying trees creak and crackle like old bones and wind whispers as much as it howls. Animals chatter, chirp, bark, rustle leaves as they scurry. Birds do more than sing and call. They make a hundred different sounds with their wings, claws, and beaks. Insects buzz and whine. Human sounds, however, are distinctive. They are clumsy and unnatural. The forest floor is littered with fallen branches and people can’t seem to walk without snapping them beneath their feet.

  Only when I followed the slope of the hill down to the river and the falls did I have any trouble hearing. So I moved about forty yards back into the woods, twenty yards on the river side of where the access road from the shed cut a swath through the trees. I should have known that Renee would be lying in wait for me there. I was sitting on a log resting, listening for the telltale snapping of branches when I felt a ring of cold metal press against my neck.

  “Go ahead, Renee, just pull the trigger and get it over with. But please try and save-”

  “Shhhh! Quiet.” She removed the muzzle and fired a shot into a tree on my right. “Wait a few seconds,” she whispered, her breath hot on my ear, “then shoot at something on your left.”

  I understood. To Jim, standing outside the woods, it would sound as if we were firing at each other. After I fired, she fired again. That left one round between us. She moved quietly around in front of me, putting her face close to mine so that we could speak more freely.

  “Renee, I’m sorry. I have pissed away my time with you. If I had it to do over, I would-”

  “Forget what I said back there. I had to make Jim believe I was really mad at you or none of this would work. I love you and I guess, in your way, you really do love me.”

  “Strawberry,” I said. She smiled so that I barely noticed the absence of the sun.

  “We don’t have much time. One of us has to walk out of the woods and the other has to-”

  The sound barely registered above the wind and the rush of the water. It was only when Renee’s eyes got big and she coughed blood that I understood what was happening. There it was again. She slid sideways against my knee and to the ground, the left side of her sweater dark and wet. White bubbles formed in the blood at the corners of her mouth as she struggled to breathe. Her lips were moving and I pressed my ear to her mouth.

  “Your back pocket,” is what I thought she said. Yourbackpocket? If I survived, I’d worry about it then. I pulled away to check on her wounds, but it was moot. The St. Pauli Girl was dead. Of all the possible sounds in the woods, crying was the most distinctly human.

  Jim was on me before I could raise the Colt, not that I could have seen him clearly through my tears. I tried to make the heaving in my chest stop by taking big gulps of air, but it would not stop. Even breathing became difficult.

  “If I thought it was your idea to trick me, Kip, I would have killed you just the same as her,” he said, his voice strained and woeful. “She thought she could fool me with that angry act down there, but I knew how much she loved you.”

  “Why did you kill her?”

  His tone reverted to form. “Don’t ask stupid questions. You killed her just like you killed Haskell Brown and Mabry and Stan Petrovic. If you had accepted her love and my other gifts to you, she’d still be breathing.”

  Jim’s cold nature put me back in the moment. “What did you do with Stan’s body?” I asked.

  “He’s rotting in your Porsche in one of the old buildings at Hardentine. I used him as added leverage to get Renee to come up here with me. She would have done anything to protect you. And now … ”

  “I’m going to kill you, Jim.”

  “Good, that’s what I like. You’re not going to be a pussy and just lay down and die. If I counted right, you’ve got one round left. Let’s see what you can do with it. Now when I tell your story, I won’t have to make anything up about you dying like a man. Go ahead, I’ll give you-”

  I wheeled and fired, but if I thought I would catch Jim sleeping or in mourning, I was wrong. He fired too. I was down and my right side burned as if there was a white-hot sword sticking through me. My shirt was wet under my jacket and I didn’t need to look to know it wasn’t sweat. Jim had stumbled several feet backwards and I couldn’t quite see him, but I could hear him howling in pain and rolling around on the forest floor. The thing about it was, Jim wasn’t dead and I wasn’t going to stick around to see how badly wounded he was. I got up and ran for the falls.

  For some reason I held on to the Python, but a low-hanging branch smacked me in the cheek and I dropped the gun. For about twenty yards, I thought I might get to the river. But when another branch on a tree a few paces ahead of me was sheared off at its base and the shot echoed through the woods, I knew I was probably going to die.

  I looked back and, in spite of the shadows, saw Jim dragging himself through the underbrush. His right wrist and thigh were wet with blood, his arm dangling off his shoulder like a useless piece of rope. He carried the Glock in his left hand. Jim was good with his left, but not nearly as good as with his right. He was probably losing a lot of blood and in pain, and adrenalin would carry him only so far, so fast. None of that was apt to help his marksmanship. The same was as true for me.

  I weaved in and out of the trees trying to keep as many between Jim and me as possible without letting him get too close. Shots came in fast succession so that their echoes seemed to catch up to one another and overlap. I tried counting the shots-one into Moreland’s calf, two into Renee’s side, one for that first branch … and so on-but I gave it up. For all I knew he had ten clips on him and I stopped looking back altogether. I focused my energies on the opening up ahead and the ever-increasing noise of the river.

  I came through the trees, caught my foot on the edge of an exposed tree root and tumbled head over ass into the river. The icy cold water sapped my strength and will, but oddly it did little to extinguish the fire burning in my side. It would’ve been so easy to surrender, to let myself be swept away over the falls and downstream. If Amy was already dead or if Renee were still alive, I might have given myself over to the water. But when I felt the sting of something bite into my left arm, I gave up any thought of surrender. A bullet whistled right overhead. Looking up and behind me, I saw Jim at the edge of the woods where I’d tumbled into the water. As I was pulled downstream I lost sight of him behind some dirt mounds and weeds. I willed my way to the riverbank and fought my way out of the water.

  The bullet had taken out a small chunk of my bicep and it was bleeding, but not as badly as my side. As I came up over the bank, I could see the maintenance shed ahead of me, off to my right. Jim was now
here in sight, but I decided not to take any stupid chances. Instead of making a dead run at the shed, I combat crawled. I wasn’t paying much attention to the damp, winter-hardened ground under me. About halfway to the shed, my leg brushed over something metal with angles and edges. I rolled on my side, the pain ripping me apart. There was the old.45 that Jim had thrown over the shed towards the river after killing Moreland. I laughed to myself. Unless Jim was willing to toss the Glock away and stand still while I beat him to death with the Browning, an empty gun was useless to me. I stopped contemplating the Browning when the ground kicked dirt into my cheek.

  I looked behind me over my right shoulder and saw Jim about forty or fifty yards away, his head, shoulders, and left arm extended over the rise of the riverbank. If he made it up the bank he would have a clear shot no matter where I went or what I did. Now I understood what the term no man’s land meant. But he was seriously wounded and wouldn’t be able to work his way up those last few feet to more level ground without expending a lot of energy. Another shot kicked up more dirt. It kicked up something else with it: an idea. The odds of it working weren’t very good, but I was out of other options.

  Jim had been a little too comfortable and in control for too long. It was time to see how he would act when he didn’t have all the advantages. Besides, I had to buy myself some time. I picked up the empty Browning, stuck it in my pants and rolled to my left. Christ, it felt like my side would split wide open. I was lightheaded. Jim wasn’t the only one losing blood.

  “You’re a fucking pussy, Jim, a coward,” I screamed at him, crawling as fast as I could in the direction of the shed. “You going to shoot an unarmed man hiding behind a riverbank like a total pussy? What about all your high-minded bullshit about two people facing off across a room? I thought you were special, but when push comes to shove, Stan was right about you. You’re just a scared little boy. You disappoint me, kid. No wonder the Colonel used to beat the shit out of you. He was trying to make you a man. I guess it didn’t work.” I took a big breath and rolled as quickly as I could.

  He fired wildly. “Shut up!” He fired again, the bullet passing over my shoulder. “Shut up!”

  “Did you know that Renee used to tell me about the two of you fucking? She said you were so clumsy and awkward she had to stop herself from laughing at you. I get it now, why you used to love to hear me tell you about all the women I’d fucked. Renee was probably your first and last. You were a disappointment to me and to her and to the Colonel. It’s what you do best, kid, disappointing people. You’re just a fuckup.”

  That did the trick. I could see him struggling to get up the bank. This was my chance. I stood, taking off for the shed, but I wasn’t as quick as I’d been in the woods. My legs felt like soaked logs and I had to fight to keep my feet. I didn’t look back. I had one chance, only one chance, and it all hinged on me finding a shiny metal object smaller than my thumb.

  I as much fell as dived behind the wall of the shed and tried to gather some strength. Moreland’s body was around one corner and Jim somewhere around the other. I knew that regardless of how badly Jim was hurt, I couldn’t afford to split my focus. I fought the urge to free Amy from the shed, but I called to her, warning her.

  “Amy, keep yourself as low to the floor as you can.”

  “Kip? Kip, is that you?” Her voice was weak and the wall between us made her sound like she was speaking to me from beyond the grave.

  “Just keep yourself low and you should be all right.”

  I took my own advice, keeping low, and searching with my hands out in front of me. Wood splintered above my head and again and again and again. The Glock had a pretty long effective range. Jim could have been five feet away or a hundred feet, but I couldn’t waste time checking. I had to find that fucking bullet I’d ejected from the.45, and there it was, under my left palm. I snatched it up and kissed the damned thing. I wiped it off and pulled the old Browning out of the waist of my pants. Fuck! The gun was filthy. It had thumped into the wet ground when Jim hurled it over the shed and had sat there with its slide locked open. My rolling around in the dirt hadn’t helped either.

  I brushed as much soil off the gun as possible and furiously wiped down the exposed barrel and slide grooves with my jacket sleeve. I blew air through the barrel to little benefit. It was just too dirty. I tried spitting on the gun to help loosen some of the grit and wash it away, but my throat was cotton. Until that moment I wasn’t fully in touch with just how amped up I was. I was soaked from the river but covered in mud, so I opened my jacket, peeled back my shirt-trying not to look at the wound-and used the water- and blood-saturated material to wipe the gun down. A bullet, then another, pinged off the concrete behind me and I thought I could hear Jim close by, dragging his leg along the ground.

  It had come to this. I released the clip. Hands shaking, I pushed the bullet into it, replaced the clip, and racked the slide. I tried not to think about the grit in the firing mechanism or how my rushed loading might jam the gun. I stopped breathing and listened. I hadn’t imagined it; Jim was coming. I heard his foot dragging on the concrete slab on which the shed was anchored.

  “Amy,” he said as he passed the shed door, “I’ll be coming for you any time now.”

  He wasn’t worried about giving away his position. Why should he worry? He was the one with the loaded weapon. What could I do to him?

  I saw the Glock come around the corner first. I raised the.45 into shooting position. Now Jim turned the corner. I squeezed the trigger. In that frozen split second that followed, I saw on Jim’s face a familiar look of surprise. I’d seen it on Frank and Stan’s faces as well; it looked a little bit different on Jim somehow. His surprise seemed tinged with a mentor’s satisfaction and pride. His knees buckled and he fell backwards, his head smacking down hard against the concrete. I crawled over to him, my hand around the barrel of the Browning, ready to bring it down on his head. No need. His eyes were open and unseeing. He was deadly still. I tossed the.45, grabbed the Glock. Before I mustered the energy to get Amy, I just sat in silence with Jim: Frankenstein and his monster.

  Fifty-Four

  Miami

  Even eighteen months later, I don’t really remember much about what happened after I pried open the shed door and found Amy face down on the concrete floor, shaking. She says I never lost consciousness. I disagree. My eyes may have been open. Words may have spilled out of my mouth, but I wasn’t there. The first clear memory I have is of waking up in the hospital in the dark, alone. I was so weary that the pain, and there was a lot of pain, felt like it belonged to someone in the next bed. I didn’t press the call button. I didn’t want to see anyone or speak or hear another voice. If I could have quieted my own internal chatter, I would have. I fell back asleep.

  The next time I woke up, there were state troopers outside my door, detectives and a doctor at my bedside. I didn’t know what day it was or what hospital I was in, nor did I care. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they wanted. The doctor told me my wounds weren’t life-threatening, that the shot in my side was a clean through and through. Jim’s bullet had hit me below the ribs, traveled in a relatively straight line, and exited out my back without chewing up any major organs or blood vessels along the way. The shot in my arm had just notched out some tissue.

  “It will leave a little scar, but that’s about it,” he said.

  Little scar? There could be no such thing as a little scar from anything connected to what had happened.

  The detectives bought my story, as far as it went. They didn’t mention Haskell Brown, Lance Vaughn Mabry, or Stan Petrovic, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to broach the subject. Not yet, anyway. No one offered me a lawyer. No one read me my rights. When they asked me about Jim and Renee I tried not to be expansive. They were both ex-students of mine, I said. I’d had a relationship with Renee that had ended on good terms. Jim was a friend and fan whose attitude towards me changed when I moved back to New York. He had been stalking me, thr
eatening me and my ex-wife. I guess that pretty much jibed with what Amy had told them and with the physical evidence. None of this is to say I was free and clear.

  The media were all over the case. It had all the red-meat elements they lived for: famous victims, overlapping love triangles, stalking, small-town strangers lost in the strange land of the big city, and violence, lots and lots of violence. Best of all, it was easy and distracting. Since many of those involved were dead and the rest of us weren’t talking, the media could speculate themselves into multiple orgasms.

  After I was released from the hospital, I stayed in a hotel in Manhattan under an assumed name. It was the only way to avoid being hounded by the press. Amy fell off the face of the earth after Moreland’s funeral. I didn’t blame her. Meg arranged for me to get daily visits from nurses who dressed my wounds and made sure my healing was progressing. I alternated between sleepless nights and days when all I could do was sleep. I cried a lot. I thought about Renee all the time, about her last words: “Your back pocket.” After wracking my brain for what she could have meant, I convinced myself that I must have heard her wrong. Of course I’d checked my back pocket, and of course it had been empty. I seldom, if ever, thought about Amy. Her respect, which I had made the centerpiece of my ambition for the last year, mattered little to me.

  For weeks I considered going to the authorities in New York and Brixton to explain the full and bloody extent of Jim’s obsession, but I could never quite get my own head around it. You see, this student of mine was obsessed with me and my writing. He bought an unpublished chapter of my work off the Internet and hatched a plan that involved him giving me his girlfriend and getting me involved with a place where we used to fire guns at each other with live ammunition in order to restart my writing career. How the fuck was I supposed to convince the police when, in spite of everything that had happened, I still couldn’t quite believe it myself?