I, Weapon

by Vaughn Heppner

  “No way,” Gemmell said. “Not ever.”

  “Then I have good news for you,” she said. “Dr. Parker called us, and she asked that we help find you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You haven’t taken the green pills lately, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Dr. Parker didn’t think so. She’s worried sick about you.”

  “I-I’m not sure what to do,” Gemmell said.

  “I am,” the woman said, touching the medical bag. “I have an injection that…will make the voice—the anger, as you put it—go away.”

  Max glanced at the woman and he appeared surprised.

  She’s lying, the voice said.

  “Are you lying?” Gemmell asked her.

  “You’ve watched me sing at CR,” she said. “I know you have.”

  Gemmell nodded. She was pretty, especially with that bikini top and her full breasts.

  “I’m telling the truth,” she said. “These shots will make the anger disappear. Then you can go back to mowing lawns and see me again at CR.”

  Gemmell’s nostrils flared. It sounded good, but—

  “We’ll start talking, you and me at CR,” she said. “Now that we’ve broken the ice, we should talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sure,” she said. “And maybe we can go out for coffee during the weekdays. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  Max raised his eyebrows and glanced elsewhere.

  That angered Gemmell. Didn’t Max figure he was good enough for…

  “What’s your name?” Gemmell asked.

  “Susan.”

  “Why do I need several shots? At Dr. Parker’s it was always a pill and sometimes a single injection while I sleep.”

  Susan smiled as she shrugged. “I’m doing this at Dr. Parker’s orders.”

  Why did you run out here if you’re simply going to give up? the voice asked him. Gemmell knew the voice knew the answer to that. He didn’t want to release the anger upon the world.

  “Will I forget that Max murdered a man?” he asked Susan.

  “Gemmell, Max did that to protect you. The muscleman, as you call him, was evil. He wanted to hurt you and make you do bad things.”

  “He didn’t say that.”

  “People like him lie.”

  She’s lying, the voice said. She’s fooling you. She just wants to put me back to sleep so they can use us again.

  Gemmell took a deep breath. He would run away from these two if it wasn’t for the image in his mind of the dead teenager. He couldn’t let the anger loose. It had to stay bottled up, even if Max was a murderer.

  “Okay,” Gemmell said.

  Susan smiled even wider. She had white, perfect teeth. She set the black bag on the ground and opened it. Then she looked up.

  “Does the sight of needles bother you?”

  Tell her it doesn’t, the voice said.

  Gemmell frowned. “Needles make me angry,” he said slowly.

  Max whipped back around, watching him, and his hand dropped again onto the butt of the .38.

  “I want you to turn your head,” Susan said. “You can’t watch. It isn’t going to hurt, but it’s better if you don’t see this.”

  Gemmell turned his head, although he saw her take out what seemed like a huge hypodermic needle. With her finger, she flicked a bottle. Then she jabbed the steel needle into it and pulled back the plunger so the plastic tube filled with a yellow solution.

  Gemmell felt lightheaded so he went to one knee. His breath quickened.

  “Take it easy,” Susan said. “You’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t like needles,” Gemmell said.

  “I know. But you do want to get better, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to take me out at CR this Wednesday, don’t you?”

  “Do you promise?” Gemmell asked.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Gemmell swallowed. That was a big promise. People didn’t break a cross-your-heart promise easily.

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  Susan approached and tied a rubbery string around his biceps, and she tightened it. After waiting a bit, she said, “Turn your head, Gemmell, and think about us sitting and laughing together at Starbucks.”

  Gemmell squeezed his eyes shut. He hated needles. But he could—he shouted as the needle slid into him.

  “Hold still, Gemmell.”

  He roared and he backhanded Susan. She went tumbling down the shore and she splashed into the water. He stood, and he saw the needle sticking in his arm. He couldn’t tell if any of the solution had been injected into him. He tore out the needle.

  “Stand down, Gemmell,” Max said. The man gripped his .38 two-handed, and he backed away toward Susan, keeping the barrel rock-steady on Gemmell.

  “I’m going jab this into your neck!” Gemmell said. “Let’s see how you like it.”

  “I’ll shoot,” Max said. And despite the gun, despite his being a tough guy, there was fear in his eyes.

  Gemmell sneered, and he almost hurled the hypodermic needle at Max. He felt something. It was in his head, something greater than lightheadedness. He knew then Susan had managed to squirt some of the drug into him. It was fast acting. Gemmell hesitated between running and attacking. He wasn’t sure which would serve him better. As he debated it, more of the drug gripped his thoughts.

  “I won’t forget this,” he told Max.

  Max nodded, but the .38 never wavered.

  “Someday…” Then the world became fuzzy for Gemmell. It began to tilt crazily. Had he made the right choice calling them? He didn’t think so. They used him, the bastards. Someday he was going to get away from them. Someday he would mourn his wife and daughter properly, and get better, just settle down to a real life without green pills or these freaking needles.

  He hated…Gemmell sank to his knees and he felt himself toppling toward the gravel shore.

  -13-

  “This little episode should prove that I’m right concerning the need to put a tracking nodule in him,” Karl said. They were outside the laboratory, looking in at Bannon in the cylinder.

  “Possibly,” Parker said. She wore a lab coat today.

  “How can you think otherwise?” Karl asked.

  “It would leave physical evidence in his body for him to find. That might trigger the wrong response.”

  “Listen,” Karl said. “It would be a tiny thing, nearly impossible to find.”

  “You underestimate Bannon’s power of observation.”

  “The guy’s smart in his assassin mode. I get that. This also happens to be the most delicate hit that we’ve ever done, that your father has ever done.”

  “I’ve told you before. Refer to my father as the Controller. It is his proper title.”

  “Sure. My point is we need to know exactly where Bannon is at all times. Put in the nodule. It will save us headaches and excessive worry later on.”

  Parker stared through the glass partition at Bannon in the cylinder.

  Karl could see the wheels turn in her mind. He waited and let her argue the merits of his suggestion with herself. Finally, she turned to him.

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s graft your nodule into him.”

  ***

  It felt like a dream, but Bannon knew it wasn’t. People in white coats, white masks and caps hovered around him. They shaved his head, slathered a cool gel over it and secured a helmet onto him. Afterward, they lowered him until liquid sloshed against his skin. He was naked and half-submerged in a warm bath of something like water but more sluggish and gel-like. The white-coated people—doctors, he figured—attached wet suction leads to his body.

  “Are we ready?” a female asked. It sounded like Dr. Parker.

  Bannon tried to form words. He could remember Gemmell and the days of lawn mowing, the meetings at CR and the grave of his precious wife and daughter. Then electricity surged through him and he arched in agony. Afterward, they injected him with som
ething. His thoughts blurred, his stomach curdled and a new torture invaded his body with every beat of his heart.

  “This is inhuman,” someone said.

  He heard the words, although they had no real meaning. The words were free-floating…and spoken by a female. That was important. A woman had spoken the words. He latched onto one of them: inhuman.

  Steel slid into him: more injections, always the injections. There was electricity again so it seemed he lived in a bolt of lightning. His mind become numb as his senses shut down. Eyesight departed. His hearing vanished. Chemical odors faded away. The rust-like taste in his mouth disappeared and he felt absolutely nothing. He was in limbo, alone with himself and his non-thoughts.

  Something changed, and flashes of memories flickered before him: a woman’s lips, a barking German Setter, the squeal of a schoolyard swing, the gasoline-taste of whiskey—

  Abruptly, he could hear sounds again. A tongue moistened a pair of lips. Someone breathed beside his ear, and that should have made his ear itch, but it didn’t.

  “Bannon, can you hear me?”

  “…yes.”

  The female began to drone, and with the words came images in his mind. She told him things, many, many things, including new and powerful memories, including more Supreme Court cases. He wondered about that until he heard the grimmest thing of all.

  He—Bannon—was in prison for having killed two males aged twenty-three and twenty-six. He’d done it to protect his wife and he had been in prison many years already. He had plea-bargained, which had been a serious mistake. One of the murdered men had been a senator’s only son. The son and his friend were outside the rock concert Bannon and his wife attended. Bannon and his wife had had an argument. She stormed off and left the concert to walk to a nearby park. The senator’s son was high, sitting on a park bench with his drunken friend, the son of the senator’s biggest contributor.

  The two men had found his wife wandering among the trees. They gagged and then raped her together. Bannon found them there, picked up a heavy branch and hit the senator’s son on the side of the head, killing him with the first blow. He’d broken every bone in the other young man’s face.

  He had killed out of anger and because Bannon had known that the state wouldn’t send these two rapists to the electric chair. If they were going to die, he had to do it.

  He remembered one case. Patrick Kennedy had been sentenced to death for brutally raping his eight-year-old stepdaughter. It had been a savage assault, unspeakable what the monster had done to the little girl. Later, Kennedy appealed the decision. The Supreme Court decided 5-4 in 2008 that under the Eighth Amendment the death sentence was cruel and unusual. The power of the state to impose the death penalty against an individual for committing a crime that did not result in death of the victim was now limited to crimes against the state such as espionage and treason.

  Bannon’s plea bargaining had been a bad idea. At first, the judge had understood his violent reaction in the park and had actually sympathized with it. The trouble was the senator. Bannon had killed his only son. The senator spoke to the judge. He asked for a favor, and he promised the judge any favor in return.

  That was illegal, as justice was supposed to be blind. But those things happened. This time, it had happened to Bannon. The judge gave him life without parole. His wife stuck with him even while he was in prison. A year later, they had a daughter. The two came and visited him. He loved his family and it helped him survive the endless lockup.

  Several years passed after his daughter birth. The senator, he couldn’t get over his loss. So he decided to make Bannon suffer. The senator hired a hit man, who killed Bannon’s wife and daughter.

  Through the years, the crooked judge had climbed the rungs of his profession and become a very high-ranking magistrate. He eventually became a Supreme Court Justice. His name was Arthur Blake. Of course, he had gained the exalted position through the senator’s help.

  The senator died, but not the Justice. He lived and he deserved death.

  Bannon learned these “truths” and he knew that only one thing mattered in his life: that he must kill Supreme Court Justice Arthur Blake.

  -14-

  “Bannon…Bannon,” a woman said gently.

  Bannon’s eyelids fluttered. His mouth tasted like a mouse’s nest and his neck hurt. He was lying on his back and there was a bright light above him.

  “Can you hear me?” the woman asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You need to wake up now.”

  “I am awake.”

  “Open your eyes. Try to sit up.”

  Bannon opened his eyes. Everything was blurry, even the intense light shining down on him.

  “Look here,” the woman said.

  Something moved before his face. It was blurry, and the movement made him blanch, made vomit burn the back of his throat.

  “Listen as I say—oh!” the woman said. “You’re hurting me.”

  Bannon focused. He gripped a slender wrist. The woman must have been moving her hand or finger in front of his face. He eased his grip but still kept hold of her. He liked the smooth feel of her skin.

  He was in an office with an overhead lamp shining down on him. He reached up, brushing the lamp aside. He could see better that way. There were books on two walls, shelves from floor to ceiling crammed with thick tomes. On the other side of him he spied a desk cluttered with paper, notes and a computer screen. Diplomas and certificates hung on the back wall.

  “You can let go of me,” the woman said.

  Bannon squeezed slightly before letting go, like a friend would. The woman had long blonde hair, glasses and could have been in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, she was so pretty. She wore a white lab coat over her dress and nylons on her shapely legs. He frowned. He should know this woman. He should know this place, shouldn’t he?

  Bannon filed that away as he noticed other things. He lay on a black couch. He had a gauze patch on the big vein of his left arm on the inside of his elbow. A strip of surgical tape held it there. Someone had obviously put a needle into the vein. He was groggy, and it was difficult to slide his eyes around in their sockets. The bad taste in his mouth remained, and if he stood up, he was certain that he would fall on his face.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  “You’re in my office, and everything is fine.”

  Bannon concentrated on her. She sat on a chair beside his couch and she had crossed her legs. She wore low-heeled red shoes, and they seemed faintly familiar. There was a silver bracelet on her right arm and she lacked a wedding ring.

  “You’re Dr. Parker,” he said.

  She might have stiffened the tiniest fraction, but maybe not. She smiled, and asked, “Who else would I be?”

  “Where am I again?”

  “Are you feeling better?” Parker asked.

  “What did you shoot into my arm?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  Bannon thought about it. “No,” he said.

  A flicker crossed her features. It might have been fear. She smiled afterward. “Your honesty is an improvement. I’m surprised you didn’t lie to me.”

  Bannon processed that, not sure he believed her.

  “I need to ask you a few more questions,” she said.

  “A few more?” he said, before hesitating. He wanted to say, ‘What did you ask me previously and why don’t I remember?’ But he refrained from doing that. Caution was in order. By asking, he would let her know he didn’t know what the questions had been. It seemed important to hide his ignorance.

  “Sure,” he said. “Ask away.”

  She gave him a significant glance before lifting an iPad from her lap. “I noticed you were agitated the other day about the murder of three inmates.”

  Alarms rang in his mind. Inmates? What would that have to do with him? Inmates implied a prison, and that had nothing to do with him, did it? Could his thinking, his memories be that off?

  “Am I in prison?” he asked.


  “You know you are.”

  He stared at her. Why couldn’t he remember going to prison? It must have something to do with the swab on his arm. The last thing he remembered… Alarms rang in him again. He didn’t remember squat, although there was a faint image of needles. He hated needles.

  “Was I agitated?” he asked, trying to cover his ignorance about being in prison. What had he done to be put away here?

  Parker pursed her lips and made a mark on her computer.

  He didn’t like that. In fact, he wanted to rip the iPad out of her hands, smash it on the ground and grind it with his heel. His sudden anger surprised him. It didn’t bother him or make him think he’d been mistaken about getting mad. It told him these surroundings—she was his enemy, although he didn’t know how or why.

  “Yes, you were very agitated,” Dr. Parker said. “You evaded my questions earlier and appear to be doing so now. I’d like to know why.”

  He wanted to shrug. Instead, he held himself perfectly still, trying to think this through.

  She made another mark on the computer before reading something on it. He could see her eyes shifting back and forth. He would have liked to know what she was reading. She nodded to herself—as if she’d come to a conclusion—and looked down at him.

  “Why do the three murders bother you?” she asked.

  “What murders?” he asked.

  “Hmm,” she said, tapping the stylus against the computer. “Three inmates died violently two days ago. A man with incredible skills slew them. The evidence was quite clear about that. The inmates were abusing a smaller, younger man. Unfortunately, this skilled man made a mistake.”

  “According to you,” Bannon said, “this man is alive and the three inmates are dead. It seems to me they made the mistake.”

  “In that way, yes,” Parker said. “The three of them, however, were Demetrius’s enforcers.”

  Bannon closed his eyes, and at the mention of the name, a memory surfaced. He’d killed those three. Yes, he remembered now. It had been a short and savage fight in a prison kitchen storeroom. The youngster—the one the three had been abusing—had witnessed the fight, and Demetrius now knew who had killed his enforcers. Demetrius had to kill him in order to keep his prison reputation. That meant most of the inmates would be after him to curry favor with Demetrius “the King” of San Quentin.