DADDY AT THE ALTAR

by Claire St. Rose

  “Tell them to haul ass!” Hammer roared at Mike, then looked back at Stilts. “You’re going to be okay, you hear me? You’re going to be okay. Just stay with me, Stilts. Medical is on the way, so you stay with me!”

  Stilts nodded again. “Hurts,” he murmured.

  “That’s good. It’s good it hurts,” Hammer said, softer. “That tells you you’re still alive.”

  Stilts began to nod again, but then a look of peace came over his eyes, and he stilled.

  “Stilts! Stilts, goddamn you. Fight! You fight, you bastard!” Hammer tried to call his friend back from the edge. He released his two-handed press of his coat and searched for a pulse. He found it, but it was far too fast and shallow as Stilts’ heart pumped his life out onto the ground.

  “Hang on buddy,” Hammer said, his voice thick as he pressed harder on his brother’s chest. “Just hang on a few more minutes. You can do that. You can hang on just a couple more minutes. Come on buddy. Hang in there. You can do it.”

  The rest of the Souls had crawled over, staying low behind the tables, gathered around Stilts from all sides. Duck’s old lady was holding Stilts’ hand as tears streamed down her face, trying to give him comfort in his final moments.

  Hammer was the only active member to have served in the armed forces, and they could hear the pain in his voice as he talked to Stilts, encouraging him to hang on for a while longer. No one knew what had happened to Hammer, he wouldn’t talk about it, but they knew he’d seen more than his share of death.

  Hammer checked for a pulse again, desperate for the faintest sign. His hands were red with Stilts’ blood. He rocked back and sat on his heels, his head hanging low in defeat as some of the women sniffled.

  “He’s gone,” he said, but it was barely a whisper.

  ###

  The shooter watched through the scope as the men and women disappeared behind the tables. He could see slivers of movement as they scrambled, but nothing he could paint a target on. He saw Grimes’ head pop up, but before he could acquire the mark, it disappeared again. They were down and wouldn’t be coming back up. They knew what had happened.

  It was time to go.

  He inched his way out from under his car and then stood, dropping his camouflage netting as he rose. He slid his rifle into its case in the back seat, tossed in the netting, then calmly walked around his car and slid behind the wheel. He was just another guy out enjoying a day at the park.

  His five-year-old Honda whirred to life as he twisted the key, and he smiled as he slipped the car into reverse, stroking his hard cock through his pants as he backed out of the parking space.

  Putting the car in drive, he motored along the road that meandered through the park, passing within a dozen yards of the array of motorcycles parked at one of the covered picnic areas.

  There seemed to be some sort of medical emergency with a man lying on his back as three other men hovered over him. He smiled and kept moving. He wasn’t a doctor, and there wasn’t any help he could offer the man.

  When he arrived at the park entrance, he could just make out the faint wail of sirens. He smiled, signaled, and pulled out onto the road.

  ###

  The park was swarming with police. The red and blue lights from the patrol cars bouncing off every reflective surface around to create a dizzying strobe that was giving Hammer a headache. It didn’t help that they kept asking the same questions over and over while Stilts lay under a covering on the ground.

  “You saw nobody out of place? Nobody standing around that looked suspicious?” the officer asked.

  Hammer sighed. “No. It was just Souls. Look around,” he said as he twisted at the waist, his arms outstretched. There were no other structures nearby that could have hidden a person. “If anyone were standing around, we would have seen him. I’m telling you, this shot came from long distance, maybe as much as a mile. There was a long time between when the bullet hit him and the sound of the shot.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Hammer snapped.

  “And you have no idea who would want to take a shot at Mr. Stilton?”

  “No.”

  The officer tapped his notebook against his hand a couple of times. “I think that’s everything. I know this had to be tough, seeing your friend get shot like that. We’ll do everything we can to track the perpetrator down and bring him to justice.”

  Hammer grunted. Whoever the shooter was, he’d better hope the cops found him first because if the Souls found him before the cops did, there wouldn’t be anything left of him to find.

  As the cops began to release the brothers and old ladies, they left in twos and threes.

  “Knife, Mike, I want you to stay with me,” Hammer said quietly as the cops continued to mill around.

  It took hours, but finally Hammer and his closest brothers were alone.

  “I want to see if we can figure out where this shot came from. It may not do any good, but we have to start somewhere, and I don’t think the cops know what they’re looking for. I get the feeling they think this guy was standing across the street or something, but he was a hell of a long way away.”

  “What are we looking for?” Knife asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hammer admitted. “Where could a guy setup so he couldn’t be seen?” Hammer muttered, almost as if he was talking to himself.

  He wasn’t precisely sure where the shot came from. The sound was little help, giving him only a general direction. He walked to where Stilts had been standing, facing the same direction, and scanned the distance. The only thing in sight was the recreation center, but there was no way someone could stand there, fire a rifle, and not have someone see them. He continued to scan, but there was nothing else… unless the shooter had managed to climb up one of the trees on the far side of the parking lot, but that didn’t seem likely either.

  To make a shot from that distance would require a very stable shooting platform, and trees moved with the slightest breeze. No, the trees were out. A sniper always shot from the ground or a building, somewhere that didn’t move.

  “The rec center,” Hammer said. “It’s the only option.”

  Mike and Knife looked at each other, then squinted at the building illuminated by the parking lot lights.

  “Are you shitting me? Nobody can make a shot like that!” Mike protested.

  “A sniper could. Further even with the right weapon.” Hammer continued to watch the building, thinking, then nodded. “That has to be it. Mike, let’s go. Knife, you’re about Stilts’ size. Stay here and stand where he was standing.”

  Mike glanced at Knife then followed Hammer as he strode across the ground toward the building. “You sure about this? You can barely see the building from the shelter. How can anyone see a man, much less hit them from there?”

  “A scope… and practice,” Hammer said as they walked, being careful of their footing in the darkness. “In Iraq, lots of snipers were making kills from around a thousand yards. Some of the longest were nearly three times that far.”

  It took them almost five minutes to walk the distance the bullet traveled in seconds. Hammer could see the picnic covering, but Knife was almost invisible, even with the shelter lights glowing brightly. He moved to the far corner of the building, but a tree was in the way from there. The other corner was possible, but when he crouched down to get low, a hill blocked his view. He stood and frowned, wondering if he had it wrong.

  “What?” Mike asked.

  “It’s not the building… so where…?”

  Mike indicated to the parking lot. “How about one of the cars?”

  “No. Not stable enough. But maybe…” Hammer muttered as he started across the parking lot. He stopped at the farthest set of spaces and looked toward where Stilts had been killed. It reduced the distance by a hundred yards of more, and there was a clear line of sight all the way to where Knife was standing.

  “Look around,” Hammer said, motioning with his hand. “See if
you can find a shell casing or something. It was from here, I know it.”

  “How?”

  “I can feel it. This is where a sniper would setup for that shot if he could.”

  “You said he wouldn’t shoot from a car?”

  “He didn’t. The angle is wrong. But maybe from beside it. Or under it.”

  They spent several minutes scouring the area. The light wasn’t good, but a shell casing would be easy to see. After several minutes of looking, they came up with nothing, not so much as a piece of trash.

  “Nothing,” Mike said.

  Hammer grimaced. He hadn’t expected to find anything. The shooter was too smart for that.

  “But this is it,” Hammer said, his tone firm as he stood up and stared at Knife’s almost undetectable silhouette.

  Chapter Ten

  Hammer, Knife, and Mike arrived back at the Immortal Souls clubhouse after determining the shooter’s location, pulling into the parking lot on the roar of hard-charging Harleys. They stomped into the main room, and Hammer headed straight for the bar.

  “Find anything?” Duck asked, his hands shook as he held his drink.

  “Found where I think the shot came from,” Hammer said as he stopped behind the small, polished wooden bar that wouldn’t look out of place in a Wild West saloon.

  He grabbed a shot glass from the rack, poured a splash of Jack Daniels Black Label, and downed it with a gulp. He bared his teeth as the amber liquid burned down his throat, then poured another, then two more in separate glasses for Knife and Mike. They were going to have to go back and get the Tahoe, but that could wait. Right now he needed to let his seething anger subside.

  “You’re sure?” Duck sat his glass on the bar for Hammer to refill as the rest of the members gathered around to hear what their brothers had to say.

  “No, but I don’t see how it could be anyplace else. I think he was in the rec center parking lot hiding behind a car. Maybe under it. Don’t know. But whatever he did, he was a ballsy bastard to pull this off in a public park in the middle of the day like that.”

  Tank nodded in agreement. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “What do you think?” Duck sneered after tossing back his drink. “We’re going to find that motherfucker and kill him.”

  Duck was getting shitfaced and was in no shape to ride, but he didn’t seem to care. He was just trying to drown the memory of Stilts dying under his hands, powerless to prevent it. Hammer figured Duck would either sleep in the clubhouse tonight, or his old lady would take him home.

  Hammer nodded. “The cops are going to be looking for him too, but we’re going to get him first.” He tossed back his third and final drink. He had to stay frosty, he had to think.

  “You think it was the Jokers?” Wheels asked.

  Hammer thought for a moment. The Souls was the only game in Amberton. They didn’t run the city with a heavy hand. That got them noticed, and that brought in the cops, but everyone knew they owned the city. The other two clubs in town, the Palmettos and the Black Aces, were both larger, but they were full of posers and didn’t have the balls to come at them like this. They were full of dentists, bankers, doctors and accountants—men who like to pretend they were walking on the wild side, but when it came time to pull out their cocks, they knew their place.

  The Jokers, out of Charlotte, North Carolina, however, were another matter. They certainly had the will, and ability, to hit the Souls. But why? They were a hundred miles away and had never meddled in their affairs before. The two clubs didn’t compete and compared to Charlotte and the Jokers, Amberton and the Immortal Souls were small fish. Hardly worth their notice.

  Hammer topped off the glasses sitting on the bar, save for his. “That doesn’t feel right, either. Even if they were coming at us, why Stilts? Knife and I were standing right beside him. If they wanted to hurt the club, you’d think they’d hit one of us. And why all the sneaking around? That’s not how they operate.” He thought for another moment then shook his head. “No. I think if the Jokers were to come at us, they’d come head on.”

  He noticed most of his brothers were nodding in agreement. Clubs didn’t hide in the weeds and then sneak up behind you and stab you in the back without warning. That’s what pussies would do, and the Jokers were anything but pussies.

  Hammer met the gaze of every man there. They were looking at him to lead.

  “Go home,” he finally said. “Go home and get drunk, fuck your old lady, do whatever you have to in order to get right with this. Tomorrow we start looking under the rocks to find this fucker. We’re going to find him and kill him for what he did.”

  He paused as the brothers rumbled in agreement. “Knife, you’ll take care of Stilts? He deserves full honors.”

  Knife bowed his head in acknowledgment, his lips thinning like he was internalizing his grief. Stilts had been a member of the Souls for almost twenty years. He was going to be missed by all the brothers. “I’ll handle it.”

  Hammer nodded. They didn’t lose a lot of brothers, and even less to violence, but it always hurt when they did. By tradition the VP made the funeral arrangements, the sergeant at arms took charge of caring for the family of the fallen brother, and the president wrote and delivered the eulogy. He hadn’t been president of the Souls long, only two years, and this would be the first time he had to perform the grim task. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

  “Let’s make this happen,” Hammer said. He had to get out of there. He had to get some space so he could breathe.

  He turned and marched out of the clubhouse, swung a leg over his red and white Softail, and thumbed the machine to life after he stood it upright.

  He could feel the alcohol starting to affect him. He wanted to find solace on the open road, but he knew he was becoming impaired. They’d already lost one brother today, the club didn’t need to lose another.

  He pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward home, racing the booze in his system, so he wouldn’t slide out somewhere and end up six feet under himself.

  ###

  Hammer sat in his burgundy red leather recliner, his bottle of Jim Beam sitting on the floor beside him. He stared into his empty shot glass like he was trying to find some meaning in the transparency of it. An answer.

  This was wrong. Stilts shouldn’t have died like that. Nobody deserved to die like that. A man should be able to face the person that was going to kill him—to stare them in the eyes and dare them to do their worst—not die from afar, wiped out without a sound or hint of warning.

  He picked up the bottle and poured a splash into the glass, his movements slow and uncoordinated as he focused, then carefully sat the bottle back on the floor. He continued to stare into the glass, holding it up as he turned it in his fingers, watching the light from the lamp play and dance through the golden liquid.

  It was Fillujah all over again.

  He tossed the drink back and growled as it hurt so good. He was totally tanked, but the memories of his tour in Iraq wouldn’t be silenced. Though he’d engaged in no direct combat during his tour, he’d seen his share of death. Death just like this. Swift. Quiet. Unexpected. Death arriving with a ringing snap and a thud of lead into meat, the bullet outpacing the sound of its arrival. A silent killer, reaching down like the finger of God to erase a life.

  Stilts was a good man. He’d hurt no one that hadn’t deserved it. He’d never killed anyone. He cared about his brothers and would have given his life for any one of them without question or hesitation. But to die so senselessly? He deserved better than that.

  Hammer filled his glass half full, being careful not to waste the precious elixir, and then sat the bottle aside, concentrating on his movements so it wouldn’t spill. It’d been years since he’d intentionally crawled into a bottle. He thought the demons had been vanquished and the voices silenced but today had awakened the ghosts.

  His phone rang, and he looked at it. He thought about not answering but then changed his mind. He sat the shot glass
on the table and picked up his phone.

  “‘lo,” he slurred, not bothering to check the screen to see who it was.

  “Hammer?” Lily asked, her voice thin and tinny through the tiny speaker.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m coming on shift, and I just heard. Are you okay?”

  He blinked at his glass, his vision hazy, and then picked it up. “Perfect,” he said then tossed the liquid back.

  “You don’t sound okay.”

  “No? Do I sound drunk? If I do, it’s ‘cause I am.”

  “Yeah, I can hear that, but that’s not what I meant. I know—”