The Next God

by MB Mooney

  The first shot Russell heard blew a large chunk out of the wall beside him. His screams rose an octave, tearing at his throat. A clicking sound, the cocking of the gun, pierced his panic. Russell didn’t see what happened to the second shot, but his lower body seemed to stop from under him, as if something tugged violently on his leg. He tumbled head first to the floor.

  He lay on his back for a moment, writhing and slowly succumbing to shock, before he tried to sit up. Looking down, he saw that his right leg stopped just at the knee, a fountain of blood where the rest of his limb used to be. He started to scream again, but the sound was a weak choke. He saw the man in the long overcoat walking from the elevator towards him, holding the shotgun waist-high and aiming it at Russell’s head. The man pumped the shotgun again.

  Please, God, let me pass out before … before … before … Russell thought.

  But he didn’t pass out. The man in the overcoat stood above him now, waiting for something, looking into Russell’s eyes. Russell raised his arms as the barrel of the shotgun moved within inches of his grimacing face. He tried to speak, to plead with the man.

  “I - I’ll give you ... anything. Just don’t … don’t kill me. I swear. Money. Anything.” Russell could smell the powder, feel the heat of the gun near his face.

  The man in the long overcoat said only one word, a name, in fact. Russell recognized the name immediately, but wasn’t sure from where. The man in the overcoat waited and watched. Russell’s memory finally fought through the fear and pain, identifying that name.

  He groaned, “No …”

  Russell didn’t hear the third shot.

  Chapter 2

  Standing over the dead body, Detective Valerie Mann felt like she was going to vomit. Clenching her teeth, she tried not to puke the first minute on the job this morning.

  Trying to hold her breath at the scent of blood, she noticed her skirt might be a little too short. The shape of her legs cried for exercise, not exposure, but she had rushed out of her apartment this morning without much time for these considerations.

  The call had come just a few minutes before the alarm was to go off. God, she hated that. Of course, the crime scene couldn’t wait one minute for perusal, she knew that as well as anyone, but she wished that they didn’t find dead bodies so early in the morning. Valerie heard who they were making her work with on this case, and that only exacerbated her frustration. Now here she stood, over this bloody mess of a human being, of a man. She watched the sticky crimson mess on the floor, the splattering of it on the wall.

  As she leaned over for a better look at the body, Valerie wasn’t necessarily as new to the violent sight of blood as the other detective on the scene, Bill Young, thought she was. She just hated that smell. The smell clung to everything there in the hall on the fifteenth floor like The Blob in that old movie she saw on TV at her grandma’s house. The dead body hadn’t started to decompose yet, but the drying, slippery blood everywhere made her stomach churn. She kept holding the handkerchief over her short nose and full mouth, and that helped a little. But Detective Young’s mouth caused her even more nausea than the smell. She wished she had another pair of hands to put hands over her ears, as well.

  “All right, darlin’,” Bill said as he walked around her with one of the officers there at the scene. “You’re gonna have to stop starin’ at Mr. Dead Head, here, and start workin’, okay?”

  Valerie regarded her partner with more than a little disdain. She didn’t necessarily hate him, but it was close. She was sure he was a nice guy, for Victorian England, but he had no clue as to her abilities and treated her like a Hooters waitress. He treated every woman like that, though. She knelt down cautiously next to the area of the body that once resembled a head.

  “My God, this is a mess,” she said. “He must have been shot by a forty-ought six at point-blank range.”

  Bill grinned at her, the wrinkled forehead pushing a little at the cropped gray hair above his droopy eyes.

  “We got a regular Matlock here.”

  His sarcasm bit at her, almost causing her to lose control of her stomach. She kept swallowing hard to calm herself, taking her concentration away from coming up with a proper retort. Instead, she allowed Bill to attempt his version of investigation, and she watched his grossly out of shape body lead the young officer in blue to the other side of the corpse.

  The extra skin on his jaw and the double chin wobbled while he spoke. He knelt over the dead body but spoke to the young man in blue nearby. “Officer, what would you say the weapon was?”

  The young officer’s eyes danced quickly from Valerie to Bill. “Looks more like a twelve gauge to me.”

  “Very good,” Bill said, nodding to him. “Do you do much hunting?”

  “No, sir, not too much.”

  “Well, I guess men just naturally know more about these things.” Bill Young looked up from the mangled corpse into Valerie’s eyes. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mann?”

  Valerie just shook her head at him. “You’re an asshole.”

  Bill nodded, smirking. “A term both of my ex-wives use a lot.”

  He took a long moment to survey the wreckage of this man’s body. The victim’s name had been Russell Person, and he currently had neither much of a leg or head. “Did anyone find any shells?”

  The young officer shook his head. “No. He must have picked them up on his way out.”

  Bill nodded. “What’s the time of death?”

  Valerie’s voice was muffled through the handkerchief. “The station owner talked to him around seven, so sometime after that. Doctor said around ten-thirty.”

  “Around ten-thirty? I want something more concrete than that. Anyone talk to the security, yet?”

  The young officer piped up proudly. “They’re going through the surveillance tapes right now.”

  “I know that, but how did the piece of shit get past the guy downstairs?”

  “They don’t know,” Valerie said. “That’s why they’re checking the tapes.”

  “Thanks, Matlock,” Bill said, standing up, holding on to the belt of his pants, and situating himself under the roundness of his torso. “All this blood is making me hungry. I’m going to get breakfast.”

  Valerie sat with Bill, by necessity not choice, at a nearby diner. It was a busy place, even for a late breakfast.

  She didn’t know Bill well, but his reputation preceded him. He was a man who broke the rules on a regular basis, little rules that superiors would never bother with unless severely anal, but it was evidence to Valerie of a man who either had a problem with authority or was so close to retirement that he didn’t think the rules applied to him anymore. It was more likely both. Bill’s harassment of female and other minority officers was also legendary. And although Valerie always attempted to look beyond preconceived notions, nothing he did contradicted them.

  Valerie sipped at her water and watched Bill eat a plate full of scrambled eggs covered with ketchup. “How can you eat that?” she asked him.

  Bill smiled at her again. God, she hated when he smiled at her like that. “With a fork,” he said and proceeded to lift it inches in front of her face.

  “Now I’m really going to be sick,” she told him with a grimace.

  “How long have you been on the force?” Bill asked her as he settled in to eat.

  “Seven years.”

  “You’ve never seen anything like that before, have you.”

  It wasn’t really a question, more of a statement. “Sure I have. I just hate the smell of blood like that. It makes me sick. It’s always made me sick.”

  “Well, I guess some people never grow up and get used to it.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, the clinking of his fork more and more annoying as Bill neared the end of his meal, mopping up the residue with a triangle of buttered white toast.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Valerie said.

  “Sure,” Bill said through a mouth full of toast.

  “How long have
you been an asshole?”

  After Bill caught his breath and swallowed successfully, he turned his attention to her. “Much longer than you’ve been on the rag every month, that’s for sure. So just humor the old bastard, and you’ll do okay, I promise.”

  Bill raised his hand at the waitress, calling for his check. “They’ll promote you soon because you’re a woman, and they like to see that down here. Gives them a better image. It’ll take a little longer, since you’re not black, but you’ll get there in a couple years. Thankfully, I’ll be retired by then.”

  “Why don’t you retire now? You’re old enough, aren’t you?”

  He scoffed at her. “There’s something you should understand, Mann. We weren’t put on this case together because we like each other, or should.”

  “Why were we, then?”

  “Not sure. I don’t make those decisions. Just realize that this case takes precedence over your feminist BS. I’m not here to make you feel better about yourself or your gender or stroke your self-esteem. I’m here to solve this case. To find the guy who did this today.”

  “Okay, let’s solve it, then.” She was ready to get to business, her disgust of his personality eclipsed by excitement over the job she loved. “What’s the motive? Nothing was stolen. It was ... personal, somehow.”

  Bill took a long drink of his juice and sighed as he set it down. “All the evidence we have so far, yeah, maybe it’s personal, but we don’t know exactly what or why, so it’s useless to discuss it. But you’re right, it wasn’t just some random killing.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Continue.”

  “He got past security downstairs, okay? No telling how with those morons that work those desks. We’re not going to find anything on those surveillance films, if they were even on. It was late and dark. I don’t think we’ll be able to really see anything.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “We’re going to check out this guy, this Russell, and see what his friends in the TV business know, see if he made any enemies or had the opportunity to make enemies. But the entertainment industry isn’t much better than the mob, so we’ll probably get an earful of possibilities and names. But we won’t come up with anything.”

  Valerie shook her head at him. “That’s positive.”

  “It’s pretty freakin’ realistic. Just wait and see. We might get lucky, but this case will just die on the vine. Most of them do around here. Order something to eat. With all the useless research you’re going to be doing today, you’ll need the energy.”

  Valerie peered at Bill Young. She realized she was wrong before. She really did hate him.

  -----

  Marcus slammed the door behind him as he walked into his house. Basketball practice had been a bitch. The coach yelled at him for ten minutes, in front of the whole team, about getting into a fight with that hippie boy. Then he made Marcus run thirty suicides.

  He cursed his coach, that Richard asshole, and threw his books down on the first available blank space on the floor in the living room.

  He felt like he could kill someone.

  Walking into the kitchen, he saw his mother standing over the sink rinsing dishes. “Hey, baby,” she said.

  “Hey, momma,” he spent a moment to admire his mother. She was still a beautiful black woman, even after the years of working her butt off as a single mom. He missed those days. He didn’t know why she had to marry such a jerk and move them away from his friends and out to honky-ville.

  Marcus also hated his stepfather. There were several reasons for this. First, Steven Richter was a complete asshole. Marcus didn’t know whether the man was born like that or learned it in the Army or both, but it was reality just the same. Steven spoke in lectures, yelling about anything and everything. He had been an Army sergeant, Ranger memorabilia was all over the house, and he seemed to feel Marcus was one of his recruits.

  Second, Steven thought he could act like a father and get away with it. Marcus’ father lived across the world in L.A., and Marcus didn’t get to see much of him. A phone call or letter here or there, maybe. Steven was a sanctimonious, hypocritical bastard that Marcus only tolerated because his mother, for some reason or another, loved the man and this house out here in east bumble.

  Finally, Marcus couldn’t understand how an attractive, intelligent, strong, and loving African-American woman could marry a white man. Marcus was realistic enough to understand that it was hard to find a good black man these days, but he would rather his mother be single than with a white asshole like this. He wasn’t even a Democrat.

  And so here he was, one of the few black kids in a white school. All the coaches introduced themselves to him and then asked about his grades. Marcus knew what they wanted from him: someone “athletic” on their team, dunk the ball or get a touchdown, win some games and get more money from the boosters.

  Even though they all cheered, he felt used. Buzzwords like self-esteem or opportunity were foreign to him. He performed for the white establishment, and he hated it.

  His mother, Marilyn, was being used, too. The white man had a pretty black girl to take to parties so they could celebrate diversity and feel better when they passed the poor black homeless man on the street or the poor black woman cleaning their office at barely minimum wage. He could imagine they made nigger jokes in the bathroom, but they could claim Marilyn Richter as their friend - weren’t they progressive?

  Marcus and his mother were not people here. They were tokens to be tolerated, and he despised it all.

  “Is Steven gonna be working late tonight?” he asked. He hoped.

  Marilyn looked over her shoulder at the oven clock. “He should be home any minute now. Go get ready for dinner. Don’t forget your books.” He sighed and strode back through the living room, grabbing his bag before ascending the stairs.

  He had his headphones on, listening to his music ten minutes later, when the door to his room burst open without any notice, and Steven stood there in the doorway. Steven motioned for him to take off the headphones. Marcus ignored him, so his stepfather strolled over and yanked the headphones off his head.

  “Get that shit off when I’m talking to you,” Steven said when Marcus could finally hear him. “Now what the hell is wrong with you?”

  Marcus only shrugged and glared at the man.

  “Your coach calls me – at work, mind you – and tells me you got in a fight today, and you’ll probably get suspended. Suspended!” Steven threw the headphones to the ground.

  “Careful! You’ll break ...”

  “You see, that’s your problem. You only care about your ghetto music and your Xbox. That shit will all rot your brain. Dammit, Marcus, you might not be able to play in the next game!” Steven sighed. “You got opportunities you’re wasting, son, and you need to get it all together.”

  Marcus scowled but didn’t answer.

  “Come on downstairs. Your momma says dinner is ready.” He spun on a heel and left.

  After watching his stepfather go, Marcus took his time changing into a clean shirt. His momma liked for him to come to dinner with a clean shirt. Before he went downstairs, however, he wondered how upset he would be if his stepfather were ever killed, shot in the head a couple times. He didn’t think he would feel too bad. He could imagine doing it, in fact.

  Chapter 3

  Matt’s voice was gone, and he was soaked with sweat again, now with chills causing his body to shudder. The covers spilled around his waist in a damp heap. The room was dark, but it was his room, the middle of the night.

  Another dream. What is happening to me?

  An image filled his head in a flash, an image of a woman, a naked woman. She swayed to music he couldn’t hear. Then the man reappeared, the killer. She was in danger, Matt knew. Both aroused and horrified, he couldn’t breathe for a moment in the dream, or was it a nightmare? This dream made two nights in a row. He was officially scared, remembering color in the dream. Who dreamt in color?

  Matt walked to the bathroo
m again but this time spun the knob in the shower. The water heated up, and he adjusted the temperature. He stripped down and stepped in the shower, trying to get warm. After a few minutes, the chills subsided, weakening, but the image of the woman stayed with him. She was in danger. He didn’t know how he knew. But she was. That thought haunted him the next few hours until he went down for breakfast.

  He could not imagine a more caring mother than Alice Walker. She woke early and made him a hot breakfast every day. She was there at the house when he left for school and there when he returned. Every evening she prepared an elaborate meal for Matt and his father, Jim, and they would all sit and eat. Sometimes his mother would wonder aloud why Matt was so small and thin, but she always laughed it off and told him that one day he would still look young while all his friends grew old and flabby.

  Matt did not have many friends, however. His father always changed jobs or was transferred by the time Matt could get comfortable. The family never stayed in a place for more than a year, and it was difficult to make friends.

  He sat down at the table, his eyes heavy, and his mother placed hot scrambled eggs, toast, and a bowl of fruit in front of him. He took a deep breath and began to eat.

  “I need to talk to you for a second about something, buddy,” his mother said.

  “Huh?” He stabbed a strawberry and put it in his mouth.

  “Well, I heard yesterday about a fight down at school.” His mother dried her hands on her apron. “And I heard it was that friend of yours.”

  “Oh, that. You mean Richard?”

  She nodded. “I heard he got suspended for a day or something.”

  “Yeah, that’s what happens when you get in a fight at school. What’s the deal?”

  His mother sat across from him. “I’m worried about you, that’s the deal. I’m worried about who you’re hanging out with.”