9 More Killer Thrillers

by Russell Blake

  Weber and his deputies walked into the grocery store and almost immediately something came sailing down from the open sliding glass window of the manager's office, which was located on a mezzanine above the main floor. The object, a metal stapler, landed five feet in front of Weber.

  “Attention all shoppers, beware of falling prices, and falling staplers!” The announcement over the store’s public address system was followed by laughter and then the sound of sobbing.

  Weber looked up towards the window and called out, “Frank? What are you doing up there?”

  The store's manager, Frank Harrelson, was a pallid-faced nervous little man who had always reminded Weber of a walking corpse. Whatever personal crisis he was going through, he seemed more agitated than Weber had ever seen him when he shouted, “Look out below! Falling telephones!” A moment later the heavy black telephone from Harrelson's desk hit the floor and shattered into a dozen pieces. Weber and his deputies jumped out of the way to avoid being hit by the flying debris. It was quickly followed by a calculator, and then a coffee cup.

  “Frank, what the hell are you doing?” Weber shouted. “Stop throwing things at me like that! You're starting to piss me off!”

  “Attention all shoppers,” Harrelson replied over the PA system, “The store is no longer open for business. We are closing forever today. Who cares? I don't care, do you care?”

  “What the hell is with that guy?” Buz asked. “I mean, he's always been weird, but not like this.”

  “I don't know,” Weber said. “But something set him off, and maybe I have an idea what it is. You guys stay here and keep an eye on him. I'll be right back.”

  He walked back outside and found Stacy Cooper holding court over the rest of the store's employees and curious shoppers who were hanging around to see what would happen next.

  “Do you have Julie Smith's phone number?” Weber asked her.

  “I don't remember it, but it's programmed into my cell phone,” she told him.

  “Would you call her, please?”

  Stacy pulled her phone out of the dark blue smock all Thriftway employees wore, flipped it open and pushed a button, then handed the telephone to the sheriff. Weber held the phone and listened to it ring several times, and then it switched to voicemail. Julie Smith’s recorded voice apologized for missing his call and asked him to please leave a message and promised she would call back as soon as possible.

  “Julie? This is Sheriff Weber. I need you to call me back as soon as you get this message. It's really important.” Weber left her his cell phone number, then closed the phone and handed it back to Stacy.

  “What happens next?” Stacy asked him.

  “Hell, I don't know,” Weber told her. “Sooner or later he's got to run out of things to throw at us, or maybe he’ll fall asleep.”

  “Well, you be careful. You do know he’s got a gun in there?”

  “Frank has a gun?”

  “Sure he does. He keeps it in his desk drawer in case of a robbery.”

  In his wildest dreams, Weber couldn’t picture the nervous little storekeeper confronting a robber with gun in hand, but it was turning into one of those weeks already, and it wasn’t even noon on Monday yet.

  He walked back into the store, where Frank Harrelson was now singing a terrible rendition the old Hank Williams song I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry over the public address system.

  ***

  An hour had passed and Julie Smith hadn't called back. Weber had started up the stairs toward the office, only to find it barricaded by a large old wooden office desk Harrelson had pushed to the head of the stairs and piled high with stacks of paper towels, mops, brooms, and other assorted supplies. Several times he had tried to communicate with the store manager, but each attempt resulted in more items being thrown out the window and more inane announcements over the PA system.

  Weber and Buz were sitting on plastic lawn chairs just out of range of Harrelson's missiles, drinking sodas from the cooler and munching on potato chips. Dolan Reed had joined them and Weber had watched the two men carefully to see if there were going to be any more fireworks like there had been in the café. But they appeared to have resolved their differences, and while they were not as openly friendly as they usually were, they seemed to be getting along, at least on a professional basis.

  “So what’s with old Frank?” Dolan asked. “He always been a fussbudget, but he seemed like he was afraid of his own shadow.”

  “I don’t know about his shadow,” Buz said. “But I know he’s terrified of his wife and father-in-law.”

  Bridget Harrelson was a large, ill-tempered woman who spent most of her waking hours perched on a blue velour sofa watching daytime talk shows and evening reality programs on the giant screen television that dominated one wall of her living room. Not so much because she enjoyed the broadcasts, but because she delighted in telling the forlorn people whining about their dysfunctional lives on the talk shows what losers they were, and cheering every time a reality show contestant lost and had to go home.

  Bridget seldom moved from the couch and almost never left the house, except for a monthly foray to the Thriftway that her father owned and her husband managed. Those expeditions usually resulted in at least one employee quitting in tears and others cowering as she loudly berated them for anything from what she perceived as their lack of customer service, to their failure to accomplish more with their lives than a dead end job in a small town grocery store.

  They say that the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree, and Anthony Wilson, Bridget’s father, seemed to prove that old axiom true. He was even larger than his daughter, with an even worse disposition. The main difference between the two was that Wilson scorned the talk and reality television shows his daughter so loved. He was addicted to old television westerns and had a library of both popular and obscure programs on tape and DVD. Maverick, Cheyenne, The High Chaparral, Rawhide, Wagon Train, The Rebel, Sugarfoot, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Laramie, Bonanza, The Virginian, The Big Valley… Anthony had them all and more. But unlike his daughter, who hated everybody she saw on television, Anthony adored his cowboy heroes and in his mind he saw himself as one of them.

  His wardrobe consisted entirely of comfort-fit blue jeans topped by fringed cowboy shirts with pearl buttons. Anthony owned a collection of cowboy boots made from exotic materials such as rattlesnake and ostrich skin, all of which has been custom made with Velcro-closed slits up the back to accommodate his thick legs and ankles.

  Also, unlike his daughter, Anthony never left his spacious log home, which was decorated with enough old saddles, six guns, lariats, branding irons, and other Old West memorabilia to fill a small museum. Instead, he frequently picked up his custom telephone, made from a steer horn, to demand a full report on the day’s sales, or to summon his son-in-law to the house to submit to a long harangue about how if it were not for Anthony’s love for his only child, Frank would be standing in a bread line somewhere waiting for a handout.

  Like many people who had been born into money and never worked a day in their lives, Anthony Wilson looked down on the hired help, and to him that’s what Frank Harrelson was, no more than hired help. His grandfather had left a modest fortune, a large chunk of which Anthony’s father had squandered on bad real estate investments and a series of ex-wives. Anthony’s own wife had reduced what was left by half in the divorce settlement she received before disappearing, never to return to Big Lake and her one attempt at motherhood.

  Frank Harrelson, a man with a roving eye and many faults, had two redeeming qualities – he was an excellent businessman who could turn a nickel into a dollar, and he never put his fingers in the cookie jar. Up a female employee’s skirt or down her blouse, yes, but never in the cookie jar. If it were not for Frank, Anthony and Bridget would have been bankrupt years before, but neither was willing to admit that and Frank suffered their abuse in silence being too afraid of losing his job as manager of the Thriftway, and his access to a series of female employees will
ing to play footsie in exchange for a decent paying job with health care benefits.

  But all that had changed when Julie Smith had come to work at the Thriftway. A tall, thin girl with mousy brown hair, thick plastic framed eyeglasses and a pronounced overbite, Julie had stolen Frank’s heart by the time the ink had dried on her employment application. She had just graduated from Big Lake High School and had never had a boyfriend, or even a date. With no experience with the opposite sex and little self-confidence, it had not taken long for her to submit to the older man’s advances. Their first time had been in the cramped storeroom one night after the store had closed, but to Julie it seemed like the bridal suite of the fanciest hotel in some exciting, far off city like New York or London.

  But this was no quick slam bam conquest for Frank. At age 46, he was amazed to discover that he had fallen completely head over heels in love with the young woman and wanted her at his side forever. As long as his wife or father-in-law never got word of the affair.

  “Well, I’m getting tired of sitting here,” Buz said, draining his soda and crumpling the can in his hand. “If we can’t talk him out of there, maybe we should let Wyatt Earp shoot him down after all.”

  “Speaking of Wyatt, where did he go?” Weber asked, standing up to look around. It took him a minute, but he eventually spied his deputy stretched out in a prone position two aisles away, eye glued to a pair of binoculars. His AR-15 lay close by his side.

  “You okay over there, Wyatt?”

  “10-4, Sheriff. I don’t have the target in site at present, but he keeps moving around. I’m ready the minute you give me the green light.”

  “Wyatt, I told you, no shooting, remember? Frank’s just having a meltdown. He’ll come down out of there eventually.”

  “10-4, Sheriff. But if you need me to lead an assault, I’m ready.”

  “Yeah, well let’s hold off on that for now, okay?”

  Seeing movement down below, Frank Harrelson appeared in the window and threw a box of rubber bands at Weber, then launched into a refrain of The Old Gray Mare over the public address system.

  “Well, the good news is that maybe he’s out of heavy stuff to throw at us and he’s down to nonlethal office supplies,” Dolan said.

  “Let’s hope he keeps it that way,” Weber said. “Don’t forget, he’s supposed to have a gun up there.”

  “I prefer dodging staplers and calculators to lead,” Buz agreed, “but I do think his singing is getting worse.”

  They were interrupted by Tommy calling on the radio from his position at the front door. “Jimmy? I’ve got Julie Smith out here.”

  “Send her in,” Weber told him. A moment later, Julie made her way into the store, stepping carefully over the debris of office equipment and supplies that Harrelson had thrown from above.

  Weber had always thought of Julie Smith as an insecure young woman who had settled for whatever attention she could get from Frank Harrelson because she believed that he was the best she could hope for. But he noticed something different about her as she joined the sheriff and his deputies. She walked a little more erect, her eyes weren’t downcast, and there seemed to be a little steel in her backbone. It was subtle, but it was there.

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff, I had my phone turned off because I didn’t want Frank calling me,” she told Weber. “I just got your message.”

  Even though they had been involved in an affair for at least a year, Weber had never heard Julie refer to her boss as anything but Mr. Harrelson, never his first name. Yes, something was definitely different.

  “Oh my God, what has he done?” Julie asked, looking at the mess around her.

  “He’s really lost it,” Weber told her. “Do you have any idea what set him off, Julie?”

  Before she could answer, Frank Harrelson popped his head out the office window. “Julie? Is that you? You came back!”

  “I’m here, Frank. Come down so we can talk.”

  “I’m coming, Julie. I’m coming!”

  “Frank, when you come down, I need to see your hands. I know you’ve got a gun up there,” Weber told him, but Harrelson didn’t answer. The love of his life was waiting for him down below. He scampered over the obstacle he had built at the top of the stairs like a monkey after a stalk of bananas, tripping and falling halfway down, but he quickly regained his feet and rushed to Julie’s side. Weber was relieved to see that the man wasn’t armed, but he gave Harrelson a quick pat down, just to be sure. Or at least the best pat down he could do with the two star-crossed lovers locked in a tight embrace.

  “I’m so sorry,” Harrelson was telling Julie. “We’ll work it out. All that matters is that you came back to me!”

  “I’m back, but it can’t be the way it has been, Frank. Something needs to change.”

  The older man was making assurances of change and promising his eternal love. Although Weber doubted a man like Frank Harrelson could really change for very long, he was relieved that at least the current crisis was over. Or so he thought.

  He should have known better.

  There was a loud commotion at the front of the store and an obviously enraged Bridget Harrelson came huffing and puffing her way into the store, with young deputy Tommy Frost hanging onto her arm like a tiny dog with its teeth locked onto someone’s pants cuff, trying in vain to stop them. Poor Tommy wasn’t having much success.

  “Where is that whore?” Bridget screeched. “When I get my hands on her, I’m going to rip every hair out of her head! There you are!” Seeing Julie, she charged forward, with Tommy in tow.

  Julie ducked behind Harrelson and said, “Stop her, Sheriff. She’s gonna kill me!”

  “Let me at her,” Bridget demanded, trying to muscle her way past Dolan and Buz, who were doing their best to hold her back. “You home wrecking little slut. How dare you seduce my husband?”

  Julie was crying and trembling as she cowered behind Harrelson for protection.

  Hearing the voices of his wife and mistress at the same time, Frank Harrelson’s worst fears were realized. But he was too far gone to care. “Go away, Bridget, it’s all over between us.”

  “Oh, you’re right. It’s over! When I get done with the two of you, you’ll both wish you were dead,” bellowed Bridget, throwing herself against Buz and Dolan’s arms in a vain attempt to get to her husband and Julie. Weber wasn’t sure how much longer his deputies could hold out against 350 pounds of hate-filled, scorned woman.

  Frank Harrelson had his Julie back and he didn’t care that Bridget was doing her best to scratch Buz Carelton’s eyes out, while Dolan and Tommy tried to fit handcuffs around her flabby wrists. Bridget screamed even louder and fought harder to reach the couple. Somehow Dolan and Buz managed to get her onto the floor and, using two sets of handcuffs linked together, secured her arms behind her. Oblivious to what was happening around them, Frank and Julie were locked in an embrace and cooing words of love to each other.

  Just when Weber thought the day couldn’t get any more bizarre, he heard Wyatt shout “Gun!” and turned to see an obese apparition from the Old West storming in the door, clad in a black cowboy-cut shirt with white fringes on the arms and white pearl buttons down the front. He was armed with a long barreled old single action thumb buster Colt revolver in his hand.

  “Where is that lyin’ cheatin’ son-of-a-bitch that done my baby girl wrong?” Anthony Wilson demanded to know.

  Weber drew his pistol and pointed it at the man. “Drop the gun!”

  “I mean you no harm,” Anthony told the sheriff, “but I aim to shoot that yellow-bellied dog down right where he stands.” He pointed the old gun at Frank. “There you are!”

  Seeing the gun in Anthony’s hand, Frank Harrelson did what was probably the only brave act of his entire life when he stepped forward and in front of Julie, shielding her with his own body.

  “Drop the gun!” Weber ordered again, but Anthony was lost in some Old West fantasy where honor mattered more than mortality, and he ignored the sheriff. “You c
an live or you can die. It’s your decision,” Weber told him.

  Anthony made his decision, thumbing back the hammer on the .44-40 Colt. The gun may have been an antique, but it was just as deadly as it had been when a long dead Texas outlaw named Dud Biggs had used it to rob the Waco stage and ended up with a bellyful of buckshot for his trouble.

  Weber’s front sight was centered on Anthony’s chest and his finger was tightening on the trigger when Wyatt’s rifle roared from close behind him and Anthony stumbled backward, the old Colt clattering to the store’s tile floor. He sank to his knees and then fell over backward.

  Weber was deafened by the rifle’s blast, but he yelled, “Hold your fire!” and stepped forward, his pistol trained on the man on the floor. He kicked Anthony’s gun away and knelt over the large man, seeing the splotch of blood on his stomach. Anthony was laying on his back, his eyes were open and he was blinking rapidly as he panted, trying hard to breathe.

  “Call an ambulance!” Weber shouted, trying to make himself heard over the bedlam behind him and the ringing in his ears.

  ***

  “He’s going to live,” Doctor Williams said as the MedEvac helicopter lifted off from the pad at Big Lake’s medical center. “But he’s damned lucky. If he weighed 150 pounds less he’d probably be dead right now. I think all that blubber deflected the bullet just enough to keep it from taking out anything he can’t live without.”

  “Yeah, well I guess that’s why we don’t see too many walruses dying of gunshot wounds around here,” Weber told him. “How about Bridget Harrelson?”

  “She’s fine. Or as fine as a woman her size can be. It wasn’t a heart attack, she just passed out when her father got shot. She was awake by the time the ambulance got her here. I could hear her cussing out the nurses all the way down the hall.”

  Weber walked back inside with the doctor, and sure enough, the minute they stepped inside, the sound of Bridget Harrelson’s loud voice greeted them.

  “I said I want a Doctor Pepper, you stupid twit! I’ve suffered a traumatic event and now I have to deal with this? Don’t you know anything about taking care of patients?”