Breaking Point_Kindle Serial

by Aric Davis

  Van Endel shoveled lasagna into his mouth, faking ravenous gusto like a man in a Prego commercial on the forty-fifth take. He’d been full ever since the Big Max earlier in the day, and the aroma of the meatball lasagna that Lex had made was more nauseating than it was mouthwatering. For all Van Endel knew, the dish was amazing; he just knew that it wasn’t right now, at least not for him. Lex was on her second slice, and for a neglected wife seemed to be in high spirits. She’d been shopping, and there was a stack of children’s clothes on the table, “clothes suitable for either a boy or a girl,” as Lex had told him twice.

  She filled him in on the outfits while she scarfed pasta, breaking the routine of shoveling ricotta, meat, and noodles into her mouth by telling him about jumpers, onesies, and everything else about baby couture that he’d never wondered about. Her behavior was almost as troubling as his upset stomach; this was the third pregnancy in a row that Lex had gone shopping like this for, and the two other pregnancies had ended shortly afterward. Van Endel didn’t think there was any real connection there, but he did wonder if Lex wasn’t feeling well and perhaps found it easier to ignore the discomfort than to get bad news from her doctor.

  “Dick, are you even listening?” Lex asked, making Van Endel snap up from his plate. “I asked how your day was. God knows you’re sick of hearing about mine.”

  “I heard you,” lied Van Endel. “I was just enjoying my food. Today was OK. Not good, but OK. We still don’t have any leads, and I have a feeling my time as a detective will be over soon if we don’t catch a break.”

  “And you’re sad about that?” Lex asked him, incredulous. “You got three hours of sleep last night, tops. For all I know, you didn’t catch a wink. This is burning the candle on more ends than it even has, and you know it. Not to mention this is no schedule to be dealing with a newborn. When this baby comes, I’m going to need you to help, and I’m probably not going to be nice about it if you can’t.”

  “Lex, you know I’ll be around,” said Van Endel, guarding his true feelings on the matter. A bitter, cruel part of him wanted to tell her that there wasn’t going to be a baby, and the sooner they both acknowledged that, the better off they’d both be. He hated himself for thinking it, but her expanding waistline was the elephant in the room, and no one was talking about it.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Lex, and Van Endel felt his back stiffen reflexively. “You’re scared to be a father.” Van Endel did his best not to let the relief that she didn’t actually know what he was thinking show on his face. “Dick, you’re going to be fine. Let this detective thing run its course, and then just enjoy the family we’re about to be. There’s always going to be time for a promotion later. You don’t need to force an odd happenstance on a career that you enjoy and pays you well.” She slapped the table, maybe playfully, maybe angrily. A mystery. “Just be here for us, be here for me, be here for our family. It’s all I ask.” Van Endel stared at her blankly. Does the shooter have a family?

  Ken woke up at the table. His nerves were shattered from a day of shaking fries, talking to the fuzz, and reliving the scene of a very violent crime. Instinctively, his hand went to the bullet. He felt it in his pocket, a familiar lump that it was hard to believe he’d ever gone without. He turned to look at the clock and saw that it was quarter to nine. Ken went into superspeed mode. He stuffed the revolver into a pocket that wasn’t there, and it fell on the floor, a temporary casualty of no pants. Someone barked a protest to the unexpected noise, most likely the downstairs neighbor, and Ken picked the pistol back up and laid it on the table. He walked to the bedroom, trying to act like he wasn’t in a rush, but was unable to fool even himself. Finally there, he was dressed in moments, the same outfit from the day before.

  Ken filled his left pocket with bullets and his right with the revolver. The magic bullet found its place in a rear pocket. He walked to the car, popped the sticker onto the plate, and climbed on in. The engine agreed that it was time to go, and Ken left the apartment on wheels that felt all too apt to slip, to betray him accidentally to some unseen traffic cop. He passed the McDonald’s where he worked and three other fast-food chains. He passed a litany of strip malls and other ugly growths of too-quick suburban expansion, numerous doomed-to-fail pizza joints. He rolled into the lot of the grocery store as the lights died. Ken smacked the wheel, an unfortunate victim of his oversleeping. “Fuck. Fuck!”

  There were three cars in the lot, and Ken watched as a sexless shadow wearing a ball cap and an apron walked to one of them, flipped on the lights, and drove off. He parked in the spot closest to the door and took the revolver from his pocket. He tried the door. It was locked. Ken reared back his right hand and smacked the glass door twice with the butt of the revolver. He smiled — the glass had spiderwebbed, but there was no alarm. Ken tapped the glass to make it fall apart around the door, then reached in, turned the deadbolt, and pulled the door open. Once inside, he locked the door again — there was no point in taking chances. It was time to work.

  Ken walked heel to toe through the store, his movements as quiet as he was able to make them. There was a sound in the distance — someone moving a table, maybe — then it happened again. Ken held the pistol an arm’s length from his body, the gun up and the sights aligned with his eyes. The table noise happened again, then again. He was passing the cleaned-out checkout lanes of the closed grocery store when a female voice ordered someone, “Fuck me!” Ken smirked despite himself and kept his eyes on the glowing office door ahead of him in the mostly shuttered store. The lights were off, save for the yellow emergency ones, and the lights from the office were like a beacon. Ken jogged to it, sure of his safety now, and sure of the reason for the two remaining cars in the lot.

  Ken turned the knob on the office door slowly, then swung it open and let it latch behind him. The man bent over the desk in front of him didn’t notice, but the woman under him did, craning her neck up at the unexpected noise. She shrieked, then stopped as Ken leveled the gun's sight to her forehead. “Shut the fuck up,” he said, and the man who had been astride her dismounted.

  “You need to leave,” said the man, who was in his early twenties and still packing high school muscles and no common sense. Ken shot him in the face, and the man dropped to a knee, teetered, and fell. The third eye in his forehead pumped blood; Ken was entranced by it. The woman’s shrieking brought him back to earth, back to the grocery store. She was trying to get off the desk and pull on a pair of blue slacks at the same time; neither thing was going well. Seeing her so weak made Ken’s eyes bulge, and his dick followed suit. “Lay down, bitch,” he said as he kept the revolver on her. Her eyes went from him to the gun. Ken unzipped his pants to release the denim's pressure. Pre-come was draining from his cock, and he couldn’t remember ever having been this horny before.

  Their thighs rubbed together as Ken mounted her. Tears were streaming from the woman’s eyes. She was pathetic. He was rubbing against her, his mind working on autopilot. When she brought her knee up under his balls, it didn’t even register at first as pain, and then fireworks erupted behind Ken’s eyes and he fell from her. His groin was on fire, lust had turned to pain. The woman was off the table, standing next to him, shaking her pants off and moving to the door. She wasn’t concerned about preserving some false sense of dignity; she wanted to escape. Ken forced himself to his feet as she scrabbled at the office doorknob.

  “Stop,” said Ken. “Stop right now.”

  EPISODE 3

  A ship’s bell woke Van Endel from his slumber on the couch.By the time he was all the way awake, he realized that it was actually the phone, and that for a little bit there he really had thought that he was hunting a shark with Quint and Brody aboard the Orca. He was off the couch quickly, making it to the phone just in time for Lex to wake up and close the bedroom door. He gave a look to the clock over the stove as he grabbed the handset. It was just past five a.m. “Hello?”

  “Dick, it’s Phil,” said Nelson. “We got a scene,
same neck of the woods, and I got no details. I’m on my way, so be ready in ten, got it?”

  Nelson hung up as Van Endel managed to say, “Will do.” He set the handset back in the body of the phone and then walked to the bathroom. When he’d gone to bed the night prior, he hadn’t thought that it would be possible to be any more tired. Now he realized that he had been very wrong.

  Van Endel showered quickly, barely fighting off the urge to sit, maybe even lie down, and just let the water run over him. He shut off the water while it was still getting hot, toweled off, and walked back to the living room, where he’d been camping out. Thank God I got ready last night. Van Endel slipped into the boxer shorts, undershirt, and socks that he’d laid out the night before, then got back into the black suit. It had looked a little rough off the hanger two days prior; now it was starting to look more like something Van Endel had picked up at a thrift store for a postprison job interview.

  Avoiding mirrors and trying not to think about coffee, Van Endel walked outside and locked the door. Nelson was there five minutes later, the lit cherry of a cigarette floating in the windshield. Van Endel walked to the car and got in. Nelson backed out and stuck the car in drive, then began to explain.

  “Shoot-’em-up at a grocery store,” said Nelson. “Same neck of the woods, so probably our guy.” Nelson yawned smoke into a closed fist. “I wish I had more, but there wasn’t anybody on scene when the call came in. Dispatch went right from a 911 call to buzzing me. I don’t think we’ll be first on the scene — I’m sure there was at least one uniform closer — but it won’t be like the last one either.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “That’s the weird thing,” said Nelson. “Dispatch made it sound like whatever happened went down last night when they were closing up the store, and got spotted this morning.”

  “That doesn’t sound like our guy at all,” said Van Endel. “When he starts breaking toys, he breaks them all.”

  “I thought the same thing, but what else could it be?” Nelson asked, clearly not looking for a real answer. “I mean, seriously, fuck me if we’ve got two of these assholes running around. We’re not even close on the one.” Nelson flicked his butt out the window and then rolled it back up with the crank. “I say we just hope for the best, Dicky-Boy, and maybe we’ll get lucky. If this is our guy, maybe he finally fucked up.” They sat in silence for ten minutes, the highway bare save for a few sets of lights dancing on the opposite side of the road. Finally Nelson pulled off and took a right from the ramp, and they saw flashing lights.

  Nelson parked and they got out, walking to the pair of marked cars that sat outside the grocery store. Nelson and Van Endel flashed badges at an amped-up uniform. He was younger than Van Endel and a man whom neither of them recognized. “This scene secure?” Nelson asked, and the young guy said, “Cleared it myself. Everything looked like it happened around the office at the front of the store, there’s—”

  “I’ll figure that out myself, kid,” said Nelson. “Nobody but the ME gets in unless I say so, all right?”

  The kid nodded, and Van Endel and Nelson walked around him, stopping briefly to admire the broken glass in the door. “After hours,” said Van Endel, and Nelson said, “Yep.” They walked through the foyer. The place was lit up like it was open for business. “You think Junior out there turned on the lights?” Nelson asked. “We can ask, but I guarantee he did.”

  “You want me to shut them off?” Van Endel asked, and Nelson shook his head. “No, I don’t think it would do us much good. I just think we should keep in mind that when our boy walked through here, he did so in the dark.” Nelson pointed up at an unlit yellow bulb. “Those are what he walked in on. Bet.”

  “No argument from me,” said Van Endel, the office in sight. The door had been left open, the glass window in the upper half shattered. Van Endel let Nelson walk in first, and the older detective stopped in the door, finally letting Van Endel in after about thirty seconds of observation. It was easy to tell what had given Nelson pause. This was a shooting, but everything else was different.

  A half-dressed dead man lay on his side across the room. A pair of pants hung off of one of his ankles, and a condom hung off of his dick. Even from their position in the doorway, it was obvious that he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. The pool of blood was telling in its own right, the hole in his forehead gave confirmation, and the bits of skull and brain on the floor were an unnecessary exclamation point. Behind him, on top of a table, were two pairs of shoes, oddly neat when compared with the rest of the room. On the floor next to him was another pair of pants, and, judging by the half-naked woman lying dead on the opposite side of the room, Van Endel and Nelson figured them to be hers.

  The woman was lying in the same state of undress as the man, fully clothed across the torso, nude except for socks below. She lay in a pool of blood as well, but hers was smaller than the man’s and there was no visible damage to her head or face. Van Endel crossed the room to her, and Nelson with him, neither of them speaking. Van Endel knelt next to her and saw that she’d been shot through the chest; the look on her face told him all he needed to know about the amount of pain she was in when she died.

  “Floor safe,” said Nelson, pointing at a partially raised tile. Van Endel watched him poke a pen in and then lift the door of it. The thing matched the rest of the floor perfectly. “This may not surprise you, Dick, but this safe is empty. Not even a crumb.” Nelson stood, surveyed the room again, and shook his head. “I know I probably sound like a recording at this point, but this is a robbery. Not to mention, we have no idea of when exactly these two bought it. For all we know, our boy could have been planning on a simple B and E. I don’t even think we can associate this with the other crimes until the ME gets here.”

  As if on cue, a young African American man walked into the room. He had a camera around his neck, a case under his arm, and a name tag pinned to his jacket. Van Endel recognized him immediately: it was the guy from the hardware store with the funny name.

  “Tracy, great to see you,” said Nelson, and Tracy flashed them a wall of pearly whites. “Sorry about the mess,” continued Nelson. “My parties keep getting out of hand. You know how it is. Hey, where’s Lorne?”

  “My boss assigned me to this one,” said Tracy as he walked to the man. “Gave me a compact little speech about how I was ready to handle this thing on my own and not to let him down, that sort of thing.” Tracy’s grin widened. “We’ll see if he feels similar the next time we get an all-daytime crime spree. I have a feeling he’ll think I still need his watchful eyes glowering over me as I use all of the equipment he doesn’t know how to use.” Tracy sat on the floor next to Van Endel and opened the case he’d had under his arm. It looked like a portable lab to Van Endel.

  “I’m going to swab her for semen,” said Tracy. “I think it’s our best bet to determine rape. I’ll look at physical evidence as well, but if they were doing what it looks like they were doing when your guy came in, it’s going to be harder to determine injury.” He shrugged. “Either way, though, it will let us know if your guy has more than just murder on his ticket.”

  “How long on bullets?” Nelson asked. “I want to know ASAP if this was the guy from Ace and the McDonald’s. Not sure if you saw it or not, but there’s an empty floor safe over here, and I’d take Vegas odds that as soon as she got that thing opened, he punched her ticket. Maybe he had some fun too, who knows, but I think our guy cared a lot more about money than he did about a piece of ass.”

  “I can have ballistics later today, most likely,” said Tracy. “Either of you guys check her purse over there? It’s hanging on the back of that chair.” Van Endel walked to the bag as Tracy began taking pictures, snapping the woman, the man, and the room. Van Endel opened the zipper on the purse and started digging. Of interest was a cigarette pack containing three Marlboros, two joints, and a bullet of what was most likely cocaine. Aside from the cigarette pack, Van Endel found a lighter, tampons, condoms, a
nd a wallet. He opened the wallet and saw a picture of a woman smiling with two kids, definitely the woman on the floor, and then turned to her license. “Got a name: Sharon Emerson,” said Van Endel to the room. “She’s got some dope and some white powder in a plastic bag.” Van Endel reopened the wallet; eighty dollars in assorted bills sat inside, along with a MasterCard and a Diners Club card. “Whoever our robber is, he’s lazy,” said Van Endel.

  “How do you mean?” Nelson asked.

  “He didn’t take the money out of this purse, and I don’t think a single one of us believes he was in much of a rush.” Van Endel left everything from the bag on the table; he could see Tracy on the floor, swabbing the inside of the condom and then dropping it into a test tube. He sealed it with a rubber stopper, and both he and Van Endel headed back to the woman.

  “Were the lights on when you guys got in here?” Tracy asked, and Nelson said, “Yes.” Tracy looked around the room and then pointed to the door. “It’s by the door,” said Tracy as he stuck the test tube into the case and started digging. “Will one of you guys make yourself useful and hit the lights?” Van Endel walked to the door and flipped the switch. The room plunged into darkness. Tracy pushed the button on a flashlight and shone it on the floor to give Van Endel a path back to them. He followed the beam, and when he was there, Nelson asked, “So, are we going to get out the Ouija board?”

  “Nope, I’ve got something better,” said Tracy as he handed over the light to Nelson. “Keep that on me for a minute.” Nelson muttered something under his breath, and Tracy appeared out of the shadows of the box with a small black bar and a spray bottle. “Now shine it on her,” he said, and Nelson did. Tracy sprayed the woman’s thighs with whatever was in the spray bottle, and Nelson said, “Are you making this up as you go?”