Culprits

by Richard Brewer

  “Yeah,” T-Rod said. “Last month.”

  “The part I found most interesting was that he said you were Eel’s partner. Imagine my shock. Mr. Straight and Narrow living a life of crime. I got to thinking if our old buddy Parker’s in on this, he should be able to get us in on it too.”

  Fucking Carson and his big fucking mouth. Eel had paid the guy nicely for subpar work, making it clear that the dumbass was never to speak of the job or Estevez or Benny when it was over.

  “So T-Rod and me, we decided we’d pay you a visit, see how we might assist in your operations. I have to say, when we got here a couple of days ago, I was surprised to find you living in this dump. I thought with all the cash you were supposed to have, you’d have fixed it up into some kind of mansion.”

  “Obviously, your information is shit,” Benny said.

  “I don’t think it is. We go back, you and me. We were tight once.”

  That was a lie. They were never tight.

  “I know you,” Dolan went on. “You’re a planner, Parker. You’d know that the smart move would be to leave most of the cash untouched. When you’d made enough, you’d skip the country, start a new life somewhere with a new identity. I should have realized that from the start.”

  Benny couldn’t deny daydreaming of doing exactly that. But that’s all it had ever been, and while Dolan was right about using only the cash he needed to survive, he couldn’t be more wrong about what the remainder was intended for.

  “What I want to know is where you are stashing it while you wait for the right moment. The banks report that kind of stuff to the feds, so you’d have to hide it somewhere. Which got my mind whirling around again. Hell, I thought, why ask for work when we can have all your money for doing nothing?” He smiled. “Tell us where it is, and we’ll be on our way.”

  “A nice story. And even if it were true, why would I ever tell you?”

  “I’m asking nicely. I won’t do that again.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Dolan whipped up the Glock and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet slammed into Benny’s left arm, spinning him sideways out of the chair.

  Grimacing, Benny clamped his hand over the wound, then turned toward the kitchen, thinking he could make a run for the back door, but T-Rod was standing in the way.

  The chair at the other end of the table scrapped across the floor, and Dolan walked over. “Where’s the cash, Parker?”

  “Fuck off.”

  T-Rod kicked Benny in the stomach, knocking the air out of the man’s lungs.

  “Where?” Dolan asked.

  Chest heaving, Benny eked out, “Fuuuck…off.”

  Whether it was T-Rod’s plan or not, his next blow hit Benny in the head, and the world went dark.

  . . .Benny hit the floor of the bombed out factory a moment after the barrage of M4 rifle fire started. Bullets and chunks of bricks and mortar flew through the air, some debris smacking down on him, but most sailing over.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire,” he yelled into the radio.

  The pounding continued for another few seconds before stopping. Benny lay there for another beat, just to be sure, and then pushed up and looked around for Eva. He spotted her limp form on the ground a dozen feet away and rushed over.

  “Oh, God!”

  Her face and the top of her uniform were covered in blood that had come from a wound on the side of her neck, near the base of her skull. The kind of wound you never recovered from.

  “Open your eyes!” he yelled, not wanting to believe it. “Eva, open your eyes!” She wasn’t supposed to die. Neither of them was ever supposed to die.

  Footsteps ran into the room, then slammed to a stop a few feet away.

  “Is she…is she…?” Southside couldn’t get the last word out.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” T-Rod said.

  “It wasn’t me!” Dolan yelled. “I swear. It’s wasn’t me!”

  If the Army investigators ever discovered whose rifle fired the fatal bullet, they never released that information. Dolan and T-Rod received two-year sentences at Leavenworth for some minor charge Benny never bothered to learn. Ultimate blame for the incident was placed at Eva’s feet since she had been in charge of the squad. Benny and Southside were cleared of any wrongdoing and transferred back to the States. Though Benny had always planned to reenlist, as soon as his current commitment was up, he opted out.

  Three months later, Eel called.

  . . .Water hit Benny in the face.

  “Snap out of it, Parker.”

  Benny groaned, his arm and his head throbbing in pain. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He was sitting on one of the dining room chairs, though not at the table. Instead, he was in the kitchen, facing the back of the house, with Dolan and T-Rod standing before him.

  “It’s about time,” Dolan said.

  Benny glanced at his arm and saw that there was a blood-soaked dish rag tied around it.

  “We took a tour of your place while you were out. Afraid we kind of made a mess of the things, but, to be clear, that’s your fault for not telling us where the money is.”

  Past them, Benny could see the basement door. Though the padlock had been ripped off the wall, the heavy metal door itself was still closed.

  Dolan followed his gaze. “Yeah, we already guessed it’s through there. How about you tell me where the deadbolt keys are?”

  “Water,” Benny whispered.

  “Keys then water.”

  “Water…first.”

  Dolan frowned, but nodded at T-Rod, who reluctantly filled a plastic cup with water and gave it to Benny.

  Benny took his time lifting the cup to his lips and taking a drink, allowing the fog time to clear from his head.

  If he let them get downstairs, he knew it wouldn’t be long before they found the safe. And if he didn’t, they’d probably kill him, then spend as long as it took to break the door down themselves.

  But when you kept as much money around as he did, you prepared for situations like this.

  He lowered the glass and said, “Inside the sugar bowl.”

  Dolan spotted the white ceramic bowl on the counter and nodded at T-Rod. T-Rod dumped the contents on the counter. Hidden in the sugar were two keys on a ring.

  “See,” Dolan said, “that wasn’t hard.”

  T-Rod used the keys to unlock the deadbolts. When he swung open the door, cold air drifted into the kitchen.

  “Check it out,” Dolan said.

  T-Rod descended the stairs, quickly dropping out of sight. Benny could hear the thief moving around below.

  After about a minute, Dolan yelled down, “You find anything?”

  “Just shelves and junk,” T-Rod replied

  “He wouldn’t leave it sitting out in the open, dipshit. Look for hiding places.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  A few bangs and some scrapping sounds.

  “It could be anywhere,” T-Rod said.

  Dolan looked at Benny. “Parker, if you don’t want me to kill you right now, you should tell me where it is.”

  Benny allowed some faux doubt to cloud his eyes.

  Dolan smiled. “That’s right. No reason to be stupid.”

  Benny sighed, as if coming to an unavoidable conclusion. “Easier if-if I show you.”

  Dolan considered it, and nodded. “If you breathe wrong, it’ll be your last.” He manhandled Benny to his feet.

  “We’re coming down,” he yelled to T-Rod. He pushed Benny toward the doorway and motioned for him to go first.

  T-Rod was waiting at the bottom when they arrived. Benny took a step toward him and spit in the son of a bitch’s face.

  “Fuck!” T-Rod yelled. He wiped a hand over his eyes and snapped a hand out toward Benny’s shirt. But Dolan knocked it away before T-Rod could grab anything.

  “Rein it in,” Dolan said.

  Nostrils flaring, T-Rod said, “He just s
pit at me!”

  “Bigger picture, Rodriguez.”

  “Screw your bigger picture. He spit on me.”

  “Cool it!”

  T-Rod huffed and puffed for a few more seconds before relenting. “There’d better a lot of fucking cash, that’s all I gotta say.”

  “Which way, Parker?” Dolan said.

  Benny led them to the secret wall and slid it out of the way, revealing the safe.

  “Holy shit.”

  Dolan grinned ear to ear. “You are a smart man.”

  “I assume you want me to open it.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Looking appropriately resigned, Benny put one hand on the dial, and the other around the side of the safe for support it seemed. As he worked the combination, his other hand grasped the metal lever that hung against the side.

  After clicking the last number into place, he pulled the door open.

  “Oh, yeah!” T-Rod shouted, staring at the stacks of cash.

  Dolan seemed to have lost his voice, as he, too, stared, wide-eyed, into the safe.

  “How much?” T-Rod asked.

  “One point two million, give or take,” Benny said.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  The thieves took a step closer. That was what Benny had been waiting for.

  Boom went the Mossberg hidden above the safe in the beams, and down went Dolan and T-Rod.

  Benny staggering sideways, wincing from the noise.

  Turning back, he saw that T-Rod was down for the count, his face taking a direct hit, pulverizing it. Dolan, on the other hand, was on his knees, looking around. He had also been hit in the head, but the blast had caught him on the side, blowing off an ear, unfortunately leaving his skull intact.

  Benny saw the gun lying on the floor a moment before Dolan dove for it. He launched himself at the other man, hoping to pin the asshole down, but Dolan was able to grab the gun and begin to turn before Benny reached him. Their collision was underscored by a blast from the pistol. Benny’s momentum slammed Dolan’s face hard into the concrete.

  Benny yanked the gun away, and stuck the barrel against the back of Dolan’s head. Delivering the justice that was years delayed, he put a bullet into Dolan’s skull. Benny held his position for a moment, wanting to be sure it was truly over, and then slumped against the wall.

  As his adrenaline subsided, he began to feel a sharp pain in his torso. He carefully pulled up his shirt.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  He had thought the blood covering him had all been Dolan’s, but apparently not all of it.

  The bullet that had been fired when they crashed together had clipped him in the side. Fighting the pain, he reached around and felt his back, and discovered an exit wound. At least the bullet wasn’t still inside him.

  Leaning against the wall, knowing that if he went to a hospital, the sheriff’s office would be informed and a deputy would be sent to check the cabin. And that would be the end of Benny’s plan. He couldn’t let that happen.

  . . .Benny woke to darkness. He reached for his phone to check the time, but stopped moving the instant his side screamed in pain.

  Dolan and T-Rod.

  The money.

  The gunfire.

  Shit.

  Earlier, he’d patched himself up as best he could, taken a dose of the antibiotics from his med-kit, and then passed out.

  How long had he been asleep? Ten hours? A whole day? More?

  He carefully swung his legs off the mattress and rose to his feet, squeezing his eyes shut with each spike of pain. Once it was bearable, he picked up his phone.

  3:37 a.m.

  He’d been asleep for nearly eighteen hours.

  He checked his bandages. While there was a large circle of blood in the middle of the one on his torso, it wasn’t completely soaked. The bandage on his arm showed even less blood.

  He made his way to the kitchen and turned on the coffee. He was going to need it. A lot of it. Before he’d slept, he’d decided on a course of action.

  Though he hadn’t reached his monetary goal, what he’d already collected would have to be enough. He had a promise he’d made to himself, and he couldn’t risk something else happening before he could keep it.

  After redressing his wounds, and cleaning up as best he could, he grabbed his three largest duffel bags and headed into the basement.

  The smell of blood hit him the moment he opened the door. He did his best to ignore it as he stepped carefully around the carnage in front of the safe.

  In his impaired condition, it took him nearly a half hour to evenly distribute the cash among the bags, and another ten minutes to haul the duffels upstairs.

  By five thirty, he had Dolan’s truck packed and had returned for a final trip down the stairs. While Dolan was the closest to Benny’s size, T-Rod wasn’t that far off, and with his face already unrecognizable, he would serve Benny’s purpose best. Benny first removed all identification from both men, and then slipped his own wallet—in which he always carried one of his dog tags—into T-Rod’s pocket. He then doused both men in lighter fluid and set them ablaze. Eventually, investigators would probably figure out the ruse, but by then it wouldn’t matter.

  He waited by the truck until he was sure the cabin had caught before he drove away.

  Ten miles down the road, he stopped at a gas station and used an old pay phone to call 911 and reported seeing flames in the woods. No sense in burning the whole forest down.

  With that done, he headed east.

  . . .A few hours after he crossed the Mississippi River, the skin around his wound started feeling irritated. He hoped it was part of the healing process, but as he was driving through Ohio the next morning, he knew he had a problem. The redness was spreading. An infection. Maybe even blood poisoning.

  Great.

  Since stopping to see a doctor still wasn’t an option, he upped his intake of antibiotics, hoping that would do the job.

  His fever began outside Erie, Pennsylvania. He swallowed half a dozen aspirin and tried to ignore it. He thought about getting a room for the night when he reached Massachusetts, but he was so close now, he wanted to just press on.

  In those final hours, the pull of sleep grew stronger and stronger, but instead of winning the battle, the feeling scared him into a determination to keep going at all cost.

  By one a.m., he reached the suburbs, east of Boston.

  It took him a half hour to locate the house, an old one-story place on three acres that needed a little work.

  Though there was a gate at the end of the driveway, it was open. The lights at the house, however, were off. He idled at the side of the road, his face red from his fever, unsure what he should do.

  “I got you, Parker,” Eva said.

  She was suddenly sitting in the seat next to him.

  “I…got you, Norris.”

  She smiled. “You’re almost there.”

  “I know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I…I could have done…better.”

  It was only after she evaporated that he realized he should have ask her what to do.

  Maybe I should walk around and clear my head.

  But as he reached for the door handle, his mid-section screamed in pain. He pressed back against the seat, his breaths shallow and rapid. When the pain eased a little, he peeled back his shirt. The infection had nearly spread all the way across his stomach, and the area closest to his wound had turned black.

  “No coming back from this,” he mumbled.

  Taking a page out of Dolan’s book, he killed the truck’s lights, pulled onto the driveway, and stopped halfway to the house. He turned off the engine.

  He stared at the house, thinking of an alternate life, one in which he visited on happier occasions, with Eva at his side. One where everything was—

  He sucked in a deep breath.

  He’d started to nod off. He knew
what would happen if he did, and he still had work to do first.

  Fighting the pain, he leaned over and searched through Dolan’s glove compartment. As he’d hoped, there were a couple of pens. He grabbed one, and the owner’s manual for the truck. Ripping off the back cover, he turned it blank side up, and began to write.

  . . .Like most days, Sandra and Larry Norris were in the kitchen by six thirty a.m. While Sandra cooked oatmeal for their breakfast, Larry made lunch for their granddaughter and put it in a well-used paper bag.

  It was almost seven by the time they heard Megan coming down the stairs.

  “Grandpa, is someone here?” the girl asked from the other room.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Larry said. “What did you say?”

  Megan appeared in the doorway. “Whose truck is that?”

  “Truck?”

  “The one parked in the driveway.”

  Larry and Sandra went to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, there was a black pickup parked halfway down their drive.

  “You two wait here,” he said. “I’ll check.”

  He pulled on a light sweater and headed outside. The weatherman had said it was going to be a pretty nice day. It was already feeling that way.

  The driveway had been graveled once, but years of use and the punishment of winter had exposed more and more dirt. Maybe someday he’d be able to get it done again.

  He hadn’t expected to see anyone in the truck, so paused for half a second when he realized someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. As Larry neared, he gave a friendly wave, but the person didn’t respond. The reason soon became clear. The driver, a man, looked to be asleep.

  Larry frowned. Why would someone park in his driveway and fall asleep? Well, he sure couldn’t stay there. He was blocking half the road, and Larry would have to take Megan to school soon on his way to work.

  He walked up to the driver’s door, and was surprised to see that the window was open.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Hello?”

  He rapped against the door, but the guy didn’t move.

  “I’m sorry, but I need you to move your truck.”