Red Dog Saloon

by R. D. Sherrill

  “You’re wrong,” Ben corrected. “I just spoke with him a while back. He’s very much alive, at least for now anyway.”

  Bart searched his mind for the source of the dark man’s venom. What had caused his murderous rampage? Could it be?

  “Was it that whore?” Bart blurted out before realizing the consequences of his words.

  “What did you say?” Ben asked, not believing his ears.

  “This isn’t all about that whore we had fun with that night?” Bart replied.

  His words were barely out of his mouth before he felt the crack of the deputy’s gun across his nose. The impact knocked him to his knees.

  “Don’t you ever call her that again!” Ben screamed, resisting the overwhelming urge to fire a round from his forty-caliber into Bart’s eye. “She was my mother!”

  Bart grimaced as he saw his blood pouring onto the white snow. His nose was likely broken. He reached under his nose to stem the flow.

  “I hit a nerve didn't I?” Bart said.

  Bart struggled to his feet, finally daring to look toward the deputy. The taste of his own blood gave him a sudden surge of courage much like a wounded animal.

  Ben stood quietly for a moment, biting his lip as he fought his trigger finger which was twitching around the cold steel. Then he broke his silence, a sneer crossing his face.

  “It’s a hell of a thing killing your own father,” Ben stated with a smirk, nodding toward the dangling corpse of Bart’s father. “Like I said, I wanted you to do a favor for me. I don’t kill women, children or old people. I figured you couldn’t resist the temptation to shoot me in the back. I was banking on that and you didn’t disappoint me.”

  Gathering his courage, figuring he was going to die anyway, Bart straightened up and looked Ben in the eye.

  “You wouldn’t know, would you?” Bart said spitting blood at Ben’s feet, his words bringing still another smile from the lawman’s lips. “You wouldn’t know what it’s like to kill your own father.”

  “No, I wouldn’t, but I figure I’m about to find out … dad,” Ben replied.

  Bart stood bleeding in the steady snow. He couldn't believe his ears.

  “You’d be surprised what you can find out when you have nothing but time on your hands,” Ben began. “Surely you had to wonder why I saved you until last when I could have killed you at my leisure. I wanted to meet my dear ... old ... dad.”

  Bart couldn’t find the words to either beg or defy.

  “I’d always wondered where I got the ice water in my veins,” Ben continued. “Now it’s obvious. You’re the coldest person I’ve ever met. You gave me the killing genes ... dad. I don’t know whether to thank you or blow your head off. Is it a blessing or a curse?”

  Bart flipped the blood off his hand, splattering it onto the snow as he eyed his son.

  “I mean you killed them before I could. Eddie, Stevie, Rhody and even Glenn,” Ben went on. “Even I couldn’t believe you were cold-blooded enough to kill your best friend, well, your only friend actually. It seems the sheriff didn’t keep me in the loop on their little stakeout at the mayor’s house that night. I almost got caught while you were killing your friend. I hated having to hurt the officers but I couldn’t let them take me in while you were still walking around free.”

  “The honorable mayor would have killed me,” Bart said spitting out another mouthful of blood. “I just beat him to it is all.

  “Yeah, I suppose he would have,” Ben agreed. “And the funny thing is if you hadn’t come back when you did that night at city hall I would have taken care of him myself. He was about to take a terrible spill onto the sidewalk from three stories up when you showed up. It’s a good thing you didn’t open his closet that night when you came back or, well, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.”

  Bart realized the fact he was hearing the deputy’s confession likely meant he wouldn't live to repeat what he’d heard. The dread of death, Bart reckoned, would be worse than death itself.

  “What are we doing out here chatting like it’s a family reunion?” Bart asked. “Get it over with already. A big man you are, shooting an unarmed man. I guess you got that from your mother's side of the family, huh?”

  His father’s words brought a laugh from Ben. He had waited months for this moment.

  "Oh, you're not going to be unarmed," Ben laughed. "We're going to do it just like they did back in the good old days. A showdown at the Red Dog Saloon except this time it's not at high noon."

  Bart looked incredulously at his son. While ending many lives himself, Bart had no taste for a fair fight.

  “I didn’t kill your mother,” Bart responded, hoping to escape his fate. “She was very much alive when she left that night.”

  “Oh, you killed her alright,” Ben declared with a crazed look in his eye. “You killed everything that was good in her that night. It just took her twenty-two years to finish dying. Now you’re going to join her, well, figuratively anyway, since I suspect you’re going to a far different place.”

  Bart snarled despite his hopeless predicament.

  “The way I figure it, your mother was a tramp so she’ll be right there with me,” Bart snapped. “Maybe me and your precious mother will have a happy reunion.”

  Ben resisted playing executioner. He simply smiled as he pulled out another gun from under his coat.

  “It would give me nothing but pleasure to take my knife and cut you limb from limb and make you suffer a slow, painful death,” Ben said. “But then if I did, that’d make me just like you - a heartless killer who delights in inflicting pain on others. I’m not like you, dad. I’m not like you at all.”

  Ben extended the gun to his father while his own gun was still trained at his head.

  “You can go to hell!” Bart exclaimed as he defiantly extended his middle finger to his son.

  It was the wrong move as the appendage disappeared in an instant as the sound of the deputy’s gun set his ears ringing. Pain tore through Bart's body. His son had blown off his middle finger.

  “Looks like you’ll have to draw with your left hand now,” Ben said calmly as Bart watched the blood pump from where Bart's middle finger used to be. “Here, do it before you bleed to death. Ten paces and then we fire.”

  Fighting off shock, Bart reached out to take the gun from his son, realizing he had one last chance at redemption. Ben had made a fatal mistake handing him a loaded gun. He wasn't going to make it a fair fight.

  “Just one bullet,” Ben said as his father took the gun in his hand. “You got just one shot.”

  Taking the gun in his hand, the pulsing pain from his right hand numbing his mind, Bart gave his son a defiant grin.

  "It'll only take me one shot," he winced through the pain.

  It was at that instant the sound of a siren could be heard approaching in the near distance. The sound distracted Ben just for an instant. It was the break Bart was hoping for. He raised the gun and fired.

  Click. The gun didn’t fire as Bart pointed it point-blank at his son’s head. Click ... click ... click. Bart repeatedly pulled the trigger to no result. The gun wasn’t loaded.

  “I just had to be sure,” Ben said.

  There would be no showdown at the Red Dog. Ben, this night, would serve as his father's executioner. He pulled his trigger, putting a bullet between Bart's eyes. The real dark man was dead.

  No sooner had his father's body hit the ground than he was bathed in the blue lights of the sheriff’s cruiser. He reached down and retrieved the unloaded gun Bart had tried to use moments before and concealed it under his coat.

  Ben went from playing the role of executioner to that of nervous rookie deputy in an instant as the sheriff ran up behind him. His gun still pointed toward the prone body of Bart Foster, Ben looked nervously at the sheriff.

  “I pulled up and found his father like that, strung up with bullets all in him,” Ben began. “Then he comes running at me with a gun. I had to shoot him.”

  “I u
nderstand deputy,” the sheriff began. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, sheriff. I think I’m okay,” Ben replied believing the sheriff was buying his tale. “He didn’t get a shot off.”

  His performance ended quickly with the sound of the sheriff cocking the hammer back on his gun.

  “I need you to toss the gun in front of you and put your hands behind your head, deputy,” Sam said in a firm voice with his gun pointed at his officer.

  Ben stood in shock for a moment, considering his options.

  “I won’t tell you again, deputy,” Sam warned.

  “I’d never hurt you,” Ben declared as he tossed his gun into the snow and placed his hands behind his head. “You’ve got to believe me. You’re a good man, too good really.”

  The two lawmen stood looking at one another in the vacant lot of what used to be Red Dog Saloon.

  “They had it coming. They were past due, long past due,” Ben volunteered, his explanation causing no change in the sheriff’s expression.

  “The things they did to my mother, they were unspeakable,” Ben continued after not getting a reply from the sheriff. “They were going to get away with it if somebody didn’t do something. Where’s the justice in that?”

  The sheriff looked at the bodies littering the snow-covered field and then turned his gaze back to his young deputy.

  “Here’s how this is going to work,” Sam said as he slowly lowered his gun. “I’ll expect your resignation on my desk first thing Monday morning.”

  Ben stood in shock for a moment. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

  “After that you leave Castle County forever, and I mean you don’t ever come back here,” Sam said with a determined look in his eyes.

  He was letting him go despite knowing he was involved in the killings.

  “Why?” Ben simply asked.

  “I had a mother too,” Sam replied. "I assume there's evidence that will tie Bart to all this?”

  “Yes, more than enough,” Ben replied realizing there would be no problem pinning the murders on his now deceased father, especially given the fact Bart had committed most of them himself anyway.

  Giving Ben a knowing look, Sam nodded toward his patrol car.

  “Get on out of here before I change my mind,” Sam ordered.

  Ben paused for a moment. He was tempted to tell the sheriff the whole story. Or, at least, thank him for letting him go.

  “I said get on out of here!” the sheriff shouted.

  It was a word to the wise for Ben as he headed toward his patrol car which was parked next to where the sheriff had parked.

  “And one last thing,” Sam called out as the deputy was about to disappear into the darkness. “You let time take care of Earl Cutts. He was going to do the right thing back then. Agreed?”

  Ben nodded in agreement before stepping into the darkness and heading to his patrol car. He had never planned to return for Earl in the first place. He didn't kill old people.

  “And my cruiser better not have a scratch on it,” Sam called out into the darkness as he now stood alone with the bodies of Bart and Bill Foster, father and son breathing their last on the same evening.

  Hearing Ben pull away, Sam made a call for an ambulance and the crime lab team which was staying at a hotel in Easton, deciding to stay in town for the next murder which they figured would come sooner than later. They would pull double duty this evening. Actually, once they checked Bart’s trunk, it would be a night’s worth of work for the lab boys.

  The quietness was cathartic for the sheriff as he stood in the vacant lot waiting for the distant wail of sirens. Time had in fact flown. It seemed like just yesterday when he picked up the young girl as she walked alongside the dark highway leading toward town from the old Red Dog. Sam flashed back twenty-two years as he stood alone in the snow.

  He had been in on leave from the Army visiting Carly, who he would soon marry. He figured he would go out to the Red Dog one last time for a drink. He knew once he was married Carly wouldn’t allow him to frequent such places. He reached the bar only to find it closed. That was unusual since the tavern generally stayed open to all hours, especially on weekends.

  He could see it like it was yesterday. The young girl’s clothes were torn, her hair disheveled, and her makeup smeared as she wept uncontrollably.

  “What happened?” Sam recalled asking the girl, her shoulders heaving from her deep sobs as he continued toward town with her in the passenger seat of his old Camaro.

  “Where do you live?” he asked, noticing some blood on her arms, her lips visibly swollen.

  “I can’t go home like this,” the girl said through her sobs. “Just take me to a phone.”

  Sam did as the teenager tearfully requested and found a payphone in downtown Easton.

  “Do I need to call the police?” Sam asked as she climbed out of his car.

  “No, please don’t!” she begged. “Don’t tell anybody. I’ll be okay. Let's keep this our secret.”

  With that, the girl walked over to the phone and lifted the receiver, waving him to leave. While he obliged her wishes, he had never forgiven himself for leaving, for not doing more to help the young girl.

  He never learned her name that night but he knew it now - It was Gina Porter. He had his suspicions when her picture was pointed out in the annual by his wife. He now knew it for sure.

  While his role that night was more of an act of omission rather than commission, it still bothered him. He should have done something more to help her. Perhaps if he had taken initiative things would have turned out differently.

  For Sam, this night would be a night he would never forget. It was a night stranger than fiction. For Sam’s grown children, they would remember it as the evening their father called them in the middle of the night just to tell them he loved them.

  EPILOGUE

  With the head of one of the murder victims found in his bowling bag inside his car which also contained the bodies of two of his business associates not to mention his finger prints all over the smoking gun that killed former Sheriff Bill Foster, it was easy to pin the reign of terror on Bart.

  The way the story bearing the byline of Cliff Chapman read in the local paper, Bart suffered from paranoia believing his old friends were going to inform on him and turn state’s evidence for the murder of Earl Cutts. Therefore, giving in to his delusional thinking, he went about silencing the potential witnesses. He even killed his own father before dying in a shootout with Deputy Ben Faulkner. It was an open and shut case that never had to go to trial since Bart had already received the death penalty at the hands of the young deputy. No one was the wiser.

  A smaller story later in the week revealed the young hero who brought down the crazed killer had resigned his post, opting to return to the military, saying law enforcement work proved too dangerous for him. No one knew it but he had never left the service in the first place. He took the deputy job with the sheriff while he was just on leave. The sheriff would improve his background checks for future hires.

  He reported back to active duty the next week. He and Sam would never speak again, Ben true to his word to never again set foot in Castle County.

  Press conferences, television appearances and paperwork monopolized Sam’s time for the next several days giving him little time to even breathe. The public was fascinated by the nightmare which had visited his small town. However, like other hot headlines, the press found another story, another flavor of the week, leaving Castle County to return to its peaceful self even as the snow from the historic snow storm melted away.

  It was then Sam made a two-hour drive to tie up the one loose end. It had been only a week since his visit so he remembered the way to Earl Cutts’ room. Pausing at his door, the sheriff rapped lightly. The door swung open at his touch.

  Like déjà vu, the sheriff found Cutts again sitting at his favorite place by the window overlooking the lake where he had fished his retirement away. Ben had been true to his word, leaving the old
man in the hands of time.

  Walking over to the old man’s chair, Sam announced his presence, his voice getting no reaction. Realizing something wasn’t right, the sheriff walked over to the old man's perch at the window. Earl Cutts was dead, the victim of the world's most notorious serial killer - Father Time. The Red Dog had claimed its last.