Southern Heat

by David Burnsworth

  McAllister closed his finger around the trigger. I let go of the belt tourniquet on my arm and dove for him. He swung the pistol to me just as I grabbed for it. With my good arm I wrenched the gun up. It fired and hit somewhere on the second floor of the building. He bashed me in the face with Mutt’s gun and I fell to the ground.

  Patricia yelled, “Stop!”

  McAllister said, “Try that again and I’ll blow your head off.”

  As I got to my knees, he kicked me hard in the gut, the same place Galston had tagged me.

  I doubled over. My chest tightened around what felt like bruised, if not cracked, ribs. Sucking in consecutive breaths, each one more difficult than the last, I tried to think what to do next.

  Nothing came to mind directly.

  Patricia knelt next to me. To McAllister, she said, “If you’re going to kill us anyway, why all the drama?”

  The sound of a helicopter getting close caused us all to look up. Patricia stuck something in the left pocket of my shorts as she helped me to my feet. By the weight and feel against my leg, I knew it was a pistol.

  McAllister turned to us. “My ride’s here. Get moving.”

  My arm throbbed. My chest throbbed. I was losing blood. Patricia looked into my eyes. She knew I was a better shot one-handed and delirious than she was uninjured. At least, I hoped that’s what she thought. From somewhere inside the building came a muffled scream. I’d made it through three years of hell on earth and wasn’t about to die in some backwater South Carolina waste dump. We were getting out of this. My drill sergeant screamed, “Snap to it, Soldier!”

  McAllister cocked the hammer on Mutt’s thirty-eight.

  The helicopter’s spinning rotors pulsed through my shoes. I faced the open door. “Okay. We’re going in.”

  A musty smell wafted out of the structure. No light exited with it. I moved slowly and stepped inside. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I could hear the sound of creatures scurrying around—the rats we’d seen before, most likely. We stood in a large open room. Darcy sat in a chair, tied and gagged. She was dirty but alert.

  Patricia gasped and ran to her.

  McAllister said, “One big happy family. Get over there with them, Brack.” He shoved me and I fell beside the women, pain shooting through my body again. Rats darted away from us.

  We were out of options. McAllister was far from out of bullets. My arm pulsated like the bass in a gangbanger’s Impala. Injured ribs reminded me of their presence with every breath. I teetered on the edge of a blackout. Darcy was tied up and Patricia had lost her bravado.

  The only loose end McAllister had left was us.

  I said, “Why’d you kill my uncle?”

  McAllister aimed Mutt’s pistol and shot one of the rats. The blast echoed in the large brick room. Patricia and Darcy both flinched.

  “Nice shot.” I sat up, recoiling at the pain in my body.

  He said, “I hate rats.”

  I stood, feeling nauseous and light-headed. I’d pass out any minute. Willing my mind to keep working, I said, “You couldn’t buy my uncle off. That’s why you killed him.”

  He spit on the concrete floor. “Reggie wasn’t going to look the other way. Not after that two-timing rat Fisher tipped him off. Both of them had to go.”

  “And Rogers?”

  The helicopter’s rotors slowed. It must have landed.

  McAllister’s smile showed off his bleached teeth despite the dim lighting. “You’re a smart boy. Why do you think?”

  I took two more steps. My only thought was to separate his targets, make him take his focus off the women. “Well, he was dirty. Probably figured you were involved and wanted money. After you killed him, you torched my house and planted the gun. I guess you used him to set me up.”

  “Bingo.”

  Standing over the dead rat, five feet from the women and ten feet from the man with two guns, I said, “So many deaths.”

  McAllister cocked the hammer back again. “There’s about to be three more.”

  The room began to spin. I hunched over and threw up bile, my hand resting on my thigh. My chest burned and the sensation kept me from slipping into shock. After a few shallow breaths because deep ones caused enough pain to knock out an elephant, I regained strength.

  McAllister said, “I expected you to be tougher than this, Soldier.”

  He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.

  I summoned enough strength to kick the dead rat at McAllister, who swatted at the flying rodent with the gun. I reached into my pocket for Patricia’s pistol and fired four rounds into McAllister. From ten feet away, I easily hit my mark. The man’s knees buckled and he fell, the nine millimeter and Mutt’s thirty-eight he held clamored to the concrete floor.

  I staggered to the door and aimed the pistol outside just as the helicopter’s back door opened and Goatee stepped out. Sweat dripped into my eyes as I pulled the trigger and my shot went wide. Goatee tried to jump back into the helicopter but missed and fell to the ground as the pilot lifted off.

  I sighted him in.

  The man who had helped set Darcy and me up stood and raised his hands in surrender.

  “It’s over, Brack,” Patricia said from behind me. “You don’t have to shoot him, too.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  After we bound Goatee with the twine we removed from Darcy, Patricia knotted my shirt tight above my gunshot wound. Thankfully, McAllister had done nothing to Darcy other than tie her up.

  Patricia stood next to me, her face and clothes caked in mud.

  “Thanks for the gun,” I said.

  “I knew you’d hit him.” She took out her phone and called the police. The mayor received the next call and it was not pretty. Needless to say, he would not be getting her support in the next election.

  McAllister had kept Darcy alive to find out how much she knew. Patricia and I had interrupted him when we showed up. Help arrived in the form of police cruisers. They got blocked in behind Patricia’s Mercedes. Two four-wheel-drive ambulances, one for McAllister and one for Darcy and me, got in past the lot of them. Patricia sat in the back with us.

  Chauncey had caught a ride in one of the ambulances through the mud and watched the medics treat our injuries. “Everyone going to survive?”

  Patricia took Darcy’s hand and mine. “I think we’re going to be just fine.”

  “Good,” Chauncey said. “Detective Wilson asked me to give you a message.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and read. “An Asian-American male, Lo Chong, was apprehended an hour ago when the Trans Am he was driving collided with a tanker truck carrying septic-tank waste. The police estimate his speed in excess of ninety miles an hour. The driver and passenger in the truck were injured but in stable condition. Mr. Chong was not so lucky. The police are not sure if he will make it.”

  I didn’t say anything. Justice was served.

  Chauncey said, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the citizen’s arrest at the underground brothel, would it?”

  None of us replied.

  McAllister was strapped onto a gurney and lifted into the back of the other ambulance. Somehow the bastard was still breathing.

  Chauncey sighed and waved. “So long, Radar.”

  I sat up, gritting my teeth against the pain. “Radar?”

  “McAllister,” Chauncey said. “We called him Radar in Vietnam because the glasses he wore made him look like the guy from M.A.S.H. The movie came out while we were over there.”

  My ache subsided ever so slightly. “I thought Uncle Reggie said Ray shot him. I guess he was trying to say ‘Radar.’ ”

  Two police officers slammed the doors to the ambulance after McAllister had been loaded.

  “We got him,” Patricia said. She looked at Darcy, her eyebrows pinched. “Did you call in a camera crew?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Charged with the murders of Reggie Sails, David Fisher, and Detective Rogers, along with kidnapping and fraud, McAllis
ter lawyered up faster than a mosquito on a Yankee tourist. Based on documentation found by investigating officers, he was also revealed as the silent partner pushing to purchase Sumter Point. Galston had lied when he said he wanted to preserve the land and use offset credits to make an eco-friendly neighborhood. Sumter Point would itself be the ultimate offset credit, which would have preserved it at the expense of somewhere else in the state. And he would have made millions.

  The senior partners in the accounting firm McAllister and Galston used—David Fisher’s employers—were indicted for cooking the books and getting rich.

  McAllister’s aunt, Mrs. Calhoun, wanted my uncle out of the picture so she could bulldoze the Cove. Apparently murder was an acceptable solution to her distaste for seedy bars. The police could not establish whether or not she had been involved in planning the scheme, but the connection ruined her reputation. As the saying went, “There’s a mighty big turd in the punch-bowl.”

  Darcy had recognized McAllister’s ZR1 from when I pointed it out to her. No one else in Charleston had a red one. She spotted it at the Chinese brothel but McAllister caught her entering, realized she could expose the whole operation, and told the Madame who she really was.

  Darcy’s mother set up a trust to take care of the fourteen-year-old prostitute who came forward in the brothel and helped Patricia and me find Darcy. The trust provided for her care and included a provision for college if she wanted to go.

  The District Attorney called Darcy and Shorty as star witnesses. Shorty had neglected to tell me McAllister put him up to trashing my car after I blew his Chrysler to smithereens. Chauncey was the one to share that tidbit. I decided since the little freak was cooperating, I wouldn’t pursue it. That’s what my insurance company and the police were for.

  After the doctors stitched up my arm, they prescribed an antibiotic, had me changing bandages daily, and recommended physical therapy. For a little while, Darcy and I wore matching slings.

  Chauncey’s wife cried when I came to get Shelby. I think my dog didn’t want to leave Trish’s constant presence and attention. On our way out of the driveway, she flagged us down and handed me the purple leash she’d gotten him, along with a fragranced spray. She told me I needed to put it on him every night.

  Yeah, right. I threw it on the passenger side floorboard and sped away.

  Constance Hagan and the Charleston Conservation Society held several events and raised money to buy Sumter Point. I was positive Constance fronted most of the money, which was okay with me. I received a cool million for the land and the commitment to preserve it forever, as my uncle had wanted.

  After I paid the taxes and received the money the police finally unfroze from my uncle’s accounts, I cleared the note on the bar and still had a lot left over. The Pirate’s Cove was doing well under Paige’s management and I would make sure she had everything she needed to run it and be secure for her and her boy. Uncle Reggie would come back to haunt me if I sold it, though that’s what I did with Sumter Point to the C.C.S. I decided I wanted him to be resting in peace.

  The Church of Redemption found an anonymous cash donation on its doorstep—just under two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars in fresh crisp bricks of hundreds. The same amount Darcy, Patricia, and I had found in the crab pots, minus a few expenses. When Chauncey determined the money couldn’t be traced and gave legal council about how to handle it, Brother Thomas had no excuse but to accept it.

  The church also found it had two new attendees—me and Mutt. We looked like a rough version of Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing a gospel rendering of “Ebony and Ivory,” but the congregation didn’t seem to mind.

  Ever concerned about my mental state, Paige handed over a letter from Justine Fisher, who’d sent it to the bar. Paige held onto it for two days before coming clean. Justine wanted me to know she and the kids were adapting well in Virginia. Her closing paragraph contained a surprise—an open invitation to visit.

  I considered it for all of two seconds. One thing I definitely learned: leave the past where it is.

  On Uncle Reggie’s birthday, a month after he was killed, we held a small memorial service at the surf below the Pirate’s Cove. Chauncey and Trish, Paige and Simon, Patricia, Darcy, Mutt, the former Detective Wilson, Shelby, and I listened as Brother Thomas spoke about life and death and salvation. Afterwards, the group watched as I carried the urn into knee-high water, with Shelby following behind. Patricia kicked off her shoes and waded out in what looked like an expensive black dress. I handed her the top of the canister.

  “Brother said you were in a better place.” My eyes watered and my voice broke.

  Patricia put her arm around me.

  “You always loved the water, Uncle Reggie,” I said. “Now you can ride the waves all you want.” I tilted the container and let the ashes pour out. Patricia rested her head on my shoulder. Shelby paddled around the ashes, whimpering, as if he knew what was going on.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David Burnsworth became fascinated with the Deep South at a young age. After a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and fifteen years in the corporate world, he made the decision to write a novel. Southern Heat is his first mystery. Having lived in Charleston on Sullivan’s Island for five years, the setting was a foregone conclusion. He and his wife along with their dog call South Carolina home.