A Guardian of Innocents (5 page)

I thought about taking her up on the offer of leftovers. I had skipped lunch at school, but decided it would be for the best if I didn’t have anything sitting on my stomach when I put a large hole in Jack’s head. All the stuff I knew was bound to fly out of his skull would probably make me pretty nauseous and I figured leaving a puddle of puke behind for a forensics team to analyze wouldn’t be to my advantage.

At eight o’clock, still in her uniform, Doris lay in a heavy, open-mouth sleep with the bedroom TV playing a
Who’s The Boss?
re-run. I went into my room, grabbed my plastic grocery bag of thrift store clothes from the bottom of my closet and then reached way underneath my mattress to find my new, little six-shooter. I put the gun in one pants pocket and some bullets in the other, and headed out the door to the Nova.

I gently closed and locked the front door, got into my car and placed the bag on the passenger seat next to me.

Before I started the vehicle, I sat there for a moment.

Oh shit! Am I really going to do this? Am I?

Until that moment, it seemed as though I’d been under a spell the past few days. I’d been telling myself I was going to kill him, but somehow the full comprehension of that idea had never really sunk in until now.

I could end up in prison for the rest of my life... It could really happen.

There was a part of me just then that didn’t believe I could ever go through with the murder. But like a heroic knight on horseback, another thought came racing into my mind:
Yeah, and if you stand back and do nothing like a damned coward, that little boy will get raped, choked to death and buried out in the Piney Woods! And that’s not even something that
could
happen. That’s something that
will
happen.
      

And with that internal argument settled, I set out for Stilletto’s.

*          *          *

And now I sit in the Nova, waiting on Jack, going over in my head how I plan for this to work. Walk up behind him. Cock the hammer. Aim. Pull the trigger. Simple.

I was remembering how immediately after I’d bought the gun, I’d driven a little ways out into the country and fired two test shots, just to make sure it worked. The report had thrown off my aim by a dangerous margin. I didn’t like that. I knew right then that in order for my first shot to hit Jack in the head, I had to be standing at least within six or seven feet of him, or else I’d probably miss.

I’d changed into my ‘poor boy’ disguise after I’d arrived in a parking lot across the street from Jack’s favorite titty bar. I changed in the car. I just laid the driver’s seat down and switched into the outfit right there, figuring no one would see since there were no lights anywhere on my side of the road. And I knew I was alone in this empty lot, parked cater-corner to the single-wide trailer office of a construction company.

I was mulling everything over in the theater of my mind, when a feeling came over me. The only way I can describe it is. . . is that it was just a feeling of

(((now)))

Just then, I looked up and saw a tall, fat middle-aged man in a business suit push through the heavy front doors of Stilletto’s. I couldn’t see too clearly from that distance, but I knew it was him just the same.

I tore open the glove compartment lid and found the little pistol, not much larger than the palm of my hand.

I got out of the vehicle and stood up, suddenly realizing I had been sitting in there for hours and that I really needed to take a piss. On top of that, my legs had fallen asleep and were threatening to give out on me.

Very little time. Jack was already a third of the way to his red Dodge truck. I forced my legs to jog across the street. Stiletto’s sat on a side road just a few hundred yards from the main boulevard where all the traffic was. There were no cars approaching. I tucked my hands deep into my pockets with my right hand holding the loaded gun, the index finger resting on the safe side of the trigger guard. I slowed from a jog to a brisk walk as I crossed into Stiletto’s parking lot.

Jack was standing next to the driver’s door of his truck, fumbling through his keys when I came around the lowered tailgate and pulled the gun out of my pocket. He didn’t even notice me at first. I observed his whole body waver where he stood and realized he was drunk. I leveled the gun, aiming it at the side of his head and cocked the hammer. He glanced at me and did a groggy double-take.

“Shit,” he wheezed in a small voice I could barely hear, and dropped his keys onto the black asphalt, “Here. . . Yuh-you can have my wallet, you can have my wallet, just don’t shoot! Please don’t kill me!”

He didn’t even recognize me, not until I gave myself away. As tears built up in my eyes, I said, “I don’t want your fuckin’ money, Jack. . .”    

And in his voice more than his thoughts, I heard him recognize me, “What, WHAT! WHY?”

“I can’t let you hurt him,” I growled, but also hearing a slight pleading tone in my voice, “Not the way you hurt me! I can’t let you! I can’t let you hurt him!”

As tears trickled down my cheeks, an understanding dawned on Jack’s drunken face. He knew who I meant. In his head I heard,
Jacob?
and saw the beaming innocence of the boy’s face.  

Though he said nothing, I answered, “Yes, him. . .”

He began to sob, looking down in shame. Only it was worse than just crying, it was a kind of half-choked blubbering.

“Phillip, please. . . Please don’t. I love you. More than anything, I—“

That was the only time in my life I’d ever heard those words come out of his mouth, with the exception of church when he felt the need to put on a show for others.

“SHUT UPPPPPP!!! YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” I screamed at him belligerently, without any concern that someone might hear.

Then I remembered where I was and why I was here. I lowered my voice, and continued my indignant diatribe.

“You never loved me. Don’t you ever fucking say that to me you cocksuckin’ piece of shit!”

I ranted a slew of other colorful curses through clenched teeth, but I was so angry at the moment I can’t even remember what I said. I only know I was so consumed by emotions, that I’d forgotten what I was holding in my hand.

Apparently Jack sensed this too, and leapt at me with a feeble drunken lunge, a last ditch attempt at survival. Without thinking about it, I pulled the trigger. Pure reflex. A bloody hole popped open in the polyester of his slacks as the report of the revolver deafened my ears, leaving behind a nice ringing sound that would linger for the next few minutes. 

I got him in his left thigh, halfway between his waist and knee, straight through all the muscle and flab. Jack fell before he could tackle me, but on his way down he grabbed a handful of the tail of my open flannel shirt.

And as the muffled sound of tearing fabric tunneled its way into my ears through the flat ring of the first gunshot, I was distantly aware of a young woman screaming from about fifty yards behind me.

Then Jack took hold of my loose, denim jeans, and tried in vain to pull me towards him. An outraged cry erupted from his throat, “Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Despite all the confusion, I knew I had to finish this. As he raised his head up and bellowed his monotonous cry, I planted the nozzle of the gun in his left eye and squeezed the trigger.

I was amazed at how much quieter the report was, just a soft
spishhh
sound and then a
thoonk
as the bullet popped out the back of his skull and ricocheted off the quarter panel of a beat-up old corvette parked next to Jack’s truck.

Blood began fountaining out of Jack’s missing eye as his head was smacked backwards by the fatal shot. Again, my mind seemed to take a picture.

Blood was spreading in a pool around his head on the blacktop, legs in a Figure-4 position, and jaw hanging slack like a drugged-up patient in a mental institution. But what really shook me up the most was the twitching. That god-awful twitching. That’s one thing they never show in the movies.

Jack’s right arm and the right side of his neck began having these subtle spasms as his brain slowly died. What really topped it off was when his foot moved with a quick jerk and his scuffed loafer touched my shoe.  

I pissed my pants right there. I’m not joking. My full bladder decided to evacuate itself, at least partially, without my permission.

Jack’s blazer had fallen open on his left side and I could see the edge of his wallet sticking out. I reached in with only a thumb and index finger, carefully plucking it out. No cash, but then again I hadn’t expected any. There were no credit cards either. I guess Jack hadn’t seen the point in bringing them since they were all maxed out.

Suddenly I remembered the girl who’d just screamed. There was now a witness to this and she was directly behind me. I almost turned to look at her but realized she would never be able to identify me in a line-up if she never saw my face.

So I ducked down and raced in between all the parked vehicles, turning right, turning left, but steadily making my way back towards the street, only daring to stand up to ease the strain on my back when I was behind a tall SUV or truck.

Then another scream echoed through the parking lot, followed by, “No! Let go of me, you bastard!”

A masculine voice answered her, “So this is what you’ve been doing, huh? You been selling it on the side too?”

What in the holy fuck is this?
I thought. I knelt beside an old Ford Bronco and opened my mind, trying to concentrate on what the owners of the two voices were thinking.

From the man I heard
whore whore fucking whore,
but the woman’s thoughts were wordless. From her I just felt bursts of high emotion like fireworks in a clear night sky. Intense fear, outrage that her boyfriend had followed her here and embarrassment that her occupation as a stripper at a dirty, low-class tit bar had been discovered.

They were so wrapped up in their heated argument I wondered if they’d even heard the gunshots. Hell, in neighborhoods like this I’m sure people heard gunfire at all hours of the night. Maybe they
had
heard it, but just shrugged it off. Who knows? Who cares? I never found out.

I was confident then that I’d been ducking past vehicles for nothing. So I stood up and casually walked across the street, constantly scanning the area to see if there really was anyone who’d seen what I’d done to Jack. The gun and my hands were in my pockets. My crotch was uncomfortably cold and wet now, as well as my right arm all the way up to my elbow.

Why is my
arm
wet?
I thought. I looked down and gazed at the blood that had saturated the sleeve of my flannel shirt. Even with my hands all the way down in the deep pockets of my baggy jeans, the blood stains still stretched about three to four inches past the rim of the pocket. Jack’s blood had cooled and was starting to get sticky.

Coagulation, gotta love it!

Behind me, the couple continued their fight, “Fuck you! Fuck you! It’s over! Get the fuck away from me you psychotic asshole!”

“Over?” the man yelled, “I’ll tell you when it’s fucking over you whoring little bitch!”

As I opened the door of my car, I glanced back and observed the man shove his girlfriend against the door of her SUV. Part of me wanted to step in just then, but I knew I had problems of my own to deal with.

I got in the driver’s seat and quickly wiped the blood from my hands and the gun with a black towel I always kept in the Nova to cover up my portable CD player. It was the only thing I had worth stealing in that beat-to-shit car.

With the keys still hanging in the ignition, I tried to start the Nova and heard a protesting
rurr ur ur ur ur. . .
 

“Oh fuck, fuck no, fuck no!” I wheezed. A gaping hole formed in my stomach, burning with panic.

In those few seconds I saw my future unfold before me. . .

Police eye a conspicuous vehicle parked across the street while someone is drawing a line of chalk around Jack’s limp body. After running a tag trace, they discover this vehicle is registered in Jack’s name. They start asking why two of his vehicles were at the crime scene and I see myself on the run, not being able to return home, living homeless in the back alleys of Fort Worth until the cops finally find me and haul my ass off to prison.

Even though I was an atheist back then I silently thanked God when the engine turned over on the second try. I put the gear in drive and accidentally squealed the tires a bit in my anxiousness to get out of the parking lot. As I turned right onto the street, I glanced left and saw the boyfriend brace the girl against her vehicle with his forearm, pushing up against her neck. He used his free arm to deliver an uppercut punch to her stomach, hard enough to make her feet leave the ground for a second.

I braked, screeching to a stop in the middle of the street, uncertain if I wanted to risk getting caught so I could help this girl. My decision was made easier for me when a half-dozen bouncers in black t-shirts marked “STAFF” erupted from the front doors of Stiletto’s.

Satisfied the girl would be saved in approximately two seconds, and confident the asshole who administered her beating would be receiving the worst ass-kicking of his life thereafter, I drove on. Watauga or bust, and all that good shit.