The Devil's Copper by Jamie Crothall (ink ebook reader .txt) 📕

Shay took the gun he held and put it into the hand of the officer with the mustache.

“Fucking useless,” Frankie muttered.  “Starting to get too demanding.”  He paused as Shay used one dead officer’s hand to fire a bullet into the other corpse.  “Anyway, not my problem anymore.”

Frankie drank in the stunned silence as he scanned the room.

“He’s being uncharacteristically quiet, isn’t he?” Frankie asked, pointing at Jack.  “Care to say why?”

Jack said nothing.

“You realize this was all his idea, don’t you?”

“…what?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Jack insisted.

“Aw…shall I tell her then?” Frankie focused his attention on me.  “He knows I like having Walter around, but ol’ Jack here didn’t like the way I kept drawing him back in.  The more Walter refused, the angrier I got.  So Jacky-boy here comes up with a plan. A side business.  A way to get Walter to do a little ‘data mining’ without realizing it.  Disguised it as research for potential clients and what-not.  That way, he got to feel like his old friend had some honest work, and I stayed off his back.”

I turned to Jack.  My eyes pleaded him to contradict this story.

“It wasn’t all like that,” he insisted.  “There were honest jobs as well.  Like yours.  I really had the business idea.  I just…had to find a way to make things easier for Walter.”

I had no idea what to say.  I didn’t want to give Frankie the satisfaction, but I couldn’t help my reaction.

“So why do all this then?” I asked.  “Why kidnap Jack?”

“Walter wasn’t playing ball.  Didn’t even want to work for Jack anymore, the ungrateful bastard.  Such a lazy little shit.  I needed to get my money’s worth, so we came up with this to motivate him.  Right down to Jack’s kidnapping.”

I turned to Jack.  “You…knew?”

“It was only supposed to be for one job, Billie.”

“You knew??”

“Look,” said Frankie. “I don’t have time for a domestic.  I need to finish this and get out of here.  So if you don’t mind, I’d like to…”

“Why did you try to have Walter killed?”

Frankie didn’t have a smug answer for that one.

“What do you mean?”

“Walter said these two tried to kill him when he finished the job,” I said, gesturing to the two dead cops.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.  He then turned to Shay.  “What’s she talking about?”

In response, Shay pulled out his own pistol and shot Frankie.

It was quick.  Within the blink of an eye. One moment Frank was standing, and the next he was falling backwards onto my desk with a bullet hole right between his eyes.

“You’re not even worth the explanation,” Shay spat, watching his employer roll off the desk and onto the floor.

“I…I don’t know what’s happening…” I said.

“It was getting to be too much…” Jack said.

I turned slowly to him.  “What?”

“Walter,” he insisted.  “Always looking out for him.  It was getting to be too much.  You said the same.  He’s a friend, sure.  But I couldn’t spend my whole life being responsible for him.  Looking over his shoulder, working with Frankie…it was too much...”

“What are you saying?”

“He’s saying we cut a deal,” Shay growled.  “You’re not the only one who was fed up with Walter.  I watched this idiot,” he said, gesturing to his former boss, “waste too much time using that loser as the key to all his plans.  It was like an obsession.  Now he’s dead.  The local rabble will be in discord.  I can wrestle control, and Jack can leave town and pretend this never happened.  A deal’s a deal.”

It was too much to even consider.

“It was starting to become too dangerous,” Jack insisted.  “I did it for us…”

“I can’t believe you…”

“We’re free now, right?” Jack asked.  “We can go?”

Shay shook his head.  “I’m afraid not.  Walter being dead was part of the agreement.”

“Does it even matter now?” I asked.  “He’s dead!” I cried, gesturing to Frankie’s body.

“It’s not about him,” Shay said.  “You should know that more than anyone else.”

What did he mean by that?  Was this a competition?  Did he really have the same ability as Walter?  Was that what this all came down to?

“Look, we need to get out of here,” Jack said.  “Can we talk about this somewhere else?”

“Hold on,” Shay said.  He then raised the gun and pointed it at Pat.  He had been so quiet I almost forgot about him.  The poor kid threw his hands up and cowered as he saw his fate draw near so quickly and flippantly.

“No!” I cried.

Then, suddenly, there was a blaring horn blast.  It was enough to distract everyone.  We turned to look.

A Mack truck headed straight for the building.  Fortunately, it veered to the left and plowed into one of the garage doors.  The entire building shook.

I threw myself at Shay, to save Pat.

Pat scampered away in the ruckus.

Shay swore and threw me aside.  Rather than chase down the kid, he instead burst through the door, into the triple bay garage.

The garage door had crumpled around the cab of the truck.  The engine was billowing smoke.  Which triggered the sprinkler system.

Walter and Joey stumbled out of the cab of the truck, shaken but alive.

“I said the brakes were fine!” Joey insisted.

“Just fucking hide!” Walter shouted.

“You!” Shay spat.

Shay lunged at Walter.

I grabbed one of the guns from the fallen officers.  Jack didn’t do a thing, too bewildered to act.  I was too distraught to care.

Shay fired several shots at Walter.

Walter managed to duck behind several pieces of equipment – tool boxes, generators and barrels.

I raised the gun and pointed it at the back of Shay’s head, but before I could even pull the trigger