I sat down on one of the bar stools and ordered a cheeseburger to go from Sammy himself. He was wearing a name tag and was the only person working. I wondered why he wore the name tag. A bar like that in such a small town? Everybody had to know who he was. I guess it just made him feel important to wear some kind of badge. Sammy took my order and went back into a tiny kitchen area where there was a flattop grill. He cooked the burger himself and brought it back out.
I paid him in cash and gave him a two-dollar tip, and then I went outside and wandered around the parking lot for a little while. It was gravel, on the right side of the building as you faced it from the road, about fifty feet by seventy feet, and was bordered by the road in the front, an alley to the right, and a creek in the back. There was a drop-off to the creek, and I decided that’s where I would wait. I walked down by the creek, sat down, and ate the cheeseburger. It was surprisingly good.
The research I’d done told me that I wasn’t up against a quick-reaction force as far as police went. Cowen didn’t even have a public police department, although they did have a police “agency” that consisted of five people employed by a private company, two of whom patrolled the town on occasion. There was no jail in Webster County, which was where Cowen was located, and that meant the sheriff’s department was also very small. The investigation of the two murders I was about to commit would most likely fall to the West Virginia State Police. They would, no doubt, eventually be contacted by the two Knoxville detectives who had originally told me about Frazier and Beane, and then the heat would come. I had a plan for what I would do when that happened. I was, after all, a criminal defense lawyer. I knew how to handle cops.
After I looked over the parking lot and decided exactly how I would get back to my car after I shot Frazier and Beane, I drove back to Webster Springs and decided to use some of the fishing equipment I’d bought in Knoxville. I passed the afternoon and much of the evening fishing off the bank of the Elk River on the outskirts of the small town. The rain had passed, and while it was chilly, the leaves in the mountains were bright with color, and the sun was shining. It was a good day to exact some revenge.
My mother crossed my mind several times while I was fishing the river. I thought about her attempting to protect me from my drunken and abusive father when I was young, how she would deflect beatings for me onto herself. I thought about how he caused her to lose most of her faith in God, and I thought about the day when I had grown enough to beat him to a bloody pulp and throw him out of the house. My mother was sad that day, but she was proud of me. I thought about how she was with my son, Sean, so patient and kind and understanding. I thought about how she’d sacrificed for me and worked her fingers to the bone so I could go to college and get a law degree. I remembered the look of pride and satisfaction on her face when they hooded me at the law school graduation ceremony. I thought about how she’d stuck by me when I was falsely accused of murdering Jalen Jordan and was held without bail for a year awaiting trial. She stuck by me when they convicted me and carted me off to federal prison. She’d fought for visitation rights with my son, Sean, and was eventually able to see him, which meant I was eventually able to speak with him on the telephone from prison. She helped me keep from losing hope, and when I was released, she helped me get back on my feet.
Her reward?
She was blown to bits while she slept, by two murderous cowards. I kept trying to picture her face, but as time passed, her features had faded. I didn’t have a single photograph of her. Everything in the house had been obliterated or burned. The memories were still there, but they were like flames flickering with the passage of time, getting smaller and cooler with each passing day. I wondered several times where she was. One minute, she was lying in her bed asleep, and the next, she was gone. But where? Was her soul floating around somewhere? If so, I hadn’t felt it. Was she in another dimension of time and space? Was she in some paradise, playing a harp and floating on a cloud? That seemed as ridiculous as imagining her burning in an eternal fire beneath the surface of the earth. But where was she? She was gone so quickly. It was so surreal and made so little sense. The fact that she’d been blown up in her sleep was so random that I wondered whether anything had any real purpose, whether everything was random, and whether any form of life making it to the natural end of the biological clock was nothing more than pure luck. As darkness fell and I packed up the small tackle box and climbed the bank to get back into my car, I was certain of only one thing.
Donnie Frazier’s and Tommy Beane’s biological clocks were about to stop ticking.
PART II
CHAPTER 14
Ninety minutes after the shootings
The rest area was deserted, and I’d done my research and knew there weren’t any cameras, but I needed to get out of there quickly. I looked at the blood on my face for a few more seconds, and then I pulled the gloves and the glasses and stocking cap off, removed the beard, and stuck everything into the backpack. I turned on the water and let it run to warm up.
I did it. I killed those bastards.
I stared at myself in the mirror, wondering if I was looking at the same person I’d looked at in the mirror that morning. Of course I wasn’t. I couldn’t be looking at the same person, because the person I was looking at had recently committed two extremely brutal murders. I was now outside of the law. The question was whether I could remain outside of the penitentiary. I thought about the looks on Donnie Frazier’s and Tommy Beane’s faces, how they’d changed from redneck-aggressive to genuine surprise to primal fear to lifeless. Screw those guys, I thought. I didn’t regret a thing.
I wet my hands and began rubbing my face. I rubbed until all the dried blood I could see was gone. I pulled paper towels from the dispenser, dried my face, and stuck the towels in the backpack. As I picked up the backpack and started out of the restroom, all fifteen shots I’d fired played back in my head in slow motion. Explosions roared, bodies jerked, and pink mist floated.
By the time I got back to the car and opened the door, I was smiling.
Three hours after the shootings
Special Agent Will Grimes stifled a yawn as he stood next to Sammy Raft outside Sammy’s Bar and Grill and watched as a wood-paneled station wagon sped past him into the parking lot and skidded to a stop in the gravel. Dr. Larry Rogers, otherwise known as “the Crusty Coroner,” had arrived.