Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

“Sir, you have the right to remain silent…”

My heart stopped for several seconds, then began to race. “Hold on! I called you guys! I’m the one that called! You can’t read me Miranda ! You can’t arrest me!”

“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You also have the right to an attorney.”

“I am an attorney! What the hell is going on?”

“If you cannot afford an attorney, the court will appoint one for you. Do you understand these rights, sir?”

My face burned. My chest thumped. This was insane.

Is it? Asked Bobby. Red and blue lights danced on the plywood sheaths covering the door and windows of the bungalow and twinkled in the broken glass on the porch. Think about it, man. You’re a stone-cold killer. That’s all these guys know right now. You’re a dangerous motherfucker, Kevin, you’re a hard son of a bitch. If I rolled up on you in the ass-crack of Durham at night, I’d cuff you, too.

Right. I was a stone-cold killer, I was a dangerous motherfucker and I was a hard son of a bitch. These cops saw dead people on the scene and found a gun in my waistband. They sensed the danger emanating from my pores; I was a good guy but a bad ass. They had to cuff me and frisk me for officer safety. They had to Mirandize me in case I made incriminating statements. They had to contain me until they got to the bottom of this.

And when they did get to the bottom of this, they would uncuff me. They would uncuff me quickly.

“Yes,” I said. “I understand. And I wish to give a statement at this time.”

The officer who had cuffed me turned me around. I found myself looking at a black ex-Marine—I could spot them from miles away—with shoulders as wide as I was tall. I squinted in the darkness at his nametag: this was MCADOO. His partner, a white ex-Marine with equally linebacker-ish proportions, stood back and to the side. I couldn’t see his nametag, as he stood too far away. Younger than McAdoo, this one regarded me with a suspicion and wariness that his superior didn’t. He kept his right hand close by the holster of his pistol.

“Girl’s alive,” called an officer around the corner. “She’s coming to.”

“Who are you?” Asked McAdoo.

“Kevin Swanson. Wallet’s in my right pocket. Driver’s license is in the flap.”

McAdoo reached into my pants and fished out my wallet. He removed my driver’s license and handed it to the younger man. “Check him for warrants,” he said.

The younger man—I could see his nametag now and it read BRADSHER—studied my license. Probably trying to figure out how anyone who seemed this dangerous out on the street could look so stupid in front of the DMV camera.

“I said, go check him for warrants,” McAdoo growled.

Bradsher looked up from the license and studied my face. His cold, businesslike expression had vanished, replaced now with a lopsided grin. “Kevin Swanson of Burlington?”

“In the flesh.”

“You’re that lawyer who blew away those two B&E sons of bitches with an AK-47.”

I pursed my lips and nodded slowly. “That’s me.”

“Holy shit! Mac, this is Kevin Swanson, man! From Burlington! He’s that guy we were talking about the other day!”

McAdoo’s dark brow wrinkled. “Get out of here!”

“I am who I am,” I said. My nose began to itch. I decided I would plead guilty to three counts of first-degree murder if only they’d let me scratch it.

The other two officers reappeared from in between the two houses. One helped the staggering young woman towards the nearest patrol car while the other, a black man just as tall as McAdoo but only half the width, came over waving his hands.

“Cut him loose,” he said. “Girl says this guy saved her ass. He’s a hero, man, uncuff him.”

And McAdoo did.

The girl—legally a woman, but at nineteen I’d still call her a girl—worked at a service station four blocks away in the opposite direction from Ryan’s News & Video. She attended North Carolina Central University during the day and worked the gas station full-time at night to earn money to support herself and her three-year-old son. She’d seen the three men sitting on the front steps of the bungalow and had considered crossing the street so as to not pass so close to them, but as she debated this with herself, they suddenly leapt off the porch and dragged her into the alleyway between the houses. They showed her the gun and told her if she screamed, they’d use it. She could cry or moan, but she couldn’t scream. So she had started to cry, she started to cry a lot, because when they started unbuttoning her pants, she understood what was about to happen to her and she could do nothing else.

And then a strange man in a business suit appeared out of nowhere. He talked trash and a minute later, all three assailants lay dead.

“ Three guys?” Bradsher marveled. “You took out three guys all by yourself?”

After I related the story of how I’d saved the girl, I regaled them with the tale of my mugging in the parking lot of Carwood, Allison and the night I had shot Pinnix and Ramseur. By the time Craig Montero arrived on the scene, we were talking like old friends. I didn’t need a lawyer anymore; I needed a bartender.

“I have a question for you guys, now,” I said as Craig’s Audi pulled up on the curb two houses up, away from the flashing lights. “Those three shitbags I just wasted—they have any ID on them?”

And Bradsher shook his head.

“No,” he said. “At this point, we don’t have any idea who they are.”

“Three men,” Dr. Koenig said. “You killed three men this time.”

“Body count’s up to six,” I replied.

Thanksgiving had come and gone. It was late afternoon now, close to quitting time for normal people, and the sky had taken on the overcast hue that dominates the end of the day in early winter. No leaves remained on the dogwoods beside the bench outside. I hadn’t seen anyone in the courtyard in a very long time.

In my hands, Southern Rifleman had become a tube, a runner’s baton, a small sword. I laid it down on the couch beside me and sighed.

“It sounds like you’re a hero yet again.”

“I’m a lawyer who’s killed six people in less than a year. I’m more a circus freak than a hero.” I looked down at the hardwood floor. “Honestly, I feel… distant.”

“Distant?”

“Everyone’s kissing my ass,” I said. “And Bobby said this would happen. He said it in February, after I hosed Pinnix and Ramseur. He said: you’re a man apart now. You’re going to get your ass kissed like it’s never been kissed before. Because you’re going to make everybody feel small.”

“Small?”

“Bobby has a unique perspective on this,” I said. “He’s killed a lot more than six people. What he says is, we’ve done the things that other men dream about doing. Not like everybody sits there jonesing to pop somebody, but it’s like… everybody likes to think they’d be a superhero if they ever had to be. They say, I can kill. I can fight. I can do all that. But then they run into a guy who actually did what they like to tell themselves they could do in the same situation, and they compare themselves to this man and they think, could I? They’re not so sure.”

I shrugged.

“So they kiss our asses. Praise us, buy us beers, shake our hands and thank us for our service. They’ve never been tested. We have. And while all these Walter Mittys sit there on the bus or at their desks or in their cars in traffic jams and daydream about what total Billy Bad-Asses they’d be in the right situation, we’ve actually done that.”