Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

Chief Davis raises his hand and knocks on the yellow pebbled glass that fills the top half of the front door. The muffled sound of a dog barking.

Ian leans forward, waiting. The door does not move. For a long time it does not move.

‘Knock again,’ Ian says under his breath.

After a moment Chief Davis raises his hand to do so, but Bill Finch grabs his wrist before the fist can make contact.

‘I’m in charge here,’ he says.

Chief Davis shrugs and blinks. ‘If it makes you feel manly.’

Finch stares at him a long moment. Then turns to the door and knocks himself.

The dog on the other side of the door barks again. Then the sound of a voice from within, though Ian cannot hear the words from this distance. And still the door does not move. Chief Davis and Bill Finch stand side by side before it, motionless, and wait. And wait.

‘Fuck this,’ Ian says under his breath. He pulls the wet cigar from his mouth and drops it into the ashtray, then pushes open the car door and steps out onto the driveway. Stones grind beneath his feet and Chief Davis throws him a look that stops him. He remains outside the car, but only stands there with his hand holding his car’s open door, neither shutting it and heading toward the front door nor getting back into the vehicle.

Bill Finch is raising his hand to knock again when the door is pulled open.

The dog barks.

‘Hush now,’ Henry Dean says, petting him.

And there he is. Is he the man who kidnapped Maggie, the man who stole Ian’s daughter? Sagging face, bald head, dead eyes like unpolished stones pressed into sucking mud, veined nose bursting forth. Ian can think of at least a dozen times he’s seen him around town. They’ve nodded to one another, maybe even exchanged howdys. It makes him sick to think about. All those times he could have grabbed the man and choked him till he was dead. All those times he was but one violent move from his daughter. Seven years and only this fat old man has stood between them. If he’s the one.

As Henry Dean looks at the cops a light enters his eyes and a smile broadens across his face. ‘Hey, fellas,’ he says. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We need to talk,’ Chief Davis says.

Bill Finch glares at Davis a moment, then turns back to Henry Dean. ‘It’s a serious matter,’ he says.

Henry Dean licks his lips. ‘Shit.’

‘Shit?’

‘You know why we’re here?’

‘’Course I know,’ Henry says. ‘It can only be one thing.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Someone saw my truck and put two and two together.’

‘Your truck?’

‘All them scratches.’

‘What about them?’

Henry thumbs something into his mouth, a mint or an antacid, and looks at them perplexedly. ‘You ain’t here ’cause I run into Pastor Warden’s fence?’

Chief Davis shakes his head.

Bill Finch says, ‘It’s a more serious matter than that.’

‘Oh. Shit. Forget I said anything, then. What’s going on?’

Sweat runs down Ian’s face. His hand clenches his car door till the bones ache with the pressure of it.

‘Just arrest the motherfucker already,’ he says under his breath.

Henry Dean couldn’t possibly have heard him, but his eyes dart toward him for a fraction of a second before moving back to the men standing nearest.

‘Maybe it would be best if you stepped outside,’ Bill Finch says.

‘Stepped outside?’ Henry says, and laughs. ‘What the hell for?’

Chief Davis puts his hand on his service weapon. ‘Is there anyone else in the house, Henry?’

‘Chief. Todd. We grown up together. What are you doing with your hand on a gun?’

‘Answer the question,’ Bill Finch says.

‘My wife,’ Henry says.

‘We need you to come down to the station and answer some questions.’

‘What about?’

‘Step outside.’

The faint sound of a woman screaming.

Both Chief Davis and Bill Finch look past Henry toward the sound of the scream. In that moment Henry Dean produces a weapon from behind him, a sawed-off shotgun, and Bill Finch’s chest explodes.

The dog at Henry’s side starts barking wildly.

A mist of blood hangs in the air even as the man drops to the weathered porch and rolls down the three steps to the gravel driveway. He lies face up, staring at the wild blue sky.

Chief Davis jumps left, but still catches one from the second barrel. Catches it in the face. There isn’t even a scream. There isn’t time for one. One second his face is fine, the next it’s a mask of blood and musculature, and white teeth and pieces of bone splatter on the driveway behind him in a thick and widening triangle of red liquid like his head is a ketchup packet that’s been stomped on.

By the time Ian is once again looking to the doorway Henry Dean has dropped his sawed-off shotgun to the ground and is pulling a rifle from behind the door.

Ian dives behind his car, unlatching his holster and drawing his SIG in one smooth motion. He pokes his head up briefly to get an idea of where he is in relation to Henry Dean and hears a shot explode on the air. It carries death though it sounds no more harmful than someone popping a paper lunch bag. The bullet grazes the trunk lid and chips of gray metal cut into his head and cheek.

The dog continues to bark wildly.

Ian drops to the ground again, gravel digging into his arm and his side, and tries to catch a glimpse of the man from under the car, but the angle is wrong. He can’t see anything but more gravel and the base of the house.

‘Go get ’im, Buckshot! Get ’im!’

Running across gravel. Barking. A brown blur seen from under the car.

Ian turns around in time to see the dog coming around the back of the vehicle with teeth bared, its eyes black, foam hanging from its jaw in frothy strings. It leaps at Ian and Ian has just enough time to pull the gun around toward it and pull the trigger.

There is a brief yelp and then silence.

The dog continues through the air, lifeless, and drops on top of him, its dead open mouth on his throat. Hot spittle runs down his neck. Hot blood soaks into his uniform. He pushes the dog off and it falls to the gravel with a meat-sack thump, wet and viscous, and lies there, still.

‘You son of a bitch,’ Henry says, and there is another shot. It only kicks up gravel.

Ian pulls himself up into a crouching position, making sure his head is below the level of the trunk. Inhale. Exhale. He’ll be on the porch waiting for him. He’ll have to get his own shot off quick and drop again if he doesn’t want to take one in the face like Chief Davis did. The man is fast. Inhale. Exhale.

He catches his breath in his throat and jumps to his feet, ready to take a shot. But he never has the chance.

Before he even catches sight of the man-standing at the bottom of the steps now, feet distanced, rifle pressed into the crook of his shoulder, left eye closed, aiming at where he rightly reckons Ian will pop up-there is a dull thwack in his chest just to the right of his sternum, like someone thumped him with a rubber mallet. It doesn’t even hurt. Not at first. But suddenly he can’t breathe. He inhales and hears a strange sucking sound from beneath his shirt. He looks down at himself, confused. A small dot of blood appears on the fabric. He looks up at Henry Dean to ask him just what the hell happened, but the man is heading up the steps and into his house. Ian drops to his knees, both of them popping on impact. Gravel digs into the flesh, and though he is aware of it he hardly feels it at all. He looks down again and sees drops of blood splashing to the gravel.

This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.

Then he’s face down, sucking in chalky white dust. He spits. Whenever he tries to breathe his chest makes that wheezing noise: a low whistle, like a punctured tire.