Rick Mofina - If Angels Fall

“You can leave here dead, or you can leave here alive.But you are not leaving with the woman. Drop the knife now and release her.”

“Let me out of here or she dies and it’s on you!”

Shook cut Dolores with the knife, blood spurted downher cheek. Her children screamed.

“Officer!” Sydowski was talking to the uniform fifteenfeet from Shook’s right shoulder. “Do you have a clear head shot?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Don’t try it, pig! You’ll hit her! Let me outta here.I ain’t going back in the fuckin’ hole.”

“We just want to talk, Virgil.”

“I ain’t going back!”

Dolores’s face was a half mask of blood. Shook twistedthe knife.

Sydowski holstered his gun, raised his open hands, andeased forward. “We want to talk, Virgil. Please, let her go.”

When Shook relaxed his arm to reposition it acrossDolores throat, she bit into his bicep and stomped on his foot. Shook winced,and she broke away grabbing Sydowski’s outstretched hand, flinching when sheheard two shots.

They were deafening. The first bullet hit Shook in thelower neck shredding his internal and external jugulars, exiting into theceiling. The next destroyed his trachea and spleen before lodging in hisstomach. The knife went flying. He dropped to the floor.

The uniform officer was frozen, his gun stillextended. There were screams, sirens, and the smell of gun powder. Policeradios crackled. Turgeon called for an ambulance. Dolores Lopez embraced herchildren.

Shook was on his back, making gurgling noises, bloodand vomit oozing from his mouth. His white T-shirt was glistening crimson.Sydowski was on his knees, trying to obtain a dying declaration. Turgeon wasthere with him, listening.

“What’s your name?” Sydowski said.

Shook made unintelligible noises.

“Where are the children, Virgil?”

Shook’s mouth moved. Sydowski placed an ear over it.Nothing.

Sydowski touched his fingers to Shook’s neck. Wasthere a pulse?

Gonzales rushed in. “How bad is it?”

Turgeon shook her head. Sydowski bent over Shook’smouth again.

Special FBI Agents Rust and Ditmire arrived.

“Oh, this is beautiful,” Ditmire said. “Fuckingbeautiful.”

Shook was still making noises when paramedics beganworking on him. “It’s bad. We’re losing him,” one of them said.

Sydowski stood, and ran his hand over his face.Walking away, he grabbed a chair, smashing it against the wall under thequotation:

IT IS IN DYING THAT WE ARE BORN TO ETERNAL LIFE.

The new note taped to Reed’s door was scrawled in unforgiving block letters:‘WHERE IS RENT? NO RENT, NO ROOM. L. Onescu.”

Reed had broken too many promises to Lila. His keydidn’t work. She had changed the lock. He set down the paper bag containing hissupper. Two bottles of Jack Daniels and potato chips. He searched his wallet.Thirty-five bucks. His checkbook was in the room. Damn.

He walked the two blocks uphill to Lila’s building,entered the lobby, and leaned on the buzzer to her condo. No answer.

“She’s not home, Reed,” a man’s voice echoed throughthe intercom. “Hey, I’m surprised you’re not at work tonight.”

Reed looked into the security camera.

“Long story. I’d rather not talk about it now,Mickey.”

“Sure.”

“Where’s Lila? She leave a key for me? I have moneyfor her.”

“Gone to visit a nephew in Tahoe. No key. Sorry, pal.”

Reed walked back, got his supper, sat in his car infront of Lila’s Edwardian rooming house, overlooking the Marina District, theGolden Gate, and the Pacific. It was night. He thought of bunking with theother tenants, or driving to a motel. He was exhausted. Maybe he would callsome of the guys at the paper, ask for a couch. He took a hard hit from thebottle. Staring at San Francisco’s blinking lights, he searched for the answerto one question: “How the hell did he get here?”

He was seething. It kept him awake, made him thirsty.What had happened? He was a professional, married to an exceptional woman,blessed with a fine son. They had a good life. They were fighting to save it.They owned a good house in a good neighborhood. He had never intended to hurtanyone in the world. He worked hard. He worked honestly. Didn’t that count foranything? Didn’t it? It had to. If it counted for something then why the fuckwas he in the street, swilling whiskey in the back seat of his 1977 Comet,watching the thread holding his job and sanity slowly unravel?

Wallowing in alcoholic self-pity, he looked at hissituation for what it was: circumstances. Benson had thrown a fit, Reed forgotto pay his rent, and was too drunk now to go somewhere for the night. No onewas to blame. He chose the car. Quit sucking on the bottle. Call it a bad dayand go to sleep. Deal with it in the morning.

An engine revved rudely.

The sun pried Reed’s eyes open.

It took a moment before he realized where he was andwhy.

His head was shooting with lightning strikes of painand the stench in his mouth was overpowering. The bottle was half gone, theother untouched. He saw the greasy, half-eaten bag of potato chips, and nearlypuked. He had to piss.

He needed a shower, a shave, a new life.

Reed spotted a kid walking by, delivering the Examiner.

“Bobby, can you spare a paper?”

The lanky teen stopped, taken aback by someone inReed’s shape crawling out of a car in Sea Park.

“I have exactly enough for my route.”

Reed fumbled with his wallet.

“Here’s five bucks, just give me one, and buy anotherone.”

The kid eyed the bill, then gave him a crisply foldedcopy.

Reed sat on the hood of his car, letting the sun warmhim, and unfolded the paper. His mind reeled, the headline screamed:

KIDNAPPING SUSPECT SHOT BY COPS IN CHURCH.

It stretched six columns over a huge color photo of aman bleeding on a stretcher. There was an inset mug of him, file photos ofTanita Donner, Danny Becker, and Gabrielle Nunn. The guy was shot in a hostagetaking yesterday at a soup kitchen in an Upper Market church. He was pegged asthe man behind Tanita’s murder and the two abductions.

Virgil Shook? Who the hell was Virgil Shook?

Reed devoured the story and the sidebars. Never heardof Virgil Shook. The Examiner had nothing on Edward Keller. They gotthis guy in a church in the Upper Market? Didn’t he get a call from a womanconnected to a church there, a woman claiming she heard the killer confess?Yes, and he had written her off as a nut.

Reed went inside, upstairs to the bathroom down thehall from his locked room. He remembered old Jake on the third floor subscribedto the Star . Reed flushed, then took the stairs two at a time, andbanged on the door until Jake said, “Go away.”

“Jake, it’s Tom, Tom Reed from downstairs. It’simportant.”

Jake didn’t answer.

“Jake did you get The San Francisco Star today?I just want to look at it, please! It’s important!”

Reed heard shuffling, the locks turned. Jake waswearing over-sized boxers, a T-shirt dotted with coffee stains, and a frown. Hepractically threw a wrinkled copy of The Star at Reed.

“Have it! Criminals are ruining this great lady of acity.”

Reed hurried to his room with Jake calling after him”“Why don’t you guys accentuate the positive of San Francisco!”

Out of habit, Reed had his key in the door to his roombefore remembering it wouldn’t work. Damn. His phone rang. Once, twice, threetimes. The machine clicked on.

“Reed, this is Benson. Your employment with The SanFrancisco Star is terminated today. You disobeyed my instructions.Yesterday’s hostage taking proved that your story about Edward Keller waserroneous. It was a virtual fabrication that would have left us open to alawsuit. Personnel will mail your severance papers and payment. No letter ofrecommendation will be provided.”