John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

It was what they wanted to hear. “Fucker’s history,” Deputy Steadman said at the front of the crowd.

“There you go, men,” Petrelli concluded, careful to rob Murphy of the last word. “You have your orders. Go out and bring the bastard in.”

Warren was horrified. As the group of police officers broke up and headed out to fulfill their orders, he turned to face Murphy and Petrelli, his mouth agape. “Jesus Christ, Petrelli, you just issued a death warrant on that kid.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Warren, don’t be such a woman.” He turned his back on Michaels.

Warren leveraged a shoulder to spin him back around. “What the fuck gives you the right to form a lynch mob? My God, Petrelli, you’re an officer of the court! You can’t authorize an execution!”

Petrelli’s eyes burned with self-righteous anger. “Get your hands off of me, Lieutenant, or I’ll have you arrested for assault. Save your theatrics for that incompetent staff of yours. All we’re trying to do is finish the job that you couldn’t. If the kid gets killed, it’s because he deserves it. When his arrest comes down, he’ll just have to be very careful, that’s all:’

Warren knew that Petrelli was an asshole; there was no use trying to talk to him. He turned his attention to Murphy. “Sheriff?” he said. “You’ve got to tone down the rhetoric, sir. Those men think you just authorized them to kill a twelve-year-old boy.”

Warren wasn’t sure what to make of the look he got from Murphy. It wasn’t angry; it wasn’t sad. Tired. That was it, he looked tired.

“Look, Lieutenant,” he said patiently. “My boys know how to do their jobs. If the kid can be taken alive, that’s how it will go down. If he poses a threat, he’s toast. It’s that simple.”

“It’s not that simple!”

“It’s exactly that simple!” There was the anger. Suddenly Murphy seethed with it. “Don’t you tell me how to run my department, Michaels. That animal killed two of my deputies. Here are the pictures.” He thrust a fistful of Maroids at Warren. “The way I look at it, if you hadn’t fucked up on your end, I wouldn’t have had to console two widows this morning. This is my case now, and I’ll run it my way—which is to capture the bad guy and eliminate the threat to the community. That’s what I’m elected to do. If that means that a young killer doesn’t get a chance to grow up to be an old killer, then I can live with that.”

A long moment passed with Michaels and Murphy staring angrily at each other. Then the anger disappeared from Murphy’s countenance and he just looked tired again. Without another word, the sheriff turned and walked toward his office. Petrelli followed.

Goddamn politicians, thought Warren.

The very last thing in the world that Pointer wanted to do was call Mr. Slater. Nonetheless, the call had to be made. Pointer was a professional, and one of the duties of a professional was to own up to his mistakes. Sammy Bell answered the phone and passed him right through to Mr. Slater. Said he’d been expecting the call.

“Is it true what they say on the news, Lyle?” the old man asked, his raspy voice giving testimony to fifty years of unfiltered Chesterfields. “Is it true that you let this Bailey boy get away again?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Slater,” Pointer explained, surprised by the shakiness of his own voice, “but it’s like this…”

“Be quiet, Lyle,” commanded Mr. Slater. “I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses. Do you comprehend how much embarrassment you’ve brought down on us with your incompetent screwups? Do you know what the others will say about us? Even the niggers will laugh at us. Punk kids, Lyle, and they’ll be laughing at us.”

“It’s not like you think, Mr. Slater,” Pointer offered.

“Shut up,” the old man commanded a second time. “You don’t know what I think, Lyle, and I don’t care what you think. I care about performance, Lyle, and you’ve let me down terribly. Now, here’s what I want you to do. Leave the boy alone. It appears that the police are intent on keeping him from our grasp. I want you to come home. We have some things we need to discuss.”

Pointer felt himself hyperventilating, but he could not control his breathing. “What about that asshole Mark Bailey? Don’t you want me to…”

“We’ll take care of him.”

“Please, Mr. Slater, at least let me…

“I said we’ll take care of him, Lyle. I want you to come home. I want to see you in my office this afternoon at five.”

Pointer closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing. For a moment, he thought he might cry.

“Do you understand me, Lyle?”

“Yes, sir.” Pointer’s tone was flat, as though he were dead already. “Lyle?”

“Yes, Mr. Slater?”

“Make it easy on yourself, son,” the old man instructed, an unexpected touch of kindness in his voice. “Don’t make us come after you.”

Unable to make his voice work, Pointer placed the phone gently on the cradle. He cocked his head oddly as he stared at his hands. He had never seen them shake before.

Warren set up camp in an empty office, where he leafed through the Polaroids for the sixth time. Not knowing the officers involved personally, the pictures were no more or less shocking than dozens of others he’d seen, but the sheer violence of the act was baffling. The marksmanship was amazing. Three shots were fired, each one a kill shot. Where does a kid learn to shoot like that? He jotted the thought down on a yellow legal pad. One shot like this might be luck. To score three meant skill.

The circumstantial, physical evidence was undeniable, but Warren still couldn’t put it together in his head. How did a kid who had spent most of his formative years in upper-crust suburbia learn to kill with such skill? How did a twelve-year-old who was known by his peers as a wimp muster the courage and physical strength to overcome three adults and kill them? Okay, so the first one was drunk and unlucky—or so said Nathan—but what about the ones last night? How does a boy wrestle a gun from a man and still have enough composure to snap off perfect kill-shots?

For that matter, what were the cops doing wearing firearms in the cellblock? That violated the most basic security procedures followed by every jail in America.

He tried to reduce it to a timeline on his legal pad. Assuming that Nathan got as far as his cell, and according to Deputy Steadman, that was where the boy was the last time he saw him, Schmidtt had to be the first one killed. Otherwise, where would Nathan have gotten the gun? Warren wrote on his pad, Smuggled in gun?

No, the gun he took from the Grimeses’ house was found in the Honda, unused. Could always have been a second piece, but where would he hide it? Steadman’s report said that Nathan was thoroughly frisked before he was put away.

So, one way or another, Nathan whacked Schmidtt. With the door open, he had free access to the hallway. So why didn’t Watts react? He was shot in his chair, once close up, and once from further away. The Polaroids clearly showed powder burns around the mouth shot, but none on the chest. When you hear shooting down the hall, you don’t just stay in your seat. You react. At the very least, then, there should have been a shootout in the hallway, but that wasn’t the way it happened. Watts was shot dead where he sat. Shot twice.

Michaels strolled out to the watch desk and ran some quick mental calculations. The young deputy assigned to maintain security stepped aside to let him past. Standing at the side of the watch desk, at the doorway to the cellblock, Warren pantomimed a shot. His extended arm came within three feet of the taped outline on the floor. This had to be where the head shot was fired. The circled hole in the linoleum even showed where the bullet exited Watts’s brain and lodged in the floor.