Read She Is Risen (She Is Risen: The Gun Control Case Studies) Online
Authors: Travis Adams Irish
His pale complexion is for the worse, having not
spent quality time in the sun for months. The man is short in stature, but has
a wider stance than most. His blue overalls help him to appear a bit larger,
which is why he wears them even after he is done fixing cars for the day.
“Hell yeah!” The throaty southerner says with a
smile as he watches the two men battle on the television. “Get him, Sanchez,
knock that boy on his ass!”
The doorbell rings, and Ralph looks over at the
entryway in infamy, having a serious dilemma about getting out of his chair to
miss any of the fight. When it rings a second time, he takes a swig of his
beer, removes his feet from the coffee table, and gets up to find out who is
disturbing him this late.
Ralph scratches his head as he approaches the
front door. After unlocking the deadbolt with a quick twist, he reaches down
and pulls on the corroded, silver doorknob to open the large cedar door. As
the door opens, he is shocked to see Ned Lawhorn standing on his porch pointing
a .45 caliber Colt Revolver at his chest.
Sally drives like a mad bat out of hell, her
jeep bouncing along the winding dirt roads as if she is filming a commercial.
Her mind races with the possible scenarios that could be played out by her
drunken boyfriend. She has been spinning her wheels on the plausibility of
Ralph doing these things to get even with Ned after being sent to prison. Her
face turns to a cavalcade of hatred as Sally considers a reality where Ralph
would ever try to harm her boyfriend again. Although there is one thing bothering
her as she weighs out the situation. If Ralph had been smart enough to send
Mary with her bullshit story, and run over the dog, then who did he hire to run
over the dog, and how was that orchestrated?
Sally racks her brain for an answer as she nears
the Epperson home on the other side of town. Her foot presses down hard on the
accelerator as she notices that Ned’s truck is already parked out in front.
“Just like that…” Ned says as he staggers around
the rear side of Ralph’s car within the small garage.
Ned stands over Ralph, looking down at him with
pride from his bright blue eyes. The mechanic is lying under his own car with
the rear end jacked up enough for him to fit his chest under the heavy frame.
His assailant is holding the jack handle, staring at him with a victorious
smile, having wanted this for so long.
“That’s exactly how she was!” Ned confirms with
a drunken misconception of authority, still pointing his pistol at Ralph’s
head. “My little girl was pinned under your bus just like this. She laid
there as it rolled over and crushed her chest. Assfixing her… Assfixying her
to death.”
“I spent two years in prison!” Ralph evokes with
a great deal of emotion and fear.
“And I spent ten years in hell!” Ned growls
back, twisting the jack handle a bit to lower the car onto Ralph’s chest. “So
what do you think will happen when this comes down on you? I think… I think
it’s going to crush your heart. You know how they say... The breadbasket in
karate? Well, this car is going to come down right on your breakbasket. I
mean… breadbasket.”
“Don’t do this, Ned, I never meant to hurt your
little girl!” Ralph pleads in a terrified panic, looking up at the frame of the
two ton Chevrolet Corvette hovering just an inch above his body.
“You never meant to hurt her?” Ned asks with an
irritated, drunken hatred. “You never meant to hurt her… You just had some
beers, and decided you were good to drive a dozen or so kids home from school?”
“I was weak and I had a problem!” Ralph pleads
from underneath the heavy steel as Ned begins to lower the car slowly.
“No, you’re wrong!” Ned says with a slur. “You
are weak, but you haven’t had a real problem yet… not until now. Take a look
at this heavy ass car coming down to crush your chest… This is what it feels
like for a parent to lose their child… So if you can balance a car on your
chest, and live, then I guess God has decided to spare your irresponsible ass?
Or maybe we’ll just collapse a lung, and you’ll live on a breathing machine
forever… Either way, it sounds like fun!”
Ned twists the handle further, watching the
vehicle lower until the frame is compressing Ralph’s chest to the point where
it is nearly snapping his ribs. At this point he stops lowering the car,
watching his daughter’s killer suffocate and squirm, feeling like he is doing
the righteous thing.
“Ned don’t!” Sally warns as she steps up to him
in the garage. “He’s paid his debt to society; it’s not our job to decide his
fate.”
“This is poetic justice, Sally, stay out of it!”
Ned warns as he looks at her with a bit of confusion.
“Ned, you can’t end your life this way!” She
insists with strong confidence. “Don’t you realize that someone has been
playing us? These past few days with the rope, your dog getting run over by a
drunk driver, and Mary lying about having sex with you?”
“I have wanted this for so long… Sally.” Ned
replies with a selfish plea, her words barely registering in his mind. “If you
know so much about justice, then why don’t you tell me what he deserves? Come
on, Ms. Morality, tell me what he deserves for getting drunk and crushing my
baby girl under his bus?”
“Forgiveness, Ned!” Sally says as she reaches
out, pushing the pistol away from Ralph’s head and toward the ground. “He
deserves your forgiveness… and so do you!”
Her words hit Ned like a sour batch of grapes
from the bottom of a wine bottle. He closes his eyes for a moment, weighing
out the importance of his rage versus his love for her, and then he looks down
at Ralph’s terrified face.
“I forgive you.” He says slowly, reaching down
to pump the jack handle a few times and release the pressure from Ralph’s
chest.
“Thank you!” Ralph says with tears flowing from
his eyes, feeling a deep wound closing after years of self-punishment. “I
never wanted things to go the way they did… I think about it every day, Sir!
It haunts me every day of my life! I’m so sorry!”
Ned begins to release a series of healing tears
that are long overdue as he uses the jack to free the man from under the frame
of the car. Then he dutifully places the pistol in the leather holster at his
right side, and steps over to Sally for a drunken bear hug.
“I love you, my red hen.” Ned whispers with a
sweet smile.
“I love you too, my crazy cowboy!” She replies
with a wildly passionate kiss, grabbing her man by the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s
go home.” She says after the kiss, grabbing Ned by the hand and leading him out
of the garage.
“Thank you for coming to get me, Sally.” Ned
says with an exhausted smile, turning a bit to watch Ralph make his way back to
the house behind them.
“Ned, I think something very strange has been
happening in town these past few days.” Sally says as they walk down the
driveway hand in hand. “I think someone in town has been messing with your
head because they want you to kill Ralph.”
“Oh, geez, woman,” Ned laughs with a broad grin,
“who would want me to kill Ralph?”
“The CIA!” A voice says quickly from behind
Ned’s right ear as a gunshot explodes through the night sky.
Sally has only a moment to watch as Ned’s Colt
.45 Revolver is pointed at his own face and fired, knocking off his cowboy hat
and sending him backwards to the ground. The killer is in his late forties and
has blue-gray eyes. His tufts of gray and brown hair blow a bit in the wind as
he stares at Sally, and the young woman gets a good look at his face just
before he shoots her in the right side of the head with Ned’s pistol.
After Sally drops in a lifeless heap to the
concrete driveway, Mason steps up closer to the dumpy white house on the
Epperson property. He watches the front windows for a few seconds, turning every
so often to see if anyone is coming out of the garage. Within a few seconds,
Ralph’s round face appears in the window to investigate the gunshots, and Mason
quickly makes it disappear with another shot from Ned’s pistol. He watches
through the window for a moment longer, ensuring that the short mechanic isn’t
moving, and then steps cautiously over to Ned’s body, kneeling down to place the
pistol in his right hand.
Once the murder weapon is in place, Mason flexes
his hands inside of his black, latex gloves, feeling a rush of pride from a job
well done. He looks over the scene briefly, and then begins to jog back to his
silver rental car that is parked nearly a hundred yards up the road. Mason
makes good time as he returns to the car, his arms and legs moving swiftly in a
pair of loose-fitting jeans and a matching navy blue sweatshirt.
THE OBDAT – CHICAGO
“We’ve had a murder-suicide in Texas.” Mason
announces from his headset.
“What happened?” Lorabell asks with a shocked
expression, appalled at the thought of another suicide. “I didn’t even know
that our subject was in play!”
“Yeah, I’m still trying to sort this out, but it
looks like he went over to attack the bus driver that killed his daughter.”
Mason confirms in a shaky voice.
“Did you have a chance to stop him?” Henri asks,
turning to watch Lorabell’s reaction.
“Negative.” Mason reports with an uneasy tone.
“We didn’t know anything was going down until it was done.”
“Okay, we’ll talk more when you get back from Texas.” Henri says with slow affirmation, shaking his head from side-to-side. “Good luck
out there…”
“That’s fucking crazy!” Maxwell offers with wide
eyes. “Two suicides this week!? Holy shit!”
“Now let’s calm down until we have all the
details.” Henri reassures them. “We know these people are unstable; that’s why
we were given permission to run this op. I just want to ensure that we don’t
make the same mistake on the next case.”
PHILLIP AND LETISHA BELFORT
‘The war in Iraq and Afghanistan was so much simpler
than this life of hell,’ Phillip thinks to himself, dangling the cell phone in
front of his knee with his right hand. The young man keeps his eyes closed,
trying to erase the horrific image from his mind, gripping the phone firmly as
his heart begins to thunder with an unearthly fury. The text message he just
received is by far the most foul and disturbing thing he has ever witnessed in
his life.
In the war, there were men getting gut shot,
with intestines hanging from their bodies. A few heads were torn apart by
wayward bullets, and soldiers lost limbs at random intervals throughout the
day. However, none of that compares to what he holds in the palm of his now
trembling right hand. Tears of sorrow, pain, and fear stream in thick lines
down his chiseled black face. For the first time since the war, Phillip buries
his head in his hands and begins to rock back and forth, weeping spastically
like a small child.
He thinks back to the previous night, a few
hours after the Crips walked through his neighborhood; a car full of Bloods
drove past his home with their stereo pounding. The men inside the car were
making obscene gestures with their hands and tongues, thrusting their hips
toward the home. Unfortunately, Letisha saw them through the window, and his
wife went straight for the medicine cabinet, forcing Phillip to stop her from
taking a bunch of pills.
“Oh my God..!” Phillip says to the emptiness of
his front porch, biting the knuckle of his left index finger to repress the
agony. “My baby! Look what they did to my baby…”
His biceps are tense with extreme hatred,
feeling a raw surge of animal malice that festers from his jaw all the way to
his toes. After a long period of denial, he finally decides to face the horror
in the palm of his hand, knowing that the war never ended for him and his
family. Phillip opens his eyes, showing the courage of a soldier as he turns
the cell phone over and looks at the abomination that was text to him less than
half an hour ago.
As the screen turns bright again, he sees the
photo of his horribly battered wife, lying naked in the street and left for
dead. The message that came with the picture reads: ‘Talkin’ to the cops won’t
make it stop.’ He shakes all over inside as the fresh pain explodes from his
center, stripping away every ounce of happiness he has ever known. His lovely
flower and soul mate, stripped down and beaten like an animal by a pack of
cowards in the street.
The photo had been described to him during the
trial six months ago, but his loving wife had refused to show it to him,
knowing he didn’t have the strength to see her in that much pain. Phillip’s
stomach is twisting in knots, an empty, biting pain, raw and visceral;
paramount to the suffering of that most sacred to him.