Tom repeated his ultimatum, but this time he spoke the words in a soft voice, as if beseeching the madman to submit and end the confrontation without a fight. “Put your hands where I can see them. I’m going to count to three, and then—”
“I wouldn’t do anything rash, officer. If you’re not careful, my pretty little hostage might get her pretty little face blown off.”
“What hostage?”
Ackerman redirected his gaze from Tom to Jim. “The one under this counter with the sawed-off shotgun strapped against her right temple. It’ll make a real mess of her, believe me on that. I’ve seen it before. It’s not pretty. And I know exactly what you’re thinking. You think I’m bluffing.” He turned back to Tom. “And you’re thinking that even if I am telling the truth, you can probably put one between my eyes before I could get my shot off. You’d be wrong, though. My finger’s resting right on that trigger and, as soon as your bullet struck, my muscles would clench and her head would be blown out the other side of this counter. So, gentlemen, it appears that what we have here is a Mexican stand-off.”
Ackerman took a deep breath and continued in his honeyed tone. “Isn’t this fun? You both began your day like any other. You kissed your loved ones good-bye, enjoyed a cup of coffee, maybe read the morning paper, but little did you know that this would be the most significant day of your lives. Today is a day that makes or breaks everything you’ve ever said or done, everything you’ve stood for or believed in. At some point, we all come to a place where we have to choose whether to be the hero, the villain, or to walk away and remain one of the sheep. This is one of those moments, gentlemen.
“I’m going to give you both a choice. You can walk away now and continue on with your lives. Maybe I have a hostage under this counter that I’m going to carve up the second you walk out that door, and maybe I don’t. Maybe you can catch me and make a name for yourselves, or maybe you’ll die trying. There’s no way you can know for sure, but that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? There’s no meaning. Good doesn’t triumph over evil. There’s just random chance and death. You were the unlucky ones who got the call tonight. The gentleman down the aisle was the unlucky one who was working the station tonight. We like to walk around and think of ourselves as being so damn evolved, so much better and intelligent than all of the other wildlife. But you know what?”
Ackerman looked at the two men as if he was a hungry animal and they were his next meal. He lowered his voice. “In the end, no matter how many delusions of grandeur that we blind ourselves with, we are all either hunters or the hunted, predators or prey. Life is just one big game, gentlemen. The winners survive and the losers rot. The choices we make determine our fate. So…make your choice.”
Jim stood at rigid attention, entranced by the madman behind the counter. Ackerman had recited the speech with passion, as if the killer were a politician rallying the constituency behind some noble cause. He had never seen a man with two guns pointed at his face remain so impassive. There was no fear in him. Fear to Ackerman seemed as alien a concept as an airplane to a Neanderthal. More than that, it appeared as if the man felt in complete control of the situation.
Despite the gun in his hand, the realization of that fact made Jim feel defenseless.
Tom’s voice cracked and contained a noticeable tremor. “There is no hostage,” he said. “There were no other cars out front. Now, you put your hands where I can see them, or I swear to God in heaven, I will put a bullet right between your eyes.”
Jim wasn’t convinced by Tom’s statement, and neither did it seem to influence Ackerman. He knew that Ackerman would have most likely stashed his own car in back, in order to keep up the appearance of being the attendant. If some woman would have stopped and came across the killer, he would have moved her car to the back with his own. The possibility that Ackerman had brought the hostage with him in his own car also occurred to him.
He wasn’t sure whether his partner had overlooked those scenarios, or if Tom’s actions merely represented a desperate attempt to end the situation. Either way, he knew it wouldn’t work. Ackerman wouldn’t allow this to end without things getting messy. He could see that much in the killer’s eyes.
Ackerman sighed. “Well, darling, they apparently don’t believe you’re real. Why don’t you scream for them?”
With Ackerman’s last word, the front of the counter exploded outward, sending pieces of wooden shrapnel in all directions. The shotgun blast tore into Tom’s left side, sending a spray of blood into Jim’s face and dropping Tom onto the linoleum.
Jim dove into the closest aisle. An instant after he was clear, the end cap display of Dorito chips erupted from a second blast.
He regained his feet and fired two shots in quick succession around the corner. He barely had time to see his shots strike the counter when the shotgun answered, sending him back to cover.
He could hear Tom crying and cursing.
His gun must have been lost in the confusion
, he thought. And Tom must have been half delirious with pain since he wasn’t even attempting to find cover. Jim knew that his partner wouldn’t survive if he didn’t immediately end the confrontation and get help.
“Trooper down. Send medical,” he said into his portable packset radio. He didn’t bother to announce his name or location. The radio carried a unique code that dispatch would identify while the GPS in the patrol car would alert backup units of their position.
But, unless he acted now, he also knew that he and Tom would be dead by the time backup arrived.
He tried to stay focused, but he couldn’t keep his thoughts from wandering onto his wife and daughter.
Will I see them again? Will I get to watch my daughter grow up?
He thought of brushing the golden, curly locks of hair away from her face and kissing her on the forehead. He thought of the way her eyes lit up with awe and wonder as she sat on his lap and listened to him read.
He thought of his wife kissing him goodbye and telling him to be careful. He thought of holding her, skin against skin, and running his fingers through her raven black hair.
I have to be strong. I have to make it home to them.
He tried to tell himself that he would see them again, but somehow he knew better. At that moment, he would have given anything for one more chance to hold them.
The smell of gunpowder mixed with the aromas of scented cleaning fluids attacked his senses and made him feel lightheaded. It was that or the adrenaline. Either way, he felt as if he was in a washing machine on spin cycle. He tried to get himself under control, but he was terrified beyond reason. He had no idea of what to do next.
He knew that he wouldn’t survive a frontal assault against the shotgun, so he decided his best option would be to move around to the back of the aisles and perhaps catch Ackerman off guard. Plus, the greater the distance, the more advantage his 9mm would have over the less accurate shotgun.
Moving as quietly as possible, he made his way down the aisle. Reaching the opposite end cap, he peered around the corner into the next row.
All clear.
He dashed to the next end cap.
So far, so good.
There were only four rows of food in the small station, which meant that if he made it to the next end cap without Ackerman seeing him, he would have an unobstructed view of his opponent’s hiding place.
He checked the next aisle for danger and was about to make a dash for the next end cap when he heard a small but strange noise coming from the front of the store. It took him a moment to associate the sound with anything tangible, but then he made the connection of a liquid being pressed from a squeeze bottle. Following the sound, Tom’s wailing increased in intensity, and the injured officer screamed an almost unintelligible call for help.
“Your friend is having a very bad day, officer. He made his choice to stay and fight, but I guess that I didn’t really give you much of a choice, so here it is. Your partner was right. There was no hostage before. But there is one now, and he’s not going to leave here alive. I will, however, let you walk right out that door, get in your car, and leave this place behind like it was nothing more than a nightmare. If you stay, maybe you can stop me and save your friend, but let’s be honest. I’m better at this game than you are. If you stay, odds are you’ll both die. The choice is yours, officer.”
He gritted his teeth. Ackerman most likely knew his position, so the chance to sneak around behind the madman was gone. He knew that Ackerman was right. He had never been in a situation like this. He had never seen any real action other than a few rowdy traffic stops and a hostage situation at a diner a few years back, where he had been one of about twenty policemen on the scene. He had been involved in some murder investigations after the fact, but he had never been in a shootout with the killer.
His adversary, however, had taken countless victims, several of which were law enforcement. The killer outgunned and outmatched him; yet, he knew that he could never abandon his friend.
Tom Delaine was a hotheaded, irrational jerk, but he had also been his partner and best friend for nine years. Tom had been there the day that Emily had given birth, handing out the cigars and grinning like a proud uncle. Tom had been the only person who could comfort him on the day they placed his father in the ground. His partner had counseled him through every tough moment of his life and had never asked for anything in return.
“You come on back here where I can get a good look at you, and I’ll give you my answer,” he said, without the slightest tremble in his voice.
“All right, officer, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He didn’t respond. He was already on the move.
He made his way down the middle aisle, staying low and trying to zero in on Ackerman’s location from the sound of his voice. If his instincts proved correct, Ackerman awaited him at the end cap of the third row.
When he reached the end of the aisle, he peeked one eye around the corner, but couldn’t see the killer. Tom lay only a few feet away.
He edged farther out of the aisle, but still no Ackerman. He was about to reach for Tom, when he heard a match being struck. In that split second, he noticed the line of liquid running from around the side of the station’s counter to where Tom lay. He sniffed the air and realized that the sound he had heard earlier was the spraying of lighter fluid. Before he could react, a hand appeared from around the corner of the counter and dropped a match into the trail of liquid.
The stream of lighter fluid ignited, a blue spark questing out and morphing into hues of red and yellow. Within the blink of an eye, the fire shot back to Tom and engulfed him in flames.
Tom’s tortured screams of agony filled the gas station and reverberated off the walls and glass. The echoes compounded on each other, giving the effect of a chorus of the damned.
In that moment, Jim lost the capacity for rational thought and acted on pure instinct. He dropped his pistol, ripped off his coat, and slapped at the flames in a last ditch effort to save his friend. After a few swings, his coat glowed with reds and yellows, as well. He dropped it to the linoleum next to Tom.
A part of his rational mind, which had now been thrown to the back of his consciousness, realized that his friend and partner of many years was gone, but terror had usurped coherent thought. His own screams added to the cacophony of suffering.
After what felt like an eternity, his partner’s thrashing ceased, and only the flames remained. The smell of charred flesh filled the space all around him, adding to the whirlwind of emotions swirling in his mind.
A mixture of terror, grief, and anger consumed his consciousness. He sat on his knees, weeping for his friend and knowing that he would be next. For some time, he had been aware of the man with the shotgun standing behind him in the aisle. Ackerman had used Tom as a distraction, and the ploy had succeeded.
His voice trembled and tears ran down his cheeks. “Why did you do this? You called us here just so you could kill us? Why?”
“Why?” Ackerman said. “That is the eternal question, isn’t it? From the beginning of human existence, we have sought frantically for the answer to one question:
Why?
Well, I’m afraid that I don’t really have an answer for you, other than to say that it is simply who I am. Some people paint beautiful works of art. Some people are doctors, lawyers, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. I am a predator, a killer. Life’s a game, and I like to play. But I’m not quite through playing with you yet. Give me your wallet.”
“My wallet?”
A kick to the back of the head answered his question. “Your wallet, now. Please.”
He complied, and Ackerman took the proffered item. The killer sifted through the wallet’s contents, pausing to study the driver’s license and a tattered family photo. “You’ve got a beautiful family here, Jim Morgan. I’d love to meet them.”
“Don’t even look at them!” he said as he charged at his best friend’s murderer.
Ackerman used the shotgun as a club to knock him to the floor. Then, the killer pummeled him until blood flowed from several large gashes on his face. He could feel his flesh tearing with every blow, but he could do nothing to stop the barrage.
After a moment, the blows ceased. Ackerman stood over him, aiming the shotgun. “I was just going to toy with you a bit before ending your life, but now…I think I’ve got a better idea.”
Ackerman walked behind the counter and retrieved a bottle and a cloth, his eyes never leaving Jim.
He writhed in agony on the floor as he watched Ackerman dump some of the contents of the bottle onto the piece of torn cloth. His vision blurred as his eyes filled with tears. He could taste his own blood in his mouth and still smell the acrid smoke from Tom’s charred remains. His brain couldn’t process the onslaught of information transmitted by his senses, and his mind threatened to shut down.
Ackerman knelt and placed the cloth over his mouth. He tried to fight back, but his efforts were futile. Within a moment, he succumbed to the chemicals and darkness overtook him.