Arsonist

CHAPTER 32

Stephen Gunn pulled up to the apartment complex and jumped out with such glee he felt like hitting his heels together like some leprechaun. He sprinted up the stairs and got to Jaime Spencer’s door. It was locked and he used his key rather than knocking and waiting for her.

“Hello?” he said, coming in.

The apartment was actually clean for once and vacuum impressions were on the carpets. He went to the fridge and took out a beer, drinking half of it down before noticing the note on the counter. He walked over and picked it up:

Stevie, make yerself at home I’ll be back later Jamie

He crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. She had probably gone out to score and would stumble back at one in the morning, used up from a gangbang she probably had to do to score the amount of H or OxyContin she needed to keep her high for the next few weeks. Gunn wondered what the hell he was doing with a whore like her.

He went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. He closed his eyes and listened to the traffic outside. Kids were playing out there, chasing each other with water balloons and squirt guns.

Gunn had never been able to play games like that when he was a kid. His father, when he was actually home, was so drunk that Gunn had to intentionally piss him off to take a beating. His father was fat and a pothead; he didn’t have the energy for two beatings in a night. If Gunn could take it, he’d spare his mother and younger sister. But Gunn had been sickly as a child and many of the beatings broke bones and tore ligaments. Injuries he would have to live with until morning when his mom could take him to the emergency room and spend the co-pay without his father blowing up.

But, the last time Gunn had seen his father, that one moment had almost made those years of pain worth it. In that moment, he let his father know who he was. He beat him for over an hour, so badly that his father had passed out several times. Gunn sat down on their cigarette-stained sofa and patiently waited for him to wake before continuing. Gunn had been sixteen years old.

A sound was coming from the living room as Gunn dozed off to sleep. It was soft, almost a scratch, and if the kids had been yelling or a car had been driving by at that moment he wouldn’t have heard it. He thought perhaps a dog or cat was clawing at the door and thought about getting some food out and giving it to them; he could use some company right now.

Then, he heard a click. The doorknob began to twist. The door opened quietly, only a minor creak as it closed again.

Instinctively, he jumped to the floor and crawled under the bed, pulling out his Glock and aiming out the bedroom door. Jaime wouldn’t have been so quiet, couldn’t have been so quiet. Still, it was probably just one of her junkie boyfriends.

The footsteps in the hall were light, light enough that he couldn’t hear them until they were close. Then he saw a pair of converse shoes quietly stop in front of the bedroom and then keep going farther down the hall. They came back a minute later and walked to the bedroom closet, opened it, and then closed it again. The bed above him dipped down as the person sat. Gunn heard the beep of a phone and then a male voice said, “Yeah, he ain’t here. Nah, I’m tellin’ you, the mutherfucker ain’t here.”

Gunn, as quietly as he could, moved his head enough to peek out from under the bed. The man was still talking on his phone and his back was turned to Gunn. Across his lap sat a 12-gauge shotgun.

Gunn slowly pulled his Glock up across his chest and out from under the bed. He was just slowly going past the metal railing when the barrel tapped the bed from an inadvertent muscle twitch. The man immediately looked down, saw Gunn, and went for the shotgun on his lap.

Gunn fired two rounds. One hit the man in the side as Gunn slid back under the bed and a shotgun blast went off into the floor. Gunn rolled out on the other side of the bed and fired three rounds to keep the man on the other side of the room. He got up to his knees and fell back down as another blast echoed off the walls.

On the floor, Gunn aimed for the man’s ankles on the other side of the room. He steadied his hand, and fired. A scream as the man nearly toppled over. He stumbled out of the room, blood trailing on the carpet.

Gunn jumped to his feet and went after him. He quickly glanced out the bedroom door and saw that the man hadn’t waited for him. He was already out the front door. Gunn ran after him but by the time he was at the front door the man was hobbling to a waiting car. Gunn lifted his weapon, but didn’t fire at the man. Instead he shot one round into the front tire, and then another round into the rear tire which seemed to explode from the sudden release of pressure. The driver got out and ran and the man that had been in the apartment turned with his shotgun aimed at Gunn’s chest.

Gunn dove behind the railing as it shattered, the plastic in between the metal bars spraying over him in sharp fragments. He fired two rounds, missing both times as shards of the plastic had cut up his face and gotten in his eyes. He rolled backward as far as he could go until he hit a storage closet that the unit across from Jaime’s used. When he went to stand, his knees buckled and he fell to the ground with a thud. That’s when he noticed the small holes dotting his chest.

His breath was short and he felt like he was about to pass out. He got out his cell phone and dialed 911. By the time dispatch answered, he had blacked out.