Injustice for all

56

A sound awakens me. I open my eyes in the darkened bedroom and look at the digital clock on the dresser. Almost three in the morning.

I hear it again, a low growl coming from the foot of the bed. It’s Rio. Something has startled him.

“Shhhh, Rio. Go to sleep.” I lay my head back on the pillow and close my eyes. I can hear Caroline breathing rhythmically next to me. I start to drift off, but Rio growls again, this time louder. I sit up and slide my legs over the side of the bed. I’ve heard him growl thousands of times. This one is different.

I flip on the lamp beside the bed and stand up. Rio has also gotten to his feet and is standing near the closed bedroom door. His ears are laid back flat against his head, and he’s quivering. I walk over to him and pat him on the shoulder in an attempt to calm him, but he ignores me. Something is wrong; definitely wrong. I take hold of his harness and look over toward Caroline. She’s sitting up now, rubbing her eyes. I put a finger to my mouth and open the bedroom door.

“Go get ’em!” I whisper, and I let go of the harness. The dog launches himself into the darkness beyond the door as though he’s been shot from a cannon.

I hear a deafening gunshot about three seconds later, followed by a pitiful wail. Caroline screams. The first thing that enters my mind is that someone from Brian Gant’s family has come for a little revenge. I dive across the bed and turn the lamp back off. I can hear the dog whining somewhere in the house. I grab Caroline by the arm.

“Be quiet,” I whisper, and I pull her toward the walk-in closet between the bedroom and bathroom. There’s a semiautomatic Remington twelve gauge standing in the closet corner. I always keep it loaded. My fingers find it immediately, and I flip the safety off.

I help Caroline down beneath the clothes and boxes and so that she’s facing the door. I hand her the gun.

“Stay here. It’s ready to go. All you have to do is pull the trigger. When I come back, I’ll say something before I get to the door. Anybody else comes through, blow them away.”

“Where are you going?” The whisper is almost desperate. She doesn’t want me to leave her.

“I’m going to go kill the son of a bitch who broke into my house and shot my dog.”

A quiet rage is building within me. This is my home. It’s the middle of the night. My wife is terrified. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let whoever has invaded us walk out alive. I creep back into the bedroom for the nine-millimeter Beretta I keep in the drawer with my socks. I ease the clip out, check it, and push it back in. The pistol is loaded and I’m ready, though my heart is thumping against my chest and my hands are trembling slightly. I take a few deep breaths and try to focus.

Let them come to you. Whoever it is has come this far; they’ll come the rest of the way.

I crouch on the floor next to the dresser for a couple of the longest minutes of my life and listen. I hear a thump, then mumbling. It’s coming from the kitchen. He’s run into the counter or the island.

After another moment-an eternity in the dark-I hear what I think is a creak in the floor. Screw this. I can’t wait any longer. I go down, flat on my belly, and slide toward the sound. Once my head is around the corner I can just barely make out a pair of legs, two dark shadows on the far side of the kitchen table, but nothing else. If I stand, I’ll expose myself. I wait just a couple of seconds to make sure he’s alone. I ease my elbows out onto the floor in front of me and aim through the legs of a chair. He’s mumbling again. He’s maybe fifteen feet away.

The muzzle flash is blinding, and the explosion rattles my eardrums. He screams and falls in a heap. I hear his gun clatter against the tile as it skids away from him. I leap to my feet and run toward the intruder. I reach out and flip on the kitchen light as I pass the switch. His gun is lying near my feet, and I kick it away. He’s on the floor on his side, groaning, his face away from me. Both of his hands are wrapped around his knee, and blood is running through his fingers. A strong urge grips me, an urge that tells me to stick the barrel of my gun next to his temple and pull the trigger. I take a couple of steps toward him. I raise my foot, plant it in his shoulder, and roll him onto his back.

“You!”

I turn my head toward the bedroom and yell, “Caroline, come out here!”

She appears in a couple of seconds, carrying the shotgun, and walks tentatively toward me. She looks at the man on the floor and her mouth drops open.

“Are you capable of shooting this piece of shit if he moves?”

She nods her head. By the look in her eye, she means it.

I turn and walk into the hallway near the stairs that lead down to Jack’s room. Rio is lying a couple of feet from the door. A small pool of blood has formed beneath his chest. I kneel down beside him. His breathing is slow, but his eyes are open. I stroke him between the ears, and he moans.

“It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay.”

I examine him quickly. The bullet looks to have entered at the shoulder and broken his leg. I need to stop the bleeding. I remove my T-shirt and wrap it tightly around the wound. The bleeding slows, but I still need to get him to a vet.

I stand, and he whimpers.

“I’ll be right back, big guy. You just stay with us.”

I run back through the kitchen where Caroline is still holding the shotgun on the intruder. I pick up my cell phone off the bed and find Dr. James Kruk’s number. He’s been taking care of my animals for years, and he’s accustomed to being awakened. He answers after the fifth ring, and I tell him what’s happened. He says he’ll be right over.

I walk quickly back to the kitchen. The man has rolled onto his side again, but now he’s facing toward me. His hands are still wrapped around his left knee. Caroline is standing over him with the shotgun pointed at his head.

“I’m bleeding,” Lee Mooney says quietly. I can smell the strong odor of liquor in the air. He was trashed earlier. He must have kept drinking, the effects of which eventually led to the irrational decision that I needed to die.

“I don’t care if you’re bleeding,” I say.

“I needa… go… ta hospital.”

“How about the morgue?”

I kneel next to him and hold the barrel hard against his forehead. His head moves with the trembling of my hand. “You couldn’t just leave it alone, could you? All you had to do was crawl into a hole somewhere.”

“You don’t unnerstand,” Mooney says in the whiny voice I’ve heard more times than I care to remember, now thick with drunkenness. His dilated pupils look like black holes.

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” I say. I feel something I’ve never felt before, and I realize it’s indifference. I don’t care about him. I don’t care that he’s bleeding. “You broke into my house, you son of a bitch. You know the legal standard for defending yourself in your own home, don’t you?”

I see a glint of understanding. He knows what I mean.

“That’s right. Deadly force. I can use deadly force defending myself against someone who invades my home.”

I stand and back up a few steps, my mind whirling. If they look closely, they’ll see the amount of blood on the floor and know he bled for a while before he was shot the second time. They’ll analyze the angle of the trajectory of the bullet and know I was standing over him when I shot him. They’ll accuse me of murdering him.

He’s garbage. He raped Hannah and then had her murdered, and he’s going to get away with it. He shot my dog. He needs to be dead.

I pull back the hammer on the pistol and take a deep breath.

A hand wraps around the gun barrel and pushes it down gently. I come out of the trance and recognize the voice.

“Don’t,” Caroline says. “You’re not like him.”

I lower the gun to my side and nod my head. A thought pops into my mind, something Bates told me about Ramirez. I step back up next to Mooney, raise my heel off the ground, and stomp on his wounded knee with all the force I can muster. He screams in agony. I dial 911 on my cell phone and tell them there’s been a shooting. The cavalry is on the way.

“Take care of Rio, will you?” I say to Caroline.

I walk to a drawer next to the sink, pull out a clean dish towel, and walk back over to Mooney.

“Here,” I say as I toss it onto his forehead. “You’re going to jail. Try not to bleed to death before you get there.”