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| Ruger Police Service Six .38 Special. |
My ears were met by the unnerving sound of a cocking
revolver, and a deep voice behind me in the thinning fog ordered me to drop my
Beretta. “Claiborne police. Make one wrong move, and I’ll blow your head off,”
the voice said.
The voice surprised me, and I fought the urge to spin
around. I’d switched the Beretta to my left hand when I squatted to examine the
set of dentures on the ground. If the man behind me was in fact one of
Claiborne’s finest, any sudden move with a gun in my hand might cause him to shoot.
In an instant, I considered the possibility that he might
not be a police officer at all. Maybe he had something to do with Professor
Gruner’s disappearance or with the mysterious man I’d encountered in the dark
woods just hours before. Maybe, like me, he was out for the $10,000 reward offered
by the professor’s distraught wife.
Without turning my head, I spoke over my shoulder. “I’m
setting the gun down on the ground.” I flexed my knees just enough to drop the
gun by my left foot and then raised my hands.
“Kick it away,” the man ordered. He sounded like he was
maybe 20 feet behind me, a clue that he probably was police. A reactionary gap
of about 21 feet was standard practice.
I kicked the Beretta away with the toe of my boot and watched
it come to rest a few feet away, amidst dirty, wet leaves. It would need a good
cleaning later. “Can I turn around now?”
“Slowly,” he said. “Don’t think I won’t shoot you.”
With my hands raised, I turned to face him and saw that he
was a uniformed patrol officer. He looked familiar. I’d probably seen him somewhere
in the city.
He was a white guy, about 50 years old. I couldn’t read his
badge number or nameplate. The City of Claiborne had about 270 police officers,
not counting the 15 or so that worked for the college.
His .38-caliber blued steel revolver was leveled at my
midsection. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“McMorn,” I said. “Reporter at The Herald.”
His expression didn’t change, but I saw recognition in his
eyes. Static squawked over the radio clipped to his hip as he made his way over
to my discarded handgun and secured it. He never took his eyes off my hands. “What
are you doing out here?”
“Working on a story. You?”
He ignored the question. “What’s all this stuff on the
ground?” he asked. He pointed at the professor’s belongings piled at the base
of the large oak just a few feet away.
I explained that I’d found the items just a few minutes
before. I told him that the wallet on top of the folded pants contained a
driver’s license belonging to Dr. Albert Gruner.
He pulled his handheld radio off his belt and keyed it up.
“All units be advised I’ve got one subject in custody and will be headed out
with him on foot,” he said. A male voice on the other end acknowledged him as
he produced a set of handcuffs.
He tossed the cuffs over to me. “Put them on,” he ordered.
“Why? What am I being charged with?”
A grim, no-nonsense look passed across his face like a
shadow. “Son, you’ll either put those on yourself, or I’ll put them on for
you,” he said. “You’re out here with a handgun, standing over bunch of weird stuff
that belongs to a known missing person, and we’ve got another dead body not far
from here out by the highway.”
(All rights reserved. This story is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or
locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.)
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