From a Dead Sleep (2 page)

The man was average in height with bright blonde, well-kept hair that was short at the sides and back, and not much longer on top. His dark pants and shoes matched his trench coat.

The bags under Sean’s eyes tightened and his mouth drooped open as he curiously examined the stranger. He noticed the man’s chest was visibly expanding and contracting with large breaths. He watched him lean forward with his hands in his pockets, peering aimlessly down at the water below. His leather dress shoes, despite being scuffed and muddied, shined under a gap of sunlight penetrating through the trees.

Even from the distance, Sean could smell money. He fancied the man as a business executive. A big-shot city slicker. The stranger was thin but athletic, with a runner’s build. He was clean shaven and appeared to have quite noticeable wide, red marks under his dark eyes, as if he normally wore glasses. Sean guessed they had to be large glasses, because the streaks traced well down to his cheek bones.

Without warning, the man’s head quickly spun to the side.

Sean, out of pure instinct, ducked down low to keep from being seen. The long grass helped conceal him from view.

The man intently investigated the stretch of road to the west and then spun to the other side to check out the east.

Sean felt a little silly for hiding; he wasn’t sure there was a point in it. He was a large and strong man who had little fear, a trait that often served as a detriment. But it was the pure fascination he was developing with the gentleman’s foreign nature that kept Sean from revealing himself. As if observing a deer in the forest, he felt compelled to stay still and silent, to keep from startling the man.

The stranger on the bridge peered back and forth several more times in a paranoid fashion. This was all the more fascinating to Sean, whose large frame sunk lower onto his hands and knees.

As if he was suddenly being timed, the man quickly regained his composure and raised his hands from his pockets. A shiny gold wristwatch, now visible, danced in the sun, sending a beam of light directly into Sean’s eyes.

Sean was forced to squint but kept his sight trained on the stranger’s odd behavior. Once the glimmer vanished, Sean’s face twisted in puzzlement. He now had clear sight of the man’s hands.

His left hand was wrapped in what looked to be a gauze bandage or maybe a towel. The bandage wasn’t clean; a crimson blemish stained the area over his palm.

“What the hell?” Sean whispered under his breath, struggling to decipher the display.

The man’s head snapped quickly from side to side again before he lifted his left leg over the guardrail and stepped onto the narrow outer edge of the wood planking. His other leg followed. He was now in a sitting position, nested across the railing with his knees facing out and his feet dangling in the empty air.

Sean’s nostrils flared as his eyes held a firm squint. Every now and then he had seen one of the locals perched in a similar position on that same bridge with a fishing pole. However, that was usually in the spring or fall when the water was moving slower—not this time of year. Either way, it was clear that the man was not a fisherman. A hint of concern flashed through Sean’s mind; he was familiar with the merciless power of the river. If the man wasn’t careful, he’d slip and fall in, and not likely make it back out.

He noticed the man’s lips moving, deliberately, as if he were talking to himself. Whatever he said could not be heard over the rush of water pounding below him. The stranger’s hand then crept into the side pocket of his trench coat. There resided a small bulge that Sean hadn’t previously noticed.

As he arched his neck up a little in an attempt to analyze what would emerge, Sean’s eyelids quickly opened to their widest extent. To his shock, a black handgun rose from the pouch.

“Jesus,” Sean muttered softly, lowering back to his hands and knees. His heart began pounding.

The pistol appeared to be a Glock, but the barrel looked a little too long. Sean knew a little something about guns. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind, like lightning bugs bouncing off the inside of a glass jar. Upon closer examination of the pistol, he realized that it wasn’t the barrel that made it appear disproportionately long; there was a silencer attached. He had never actually seen a silencer in his lifetime, but it looked just like they did on television and in magazines.

Sean’s mind was cloudy, and the hangover wasn’t helping his focus. He strained to form a sensible explanation. Then, a thought suddenly occurred to him.

Could this guy be a hit man? Had this lone stranger just
taken
someone out
, and was he now about to dispose of the evidence?

Sean understood the ridiculousness of the notion but began to make a case for it in his mind. It would explain the way he was dressed and the style of the gun . . . or so Sean deemed reasonable. If he was a professional, however, why was he taking so long and acting so peculiar? And where was his car? How did he get there? None of it made sense. Sean felt the best course of action was to stay put and let the show play out.

The man’s shoulders deflated. He sighed before his arm whipped behind his body where his fingers searched through his back pants pocket. Shifting his hips and tugging at his arm, the extended effort allowed him to remove a black leather wallet. With the flick of his wrist, he flipped open the sides of the trifold, and gazed at whatever was inside.

Sean wondered if he was looking at a picture.

The man set his gun down sideways on a wooden post beside him, one of many of that supported the guardrail.

The stranger’s eyes drooped from what, up until then, had been direct intent. They now read a much less organized tale.

It was the same expression Sean himself had witnessed so many times—when looking in the mirror. Sorrow. Regret.

A hit-man with a conscience?
he wondered.

The man’s shoulders dropped lower, and he took another deep breath. After glancing back out along the river’s path, he suddenly built up enough motivation to stand up straight. The bottom of his long trench coat spilled back to his ankles. He used his right hand to hang onto the guardrail, keeping himself balanced on the edge of the old wooden planking. The injured hand quickly shoved the wallet back into his pocket. It went in much easier than it came out, though the man’s face seemed to twist in pain at the movement. He leaned to his side to retrieve the pistol.

Sean wondered why the man was making no immediate attempt to climb back over the railing to safety.

Instead, the stranger remained in an upright position balancing his heels along the edge of the bridge while his calves rested against the guardrail. Then, he held the butt of the gun to his chest with both hands.

“Hey . . .” Sean instinctively said to himself in a whisper before quickly raising up to his knees. Remaining hidden no longer felt important.

His focus shifted back and forth from the man’s desperate eyes to the gun he held in front of his body in an awkward grip. It had suddenly become apparent that the series of actions unfolding before Sean were concluding something very different than what he’d originally thought.

The stranger shuffled the gun in his noticeably trembling hands before holding it in a conventional fashion with his right. He steadily raised his arm back over his shoulder and drew the gun awkwardly to the back side of his head, using his other hand to direct the barrel to the base of his skull.

The oddity and mystery of what he was witnessing was no longer Sean’s concern. No more questions. No more observation. He was certain the man was about to take his own life, and he wasn’t going to sit by and let it happen.

“Hey!” Sean heard himself call out in a voice loud and scary enough to gain the attention of anyone . . . unless that person was standing above the loud crashing sound of roaring water rapids.

The man didn’t flinch or show any indication that he had heard Sean’s call. He continued to hold the barrel in place with the metal tip resting against the back of his skull.

Sean’s teeth clenched as he quickly scrambled up the short hill and onto the dirt road. His footing slid on the damp grass, but his persistence gave him the traction he needed.

“Hey!” he screamed out again, projecting his voice even louder than the first time.

There was still no reaction from the man who stood about forty yards away. The motion of his arms had come to a grizzly halt. His limbs contorted back behind his body with the barrel of the gun glued to its intended target.

“Stop!” Sean roared, waving his arms frantically back and forth above his head as if he were directing a grounded plane. He prayed his wild movements would catch the man’s peripheral vision, but they received no response.

Sean engaged in an all-out sprint, something he hadn’t done much of since his high school football days. The loud modulation of crackling gravel was soon replaced by the sharp groaning of wooden boards once he broke the plain of the bridge. Air pressed heavily from his nose and mouth. With a grueling red face, his chest thrust forward with each stride. Despite the great amount of effort he was extending, he felt as if he were running underwater in a dream. His body couldn’t move as fast as his mind.

About twenty yards away now.

Sean’s jaw lifted as he prepared to deliver another verbal plea, but before a syllable could leave his mouth, his eyes glared in horror at the image of the man purposely letting his body fall forward off the bridge. Sean’s mind interpreted the scene in slow motion. Regardless of how fast his legs were pumping, there was no way of reaching the stranger in time. This curtain of helplessness was quickly replaced by numbing shock when a deep-red spray jetted through the air, just above where the stranger’s body dropped from visibility. After hovering for a second, the red mist quickly dispersed into the breeze.

There was no sound of a gunshot. The silencer had done its job.

With a coarse gasp and a wrenching cramp in his stomach, Sean immediately altered his direction toward the railing at his side. He dropped to his knees and craned his neck over the edge, just in time to see the fluttering trench coat drop into the swirling water below with a loud splash.

Water flew high into the air, but the jetting rapids quickly replaced all disruption of the river’s flow. The body disappeared into the violent churning; swallowed whole. All that was left was a burning smell and a red, discolored stream of water that dissolved into whiteness as it was quickly carried downstream.

Sean’s chest heaved in and out as he struggled for breath. He felt as if he himself was drowning. The realization of what he had just witnessed quickly sank into the depths of his stomach.

Chapter 2

B
reath was in short supply as Sean’s feet fumbled briskly along the rocky edge of the river. He tried his best to keep his eyes on the black blob he’d thought he saw momentarily bobbing up and down as it shot downstream.

Thick pine branches smacked against his face, and his ankles repeatedly buckled under the weight of his body as he negotiated round, wet rocks and overturned foliage. He could taste sap on his lips. More than once his legs dipped down into freezing cold water, which drenched his pants. Yet, none of nature’s obstacles hindered resolve.

Sean himself couldn’t say where his persistence and motivation were coming from, but the helplessness he had felt while kneeling at the top of the bridge did not sit well. His heart wouldn’t let him give up. Anger encompassed him as he briskly lumbered alongside the water. The anger stewed from his failure to recognize, until it was too late, what was transpiring right before him. He also felt intense guilt over the effect his poor decision from the night before was having on his body. If his head was just a little clearer, and his legs had moved just a little faster, maybe he would have been able to stop the stranger. Then again, if he wouldn’t have gotten drunk, he wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Perhaps he was being too hard on himself.

After a few more seconds, and one last possible appearance of the bubbled-up coat, Sean lost all traces of the stranger. The water was moving too fast. The body was gone.

He stopped and dropped to his knees, refusing to take his eyes off of the river. All was eerily tranquil again. A light breeze; birds singing. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

Minutes later, his side cramped with ferocity as he strove to keep up a jogging pace. A dry belch bellowed from deep within his stomach and he tasted hours-old alcohol in his mouth. His ankle ached from twisting on a rock along the river’s edge. Still, even through straining muscles and painful panting, he lumbered his way steadily down on the dirt and gravel of County Road 2, headed toward town. Dense beads of sweat poured down the sides of his face. His drenched hair shone. Images of the horrific scene from the bridge were still fresh in his head, and the scent of a gun being fired still lingered in his nose. They all took a momentary backseat to the thoughts of what reaction he would face from the town’s authorities.

Sean had a very complicated relationship with the chief of police, Gary Lumbergh. The two were engaged in what could best be described as a rivalry that was a secret to no one. In fact, it was often the local talk amongst the citizens of Winston, where gossip was as common as the fields of purple and white columbines that decorated the surrounding landscape.

He dreaded the thought of another encounter—especially one that would surely leak to the public—but he knew he hadn’t a choice.

His heavy breathing and pounding feet hindered Sean from hearing the rattling frame and purring engine of the old, red pickup truck that approached him from behind at a snail’s pace.

“Hey, Sean!” a gravelly voice sounded out, causing Sean’s head to quickly spin.

The view of old Milo Coltraine’s gray-bearded face, hanging outside the window of his 1972 Chevy pickup, was a welcome sight. Sean came to a relieved halt and doubled over to suck in air. His hamstrings ached, and his throat felt raw. With his chest mightily expanding and contracting, he scurried up to the driver’s side door, his hand clutched at his side. He hadn’t the energy for a drawn- out explanation of what had happened at the bridge, but Milo was certainly eager to talk.