The Ruse (2 page)

What the fuck is she talking about now? I dodged a bullet here. I’m alive, in one piece, and Jessica is talking her shit again.

“I killed someone,” she repeated.

“Is this about your parents, because if it is, you have really bad timing. I could’ve been killed today. I saved myself. It isn’t always about you Jessica. Get over it, already, geez.”

“I killed someone you know intimately.”

“What? Are you mad? I didn’t know your parents.”

I was completely confused. Most of the phone call, I was in another reality, another field somewhere, stupefied at my good fortune that I was still alive.

“I killed… I killed your sister, and now I have to die.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I was getting mad. I had no idea the woman was this fucked up.

She blew her nose again. “Your sister called here looking for you this morning. When you told me to take messages and tell you them tomorrow, I didn’t say anything about her. You cancelled the 3:00pm booking. I couldn’t call her back anyway. She didn’t leave a number.”

“Where are you going with this? How could you have killed her? As far as I know, she has cancer. She’s probably dead already.”

“She asked where you’d be today so I told her about the Garrison house. But you canceled. She was there, she was there.”

Her twisted logic hit me.

“Were there any casualties at the Garrison house?” I asked.

“Yes. One. Your sister. I killed her by sending her there and now I have to kill myself. Goodbye.”

She hung up.

Shit.
I couldn’t have a dead secretary in my office; that kind of thing was bad for business.

I ran for my car, all the while attempting to raise Jessica on my cell phone.

I was tired of the bitch. If she wanted to off herself, that would be one less person to eat the last apple turnover at my favorite bakery. One less person to take a seat on the bus from an old lady. One less person to nab the numbered ticket before me at the butcher shop.

I just couldn’t allow her to do it at my office.

When I pulled into the parking lot, there was no indication a suicide had taken place, raising my hopes that she had gone home to do it, or some ditch on the side of the highway.

I unlocked the front door and stepped into my office’s foyer, acting as if nothing could bother the savvy real estate broker. It’s not every day you have a dead sister and a secretary who wants to die.

“Jessica?”

The lights were all out. The blinds had been drawn.

“Jessica?”

I heard a police siren in the distance. After a few seconds, the siren drew closer outside. I realized they were stopping out front.

“Jessica, did you call the police?”

I stood in the main office, not venturing down the hall. If she did off herself, I didn’t want to find the body. I wasn’t willing to have bloody dreams for the next fifty fucking years.

The woman of the hour stepped out of my office. She had a gun in her hand. She raised it and aimed it at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to hide the fear I instantly felt.

“Do you want to die with me?”

Oh, my shit. Every one of her marbles were on the floor, because she had definitely lost them.

“I think I’ll take a pass. Living is much more fun and the possibilities are endless. Did you call the police?”

She nodded. “I can’t kill myself. I’ve tried too many times and failed. I have to die like my parents did. Like your sister; indirectly. Death by cop is indirect suicide or whatever you want to call it.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

She turned her head sideways and looked at me with an expression that showed her madness quite clearly. In the little light I had, I could see her eyes were completely bloodshot.

“Are you serious? I did not expect you, of all people, to try to save me.”

Her condescending tone pissed me off. The world would be a better place without people like her, littering it with their demented sicknesses.

There was a loud knock on the front door.

“Police! Open up!”

“Umm, Jessica, we’re going to have to get that.”

“Why? You worried they’ll bust the door down? That could get expensive.” She raised the gun, butt end extended to me. “Here, shoot me and this ends now. Or get out of the way so I can open that door and have them shoot me. Either option you choose, I die today, and the blood stain will be on your carpet. It was here that I directed your sister to her death, it’ll be here where I direct my own.”

“Can we talk about this?” I was getting even more pissed off now. “Go home. Do it there. You have to ruin me in the process?”

Jessica moved forward. “You don’t get it, do you? This is all your fault. If you felt love, even for one day, you would understand what was happening here. But you don’t.”

She walked past me and touched the door handle, the pistol in her other hand.

“Get what? You want to end it. That’s easy. I get it. Just save me the name in the paper. Do it at home. And what does this have to do with love?”

Jessica hesitated. She held the doorknob and stared at the floor.

“If you loved your sister and didn’t judge her for what your parents did, you would’ve taken her call. Had you done that simple, humane task, she would be alive today. If you could fathom what love is,
you
would be alive today. You’re dead on the inside.” She raised her head and stared into my eyes. “I lost my parents. I feel responsible. If I could go back, I wouldn’t be driving that night. I’d had too much to drink. If I could go back, I wouldn’t be working here, for a soulless man who only cares about money. You’re more dead than I will be in the next minute.”

She turned the knob.

“Wait!”

She stopped and looked at me.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. Put the gun down and step away from the door.”

“Why should I?”

“Because, I can change.”

She shook her head back and forth. “No one changes. This isn’t about you. I die today and ultimately, as much as it is my fault, it’s yours too.”

I heard a noise in the back of the office. Maybe they were coming in through the rear entrance to surprise us. I hoped they hurried and disarmed Jessica before she did something I would regret.

“Please,” I said, thinking maybe I could disarm her first. “Give me the gun. We’ll deal with this together. We’ll get through it. I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass to you. Give me a chance. Show me what it means to love again. Teach me. I’ll be your student. It’s quite evident how much love you have to give. Your parents are gone and it crushes you. My parents are gone and I laugh about it. Bring me over to your side. Teach me how it is you are the way you are. Help me and I’ll help you.”

Yeah, right. As soon as you go home I’ll fire your ass and you can kill yourself there, in your own bathtub.

She let go of the doorknob and turned toward me. “Are you serious? No jokes?”

With a show of exaggeration, I shook my head back and forth. “No jokes. Realness here. Seriousness.”

Someone was moving around in the back of the office.

Good. They’re coming. I will have her gun in seconds.

I reached out. Jessica shivered as she started to cry. She handed me her weapon. Then she stepped over to her desk and sat down, resting her head in her arms on top of the desk.

I lifted the gun up to look for the safety.

“Drop it!”

A red laser pointer moved about on my chest. I looked up and saw three men dressed in some kind of ski hats, with what looked to me like military fatigues.

“I’m trying to flip the safety on,” I said, my heart thumping in my chest. The last thing I wanted was these guys to see the gun in my hands.

“Drop it!” the cop repeated.

I turned it around, my fingers shaking, found the safety and used my other hand to flip the switch. I didn’t realize that the barrel was aimed at the cop.

They fired at me.

A barrage of pops resounded in my small office. My heart felt like it stopped. I lost all ability to stand. There was pain in my chest. More popping sounds. I dropped the gun. Jessica screamed somewhere off to my left. My eyes closed.

#

When I look back, I realize the text messages were a chance for me to set things right: to curb my personal evils. I could have done right by John Turnbull and sold a cheaper house to the lottery winners. I could have spent more time with my sister. I understand now why the text said: your last chance. It was my last chance at salvation.

I know I saved a life.

Mine.

There never was an explosion at the Garrison house. Jessica had been approached by my sister six months before and together they worked out an elaborate plan to bring me back to the land of the living. My sister acted like she was dying of cancer. The texts were a collaboration of work between Jessica and my sister. Jessica knew the Turnbulls were going to call in. She knew on most Friday’s I love to buy meat for a barbecue. She’d called my sister and told her to meet me there, and then sent me a text.

The suicide thing, at my office, was a set up. Would I save a life? Even after finding out I’d just lost my only other family member?

The three officers had a key for the back door. Two of them were ex-boyfriends of my sister and one was Jessica’s brother. They fired blanks and one of them tased me so I’d lose control of my body and assume that I’d been hit and dying. They took me to the edge and brought me back so maybe I could live again.

They did it because they love me.

Life is but a river of tears. At least now they flow from joy. I’m married and I have two lovely children. I work from home so I can spend time with my family every day. For me, waking in the morning is a blessing. Every day I breathe is one more day I get what I wasn’t supposed to have. Hearing my kids laugh, enjoying the smile on my wife’s lips, eating ice cream, playing catch with my son, watching a sunset: all examples of life’s little pleasures, that for me, amplify the beauty of my surroundings.

I know what’s important in life. And it isn’t money. It’s hearing my wife whisper, ‘
I love you
’ while we’re having a family hug before bed each night.

I don’t own a cell phone.

I don’t send or receive texts.

The Burning - A Preview

An excerpt from The Burning.

Chapter 1

Monday, October 18, 2011…

Jared Tavallo stood in the clearing as his gun’s echo reverberated off the mountainous walls surrounding the valley. The sun shone bright on the bushes into which the doe had scurried, making it impossible to see blood on them from where he stood.

His heart raced and his breathing rasped as Jared ran after his kill. He was certain the doe had taken the bullet about the neck. No way did he miss. Not from that range.

The bushes were thick in the area where the deer had entered. Jared hit them hard and fast in the hopes of finding and securing his kill before anyone could see how close he’d gotten to the city of Banff.

The National Park strictly prohibited hunting. He had a dilemma: he was too close to the park’s border, but the deer was too tempting to let go.

He would locate his prize, cover it in the recently received snow, and that evening, his hunting partners would come and help him haul the carcass out.

No one in the National Park had to know.

The kill was his and his alone. He’d worked too hard for it — fought the cold temperatures and stumbled a long way from home to let the deer go simply because it didn’t follow man’s rules on geography.

He pushed harder through the brush and stumbled, dropping to one knee in the foot-high snow.

“Damn!”

Back on his feet, he slung his rifle over his shoulder and trudged on through the white powder. The deer tracks led deep into the thicker foliage. A line of lodgepole pines were on his right. The fawn’s tracks turned toward them.

A light snow began to descend from the dark gray clouds. Jared stopped and examined his surroundings. A tall tree to his left sat beside a boulder the size of an SUV. He would use that as a marker to find his way back. He had no way of telling how much snow would fall in the next hour and getting lost would only move him one step closer to hypothermia. All he needed to do was get back to the clearing where he had taken the shot. Then he could find his way back to the cabin.

But first he had to locate the wounded deer. The cold had worked on Jared all day, but he was just now starting to shiver. He collected himself, took a deep breath and started toward the line of pines.