Tangent Episode Two

2 | Six Shot Psychopath

Marko woke up in the morning. The sun shoved itself through the blinds and Marko turned on the television. The news was on, showing police and police tape in the middle of the desert. Several bodies lay on the screen in morgue bags as a reporter narrated. Then the news shifted to a road detour, an empty cop car, several other cop cars, police tape, several deputies, and one body bag. The headline read: "New police officer shot to death on Rt 191"

Marko rubbed his eyes and got out of bed. He picked up his phone and dialed Brain Stephens.

"Yes."

"Brian," Marko paused, "what exactly did this guy do? and who is he?"

"I knew you'd come around buddy; his name's Dom Fredrick and he's the guy I set to lead the execution."

"And why does he gotta get out of the county if the cops don't have nothin' on him?"

"Well," Stephens sounded tired, "the police picked up one of the kids who helped Dom out on this one. Kid's name is Nathan and they got him holed up in the county jail, probably shoving so much God-damned bribes up his ass, that my name's coming right out of his throat."

"So you want me to take this Dom guy upstate -- what about this kid in jail?"

"Don't you worry 'bout that, Phoenix. Just be at the Super 8 tomorrow at ten."

Across town a man wearing a baseball cap and bluejeans and a white polo with blue inner-collars and a thick pair of aviator sun glasses walked into the Moab City Police Station and shot the man sitting at the desk with a ten-gauge shotgun. The point-blank shot blew the mans head into the glass wall behind him and every officer in the station dropped to his knees.

The man continued through the lobby and into the main office, firing on every moving thing in the room. Shot after shot, it seemed as if he could not run out of ammunition. An officer lay sprawled out on the floor before the chief's door. The man stepped over him and shot the door open and dropped his shotgun and developed a revolver from his belt.

The chief was behind his desk. He fired a blind a shotgun above his head, nearly killing the man, but within a moment the man circled his desk and shot the chief point blank in the back of his ear.

The station lay dead. The man crossed through it to the jail wing and entered it. He walked past four cells and stopped in front of the fifth. A kid no older than nineteen was sitting there, staring at the man. In the next moment he was on the ground, staring at his own blood, pooling from his open skull.