Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

Footsteps behind me. He’s on his feet again and coming. Boots on hardwood, relentless as a zombie.

Stomp.

“I…”

Stomp.

“CAN’T…”

Stomp.

“STOP…”

“Go to hell,” I say.

The pistol barks. Its muzzle flash illuminates his wild bloodshot eyes and the neat, round, red hole that’s appeared in the middle of his forehead.

As blood and brain slap wetly across the window behind him, the fucker crumples to my bedroom floor.

I’m rooted in place. Standing there, the literal smoking gun in my hand, too wound up and confused to do anything.

My knees give out. The room swims as I sort of half fall, half sit. I try and fail to make any kind of sense out of what just happened. Why this guy came here at all, much less to try to… to try to what? Kill me? Kidnap me? I figure that cloth, still wrapped around his hand, is soaked with chloroform, and wonder how I can test for that. I don’t know the first thing about chemical analysis.

And what the hell was he saying? Why couldn’t he stop attacking me in my own home?

I run through our encounter on the south grade road early yesterday, but the conversation is hard to recall exactly. Not a lot had been said, I remember that much. He seemed okay, upset about his stupid Harley more than anything. And then by the time Doc had arrived to check on him, he’d left. What had I done to warrant this?

I’m speculating. Shouldn’t do that. Facts are what’s important.

Blood and brain are dripping down my wall.

My own head is pounding, no doubt a result of the strange cocktail of sleeping aid and massive adrenaline come-down.

“Shit,” I mutter as the ramifications of all this start to manifest into three words that every cop dreads: “officer involved shooting.”

I just killed an intruder. Entirely justified, but I’ve got some prescription sleeping drug in me that I don’t have a prescription for, not to mention a bit of white wine still sloshing around in there, and on top of it all I’d had a run-in with this son of a bitch yesterday. It’s not going to look good. It’s going to bring questions, or at least rumors. Folks might wonder if this prick and I hadn’t hit it off, that maybe I’d given him my address and told him to come up and see me sometime. Rumors like that are absolutely the last thing I want.

A sound breaks my train of thought. More footsteps outside.

The gun is still in my hand, and I tighten my grip on it, ears perked.

“Hello?” someone calls out from the driveway. An elderly woman. One of my neighbors, I think, but which one exactly I’m not sure. “You okay in there? I heard… I thought I heard a gunshot.”

“I’m okay,” I say back, raising my voice to be heard. “There was an intruder.”

“Should I call the police?”

“I am the police.”

A pause. “Well, yes, I know, but…”

“Everything’s under control,” I say. It sounds highly unconvincing to my own ears.

Must not have convinced her, either, because seconds later I hear the woman mumbling into her phone. Hard to catch it, but the words “break-in” and “shooting” are clear enough. I wonder who she’s talking to. I’m the police, and my phone didn’t ring.

A 911 operator, then. Those calls go to the state patrol and are routed from there. Someone will be calling me shortly, I expect. After they call the station. And after they call Greg, no doubt first on their backup list. They’ll get to me eventually, though.

The room’s getting a bit blurry as I wait for the phone to ring.

Sound fading.

Eyes heavy.

I’m awoken by a pounding at my door and a heavy fog throughout my mind.

The room swims into focus. Dead man on the floor, streaks of gore on the wall behind him. The beginnings of a terrible odor.

Pushing myself up to one elbow, I mumble something about needing a minute. It’s a minute too much.

The front door is kicked in.

Loud footsteps echo in my front room. Half of me wonders where my pistol ended up, the other half is trying to remember where the clock is. All I’m able to manage is sitting up and wiping some drool from my chin before an older man in uniform fills the doorway to my bedroom.

My first thought is Greg, but the uniform’s the wrong color. The badge the wrong shape. This is someone else.

He’s got a revolver pointed at me, but lowers it when he sees my face.

“Mary Whittaker?” he asks.

“Yessir,” I say like a fresh cadet.

“Sheriff James Davies, Granston County. Drove up when no one here responded to a 911 call. Are you injured?”

I start to say no. Then I think better of it and rub the back of my head. I’d rather he think I fell than that I was in a drug-induced stupor.

Sheriff Davies is the textbook example of a cop. Mustached, white as white bread, probably wears aviator sunglasses when on patrol. From his midsection I’m guessing doughnuts are also involved in the equation.

He crosses the room, taking care not to touch or disturb anything until he reaches the body. He checks for a pulse, but it’s a perfunctory effort. Death is not up for debate here. Davies stands, studies the splatter on the wall, then glances at me. “Anyone else in the house, Officer?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” I say. “I mean, he came alone. Pretty sure anyway.”

“Any idea who he is?”

I quickly explain about my encounter with him on the road the day before, and that he broke in, mumbling apologies even as he attacked me.

“And you fired in self-defense?”

“I did.”

He glances around, nodding all the while. “I’ll back you up on that. Apologizing for what?”

“Excuse me?”

He helps me to my feet, then to a chair in the corner. “You said he apologized.”

“Oh,” I say. “Honestly, Sheriff, I have no idea. It was like he was sorry for attacking