Breaking Point_Kindle Serial Read online

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2013 Aric Davis

  Originally published as a Kindle Serial, December 2012

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  PO Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781477805008

  ISBN-10: 1477805001

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923477

  Dedicated to the memory of Rory Connell

  Table of Contents

  EPISODE 1

  EPISODE 2

  EPISODE 3

  EPISODE 4

  EPISODE 5

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KINDLE SERIALS

  EPISODE 1

  Everyone has a breaking point. Ken Richmond’s breaking point came as he drove to work hungover. It wasn’t just the job at the Sixty-Eighth Street McDonald’s that was killing him; it was everything. An ex-wife in Paula determined to ruin him. Two kids who ate up the lion’s share of his paycheck, who not only didn’t like visiting their father but also seemed to hate him. Even worse, they seemed embarrassed by him. Worse than that, he didn’t blame them either. He was a failure, a fuckup, useless even to his own eyes. Being a burger-slinging forty-two-year-old had never seemed like something that could be possible for him, but it was reality.

  Things hadn’t always been like this. There had once been a Ken Richmond who didn’t spend his nights after work drinking Five O’clock vodka and Colt 45 malt liquor and picking chunks of fast-food mash out of the treads of his shoes with a screwdriver. He had been on the line at Case for most of his adult life, was even close to making foreman, but a pair of DUIs and an argument with his boss had changed that. The third DUI was just a nail in the coffin that wasn’t even needed; that particular drive to his new home at the Rodeway Inn had seen Ken vomit on a cop’s shoes, the reflection in the street showing not a pile of cheap booze mixed with cheaper food, but instead a man with nothing left.

  Ken persevered, if that’s what you called it. He faked his way through court-appointed A.A. meetings after his three months in the county lockup, enjoying stolen drinks on the sly. A brutal lesson had been taught, one that had beat him down to what seemed an irreparable level. The truth of his addiction was simple: don’t drive, no problem. It was a startling revelation learned far too late. Applying at the McDonald’s visible from his room at the Rodeway had been a foregone conclusion: he could see it, had no license, and needed money. Two years after getting hired on at a job where even the sixteen-year-old fry cooks treated the new janitor like shit, Ken was finally moving up in the world. The success tasted as shitty as the free burgers he took home.

  That was perhaps the worst part. Ken wasn’t just succeeding, but flourishing, in a world he wanted to fail in. He had all but expected to wind up on the streets — he’d almost looked forward to it — and instead he was finding success at something he’d never even considered a viable work option. Not that his ex-wife cared, or his kids. All he was to them was a check twice a month, and they made that clear as day. Somehow, when he got a raise or a promotion, they knew before he did, and he usually got the letter from the court before he got the talk from his boss. On the first of these embarrassing occasions, it hadn’t even occurred to him why he was in court. When he left, he knew why: his extra nickel an hour was seeing two cents garnished per hour. The only place at McDonald’s for a garnish seemed to be in what was taken from his check.

  Ken pushed the bleak thoughts away, all of them. It was one thing to be hungover — and possibly drunk, even the morning after — but it was a whole other animal to acknowledge the depths that one could sink to. He ran his hand over the revolver tucked in the pocket of his work pants. It was a .38 Special with a snub nose that he’d picked up on the cheap from a pawnshop that was known to sell illegal heat. Ken hadn’t wanted or needed a hot gun, but that was the only kind he’d been able to afford. The one in his pocket had its serial number shaved off but had been no less neutered or disguised in the doing. Ken had seen enough Magnum, P.I. and Hill Street Blues to know that the marks a gun left on the bullet from the grooves and lands inside the barrel were a weapon’s real fingerprint. Not that it mattered in this case. You couldn’t catch a dead man.

  Ken parked in the McDonald’s lot and took a drink from the can of Coke wedged between his knees. Caffeine wasn’t much of a drug for this sort of thing, but it was all he was allowing himself. He turned the key in the ignition to shut off the car, ran his hand over the revolver again, and then exited the vehicle. It was time to die.

  Gail Russow did not enjoy fast food. Her twin boys, Josh and Jacob, four and only a year away from kindergarten, loved the stuff. They were chicken-nugget connoisseurs, french-fry freaks, sultans of shakes. Gail ate on these trips only occasionally. Her palate hadn’t been destroyed by watching her children motor through greasy fast food, but she had found her enjoyment of even something as simple as a hamburger diminished with every visit.

  It wasn’t just the food, of course; it was everything. Her and Ryan’s decision to get pregnant had never seen a conversation about twins; as far as she knew, neither of their families even had a history of such a thing. Still, a pair of blessings had pushed kicking and screaming into the world a little over four years ago, and it was less than two weeks later before Gail knew in her heart that there would be no triumphant return to the nursing job that she loved after ten weeks of leave. There was no way any day care was going to put up with her two colicky little screamers, and a small part of her was selfishly glad for it.

  They had no family in the area. Ryan had moved here for work, and Gail had settled in after moving from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for school, making the impossible decision after graduation. She liked living in a bigger city. It just fit. That decision meant that she met Ryan Russow after an embarrassing and drunken touch-football injury saw him admitted to the emergency room for stitches; he’d been tackled onto a sprinkler. A week later, flowers showed up at the hospital, but the card with them had her name instead of a patient’s. The rest just happened.

  Still, living so far from family had its consequences, the primary one being no reliable sitters. That meant no more date nights out, and no more work, at least for her. As for Ryan, he seemed to work even more since the twins had been born. Gail loved him for the sacrifice and secretly resented him for not being home, a dual-edged blade of emotions on which she did her best not to teeter, lest he see her as being a naggy brat. Her husband wasn’t the type to enter into some daytime tryst with a slutty secretary, despite what the soap operas seemed to suggest, but she still didn’t want to be the one nagging him into an affair.

  Her attention snapped back to the twins as Josh, the food in front of him somehow gone, asked, “Can we play now?” She considered the question, then looked at Jacob’s plate; his food was missing as well. “Of course,” she said, and the two boys charged fearlessly into the dangerous-looking area populated by Ronald, Grimace, and the gang. Both of the boys were looking at her through the bars acting as the teeth of the Mayor McCheese statue/prison that they seemed to love so much; somehow they’d ascended the ladder and turned to face her before she’d even stood. “You two be good,” said Gail. “I’m going to throw out your trash, and then we have a half hour before it’s time to go grocery shopping.”

  Gail grabbed the greasy,
ketchup-covered brown trays, making sure to remove the toys from them, and then walked into the main part of the restaurant. She could hear someone arguing with the manager, and she rolled her eyes as she slid the tray liners and crud into the trash cans. The explosion made her jump, and the angry parent in her wanted to find the idiot who was setting off firecrackers and give him or her a talking-to. Then the noise happened again, and Gail noticed that the argument at the front of the store had stopped, and that someone was screaming.

  Gail looked to the front of the store. The nice young man who had sold her food was bent at the waist over the counter, and he’d fallen in some ketchup. There was more shouting from the back of the store, and then another bang. Gail turned, the deeply recessed danger indicators in her finally going off — something was really wrong. The door from the kitchen was kicked open, and a man ran out. Gail felt her legs turn to rubber. He was holding a gun and moving toward her. Gail screamed, turning now, knowing it was too late to get the boys and run out of there.

  “Stop!” a voice behind her called, and Gail did. She was shaking, tears were streaming down her face. The man was wearing McDonald’s clothes, and he looked tired. Not angry, not the kind of man one would expect to see shooting a gun at people, just tired. He truly looked like someone who had been given all he could take, and his eyes looked as dead as any that Gail had ever seen at a funeral.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she said, her voice full of fear. Inside she was praying, her thoughts a train jumping off the tracks and begging her sons to stay hidden, begging the God she believed in on Sundays to let her boys stay hidden.

  “Sorry,” said the man as he raised the pistol, fire and light noiselessly leaping from it, forcing her to sit on the floor. There was an intense pressure in her chest, and then a warmth. She watched the man as her life’s blood ran out. He raised the gun to his head, and a moment of impossible joy came over her. He was going to kill himself; her boys were going to be safe. Gail closed her eyes, and the world fell away from her.

  Officer Dick Van Endel grabbed the CB radio off the dash of the marked police car he was driving. “Van Endel,” he said into the handset. “I have possible shots fired at 6100 Kalamazoo Avenue, confirmed 417. The 911 call was dropped.” Van Endel hit the lights and spun the car.

  “Is that location a McDonald’s?” The radio crackled, and Van Endel gave a look to the cup of McDonald’s coffee in the console of the car and grimaced. Dispatch came back, confirming what he already knew. “Yes, location 6100 Kalamazoo is a McDonald’s restaurant.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Van Endel. “I’m two minutes out, tops.” He punched the gas and felt the Crown Vic leap underneath him, 165 horses running like they were being whipped. Van Endel should have been thinking of home as he drove, of Lex and her four-months-pregnant belly already protruding like she needed to go to the gym. He wasn’t, though — he was thinking that he was just there buying coffee, and that Calvin was working the counter, because Calvin was always working the counter on weekday mornings. He pushed his thoughts away from the young woman he’d seen with her sons in front of the restaurant, and let the Crown Vic put in work.

  Cars pulled to the side as he flew down the main drag, a street that had once divided farms but now split the suburbs into two chunks—a caste system born of asphalt and money. To the west lay the working class, to the east the working class’s bosses. Almost all of them were employed by the office-furniture mogul Case; in the same way that Detroit was auto, Grand Rapids was furniture.

  Van Endel saw the sign of the McDonald’s and slowed the car. He killed the siren as he pulled into the lot but let the berries on top of the Crown Vic keep flashing. He got out of the car, but pulled his Smith & Wesson revolver from its holster before closing the door. He had never had his gun outside of leather except at the range. Inside the store he could see what had to be Calvin bleeding out like a gutted deer on the counter. He grabbed the squawk box at his waist, forcing himself to wait.

  “I need backup and EMTs now,” barked Van Endel. “I’ve got at least one injured inside.” The radio screeched, and Van Endel continued, “I’m going inside, repeat, I need backup and EMTs.” Van Endel killed the walkie-talkie and stuck it on his belt. He walked to the glass door and pulled it open. “Police,” he yelled, not sure if he was setting himself up to get ambushed or saving an itchy trigger finger from going off on an innocent bystander.

  Calvin was at the counter, dead and still wearing his headset. The register was open next to him, all of the money gone. Typical. Van Endel gave a look to the seating area, where there was a dead woman on the ground, but no sign of the kids he’d seen just minutes prior. He shook his head, then got back in the game. Van Endel hopped the counter, his fingers white-knuckling the revolver, index clear of the trigger guard. The trigger took just over twelve pounds of pressure to pull — hell at the range, but, as more than one older officer had told him, that weight was gone if you were scared.

  Van Endel saw two more bodies behind the counter: a line chef who had fallen face-first onto the grill, his cheek seared and greasy, and a manager named Clint. Van Endel and he usually talked if Clint wasn’t too busy; the man loved the Lions. Clint had two gunshot wounds in his chest and had left a red smear as he’d dragged himself to the phone. The receiver lay on the ground next to him, the handset was still in his hand, blood in the 9 and 1 holes in the rotary. Van Endel left the kitchen, gun still out, then hopped the counter again.

  There was still no backup, and Van Endel could hear no sirens. He looked at his watch; he’d taken the call less than two minutes earlier. He passed the woman on the ground, checked her wrist for a pulse, and, finding none, walked into the play area. He knew he was about to find two dead children there, the two roughhousing boys he’d watched with amusement while he talked with Calvin. He pushed the door open and crossed through to the other room, the air here colder, and not stained with iron and shit.

  There were no bodies on the floor, mercifully, and as Van Endel cleared the room he decided that what looked like a robbery gone bad might have turned into a kidnapping as well. He considered the walkie, then decided he hadn’t cleared everything. Looking up, he saw two scared faces peering down at him from between the teeth of Mayor McCheese. “Can you guys come down from there?” Van Endel asked.

  “We want Mommy,” said one of the boys. “We’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”

  “Well,” said Van Endel, as he slid his pistol back into the holster, knowing he hadn’t cleared the bathrooms yet and not caring. I need to get them out of here now. “Mommy can’t talk right now, and I’m glad you know about strangers, but I’m a policeman. I’m one of the good guys, and I need you guys to come down so we can go outside.”

  “Do you have a police car?” the other boy asked, and Van Endel nodded, saying, “I do, it’s right over there, see? The lights are flashing. My name is Officer Van Endel. What are your names?”

  “Josh.”

  “Jake.”

  “Well, Josh and Jake, I was hoping to let two little boys check out my police car. If you guys don’t want to, I guess I’ll have to find someone else.” Van Endel shrugged and faked turning. He could hear sneakers on plastic as they slid free from the Mayor. He turned back to them and said, “I’m going to pick you guys up, OK? We have to make another deal too: Can you guys close your eyes?” They nodded and he knelt, taking Josh in his right arm and Jake in his left, then stood. They were heavier than they looked, and Van Endel strained to open the door. “Eyes still closed?” Van Endel asked as he stepped over their mother’s body, and two little heads nodded at his shoulders. Van Endel walked to the main door and slid outside, the only witnesses to a slaughter in his arms.

  The headache was gone. Ken Richmond stood flipping burgers at the McDonald’s where he worked. He was smiling because providence had smiled upon him. God had smiled upon him. After he’d shot the woman in the restaurant, he’d known that there was only one bullet left in the gun, and that h
e was going to have to put it in his head. The murders there had not been like he had expected. The joy that he had known he would have in killing his coworkers had been far less powerful when he was shooting people he didn’t know. The faces of the people he knew were briefly placed atop the victims’ at the other McDonald’s, but once he pulled the trigger, they went back to being who they were before — anonymous. Still, the headache was gone.

  When the gun failed to fire while placed against his own head, Ken briefly had a thought that he had personally solved the mystery of dying: nothing changed! Still, it was better to be safe than sorry. So he raided the till and ran out of there, hopped in his car, and got moving. When he parked at work, he unloaded the revolver into his lap: five empty brass casings; the sixth still held a bullet. Ken held the unfired shell up, then checked the primer on its ass end. The primer was dimpled. There was no reason for him to be alive, unless some divine entity — God, perhaps — had seen fit to make it so. The unfired bullet was proof that he had done the right thing by killing. He pushed the bullet into his pocket and left it there; the gun and brass casings he tucked under the car seat.

  Since he had come inside, he’d been working. Mr. Everett, the manager, had yelled at him for being late, and Ken had looked him in the eyes and apologized. “That’s all right, then, Ken. The bathroom needs some help, though, and let’s try and be more prompt in the future.” Ken had been staring at Mr. Everett the whole time, but Everett had dropped the eye contact before the word “Ken” had even come out of his mouth. Ken smiled at the memory; even cleaning out a clogged toilet was a joy after you’d backed down your boss. For the first time in a long time, Ken felt as though he had worth, as though he had power. He felt like a man.

  The feeling stayed with him through his shift. Fixing toilets, flipping burgers, dropping fries, pulling fries, assembling orders, fucking up orders — it was all good. Ken had been prepared to bring the gun into his own workplace as well, do it for real after the trial run, but now he knew differently. The cops weren’t going to come after him, and he was going to need to do it again. There was a purpose to the madness, something had been pleased by what he’d done — he just knew it. Everything felt right for the first time in a long time.