Breaking Point_Kindle Serial Read online

  When he clocked out eight hours after his shift had begun, Ken felt like a new man, almost as if he’d forgotten what it took to be alive in the first place. The wheels in his mind were turning, faster than he could ever remember them spinning before, and he felt full of ideas. He bought a skin mag called High Society, along with a twelve-pack of Stroh’s, on the way home from work. It was time to celebrate. Ken knew it in his heart.

  When he arrived at the apartment, he took the brass and the revolver and stuffed them in his pants pocket opposite the magic bullet, then grabbed the beer and brown paper–bagged magazine and got out of the car. He closed the door with his foot and walked up the steps to the apartment. Once inside, he pushed the beer into the fridge next to the nearly empty mustard and definitely empty pickle jars, then put the magazine on the counter. He sat heavily in one of the cheap little chairs in front of his cheap little table and set the bullet down in front of him. He stared at the thing. Five lives had been changed by it today, but only his was going to continue on the path.

  The apartment was a mess. The sink was full of dishes, the counter was covered in fast-food trash and beer cans, and stains littered the linoleum. The bathroom wasn’t much better. Shit crusted in the toilet, piss dried on the floor, and the shower was a burnt ocher from soap scum, hard water, and grease. His bedroom was covered in clothes spilling from overflowing laundry baskets. Lately the only clothes he’d felt like washing were the ones he had to wear to work under the Golden Arches, and the only motivator there was Mr. Everett. Staring at the bullet made him want to right this path, to live the way he was supposed to: as a man of purpose.

  He rolled the bullet in his fingers, looked at the primer again, and set it down. He pulled the revolver out, the empty brass, and set it all on the table. Not even the impending call from his ex-wife could ruin this moment, nor could the A.A. meeting he had to attend later. The bullet made everything OK.

  Van Endel worked the rest of his shift, hearing bits and pieces about what had happened at the McDonald’s on Kalamazoo. After he checked the car back in at the station, he was about to head home when he was stopped by a heavyset detective named Phil Nelson, who went by the nickname Full Nelson when his back was turned. “You got time to talk tomorrow, get your impressions down on paper?” Nelson asked, and Van Endel nodded in assent.

  “Sure thing, Detective,” said Van Endel. “What time are you thinking?”

  “First thing,” said Nelson. “The sooner, the better. We really should have gotten together today — there just wasn’t time for it. That’s a big fucking mess you walked in on.” He sighed, then shook his head. “I’m glad you found those kids, though. It would’ve been criminal if they would have come out on their own and had to see their mother like that. You have a good night. We’ll catch up first thing; just hit me up at my desk.”

  “All right,” said Van Endel, as Nelson shook his hand and then disappeared into a crowd of officers. Van Endel watched the detective for a moment and then wandered out of the station to walk to his car. The day’s events seemed impossible, and kept cycling over and over again in his head. He had been the responding officer in a crime where gunshots had been fired, people had been killed, and he’d done his job. It wasn’t quite the surety that surviving a gunfight would have been, but it was a far sight more intense than dealing with some asshole who decided after beer fifteen that his wife looked an awful lot like a heavy bag. Van Endel unlocked the car and hopped in, turned the key in the ignition of the Dodge, and then began to back out. He waved at two officers walking up to start a shift, and then pulled out and got moving. As he drove, the rumblings of his stomach provided an unpleasant reminder that he hadn’t eaten all day.

  Van Endel was home in fifteen minutes, and saw that Lex’s car was in the driveway. He hopped out, slammed the door, and walked into the house. Lex was cooking something, and the house smelled wonderful. As trying as his wife could be at times, there was something about being pregnant that brought out the homemaker in her, made her smile with her eyes. As much as Alexis Van Endel, maiden name Crawford, might have worshipped Gloria Steinem and the women’s movement in general, she turned into the antithesis of it when she was pregnant.

  Pregnant Lex had a glow to her, a silky sort of sheen that hovered over her like a beautiful gauze. That she had lost the first two pregnancies due to complications in the second trimester made this glow seem almost predatory to Van Endel, as if through the happiness he could see the borderline-suicidal woman she would become if she lost yet another child. Still, even with that fear hanging over his head — if Lex spoke of such a fear, it wasn’t to him — it was really nice to come home to a household where his wife was always trying out new recipes. Lex had a temper, but she was aces in the kitchen.

  “Pot pies,” she said in answer to a question his eyes were asking as he walked into the kitchen. “Chicken, from scratch.”

  “They smell amazing,” Van Endel said, grabbing her in an embrace, her faux beer belly a small rock between them. “But you smell even better.”

  “Knock it off,” Lex said, pushing him away. “Maybe if you’re good, later. Maybe.” She walked around him, drenched in the intoxicating aromas of good food and pretty women, and opened the oven. He watched her grab a sauté pan off the stovetop and then crouch down, open the oven, and baste the top of three pot pies with butter. She slid the rack back in, then stood, replacing the pan on the stovetop. “I’ve seriously been looking forward to that. Isn’t that the silliest?”

  “Sort of,” said Van Endel, as he grabbed a beer from the fridge, then sat at the kitchen table. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day, to just being home, so I get how basting a pot pie could have a similar effect.”

  “I was being serious,” said Lex, hands on her hips.

  “So was I,” said Van Endel. “Today was not the best. You watch the news?”

  “Yes, why?” Lex asked, realization coming over her face. “The McDonald’s thing? You were there?”

  “I was the first one there,” said Van Endel, the beer magically empty in his hand. He stood, chucked it in the recycle bin, and grabbed a new one from the fridge. This was exactly the sort of behavior that would have set Lex off, drinking drinking, and on a weeknight. Today she said nothing. “Not only that, I got a coffee from there just a few minutes before the call came in. I just missed the guy, Lex. I could have stopped him. There were four dead people in there, and one of them was a young woman with two boys. The boys were in the restaurant.” Lex formed an O with her mouth, then stood, shut off the oven, and pulled the now-browned pot pies from it, before returning to sit with her husband.

  “They were in there? Still alive?”

  “They must have been playing in that little-kids’ area they have when the guy came in and started shooting. It looked like a robbery, but it was worse than that too. I know the guy who got shot working the register. He would have given you the money if you just said you had a gun. All he wanted to do was go home every day — that was it. It wasn’t his money, and he knew that; besides, stores have insurance for stuff like this. Shooting him was mean. I know that sounds simple, but it really is that simple. People died there for no reason.”

  “Maybe that was part of it,” said Lex. “Maybe it was supposed to be mean because he’s angry.” Those words would echo in his mind as he undressed, ate dinner, and finally lay in bed. If it was cruelty for cruelty’s sake, how can anyone even attempt to find this guy?

  Ken whistled as he drove to work. Today was different, every day was going to be different from here on out. The shackles of life had been thrown off. Everything that he wanted to do was only a trigger pull away, whether to his own head or someone else’s. There was nothing that anyone could take from him ever again.

  Paula could tell on the phone last night. His ex, normally so domineering and a bully in a way that she’d never been when they were together, could tell over the phone. He wasn’t sure how, not exactly, but she’d called right after
he’d left the A.A. meeting, and there had been a tone in her voice. Paula had always said she needed a man who was stronger than Ken was, that was why she had left, but after the call last night he knew it was the opposite. She wanted a weak little worm to stomp on, and that was why she called, that was why she mentally abused him, using the kids like a lure that he didn’t even care about. He liked the idea of the kids; the reality was a pair of snot-nosed brats who weren’t even worth talking to.

  She could tell, he knew it, and it was glorious. She had always lorded the weekly phone calls over him, like it was something he couldn’t live without, but now he knew she was the one who couldn’t live without them. She was a leech, a vampire feeding on his misery, and when she called and there was no sadness, she’d tried to create some. “We’ll see about this weekend,” Paula said. “I’m not sure the kids can come over.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Ken said back, repressing laughter the whole time. “I’ve got a line on some scalped Tigers tickets. Just let me know in the next day or two so I don’t miss out.”

  “Are there enough to take the kids? Tim would want to go, I bet.”

  “Tim hates baseball,” said Ken, “and I’m not made of money, Paula. Between child support, court costs, and staying alive, life is a bitch. I’ve been saving my pennies for this — you know how it goes.” The kicker, of course, was that Paula most assuredly did not know how it went. Not only was she remarried — she had struck it rich with some computer nerd — but she still collected from his check. Divorce courts only went forward, and when a Michigan mother was ceded money, it either increased or stopped when the kid turned eighteen. Regardless, it seemed, of newfound wedded bliss and income.

  A moral victory would have been to be hung up on, a battle was won when she kept him on the phone and tried to make him interested in what she’d been up to. Normally, it would have worked; Ken was usually so desperate for a human connection that even listening to her telling him how much better off she was without him was better than nothing. All of a sudden, the wheels turned, and an idea formed in Ken’s head that was as solid as the unfired bullet in his pocket. There were still gaps in it, things to be worked out. Ken’s lips split in a smile — there would be plenty of time to think while he flipped burgers, swamped toilets, and did whatever else was required of him. After all, being a new man meant he needed a mask, and he was lucky to already have one.

  Van Endel was a half hour early to work. He managed, barely, not to pace by Phil Nelson’s desk. He waited, sitting in a spare folding chair, sipping a burned coffee, and watching the police station come to life, faces he knew and faces he didn’t swirling around in an unending circle. It made him feel smaller than the smallest of fish, worse than a rookie. He was waiting to talk to a detective, and he knew that everyone passing him knew why. He was the guy who had been there first, the guy who anyone who listened to the gossip knew had missed the spree killer by minutes.

  Nelson’s arrival interrupted the pity party. “How ya doin’, kid?” Nelson asked, and Van Endel jumped to his feet.

  “I’m all right,” said Van Endel as they shook hands. “You want to do this right here?”

  “Nah,” said Nelson, “let’s go hit one of the rooms, give everybody something to really talk about.” Van Endel shrugged, not sure if Nelson was serious, and then followed him across the station to one of the rooms where detectives typically talked to criminals. Nelson went in first, then swung his arm wide in a mock invitation. Van Endel went with it, bowing deeply, and was rewarded when Nelson chuckled. They sat across from each other, the witness and the interrogator, but Nelson’s smile put Van Endel at ease immediately. Nelson took a battered notepad out of his pocket and laid it on the table between them.

  “My notes say that you were there before and after the murders,” said Nelson. “Getting coffee?”

  “Yeah,” said Van Endel, “whenever I’m looping that end I get coffee there. The manager makes sure there’s always a fresh pot on, so it’s worth a few minutes to go in and say hi. You know how that is — people like to have a cop around. I figured it was a fair trade for good coffee a couple of times a week.”

  “All right,” said Nelson, nodding. “You knew the people there, then?”

  “First-name basis with front-of-the-house staff, at least for early shifters. I don’t tend to drink much coffee at night, it makes it hard to sleep, but I have a hard time in the morning without it.”

  “I hear that,” said Nelson. “I’m the same way. Used to have it working nights all the time, but it drove Sarah, my wife, nuts. I’d be tossing and turning for hours. Finally, she cut me off. I fell asleep on traffic duty a couple of times, but that could have happened even without coffee. You know how boring that shit is.”

  “Yeah,” said Van Endel, “they don’t show much of that on TV.”

  “Paperwork too,” said Nelson. “They never show the paperwork. Lots of gunfights and ‘Do you feel lucky?’ Not much of a guy sitting alone in a car, trying to catch speeders and drunks.” Nelson shook his head, then took a sip of coffee. “Still, I wouldn’t trade it. There’s a lot of guys shoveling shit and tarring roofs with a smile on their faces; the least I can do is appreciate that I have a pretty sweet gig.”

  “Agreed,” said Van Endel. “I wouldn’t change what I do for anything.”

  “So, in any case,” said Nelson, “you get coffee and leave, notes say the only other patrons in the store were the woman” — he flipped through his book — “Gail Russow, and her sons, Jacob and Joshua. Is that still correct? Was anyone leaving as you came in?”

  “Nope, there was no one else in there. I had to have missed him by minutes.”

  “Horseshoes and hand grenades, Officer,” said Nelson. “Everything else requires a good deal more precision. You blame yourself for what happened, fine, I get it.” Nelson sipped coffee. “That does not mean you played it wrong. You went in, bought coffee, bullshitted for a minute or two, and left. When the call came over the wire, you were how many minutes away?”

  “Three, tops.”

  “And you went in without backup? Seems risky.”

  “I knew those people,” said Van Endel, not sure how to answer. “Not Mrs. Russow, of course. But the people working. I mean, I was friendly with them. If there was an active shooter inside, or any chance that I could offer first aid...It was just something I had to do. I know how that sounds, I’m not saying I’m some hero, but I just did what I thought was best. I mean, there’s a reason we get hazard pay, right?”

  “I understand that,” said Nelson, nodding. “Let’s fast-forward a bit. You find Jacob and Joshua, abandon clearing the building, and get them into your car. Then what?”

  “I went back in and cleared the bathrooms,” said Van Endel, trying not to sound annoyed, but Detective Nelson had to have all of this stuff in his notes. “I gave the boys my hat and a billy club to play with, and I went back inside and cleared the bathrooms.”

  “It still hadn’t occurred to you to wait for backup?”

  “No,” said Van Endel. “If anything, I was more sure that I needed to clear the building. I should have left the boys where they were, checked the bathrooms, and then gotten them out of there. That’s protocol: protect your own neck first. It didn’t sit right with me. So I bent the rules, then went back in and checked the bathrooms. I found nothing.”

  “All right,” said Nelson. “I’m going to be completely honest. I considered you for this. As the shooter. I’m over that now; it doesn’t seem like your thing. Breaking protocol? That seems right. I think most cops would have done the same thing, if they’d even seen the kids in the first place. After all, our shooter didn’t.”

  “Wait,” said Van Endel, doing his best to keep the rage out of his voice, “you had me as a suspect?”

  “Sure,” said Nelson, sipping coffee, eyes locked on Van Endel. “If you were in my shoes, you would have considered a man in your position too. Think about it.”

  Van Endel did, and found
that it did make some perverse sense. Shoot the vics, call it in on a pay phone, discover the boys after the call, and be unsure when backup would arrive. A surprised perp posing as a hero would have little choice but to get the kids out of there; after all, there was no real threat inside. Does this mean he likes this for just a robbery?

  “I understand,” said Van Endel, “though you did have me pretty pissed for a moment there. You’re right, though, I would have looked at a man in my position as well. The timing of the thing does have me right there, after all.”

  “Plus, your prints are already there,” said Nelson. “There’s lots of little things that could be eliminated with you as a perp. So, since you either are some cold motherfucker who has me totally duped, or showed some good cop sense in there regardless of safety, I have a question.” Nelson looked Van Endel in the eyes. It felt like the man was probing into his head. “What do you think happened?”

  “I think the perp went in angry,” said Van Endel. “I don’t know why he was pissed, but he was. It could have been anything, I guess — maybe they forgot his fries in the drive-thru, maybe his dad used to fuck him.” Van Endel shrugged. “You know what I mean. Anyways, he comes in pissed off, holding a revolver. He shoots the cashier and the manager, they were both working front of the house.” Van Endel stopped himself. “He went into the kitchen through the employee door. I hopped the counter when I was clearing the kitchen, but the way the bodies were facing means that he shot up the front and then went into the kitchen through the side door. Anyways, he leaves the kitchen and sees Mrs. Russow dumping garbage—”