Crimes in Southern Indiana Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a choice a husband didn’t want to hear about, let alone carryout.
    Now, seated in his Scout, he remembered that scent as he flicked his Zippo lighter. It was that familiar sparking of the flint, so identical, coaling his Pall Mall. Only that day, entering the home, it was like a Zippo that wouldn’t light. That flint being flicked over and over without any fuel. No butane, just the spark of sulfur. He remembered coming home early, wanting to surprise herwith flowers. And there sat Dr. Brockman’s Cadillac in the driveway. With a sprinter’s heart, Deets dropped the flowers, entered their home. The slamming of the wooden screen door, hinges squeaking, needing oil, drowned out the loud blast, leaving only that aftereffect in the air. A scent that he followed through their home into the bedroom. He found Brockman sitting in a chair next to their bed,blocking his view of Elizabeth. He grabbed the doctor’s shoulder, spun him around, revealing what he hadn’t noticed at first, that what had stained the walls had stained the bed. It was the stain of what was missing—part of his wife, who was somehow still alive, her hands fumbling with the doctor’s hand as if playing a clarinet, the hand that had either helped her hold the double-barrel .12-gaugeto her mouth or tried to stop her from pulling the trigger that had taken the right side of her jaw. Had they planned this? Or like Deets, had the doctor walked in on the attempt?
    Weak, her hands trembled and slid, from her failed attempt to end the suffering. Her suicide. Something Deets would never accept.
    She grunted, gargling and blowing bubbles, as her thumbs tried to push the hammer backon that misfiring pin on the right side. Adrenaline took over, and Deets lost control of his temper, unleashed a fit of rage that led to both of his hands becoming a vise around the old doctor’s windpipe. Brockman lost his grip on the shotgun as Deets squeezed until he had the doctor on the floor, slamming his skull to the hardwood surface, screaming, “What have you done, what have you done?”
    And by the time he’d realized what he’d done, the old doctor was limp in his grip but his wife was still alive, trying to produce syllables with her split tongue and chipped teeth, her complexion half removed. And seeing all of this, he’d no other choice.
    That discomforting warmth of a memory, of that final day, was what accompanied Deets, haunted him in every town and every motel room or rentedfarmhouse’s bed. He could strip the sentiments, but still the guilt of his actions was there. Rooted in his mind. An incurable disease still pricking his conscience after all the time passed, all the distance traveled. What he missed most were her words, which once formed her outline next to his. That warmth of completion, now gone.
    Watching the marshal enter the station, Deets stubbed out thecigarette in the Scout’s ashtray and grabbed from the passenger seat the head shots of a wanted man. The history that wouldn’t allow him to run or hide anymore.
    With the scent of fresh-brewed coffee and a hint of Old Forester thick in the marshal’s office, Deets threw the head shots onto the desk. Sipping his coffee, the marshal smacked his lips, savoring the caffeine and bourbon with a late-nightsmile, and asked Deets, “Whatcha got there?” He removed the twine, unrolling the head shots, the wanted posters that Deets had collected from all the small-town post offices over the years.
    Deets told the marshal, just up Highway 135, five years ago in the small town of Corydon, a husband walked into his home, walked in on another man helping to hold a shotgun for the husband’s ailing wife. Whathe believed was the unfinished suicide of his wife. The name of the man who held the gun was Dr. Brockman. And in a fit of rage, the husband murdered the doctor with his bare hands. The husband was then left with his wife, whose face had been