The Fall and Rise of Cain. Greg T. Nelson

behind that stack of barrels and I think they just didn’t notice us after realizing a camera had been trained on them during a robbery. They drove within sixty feet of my front bumper and for a minute, I thought we could stick to the plan. Watch them leave and follow while the troops came. Then instead of turning at the cement barricade toward Bayshore road, they stopped sixty feet short of the Cameraman who was still dutifully holding the large camcorder on his shoulder. The driver and the front passenger jumped out and walked briskly toward him. At about halfway they opened up with the Uzis.

      An Uzi is an ugly little gun. Made to fire with one hand, it has a 60 round magazine that can be completely emptied in less than two seconds. Mass-produced for killing on a large scale at close quarters, it’s also a quantity over quality device. Not very accurate, the theory being that if you throw enough lead in a general direction you’re bound to hit something even if you’re not a good shot. I was watching the theory prove valid.

      The pretty reporter who had been there a moment ago had the good sense to be gone now but that camera guy kept right on taping as 9-millimeter bullets tore him nearly in half. He jerked backward a step but left the Camera in mid-air to crash down on its side. I didn’t notice at the time, I was taking aim down the sight of my Beretta. I heard Judith open fire. She was standing behind me and to my left, firing her glock too quickly. Before the killers could figure out where the fire was coming from, I squeezed off two shots and the first shooter was missing the back of his head. His partner turned and crouched at the same time but I swung and fired three more shots at the same time he did. His shots stitched across the side of my Ford, one of mine hit him low in the throat. Two down. I had a new clip in my hand and went on a knee as I turned and saw three more of the jumpsuits pile out of the van each unloading those ugly little guns at us.

      There was a lot of noise as my car took most of the damage but I noticed that Judith had stopped firing, “Good, I thought, keep your head down kid, let ‘em run.” But they didn’t run. I was on the ground now watching three sets of legs move my way, and then they split up. Two sets kept coming at me but the third went right to get Judith. I took aim again and took out the kneecap of the one closest to me. As he sprawled forward I put three more in his chest and he vomited blood and died. I half fell, half dove to my right, to get a shot at the second man. Bad idea. He was ready for me. Gun steady in two hands he fired at me while I was still in motion and my left leg turned into hamburger at the thigh and knee. I emptied my gun into his stomach and he looked puzzled and just sat down like he was deflating.

      The world was hazy, swimming in and out. I was aware there was another bad guy going after Judith. But I wasn’t able to decide which way to turn. I could hear sirens from far away and only then did I notice there was no gunfire. I shook my head in hopes of clearing my vision but that just brought the pain to the surface. I pulled my last clip from the scabbard on my left hip and reloaded the Beretta by feel. I turned my head in time to see the last bad guy slowly follow his Uzi back around the front of my car. I was too far-gone to aim, so I just pulled the trigger and kept pulling. And then, I just lay my head down with nothing left. That’s when I saw Judith. Looking under the car she was on the other side face turned toward me with her chest torn open. The wound was still pumping blood out, but her eyes were already a blank stare. Unlike the dreams I would have, she didn’t speak. She didn’t blame me. I could feel myself fall for a long time and the sound of sirens became yelling and distant. Cussing, then more sirens and a helicopter then nothing.

      Chapter 4

      Katy:

      We were in the air again, an hour from Houston. My thoughts jumped around like a badly edited film. I had known where he was the past year. I could have called him or gone to him anytime, except for…. except for what?

      Well, there was the fact that I had left him for no good reason or that I had let those assholes use me to blackmail him or maybe it was the ache I still had whenever I thought of him lying there hurt. The mighty Richard Cain hurt? The very possibility was enough to make me shiver, but it had been more than his leg, more than nearly dying, the last time I saw him, and he looked defeated. It had never occurred to me that anything could do that. Injure him? Yes. Kill him? Maybe. But defeat him? Never. When we were married I had been afraid of a lot of things. The stories his friends would tell me about him. Working alone all the time and always winning, no matter what. There were also the whispered stories about the women who mooned over him before I came along and maybe some after I came along. Ed Forney told me once the gangsters referred to Richard as Batman because he always wore those hideous black suits and could sneak up on the worst street scum. I tried to get him to expand his wardrobe but he never would.

      I thought about the baby and my eyes welled up. He had been in the hospital with a concussion when I told him. I don’t remember how it happened exactly; something about a pervert snatching kids and Richard had rammed him off the road to catch the guy. He had saved a seven-year-old boy that night and the department suspended him for ten days for improper use of force. Seems the pervert had suffered a broken shoulder some ten minutes after the wreck. The broken shoulder is rumored to have been how Richard found out where the boy was.

      Thinking back, I don’t think he minded the suspension. He was just lounging there in the emergency room with an icepack on his head and wearing that smile even while that idiot Haden was yelling at him. Oh…that smile... Ed said that smile scared some people, but it made me want to sit in his lap. I had done just that after the others left the room. I pulled his face close to me and told him straight out, “Rich, I’m pregnant and I’m much too busy to be a single mom so you have to cut this shit out, you understand. Whether you believe it or not, the Mighty Cain can Fall.”

      The smile had faded for a second then it came back and he put the ice pack down. Then he kissed me “Sure kid, I promise” Bad idea Katy. He had kept his promise. The thought of a baby made him happy. We bought baby stuff, talked about names and bantered over whether it would be a girl or boy. Things were good for three whole months after that. He transferred over to a fraud unit and spent eight hours a day chasing con artist. Then, gradually, he got edgy and a little cold and I knew why. Richard Cain had to stand up for victims. It was part of him, like the smile. Without a windmill to tilt at, Richard Cain was a little lost. We didn’t exactly fight. We just stopped being a part of each other. We stopped being one and turned back into separate people.

      Then I lost the baby. Richard did all the right things, he held me and told me he loved me. But all I could think was I had let him down. I had made him give up what he loved and then let him down. He never acted like a martyr but I treated him like one. It hurt to look at him, he was so lost. Then one day when I was on my way back from New York I got a room at the Hilton instead of going home. I don’t remember having a reason except if I didn’t have to see him I didn’t have to feel so sad. When I sent the divorce papers, there was a daydream in my head that he would rip them up and carry me back home. Instead, he sent a sweet note and moved out of the house.

      For the next year, we kept seeing each other. I made up favors I needed, a party I had to have an escort for or some furniture to be moved, anything to get him near me. I kept using his name instead of going back to Kathryn Black. I kept needing him to hold me. We never talked out loud about getting back together, I was still afraid. We never talked out loud about anything really, not about the baby, the divorce or how I bailed on him. It was like if we weren’t OFFICIALLY together. I didn’t have to worry about him getting killed, I wouldn’t be the widow Cain. Then after that mess at the ship channel, he was just gone.

      Richard:

      I watched the video Philly was obviously playing for my benefit, a perfect view of the whole thing. First upright then tilted as the camera had fallen onto its side next to the dead operator. The wide angle showed Judith taking the hit to the chest before the first two assholes went down. She had fallen at the beginning of the fight and I hadn’t noticed. In the video, I could see what I had suspected. She coughed and strangled for over a minute as her own blood filled her airways and spilled out onto the pier’s cement. One of the CSI teams had figured she was crouching down reloading her glock and one lucky shot had come tumbling through the car window and torn through both lungs.

      The Cameraman was dead and I never heard what became of the reporter.