© Daniel Quentin Steele 2011
Author's note: This is my Christmas story and I hope LIT readers enjoy it. I didn't submit for the Xmas contest because it doesn't meet the contest rules. On another matter, I was unaware that LIT rules prohibit providing information about off-site publication. There have been major developments in the When We Were Married story and if anyone cares to contact me, I'll let you know where it can be found. And for those who care, there is no sex in this one but I think the story definitely falls into the Loving Wives category.
*
"Silent Night" echoed through the deserted hallways as he passed the nurse's station. Liz, a small dark woman who often worked the night shift, smiled at him and said, "Merry Christmas, Officer Belker."
He glanced down at his watch and realized it was past midnight. Christmas morning.
"Merry Christmas, Liz," he said, walking past her and entering a familiar doorway before she had a chance to say anything else, to offer condolences.
He bent over and kissed the sleeping blonde princess who was ensnared in a jungle of tubes and cables and wires that invaded every part of her body, hooking her to machines that beeped and gurgled and hummed beside her hospital bed.
"Hey, Marcy," he said softly, as he always did when he came in off shift. He pulled a chair up to her bed and turned it around, sitting across it, and held one of her small, cold, unmoving hands in his.
Unlike every other night of his eight month vigil, this night he took his ten-shot police-issue Glock pistol out of his service holster and laid it on the bed near his right hand.
Talking more to himself than her, he said, "I have to do this now, darling. I won't have the courage later. This has to end tonight."
Then he started to talk to her about the day's events, as he always did.
"I killed two men this morning. I mean, yesterday morning. The first two men I ever killed, on Christmas Eve."
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He had been parked in the darkened drive-through of an abandoned Shell station across the street and on the corner a half block down from the Baymeadows Barnett Bank. It was 2 a.m., the temperature on the sign in front of the bank down to 37 degrees.
His sargeant had told him, "George, stay home,", but he could not stay in the warm and comfortable apartment he and Marcy had called home. He could not sleep there now, never could again. Because she was all around him as she had been before the freak medical accident had stolen her from him.
Instead, he waited for the Night Depositor - as he had been dubbed by police - to make a visit to this bank as he had to three others in the past two months.
The Depositor's MO was deceptively simple, taping an open plastic bag to the interior of a bank's night depository after banking hours so that unwary customers' deposits dropped into the bag. Before the bank opened he retrieved his bag and thousands of dollars in cash.
Because of its location and the fact that retailers would be depositing large amounts of cash, he had gambled that the Depositor might hit the Baymeadows Bank, and his gamble had paid off.
A late model Chevrolet entered the bank parking lot. The driver got out of his car and approached the depository, festooned with Christmas wreaths and decorations. The driver reached into the depository and pulled out a plastic bag.
"Bingo," he said to himself softly and quietly turned the ignition on, picking up his mike and keying it to talk.
"This is unit 37," he said, aware that communications knew the location of his off-duty stakeout. "I've got the Night Depositor in my sights. Request backup."
A beat up and dusty red Mustang roared into the parking lot, cutting off the Depositor from his car.
Two men jumped out of the Mustang, the revolver and shotgun they held frightening the Depositor into throwing up his hands and dropping his bag of money.
He could hear the Depositor begging them to take the money, heard the gunmen laughing as they roughly forced him to kneel on the pavement.
A BOLO alert from Atlanta had reported a pair of gunmen who preyed on convenience stores and other late night businesses might be heading for Jacksonville . In Atlanta and Charleston they had cold bloodedly executed their victims.
"Police, stop."
The gunman holding a revolver to the Depositor's head swung around first, bringing the revolver up to fire. A hail of bullets from the Glock threw the gunman onto the hood of the Mustang.
The gunman holding the sawed off shotgun was saying something he couldn't make out for the roaring in his ears. Belker's body seemed to be acting on its own as he pumped rounds into the big man firing the shotgun. Something stung his face and he wiped away blood.
When it was over, he asked the Depositor, huddling on the ground and shaking, "Are you alright?" The slightly built, blond man nodded yes.
The gunman with the revolver was dead. A bullet had gone through his heart. The big man had fallen forward on his side.
Belker rolled the big man over, feeling for a pulse at his throat. Suddenly, the big man grabbed his hand in a meaty paw. He flinched, but did not pull away. The big man couldn't talk, blood spilling out of his mouth showed that a bullet had gone through a lung. He was drowning in his own blood.
He wanted to say something, but what do you say to a dying man you've just killed. He held the big man's hand while he struggled to breath and rhythmically squeezed and relaxed his grip, and the car radio in the Mustang played "Jingle Bell Rock."
The big man let go of life and his grip quietly, the heavy, sweaty hand growing slack and loose. Belker was on his knees beside a dead man when he heard the Depositor scrambling to his feet and running to his car.
He should have called halt, he should have fired a warning shot, but he couldn't let go of the dead man's hand. He still held it, tears streaming down his face, when the first units arrived.
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"That's why I didn't come by this morning, Marcy. I was tied up with Internal Affairs investigating the shooting and going to University to get a few shotgun pellets dug out of my face and shoulder.
"The Sheriff came by to talk to me. He said nobody blamed me for letting the Depositor go. Shock and reaction to the shooting. But they won't let me go back on the street. I can't blame them. I can't hold things together any more."
#####################
Belker sat back in one of the hardback chairs that along with a plain metal desk marked every interrogation room in every police station in the world.
Chris Coleman leaned forward in the chair and propped his elbows on the table in front of him. Harry Munson, another IAD spook, leaned his gangly frame back against the wall of the room and chewed on a toothpick.
"I know we've been over this a dozen times, but this is the part I don't really understand, Belker. This is Christmas Eve. You're exhausted. Your wife is lying comatose in a hospital. You could have been by her side. Everyone says you are a devoted husband. Instead, you're out in the freezing cold by yourself, on an unauthorized stakeout. On a hunch? Why?"
Belker rubbed his eyes. It felt like sand and grit caked the insides of his eyelids. He thought he probably smelled rank. He thought he'd showered yesterday, but the days had begun to run together.
"I've already explained it, Coleman. I couldn't stand going back to my....our...place. I can't sleep there...not good. I get more sleep in my cruiser. And....I spend my free time with....Marcy. But I have to get away sometimes. I....I...can't....
"I'd been following the reports of the Depositor's pattern of hitting banks and I just had a hunch he might hit one in the Baymeadows area. It is a big commercial area, there are a lot of department stores so there would be a lot of merchant deposits. I took a chance he might hit this one."
"It worked out," Munson said, He was usually the silent one. Coleman had done most of the talking for the last five hours since Belker'd finally finished all the paperwork involving two police shooting homicides and a successful bank robbery. He'd had at least a half dozen cups of coffee and he was still having trouble keeping his eyes open.
"You were there, all by yourself, and you had him nailed. And he got away."
"With what the bank people tell us could have been as much as a hundred thousand dollars. That's a nice payday," Coleman added.
He stared into Belker's eyes. Belker held his gaze unblinking.
"You've got a good record. You haven't killed anybody, until this morning, but you've been in shoot-outs, and you did put that one guy into the hospital last year. It's not like you're a rookie. Yet you froze and watched the Depositor drive off with his loot. It doesn't seem....it seems curious."
Belker finally stared down at the table. He couldn't explain it to the IAD headhunter because he couldn't explain it to himself.
"I don't know why. I've been asking myself why. Ever since this morning. I...just couldn't. Couldn't move."
"Why are you still on the street, Belker?"
"What else am I going to do?"
"You could ask for desk duty. There are jobs you could fill. Jobs that wouldn't put you in situations..."
"Where I could let a guy get away with a hundred thousand dollars in bank money? Right?"
"Yeah."
"You ever had anybody in the hospital, Coleman? Ever had somebody bad sick, hurt bad, in a hospital, for a long time? Ever had to sit and wait and do nothing but think....for hour after hour. I need to be out of the street, doing things. Not sitting behind a desk...thinking..."
Coleman was silent. Finally:
"No, I've never had anybody in the hospital. Not like your wife. And that's the only reason we're not coming down on you with both feet. You nailed two bad guys this morning. Good for you. But you let a thief skate with a hundred grand. Most departments I know of, that wouldn't get you any commendations."
There was nothing he could say to that. He picked up the styrofoam coffee cup and sipped the coffee inside. It was cold and bitter.
The door to the interrogation room opened. A short, pudgy, rumpled-looking guy with light brown, sparse hair and an expressonless face, wearing a sweater and a pair of brown slacks, walked in. He nodded toward the two IAD detectives and Coleman got up. Both men followed him outside.
Belker recognized him. He was just surprised to see him at the Cop Shop on Christmas Eve.
