Short Story 1 - (9) Who said editing was fun?
I have reworked the next part of the story, though this part needed fewer changes than the first.
This is the new third section:
© Charles Heath 2016-2018
This is the new third section:
It had been another long day at the office for Officer Margaret
O'Donnell, or, out in the streets, coping with people who either didn't know or
didn't care about the law.
People who
couldn't cross the road where there were crossings and lights to protect them,
silly girls shoplifting on a dare, and boys who thought they were men and could
walk on water.
The one
they scraped of the road would never get to grow up, and his mother, well, she
was not doing another call on a family to give them bad news for a while.
Someone else could deal with the problem next time.
That was
her day.
So far.
At the end
of the day, she was glad to be getting home, putting her feet up, and
forgetting about everything until the next morning when it would start all over
again.
Coming
around that last corner, the home stretch she called it, she was directly
opposite the corner shop, usually closed at this hour of the night.
It was
not. The lights were still on.
She looked
at her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight, and long past closing
time. She looked through the window, but from the other side of the street,
she could only see three heads and little else.
Damn, she
thought, I'm going to have to check it out.
She was
aware of the rumors, from her co-residents and also her colleagues down at the
station, rumors she hoped were not true.
Jack
exchanged a look with the shopkeeper, who in return gave him a slight shrug as
if to say he ‘we tried and failed’.
And she
was clearly scared of something, and it looked to him like it might be the
shopkeeper. He had no idea what happened before he burst into the shop,
but from the tenseness in the air, it had nothing to do with the boy on the
floor.
He could
see the girl was not strung out on drugs, in fact, she did not like a user at
all. If she had been, Jack was positive they’d both be on the floor,
dead, or almost dead.
Another
rumor just coming back to him, this was apparently not the first time the store
had been robbed, but by the time the police arrived, the would-be robbers were
gone.
What was
different this time?
Was it the
fact the girl was just the unfortunate partner of a boy who was on drugs and
had found herself in a dangerous position, one that couldn’t be dealt with or
explained away to the advantage of the shopkeeper.
Beth, his
wife, had told him she didn’t like nor trust the shopkeeper and that her friend
in the same apartment block had told her he had been seen selling drugs to
youths who hung around just before he closed. She had warned him it would
not be safe, but he had ignored her.
It was a
bit late to tell her she might be right.
He took a half
step towards the door, judging the distance and time it would take to open the
door and get out.
Too far,
and he would be too slow, and that his reward for running would be a bullet in
the back.
Perhaps
another half step when she wasn’t looking.
The girl
had long enough to think about her situation. This was only going to end
one of two ways, and she knew it. No amount of ‘thinking’ was going to
make it any better, only worse.
The
shopkeeper changed his expression to a more placatory one, and said quietly to
the girl, “Look, this is not this chap’s problem.” He nodded in the
direction of the customer. “I'm sure he'd rather not be here, and you
would glad of one less distraction.”
He could
see she was wavering. She was not holding the gun so steadily, and the
longer this dragged on, the more nervous and unpredictable she would become.
And in the
longer game, the customer would sing his praises no matter what happened if he
could get him out of the shop alive and well.
This could
still be a win-win situation.
The girl
looked at Jack. The shopkeeper was right. If he wasn't here this
could be over, one way or another.
But there
was another problem. It didn't look like Simmo was in any shape to get
away. In fact, this was looking more like a suicide mission.
She waved
the gun in his direction. ‘Get out now, before I change my mind.’
As the gun
turned to the shopkeeper, Jack wasn't going to wait to be asked twice and
started sidling towards the door.
Officer
Margaret O’Donnell crossed the street from the corner instead of remaining on
the same side of the street as she did every other night. When she
reached the other sidewalk, she was about 20 yards from the nearest window of
the store.
As she
crossed, she got a better view of the three people in the store and noticed the
woman, or girl, was acting oddly as if she had something in her hand, and, from
time to time looked down beside her.
A yard or
two from the window she stopped, took a deep breath, and then moved slowly
forward, getting a better view of the scene with each step.
Then she
saw the gun in the girl’s hand, and the two men, the shopkeeper and a customer,
facing her, hands out where they could be seen.
It was a
convenience store robbery in progress.
She
reached for her radio, but it wasn’t there. She was off duty.
Instead, she withdrew, and called the station on her mobile phone, and reported
the robbery. The officer on the end of the phone said a car would be there
in five minutes.
In five
minutes there could be dead bodies.
She had to
do something, and reached into her bag and pulled out a gun. Not her
service weapon, but one she carried in case of personal danger.
The
policewoman crouched below the window shelf line so the girl wouldn’t see her,
and made it to the door before standing up. She was in dark clothes so
the chances were the girl would not see her against the dark street backdrop.
Her hand
was on the door handle about to push it inwards when she could feel it being
yanked hard from the other side, and the momentum and surprise of it caused her
to fall forward, losing balance, and crash into the man who was trying to get
out.
What the
hell…
A second
or two later both were on the floor in a tangled mess, her gun hand caught
underneath her, and a glance in the direction of the girl with the gun told her
the situation had gone from bad to worse.
The girl
had swung the gun around and aimed it at her and squeezed the trigger. It
was the second of two successive shots, the mini explosions in the small room
almost deafening, and definitely disorientating.
Behind
her, the glass door disintegrated when the bullet hit it.
Neither
she or the man beside her had been hit.
Yet.
She felt a
kick in the back and the tickling of glass then broke free as the man she’s run
into rolled out of the way.
Quickly on
her feet, she saw the girl had gone, those precious few seconds taken to get up
off the floor and get out the door was long enough for the girl to disappear,
as if into thin air.
She could
hear a siren in the distance.
© Charles Heath 2016-2018
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