The shooter rolled over in his double bed and looked at his alarm clock. Six twenty a.m. glowed blood red. He rolled onto his back, cradled his hands on the pillow behind his head, and stared unfocused at his bedroom ceiling.
It had taken him four hours to drive home after shooting Dr. Martin. He’d avoided the Interstates and kept to two-lane U.S. and county roads the whole way back. He passed through at least a dozen towns on the way, and none of them had populations approaching even a thousand residents, either sleeping or awake.
He had driven through that last two hours of Friday and the first two hours of Saturday without attracting undue attention. Even in the most rural areas, some people were out and about on Friday nights and in the wee hours of a new Saturday.
The shooter made liberal use of his cruise control, even passing through the towns, and kept his speed between the posted limits and three to five miles-per-hour over. While he had a backstory prepared, he had no interest in being pulled over for going too slow or for being in too much of a hurry.
Ten p.m. to two a.m., from Friday night into Saturday morning was considered prime time for Wisconsin law enforcement, from state troopers to county sheriffs to local PDs, to hand out DUIs. Drinking to excess was a hobby for too many people in the state, and it didn’t slow down much, even during the dead of winter.
He’d gotten home okay, but the last hour or so after the thrill of the kill had worn off, he had fought hard to keep from falling asleep at the wheel and hurting himself or anyone else still on the road. Luckily, there were no long stretches of straight road, but even the curvy, hilly roads he’d driven had nearly lulled him to sleep.
He drove under his carport and shut down the Blazer, leaning forward and resting his head on the steering wheel. He gave a soft thanks to God for helping him successfully eliminate Martin, and for shepherding him home safe and undiscovered. He got out of the car and made his way into the house, his frost-bitten feet barking with every step. Inside, he emptied his pockets on the tiny kitchen table. He didn’t turn on any lights. Harsh, white light from a streetlamp spilled through the plastic kitchen blinds and lit up the laminated countertop. The dim glow from a night light in the lone bathroom lit the way to his bedroom.
He stood stiffly in his room and peeled off his clothes. When he was down to his boxers and t-shirt, he lifted the thin sheet and bedspread and slid under them, sure he would fall asleep instantly.
Instead, he slept fitfully. Exhausted as he was, when he closed his eyes he saw Dr. Martin clinging to his kitchen island, his head half gone, staring back at him with an accusing eye. The shooter was reasonably sure he hadn’t seen that through his scope, and he tried to push the image away. When he shook the image off, a worse one, of Martin’s wife and girls, replaced it. In his research, the shooter had seen Google images of Martin and his wife. Dressed up at galas benefitting causes like breast cancer research and their local hospital. He couldn’t tell if they were in love, but they seemed happy in the images.
He rolled over and pushed those thoughts away only to have them replaced by images of three smiling, innocent girls. He never actually saw photos of the girls, but he’d seen one through his scope the night before. She was carefree when she flitted into the kitchen. He saw all three of the girls clearly as he lay there now…laughing, bouncing curls of blonde hair, shining eyes, pretty white teeth, angelic. And then he heard their screams.
At six-thirty a.m., he got up and knelt at the side of his bed, even more exhausted than when he’d lain down. His knees ached immediately from being mashed against the hard oak floors. He looked at the crucifix above his bed, last year’s brittle fronds from Palm Sunday draped over it. The dark wooden cross bore a pale ceramic Christ in acute agony, with dark blood seeping from wounds on his hands, feet, side, and head. The shooter identified with the suffering Christ. He was in agony himself. Shooting Dr. Smith had been easier somehow. Even from a couple hundred yards away, Smith seemed showy. Smug. Dr. Martin was more of a Jekyll/Hyde type…a monster in his clinic maybe, but a family man and a philanthropist at the same time.
The shooter felt Martin’s remaining eye, surrounded by gristle and gore, boring into him. Damning him. Overwhelming exhaustion and self-loathing overcame him and the shooter buried his head in the bedspread, muffling his sobs. He lifted back up at the crucifix, conflicting tears of shame, fear, and anguish streaming from his eyes in rivulets that dripped onto his shirt.
For the first time since Christmas, he doubted himself and his call to protect the children. “Help me, Lord!” he blubbered. “Give me some sign!”
It was quiet save for his sobs and ragged breathing. No flash of light. No loud bang. No winged messenger sent from above. But after a while, somewhere through the fog in his mind, six words came to him, tissue soft at first, but building in clarity and volume. “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord. Vengeance is mine saith the Lord. VENGEANCE IS MINE SAITH THE LORD!”
The shooter trembled, excited. He recognized the words from the Bible’s Old Testament. But he was confused. Was God telling him to leave any vengeance to Him? Did he want the shooter to stop his one-man crusade? To turn himself in?
But the same voice began softly in his head again. The shooter cocked his head a bit, staring at the crucifix as he strained to make out the new words. They repeated over and over, indistinguishable at first but growing louder and louder until the shooter lifted up shakily from his aching knees.
“THY WILL BE DONE! THY WILL BE DONE! THY WILL BE DONE!” he shouted along with the voice. He collapsed back onto his bed then and slept dreamlessly until dinnertime.