A Necessary Evil(63)
“Why did you have to do this?” Kurt asked, surprising Frankie with his softer tone. Frankie didn’t answer. “Why did you have to put me in this position?”
The detective looked truly conflicted, and Frankie found himself feeling sorry for him. But not sorry enough to turn himself in.
“I had to finish it,” Frankie said.
With one swift motion, he grabbed Kurt’s hand and twisted it. His gun flew several feet in the air and landed in a mound of hay. Kurt reacted quickly, and in an instant, they were on the ground, struggling. Each man was trying to get the upper hand. Frankie’s heart was in his throat, and his pulse was racing so fast he thought his veins may explode. He tried to get to an angle where he could bring Kurt down with a swift kick to his nuts, but Kurt had managed to flip Frankie onto his stomach and had his knee in the small of his back. Kurt had his arms pinned down with both hands. Frankie struggled to turn over, but Kurt was stronger in his old age than Frankie could have imagined.
When they were kids, it was always Frankie who won when they wrestled. He’d been a few inches taller and was built slightly thicker. It wasn’t lost on Frankie that the one time Kurt had beaten him was probably the last time the two would grapple. A small part of Frankie didn’t care so much that he was now headed to prison. This part of him actually felt proud of Kurt for finally getting the best of him after all these years.
He stopped struggling and submitted to his fate. The sound of metal handcuffs clinking together as Kurt fumbled to pull them out of his belt and secure them around Frankie’s wrists was a sound Frankie thought he’d never hear.
“Franklin Cartwright, you are under arrest for the kidnapping and murder of Collin McAllister. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say…”
The recitation of Frankie’s Miranda rights faded as he thought back to the day he’d first met Kurt. It was the first day of second grade and Kurt’s first day at Daniel Boone Elementary School after moving from the city. Kurt was being picked on in the lunch room by the school’s bullies, and Frankie had stepped in and throttled the two little monsters. Kurt was so appreciative, he’d offered Frankie everything in his lunch box. Frankie spent the next ten years or so defending Kurt at every turn. Now, here they were, on opposite sides of the law, and Kurt was arresting him for murder. He knew it wasn’t just about Collin, though. It was about Julian McAllister too. Frankie was finally going to pay for his sins, and it was his blood brother who was making him face the music.
A loud bang echoed through the barn, and at first, Frankie thought it was a car backfiring. But when he felt Kurt’s body collapse on his back, he knew. One of his bodyguards, or Bruno, had shot Kurt to keep him from arresting Frankie. Damn it, this was not how he wanted it to go down. He took a deep breath and rolled onto his side. When Kurt flopped over onto his back, Frankie scrambled to his hands and knees and looked down at him. A dark red rose was blooming on Kurt’s white shirt, right near his heart.
“No,” Frankie whispered. “Kurt, buddy. Can you hear me?” Frankie grabbed Kurt by the collar and shook him violently. “Kurt, man. Wake up.” No response. “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.” Though Frankie knew Bruno, or the boys, or whoever shot Kurt, was just trying to protect him, he couldn’t understand why they would do something so drastic without direct orders from him.
Frankie turned to ask them what they had been thinking, but when he did, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open. A sudden coldness penetrated him to the core. He could not believe what he was seeing. Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him. Frankie squinted and tried to focus. When he realized what he was seeing was no mirage, his stomach clenched, and his breath caught in his throat.
Standing near the entrance with a gun held out in front of her was his granddaughter, Mollie.
Chapter 31
Lonnie
He finally forced himself to step away from Kurt’s tombstone. Everyone else has already left the gravesite, but Lonnie couldn’t bear to walk away without at least spending a few more minutes talking to his partner. There was so much he wished he’d said to Kurt while he was alive. He wished he’d told him how much he admired him. How he’d been excited the moment he’d heard who his first partner would be. That he’d never met a harder working detective than Kurt Jamison. Instead, he’d spent the past several years giving Kurt a hard time and making fun of his age.
Lonnie walked across the brown and yellow grass with his overcoat pulled tightly around himself and his hands in his pockets. When he arrived at his cruiser, he slid into the front seat, slammed the door, and turned on the engine and the heat. He leaned his head back against the headrest and exhaled deeply. There was nothing Lonnie hated more than funerals, but in his line of work, they were practically unavoidable. He had known three officers to lose their lives in the line of duty since he started at the academy, but none of them had been shot and killed by a psychopath.
When the call had come over the wire about the shooting at the barn, Lonnie had been sitting at his desk in the precinct, trying like hell to figure out where Kurt had gone to in such a hurry. He was beyond frustrated with him for not bringing him along. Had Lonnie had a clue what Kurt was doing, he would have insisted on riding along. Perhaps then things wouldn’t have gone down the way they had, and Kurt would still be alive.