Free Broken by Matthew Storm

gun off a couple times. That’s all. If we work
this right maybe you won’t even get attempted murder for it.”
    Todd hesitated
for just a moment, then he lunged at me. I sidestepped and drove the forward
edge of my hand into his throat, intending to end the fight in one shot. It was
hard to punch someone when you couldn’t breathe. But I heard Todd’s windpipe
crunch as I connected with his neck. He clutched at his throat with both hands
and dropped to his knees with a thud.
    “Shit,”
I said. I’d gone too far. Todd stared up at me, terror in his eyes. His fingers
clawed at his throat as if he were trying to put the broken pieces in there
back together. That was never going to happen. If he was lucky he had about a
minute before he suffocated.
    The
police were getting closer, and an ambulance wouldn’t be far behind them, but
they would be far too late to help Todd.
    I needed
to think fast. What about a tracheotomy? I’d never been trained to do one, but
I’d seen it on television and it looked like something I could manage. Or was
that just the tequila talking? Probably, but what did I have to lose? What did
I need? A knife? I ran into the kitchen to look for one, settling on a paring
knife with a sharp point and thin blade. That would work. But he’d need
something to breathe through once I’d made the hole in his throat. Some kind of
tube. What about a straw? I had plenty of fast food crap lying around the
house. A person could breathe through a straw if they tried, right? At least
for a little while?
    Todd was
lying face-down on the floor when I went back into the living room with my
knife and straw. I took a good look at him, but it was over. Todd didn’t need
me to play amateur surgeon anymore. He was dead.
    I went
over to his body and looked down at him, still holding my makeshift tools.
Poor, stupid man. It would have been so simple to kill me.
    I nudged
his body with my foot. “How did you fuck that up?” I asked him quietly.
    Todd was
long past answering. Obviously the poor man hadn’t been a killer. But I was.
Todd was only my latest victim.
    I went
back into the kitchen and returned the knife to its drawer. Then I cracked open
a new bottle of vodka. I took it into the living room and sat down on my couch,
waiting for the police to come.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 8
     
     
    Half an
hour later a crime scene photographer was taking photos of Todd’s corpse where
he had fallen on my living room floor. Another investigator was prying a bullet
out of my wall. Two homicide detectives I didn’t know were standing in the
corner, talking quietly between themselves. Earlier one of them had asked me if
I minded if they made a pot of coffee. I told them I didn’t have any coffee.
One of the uniforms brought them some in paper cups from the 7-11 down the
street.
    The boys in blue had stormed my front door a few minutes
after Todd’s death. I’d been in the middle of a long drink from my bottle and
held up a finger for them to wait. The uniforms recognized me instantly, of
course. They’d locked the house down and, after making sure I didn’t need
medical attention, gone outside to wait for the detectives.
    Sarah Winters had arrived a few minutes later. She’d
brought along a blanket the EMTs outside had given her and had been trying to
keep it draped over my shoulders. I shrugged it off every few minutes. I wasn’t
cold. I was numb. They didn’t make a blanket for that.
    I’d told Sarah most of the story, starting from when I’d
first seen Todd outside my house. At first she’d taken notes down on a little
pad, but after a few minutes she put the pad down on the table and just
listened to me.
    “That was lucky,” she said, when I told her how I’d
dropped Todd.
    “No,” I said. “It was an error in judgment. I didn’t
want to kill him.”
    “He’d have killed you.”
    I scoffed. “He’d have been doing me a fucking favor.”
    There was an engine noise from outside like