Death by a .45 - a Jake Burbank Mystery Thriller
Beckett sat
in the corner of his cell watching the sunlight drift through the bars on the
window. It was faint, warm afternoon sun
angling in over the razor wire, diminished slightly by the gray walls that
tried to suck the warmth out of it, but failed. The rays landed on the tips of his feet as he
stretched his toes to reach it. His
shoes were under his bed, at right angles to the wall and hallway bars, just as
he always kept them.
"You
awake over there?" said a voice from the cell next to him.
Beckett
stretched even further, pushing his whole foot up to his ankle into the light.
"Yes,
I'm awake," he said. "How
could I sleep on such a rare and wonderful afternoon? It's like a gift."
In the cell
next to him, Chuckie Allbright leaned with his arms between the bars, staring
out at the dingy narrow hallway. There
were sixteen cells lined up along one side of a tiny corridor, with only ten
occupied at the time. Beckett had the
cell at the very end of the hallway. He
liked it for the silence, and the solitude, having to deal with only one
neighbor, and Allbright wasn't very talkative to begin with.
He hated
having to walk past all of the other cells whenever he left the block, to
shower or visit.
One of his
blockmates hated him. Had even tried to
kill him as he walked past on two occasions.
The man was LaShon Domino, a cold blooded killer serving five life
sentences for five murders. A crack
dealer and gang leader, Domino had walked into a rival dealer's home with an
AK-47 assault rifle and eliminated the competition. He represented himself at trial, claiming
defense of business practices, and failed.
The jury handed down the sentences and Domino was handcuffed and led to
the cell that had been his home for thirteen months.
Beckett had
killed Domino's sometimes girlfriend as victim number five. Domino swore he was going to get him, and had
almost succeeded on his first try.
As the
guard led him down the corridor, Domino lashed out at Beckett with a shank,
sliding open his shoulder. He had almost
cut his neck, but Beckett's cat-quick reflexes caught the movement out of the
corner of his eyes and jerked back at the last second.
The pain
was excruciating, the plastic toothbrush shank dull, and covered with
feces. Beckett spent three days in the hospital
wing of the prison, under two armed guards at all times while he was fed a
series of antibiotics to combat any potential infections. He thought it was ironic that they wanted to
keep him alive to kill him on an appointed day, but took the pills whenever the
doctor brought them, and bent over every time they wanted to give him a
shot. No use in expiring early, that was
his way of thinking.
Domino had
spent three weeks in solitary confinement, and after that, was brought back to
death row to sit in his cell until he could try again. None of the guards knew where he got the
shank, and searched his cell once a week to make sure he wouldn't get another.
But four
months after the first attempt on Beckett's life, Domino tried again. Beckett was walking for a meeting with Jake,
when Domino lunged through the bars with a sharpened piece of metal. Beckett dodged the shank, and lashed out,
cracking the former crack dealers arm like balsa wood, yanking the man into the
bars of his cell and fracturing his eye socket.
He would have done worse if the guard wouldn't have pulled him off.
One guard
hustled him to his meeting with Jake while the other tended to Domino.
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