Notes From the Crime Scene

A gun rights farce.

Crime Scene Note #1: “The bullet entered the left breast and exited out the back creating substantial tissue and other structural damage in its path.  It appears to have continued on to strike the possible assailant. There was blood on the floor where the assailant was standing and a blood trail from that point out through the front door of the domicile.  The blood trail terminated at the street where it is presumed a vehicle had been parked.”

Crime Scene Note #2: “Clarification: It seems the first body struck by the bullet was that of a turkey.  Cause of death was not the bullet as the turkey had been deceased for several weeks and had been frozen and subsequently thawed prior to the assault”.  The “possible assailant”, as the previous Note referred to him, was holding an object that could have been an unidentified weapon.

******

Bonnie and Tom lived in a respectable, peaceful gated community with wide expanses of fully fertilized extra green lawns.  Every driveway had its own stone column at the entrance. All the neighbors had plenty of money and belonged to Heritage Hills Country Club, Bonnie and Tom’s club.  The neighborhood private security firm had a patrol car keeping close watch on things. Bonnie and Tom were members of the neighborhood watch group. No one would want to rob them or otherwise cause them harm.  

He was a devout member of the church of the NRA.  He fully accepted all of the Gospel teachings, purchased all of the gun-religion tracts, attended all the monthly services and and listened carefully to the sermons delivered by the gun manufacturer representatives.  He never failed to give generously to the online collection plate. He knew it wasn’t guns that kill people. It was people who did that.

(Parenthetically, there was no doubt about the fact that people had clearly killed that particular turkey several weeks earlier but that is a different issue entirely.)

Bonnie knew that Tom’s love for guns was eventually going to come to no good.  They had many discussions about guns in their lovely, two-story colonial revival house.  Bonnie’s concern was that a bullet would somehow eventually find its way into the tender and innocent body of their four-year old daughter Rebecca.  Bonnie had read numerous articles about children being accidentally killed by “empty” and “completely safe” firearms that had somehow managed to discharge in the wrong direction and at the wrong moment.  Calling her worries a “concern” is an understatement. Actually she was terrified!

Tom kept preaching the words of the Gospel to calm her troubled spirit.  “The safety is always on.” “The clip is loaded but there is never a round in the firing chamber.”  “The gun is always stored up high, out of reach of the child.” “I have completed the NRA sanctioned gun safety course and qualified at the ‘Supreme Patriot’ level.”  And finally, the clinchers “You never know when some bad person out there will come gunning for us and when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”

Last Christmas Bonnie had bought Tom a gun-safe so he could lock the weapon safely away.  That really wasn’t on his Christmas gift list but it certainly was on hers. Her thinking was “If the damned thing was locked up, she still wouldn’t feel completely at ease but, at least, Rebecca would have less exposure to that obscene piece of metal”.

Tom thought the whole idea of a gun-safe was a waste of money and, frankly, an insult to his manhood.  Real men don’t hide their guns. For god’s sake, it wasn’t as though he wanted to open-carry at the breakfast table.  He was willing to be discreet but this gun-safe idea was going way too “pansy” for his liking. To maintain peace in the household Tom agreed to install the safe in the closet on the top shelf.  The safe was a shiny gray steel box, about eight by ten inches, with a combination lock. There was a hole in the bottom so it could be bolted securely to the shelf.

But, there was a rub.  Tom installed the safe to keep peace in the household, not because he ever planned to use it.  He had absolutely no intention of doing so. As he had said to Bonnie “What the hell do you think the murderer/robber is going to be doing while I’m fiddling around with the combination, assuming I can even remember what it is?”  But, of course, he lied and told Bonnie that the gun was safely locked-up in the safe.

Tom’s challenge then became one of finding a place to hide the gun so that Bonnie wouldn’t find it and know that he had been lying to her.  She wouldn’t be looking for it so it had to be some place where she wouldn’t come across it by accident. Their basement was divided down the middle with one half a finished “man cave” complete with its wall coverings of NRA posters.  The other half was not finished off and contained furnace, water heater, water softener, and so on. It also contained his workshop with its variety of woodworking equipment. Although Bonnie was in the “man cave” from time-to-time, the presence of an upstairs laundry made it unnecessary for her to venture into the unfinished side of the basement.  Thus, the perfect location to hide the gun was on top of one of the heating ducts in the basement. Tom was particularly pleased with his cleverness although he did feel a bit guilty about the subterfuge. However, when the temperature dropped that evening and the furnace turned on there was a strange rattling noise. Bonnie asked Tom “What could be making that rattling sound?  It sure is annoying”. Tom hastily made his way down the basement stairs, through the “man cave” and into the unfinished half of the basement to remove the offending, rattling object from the heat duct.

He wasn’t hurried because Bonnie didn’t know that the rattling sound would involve such a quick fix. After careful thought, Tom decided his second choice would be to put the gun in a plastic bag and hide it under the sawdust below the table saw.  No sooner had he put it in its nest then it occurred to him that the current location had the same disadvantage as the gun safe. When the murderer/burglar came he would have to dash down the basement stairs, through the “man cave” and into the unfinished half before he could look for the plastic bag buried in the sawdust, and remove the weapon from the bag.   Only then could he come to the aid of his threatened family. He decided to leave it in the bag in the sawdust for the time being and revisit the issue at a later time..

The next morning Bonnie had to take Rebecca to the doctor for a routine checkup so Tom was eating breakfast alone.  He had brought the gun up from the basement and was carefully brushing stray pieces of sawdust from it as he made his way to the bottom of a bowl of Fruit Loops.  The challenge of where to put the gun still weighed heavily on him. Just then he heard the door open and Bonnie’s voice saying “The doctor had to go to the hospital so we rescheduled the appointment.”  In a panic, he turned around on his breakfast stool and stuffed the gun in the back of the oven up high on the broiler rack. He would be coming home for lunch and could safely retrieve it then.

Little Rebecca went upstairs to her lavender bedroom to play with the dolls her mother and aunts had given her over the birthdays and holidays of her four years.  The only time the GI Joe figures, from her father, came out of her closet was when Bonnie was away and Tom had bedtime play duty. Rebecca was definitely a girl with gender play preferences.

Tom grabbed the lunch Bonnie had prepared for him and put in the refrigerator.  He then put on his works boots, grabbed his hard hat, gave Bonnie a hurried kiss and headed off to the project his architectural firm was supervising.  He was the lead architect on the project an hour or so away.

Bonnie put on her apron and went to the refrigerator.  When she bought a frozen turkey for Thanksgiving nearly two months ago, she bought a second smaller one to prepare at a later date.  She had decided two days ago to take that second turkey out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator to thaw. She checked it last night before going to bed and found that, by the morning, it would be ready to pop in the oven.  

Preparing the turkey for roasting was a ritual she dearly loved.  After turning the oven on to preheat she washed the bird thoroughly in clear water.  Then she loosened the skin by working her hands between the skin and the flesh on the legs, thighs, breasts, and back.  She had a special mixture of herbs, passed down from her grandmother, that she carefully mixed with some softened butter.  She worked this seasoned mixture under the loosened skin until both skin and flesh were well coated. It should be noted that her hands were also well coated as a result of this process.   

The doorbell rang just as she was about to wash those buttered-up hands.  Thinking it was probably a neighbor she hollered “Come on in the door’s open”.  While her hands were still in the sink she heard the click of the door latch. When she looked out through the living room into the entry foyer, she saw a stranger with stringy grey hair and about six inches of belly hanging over his belt.  He was standing just inside the door and was holding some kind of a metal object. He gave her a smile and appeared about to speak.

Just then there came a loud CRACK from somewhere close behind her.  The seasoned turkey jumped and then settled back into its roasting pan.  The man let out a yell and grabbed his shoulder. He then scurried out the door leaving a trail of blood where he had been.  Bonnie immediately called 911 and then called Tom.

The dispatcher asked the usual questions; name, address, what happened, anybody hurt, was the assailant still nearby.  Bonnie gave the information but told the dispatcher she was disinclined to go out to determine whether the assailant was still in the area.  The dispatcher promised that a car would be sent. Rebecca was oblivious to the excitement as she had been captured by her iPad for the past half hour and had little interest in breaking free from it.  Tom, of course was on that construction job an hour out of town.

Two police cars, complete with lights and sirens, arrived about ten minutes later, during which time Bonnie was a wreck, completely incapable of rational thought.  All the sirens and lights commotion had the effect of pulling the neighbors out of their houses and onto the sidewalks The officers parked their cars in the middle of the street, left their lights flashing and entered the house.  They carefully examined the blood trail, carefully examined the turkey, and began trying to ascertain the source of the projectile.

It was the younger of the two officers who noted the hole in the oven door.  She was new to the force and assumed her duties with great seriousness. Of course she had never seen a situation where a gun had been fired from inside an oven but she did definitely know what a bullet hole looked like.  When the oven door was opened, it became clear where the shot had originated although there was no sign of an assailant in the oven. She did notice that the oven had been preheated to a temperature that could easily have caused the gun to fire.

The crime had been solved.  We know what happened… it was an accident.  We know who the shooter was… it was the oven.  There was no assailant that we know of but there was a mystery victim who was apparently struck by the bullet.

Police report addendum: Reference the earlier investigation in the gated community.  “The second victim drove himself to the hospital where he was treated for a flesh wound to the left shoulder.  When questioned about what he was doing at the house, he replied that a guy named Tom had scheduled him to come on the morning in question to check the thermostat and the pressure relief valve on the water heater.  When asked about whether he was carrying a heavy metal object that could have been a weapon he replied that it was a pipe wrench.”

I know, you are dying to know what kind of hell-bent fallout Tom received when he got home and had to face Bonnie.  Well, that’s a long story and this is just a short story. I can tell you that he refrained from saying “Guns don’t kill people, ovens kill people”.  Blaming this on Bonnie’s oven would only get him in deeper. Oh, by the way, the gun is now safely stored in the gun safe. Bonnie changed the combination and isn’t about to share that bit of information with her husband.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

AMAZING! I love a spoof like this, especially when it continues on for a good length of time with me wondering what the hell! Just when I thought I knew what this was a spoof OF, then your story veered somewhat & kept me in suspense awhile longer. All in all, I love it when a writer can lay down some creative sarcasm about the maniacal gun culture, without being overtly argumentative. You do a great job creating suspense by, say, putting the gun in a place we just KNEW would be risky, so we're waiting & anticipating to see what happens (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie