Chapter 7 - AISLE THREE
Darkness swallowed the store except for the red emergency sign above the rear exit. Shawn dropped behind a display as Victor fired toward the counter.
Glass exploded from the cigarette cabinet. Brenda screamed and crawled toward the floor safe. Shawn moved between shelving units, keeping low while the emergency lights flickered.
Victor’s voice traveled through the aisles. He accused Brenda of betraying him after everything he had done to “fix” the Miller family. Brenda shouted back that starving two old people was not fixing anything.
The hypocrisy of her words did not escape Shawn, but this was not the moment to argue about degrees of guilt. He checked his phone. Ortiz’s team was listening through an open emergency call hidden beneath his coat.
Victor could not know police were positioned outside, but the snow and building layout made any rushed entry dangerous. Shawn needed to keep him talking.
“You wanted the farm,” he called from behind canned goods. “You already mortgaged it. What else is worth killing for?” Victor laughed. “The farm is worth nothing compared to what sits under it.”
Shawn remembered the forged documents demanding mineral rights. His parents had assumed Victor wanted leverage for a loan. Victor revealed that a regional energy company had quietly approached several landowners about purchasing underground gas rights.
The Miller acreage sat near a proposed expansion route. A confidential option contract could be worth millions if the project moved forward.
Harold had rejected the first offer because he distrusted the environmental terms and refused to risk neighboring wells. Victor learned about the offer through Evan Pike, the notary who processed nearby land paperwork.
Brenda knew only that Victor promised enough money to clear her debts. Shawn realized greed had been built around information his parents considered private and unimportant.
He shifted toward the freezer section, drawing Victor away from Brenda. A bullet struck the metal door above Shawn’s shoulder. Outside, faint blue lights reflected against the snowbanks.
Victor noticed. “You brought police,” he shouted. He ran toward the rear exit. Shawn tackled him near the dairy coolers before he reached the door.
They crashed into a rack of bottled drinks. Plastic containers rolled across the floor while Victor struck Shawn across the face with the pistol.
Shawn fell onto one knee. Victor raised the weapon again, but Brenda slammed a metal shopping basket into his arm. The pistol flew beneath a shelf.
Victor seized Brenda by the throat and shoved her against the freezer door. She clawed at his wrist, unable to breathe. Shawn drove his shoulder into Victor’s ribs and forced him away.
The rear door burst open. Ortiz entered with two troopers shouting commands. Victor reached toward his ankle. Ortiz saw the movement and ordered him to stop. He froze halfway, then slowly raised both hands.
A second weapon lay strapped above his boot. Troopers pinned him to the floor and secured both wrists. Brenda slid against the freezer, coughing. She looked at Shawn as though expecting comfort.
He did not offer false absolution. He simply asked whether she could breathe. She nodded. Ortiz recovered the envelope from behind the counter and photographed each page where it lay before sealing it as evidence.
The documents confirmed Victor had arranged the forged loans, but several pages carried Brenda’s genuine signature. She had been manipulated, but she had also participated.
Police arrested her before midnight on charges related to unlawful confinement, fraud, and elder abuse. Brenda did not resist. At the doorway, she turned toward Shawn. Snow blew through the opening around her hair.
“I thought if I finally had enough money, they would stop comparing me to you,” she said. Shawn shook his head. “They weren’t comparing us. You were.”
Her face collapsed. Ortiz led her outside. The store fell silent except for humming freezers and distant radios. Shawn leaned against the counter his mother had used for decades.
Behind it, pencil marks still measured his height from childhood, each year labeled in Ruth’s handwriting. At age twelve, Brenda’s mark stood half an inch above his.
He touched the faded line and wondered when a harmless rivalry had transformed into something capable of burying two people alive. Ortiz approached with a final discovery.
The original deeds contained a sealed envelope taped inside the back cover. Harold’s handwriting identified it as “for Shawn or Brenda if we cannot speak.”
Shawn opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a handwritten letter dated six months earlier. The paper smelled faintly of the store’s old filing cabinet.
Harold described growing suspicious after Brenda began asking about mineral rights. He wrote that if anything happened, neither child should blame the other without learning the whole truth.
One sentence stopped Shawn cold. “Victor did not come to Brenda by accident. Someone in this family sent him.” Shawn read it twice. Brenda had already been taken outside. Victor sat in a patrol car refusing every question.
May you like
Ortiz asked whether Shawn knew who the sentence referred to. He looked toward the dark highway, where snow erased tire tracks almost as soon as vehicles made them.
“No,” he said. For the first time that night, Victor no longer seemed like the beginning of the crime. He seemed like the middle.
