299 Days VIII: The War (23 page)

He went into his patrol car in the parking lot just to get away from all the people
in the courthouse. He put his face in hands and started to cry about all the bad things
he’d done and let happen. He had a long conversation with God and asked to be forgiven
for all the things he’d done. It was a long conversation. By about 7:30 p.m., he felt
relieved. He knew exactly what he needed to do. He even smiled. For real, this time.

He went up to Commissioner Winters’ office and was glad to see a handwritten note
on Julie’s desk that said “Out sick.” Thank God.

Bennington unlocked the conference room and took a bottle of Jack Daniels. He took
a swig. He would allow himself one swig. He went into the bathroom with the bottle.

He poured out the whiskey. He got a water bottle out of his small backpack he brought
with him. He filled the empty whiskey bottle with ice tea. It was light brown and
looked just like whiskey. He would “drink” out of that bottle all night so everyone
would assume he was as drunk as they were.

He looked at the other items in his backpack. They were perfect. Perfect for this
job. He couldn’t wait.

He looked in the mirror. He smiled again. A real smile. He hadn’t seen the “old John”
in the mirror in quite some time. There he was: the old, good John. The one who helped
people instead of allowing people to get hurt. “Let’s go,” he said to himself.

Bennington went back into the conference room. On the way, he put his backpack in
one of the cubicles by the conference room.

The first guest arrived at 7:55 p.m. He was the Emergency Services coordinator. He
was a total douche bag; a complete hack. A felon—seriously, a convicted felon before
the Crisis, who was picked by Winters to run the “racket,” as they privately called
county government. Bennington made small talk with him, the whole time thinking, “I
can’t wait to kill you.” Bennington was halfway scared that he was thinking things
like “I can’t wait to kill you” and half wondering why it took him so long to come
up with the courage to finally do it.

Shortly after 8:00 p.m., more guests began to arrive, mostly the rest of the department
heads. A couple brought “girlfriends” who were well-known hookers. Too bad, Bennington
thought, as he saw them come in. They’ll have to die, too. They hadn’t done anything
too bad. They would be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bennington had a great
plan, but he couldn’t make it so perfect that only truly guilty people would die.
He’d struggled with this for weeks but just couldn’t come up with any other way. Besides,
he told himself, the hookers were guilty in some way. Instead of making an honest
living like everyone else, they were partying it up with the government and gangs,
and thereby living in luxury from all the ill-gotten gains. That made it a little
easier to do what he was going to do, but not much. Those girls were someone’s daughters.

Everyone was getting roaring drunk. Some came pretty buzzed and others came high.
The hookers sure were. They had to be pretty blasted to crawl into bed with these
fat, old bureaucrats.

All the men were sitting back in the conference room chairs. They were kings. They
had all the booze and hookers they could want. They had it made. They were the winners.
All those poor dirtbag citizens outside the courthouse who were cold and hungry. What
chumps. Losers. They just didn’t have the drive to succeed like the people in that
conference room.

“Where’s the new girls?” the Sheriff asked. That’s what he’d come to the party for.

“Weird, Sheriff,” Bennington said. “They were supposed to be here by now. I’ll check,”
he said, getting on his radio and stepping outside where there was less noise. He
knew the Sheriff would be listening to his radio back in the conference room.

“Jonesy,” Bennington said to Jones, who was the night-shift jailer, “where are those
new girls you had?”

“What?” Jonesy said. “We don’t have any new girls.” He wondered what the hell Bennington
was talking about; he would have remembered some new girls. Jonesy often got the first
crack at them when they came in. He would have remembered that.

“Sure you do,” Bennington said. “You know, the young ones who came in last night?”

“Dunno, man,” Jonesy said.

Bennington snickered to himself. This was perfect. It was almost like Jonesy was part
of the plan. He wasn’t, but he was cooperating nonetheless.

“That’s bullshit,” Bennington said. “I’ll be down in a couple of minutes to straighten
this out.”

Bennington went back into the conference room. The Sheriff looked at him and said,
“I heard it all. Go find those girls.”

“Will do,” Bennington said.

Moco and Señor Hernandez arrived as Bennington was leaving the conference room. They
brought their own girls. The department heads liked the Mexican girls and Señor Hernandez
liked to share them. It was just business. More gang members came in a minute later.
Bennington counted six of them.

He was making the rounds getting everyone fired up. He was explaining the mix up in
the jail and how he’d be going down there in a few minutes to get the girls up there
to the conference room.

“Hey, man,” the FCorps liaison said to Bennington, “I love that stuff,” pointing to
his bottle of Jack Daniels that was actually iced tea.

“Oh, hey, sorry man,” Bennington said. “I’m really sick. You don’t want to catch what
I have. I got some other good stuff for you,” he said as he walked over to pour the
guy a drink.

“Okay,” the FCorps guy said as he gulped down the drink Bennington made him. Bennington
was glad he had planned things down to the very detail of the story about being sick.

It was 8:45 p.m. and all the government and gang luminaries were in the conference
room. Shortly, Winters strolled in. He was always up for some “carne fresca.”

Bennington looked at everyone in the conference room, which now included the last
piece to his plan: Winters. There he was. He had no idea he was about to die.

Bennington could not believe how calm he was. His heart was racing, but he was still
calm. His body had found a way to have peace, while adrenaline was racing through
his veins.

Bennington went over to the Sheriff, who was making out with a Mexican hooker in the
corner of the conference room near the door to the hallway. It looked so pathetic
to see the middle aged and fat Sheriff making out with a scantily clad, beautiful
woman. Pathetic. The Sherriff probably really believed she was attracted to him. He
looked stupid and grotesque, like everything else in the courthouse.

Bennington interrupted him, “I’m going down to the jail now to get the girls.”

The Sheriff waved his hand as if to say, “Okay. I’m busy now.”

Bennington radioed the jail, “I’m coming down, Jonesy. The Sheriff is pissed.”

Bennington didn’t go down the stairs toward the jail. Instead, he went to the cubicle
right outside the conference room and got his backpack. It was still there. Of course
it was, he thought. Given what was in it, the place would be on lock down if someone
had found it.

Bennington got the first item out of the backpack and put it in the outside pouch.
He didn’t zip it up. He could grab it easily. He looked in the main compartment of
the backpack. All the other items were there too. Perfect.

Bennington walked to the doorway of the conference room. He looked at those people
one last time. He looked right in their faces. He would remember these faces the rest
of his life.

(December 31)

Bennington stepped back behind the door to the conference room so he was behind the
wall. He got the flash-bang concussion grenade out of the outside pouch of the backpack.
These grenades, used by SWAT teams, were also called “stun grenades.” They were not
deadly. Instead, they produced a deafening sound and light so bright it temporarily
blinded anyone within several yards. They were used to disorient people before a team
went in.

Bennington calmly pulled the pin and threw it in the conference room. He was trying
to have it land on top of the conference room table so the blast would radiate outward.
He didn’t want it to go under the table because the tabletop would absorb some of
the blast.

Everything seemed to be in slow motion. Bennington heard the people talking and laughing.
His hearing was heightened. He could hear things like he was right there, but he was
outside the door. He heard the grenade bounce on the floor. He went to his backpack
and pulled out a regular grenade. He was grasping the pin right as the flash-bang
went off.

“Boom!” There was a blinding white flash out of the conference room door, the loudest
noise he’d ever heard, and a blast wave came out the door.

It was silent in the conference room for a split second, except for the deafening
ring of their ears. No one could believe what had just happened. That’s when Bennington
lobbed the second grenade in, a fragmentation grenade this time that would shred anyone
within several yards of its blast radius. He knew the people in the conference room
would be temporarily blinded and deaf from the stun grenade. They wouldn’t see or
hear the next thing to land in the room.

“Boom!” Another explosion. It was a different kind. A different sound and different
blast. Luckily, Bennington was behind the wall when it went off. He pulled the pin
on the second fragmentation grenade and threw it in.

“Boom!” Another one. By now, people were screaming. Blood curdling screams. But only
a couple were. They sounded like the hookers.

Bennington swung into the conference room doorway, drew his pistol, and started shooting
all the men. He’d spare the hookers with the pistol. They hadn’t done anything wrong.

The closest one to the door was the Sheriff. Or what was left of him. He was literally
blown apart. His chest and head looked like hamburger. Bennington had never seen so
much blood.

The Sheriff was on the floor deader than a doornail. The hooker was alive. The Sheriff,
in his last official act of bravery, had shielded her from the blast with his fat
and flabby body while he was making out with her. He no idea he was doing it, but
he had managed to save her life. Unintentionally.

Bennington was moving at lightning speed. He went on to the next men he could find.
The Emergency Management director was on the floor, still alive but badly wounded.
Bennington delivered a .40 round to his head. Instant hamburger. Red mist everywhere.

The FCorps liaison was trying to stand up and had a pistol. Bennington put a double
tap in his chest. Another shower of red mist.

Bennington made his way from the door area to the back of the conference room where
the gang bangers had been standing. They were farther away from the conference room
door, where the two fragmentation grenades reach wasn’t as great.

One of the gang bangers drew a pistol with his bloody arm. Bennington was already
drawn, no contest.

Señor Hernandez tried to stand up, but that didn’t last very long. A .40 to the head
ended that attempt. That bastard deserved it.

The last gang banger was on the floor trying to use one of the injured hookers as
a shield. He was a real gentleman. Bennington, who was standing, had an easy, downward
angle on him and effortlessly put a round in his head without endangering the hooker.
The air was filled with more red mist.

The last one in the room was Winters. He was injured on the floor. It looked like
his arms and legs were torn up from grenade fragments. He was still conscious, but
stunned. Upon seeing him, Bennington got a surge of joy. Joy. An odd emotion now with
all this killing. But it was joy.

Bennington calmly walked up to Winters and could tell that Winters was still temporarily
blinded by the flash-bang grenade.

“It’s me, boss,” Bennington yelled down to Winters on the floor. “It’s me.”

Winters was relieved. “I’m glad you’re here, John. Help me.”

“Sure, boss,” Bennington said. “I’m here to help.” Bennington raised his right foot
and then he stomped Winters’ throat with his boot. There was the sound of small bones
breaking. “That’s for Julie.”

Bennington realized that he needed to get out of there. He looked behind him in case
one of them was alive and conscious enough to draw on him. Nope. He looked at each
one on the way out of the room. All the men were dead. That was what mattered.

Bennington wasn’t done. His work that night had only begun. He grabbed the backpack
and ran down the stairs. He got on the radio, which was full of screaming people talking
about explosions in the courthouse up on the Commissioner’s floor.

“This is Bennington, I need all personnel on the third floor now!” he yelled into
the radio. Pretty soon, fellow officers were running up the stairs and into the lobby
area. Bennington pointed to the conference room. All the officers ran into the conference
room.

Guilty as hell. Each one of his fellow officers running into the conference room was
guilty as hell. Sanders, Jimenez, Boddleman, Tipton. In a split second, Bennington
could remember all the horrible things those four had done. The bribery. Putting innocent
people in jail, and worse. Stealing from people. Every one of them was guilty. All
the decent cops, which had been the majority, had already left the force, like Bennington
should have done.