I Stand At The Door

He was ready to die.

Mac duct taped the shotgun to a sawhorse and bolted the legs to the floor to reduce the kickback. A string ran from the trigger of the shotgun through the arms and legs of a chair and up to the handle of the door. When the time came for Phil Simms to show himself, the bastard would fling open the door and the ramifications of his betrayal would reveal itself in a single blast.

No more secrets. No more lies.

With the shotgun fixed in place, Mac stood at the window and thought of the phone conversation minutes prior.

“Hello?”

“Phil.”

“M-Mac? Did you—”

“Yes.”

After a moment… “You son of a bitch. I’ll—”

“Remember my old man’s house out on Keegan Road? Be here in thirty. Come alone.”

Simms cleared his throat. “How do I know you and your old man won’t get the drop on me?”

“My father’s in Oscoda visiting my aunt,” Mac told him. “Thirty minutes. No backup.”

“I’ll… I’ll be there.”

“I know you will.”

#

For three years, the bank robberies had gone smooth.

Deputy Mac Lowery, Deputy Nolan Richards, and Sheriff Phil Simms functioned like a well-oiled machine. Why wouldn’t they? They trusted one another at their regular jobs, so it wasn’t surprising they gelled together at their parttime job. Two of them would wear the usual get-up, a ski mask, gloves, go in, clean out the drawers and vault, head out, while the third would roll into the bank long after the alarm had been tripped and the “robbers” had gotten away. The three of them, almost the entirety of the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, with the exception of one or two parttime deputies who worked every other weekend, only made a tad more than dick, so, between them, they figured why not break the law they swore to protect? No one would get hurt or killed at any of the tiny banks throughout Jackson County. The money was insured, and since they’d be the ones in charge of the investigations, they could fudge the paperwork a bit to make sure nothing got traced back to them. Six banks in three years garnered the three of them just over fifty grand. A nice chunk of change in the 60s.

But on the seventh heist…

The plan was simple, like all the others. Mac and Nolan would head into Lakeside Bank on Friday evening, do the usual hands up, don’t move, lay down on the ground routine, load up their pillowcases, hop in Nolan’s old Dodge and hit the interstate in less than two minutes. Easy. But as Mac and Nolan came out of the bank, they ran into a line of fire.

Courtesy of Phil Simm’s shotgun.

The first blast blew off the top of Nolan’s head. The second hit Mac square in the chest, and the only reason he survived at all was a miracle, or at least that’s what the doctors told him when he woke from his coma a little over a month later.

The day before his trial, a guard, a big guy that looked like a hairless gorilla, paid him a visit to his cell. “You already survived a center shot,” he told him. “You think about stooling on Simms, your luck’s gonna run out. It’s easy to break a neck in here, hang someone, make it look like a suicide. Simms’ got friends all over. You ain’t got one. Keep your mouth shut, hear?”

Before the trial, the DA came at him, hammer and tongs. “Who else were you working with? Give us a name and we’ll cut you a deal.” He didn’t say a word, and since the DA’s office couldn’t prove Mac and Nolan had anything to do with any of the previous six robberies, they hammered him on the seventh. It wasn’t a surprise when Mac was found guilty, nor was it a shock when he got sentenced to thirteen years at the Federal Correctional Institution.

Once word of the sentence filtered into the public, Sheriff Simms played it up like Lawrence Goddamn Olivier. “It’s heartbreaking to know that people you worked alongside for years aren’t who you thought they were,” he said in an interview on the evening news, literal tears in his baby blues. Mac caught the broadcast while playing card with a few lifers in gen pop. It took a shit-ton of restraint not to rip the TV off the wall, but he reminded himself to keep his head down and wait for his release.

He caught himself wondering during his first few months behind bars why Phil betrayed him and Nolan, but after while the reason no longer mattered. Even if Phil’s motives held a heaven’s share of purity, it was done, and there was no taking it back.

Then came the pain.

It was a hot, stabbing pain in his left side, followed by fatigue, and weight loss. The prison docs allowed him to see a specialist off-sight and the conclusion came back in a week.

Cancer. Pancreatic. Stage four. Inoperable. Three to six months to live.

A death sentence given to him behind bars in a state that didn’t sanction the death penalty.

Mac had filed for and was ultimately granted an early release and allowed to live out the rest of his days at his father’s house.

Before his diagnosis, all he wanted was to move on with his life as soon as he got out of prison, put things behind him and live the life of a normal person, or as close to normal as he could with the time he had remaining, but the very moment he heard the words “cancer,” and “inoperable,” he knew that what he truly wanted, more than anything, more than a cure, was simple, undeniable revenge.

He would not sit and waste away. He’d go out on his own terms, and he’d make goddamned sure, come high water or preferably hell, Phil Simms would be there when it happened.

#

At the window, just to the left of the pond, Mac watched Phil’s pickup come up the gravel drive. He felt the end loom over his shoulder.

At least he knew how it would come. Some aren’t that lucky. And with this knowledge, he felt contentment, a beautiful peace he’d never known. Yes, the money from the heists made life easier for a while. It was good to live with cash in his pocket and not have to worry about the electricity getting shut off, to have enough money to buy the best food, to take a girl out on a date, but money can only buy so much, and serenity was one of the few things in this life not up for sale. Souls and morality, sure, but not serenity. Not in this life.

Life.

Three to six months left. That’s what the doctor gave him, and even that was a little over three months ago. Three months to live, and it took the system that long to process his released paperwork.

It had to be a joke, didn’t it? He waited to hear himself laugh, or to feel a smile breakout across his face. But he didn’t laugh, and he hadn’t smiled in years.

The truck stopped. He watched Phil get out. His thoughts turned to the string, the shotgun, the sawhorse, and the door as he looked out over the pond. Just on the other side, was the family plot. Maybe, if he were lucky, his father would bury him there alongside his mother and grandparents.

But he knew that probably wouldn’t happen. Not after today.

He heard Phil come up the front porch.

Soon. No more pain. No more lies.

He only had two regrets. The first was that his old man would see the mess left behind, the bloodstains and whatnot. Mac forced that concern from his mind and thought about the note he mailed to his aunt’s house that morning, a simple note to tell his father he loved him, that he was sorry for bringing shame to the family name, sorry for everything he’d done, and to let him know there was eighteen thousand dollars waiting for him in a safety deposit box at the People’s Federal Bank over in Flat Rock. And that was it. His life in a solitary sentence.

The footsteps stopped.

Mac’s thoughts then turned to the other source of regret.

The little girl.

When Mac came back to town, he’d followed Phil, surveilled him, watched his every move, and was surprised to see his old boss had settled down out in the suburbs with a pretty wife and had himself a cute little girl.

His plan revealed itself then.

Mac never wanted to scare her. In fact, he hated himself for snatching her up as she walked to school that morning, but he needed to draw Phil out. Threatening him wouldn’t work, but taking his little girl, snatching her up as she walked on her merry way to kindergarten? Even Phil Simms had a soft spot, and like any soft spot, you only needed to apply a small bit of pressure, like a string around a doorhandle and a trigger, to inflict a great amount of pain.

He turned away from the window with his father’s .45 in his hand and faced the door.

Faced his end.

Simms kicked open the door and the shotgun blast struck Mac where it struck him before, dead center. No miracles awaited him this time.

As Mac hit the floor, the empty gun fell from his hand, and darkness began to swallow him. Simms ran over, knelt beside him, and screamed in his face, “Where is she?”

“I… never hurt her,” Mac told the truth through the blood rising in his throat. “Remember… that…”

“Tell me!”

Mac pointed toward a closed door at the end of the hall.

Simms gripped his shotgun in his hands and ran. He called his daughter’s name.

And kicked open the door.

In his final seconds on earth before the devil came to carry him home, Mac Lowery heard the roar of the shotgun he’d rigged up in the bedroom, followed by a father’s scream, and smiled at last.

THE END

BIO: Mike McHone's work has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Dark Yonder, Playboy, the AV Club, and numerous other outlets. He is the recipient of the Derringer Award, the Mystery Writers of America's Hugh Holton Award, and was cited on the Distinguished List in 2024's Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. He currently lives in Detroit. Visit him online at www.mikemchone.com