Brisco Waters, Private Eye (Case Finale) (standard:mystery, 1308 words) [5/5] show all parts
Author: Red Storm	Added: Jul 31 2001	Views/Reads: 2588/1898	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
All things considered and all lessons learned, Brisco has to make some sense of the senseless acts of corruption. The final chapter of the Brisco Waters, Private Eye serial.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


“It’s quiet here, and I come to get away from those incessant crowds.” 

There was a full moon out tonight, illuminating the city in a strangely
unique way. It was bitter cold, but neither of us seemed to notice at 
the moment. 

“Mrs. Schillaci, I don’t know how much of this you know or don’t know,
but I’m going to give it to you straight. Big Al had your husband 
killed, and he also put out the hit on you. Both instances were direct 
results of a deal that he wanted to secure.” 

She nodded slowly. 

“Then you know?” She asked, her eyes watering with tears. 

I nodded slowly, sadly. 

“I never meant this to happen. I did this for Tommy, you know. This
place is too much, I mean, it costs too much and Tommy didn’t have the 
money. We were going deeper and deeper in the hole, and all I wanted 
was to be able to pay off the debt and settle down in a nice, quiet 
home. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I never meant it to 
be like this.” 

She was crying now, and I figured it was the first time she had let it
all out since the death of her husband. I pulled her in close, letting 
her cry away her pain. After all, she had wanted nothing more than to 
get her husband out of trouble so that they could live a happy life 
together, and then this happened. 

She cried for twenty hard minutes, until she was too weak to go on.
Pulling away, she tried to wipe some of the running make-up away from 
her cheeks. 

“You know that I’m keeping all of this to myself.” I tried to console
her, but I knew that it was useless. 

“It wouldn’t matter, but thank you. My life is over. Tommy was my life,
and I killed him.” My mouth opened, and I wanted to tell her that it 
wasn’t her fault, but I knew that there was nothing I could say to 
change her mind of that. I let it go. 

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone for a while.” 

She turned her back to me, looking out over the city from the corner of
the rooftop where we stood. Far below, people were scurrying about 
trying to get in last-minute Christmas shopping, shoveling snow from 
the streets, and keeping warm. I nodded and headed back to the elevator 
lift, saddened that it had all come to this. I knew that there was 
nothing I could do to ever ease the pain she felt, and that genuinely 
hurt. I turned, for whatever reason I would never know, one last time 
to look on Natalie Schillaci standing silhouetted against the royal 
blue night sky, and saw her step over the ledge and take her own life. 
I stood motionless at the elevator door, staring into the empty air 
where she had stood only seconds before, thinking about her. 

I remember few things about that night, but two details in particular
will always stick in my mind. One was the feeling of relief that came 
over me as I turned to get back on the lift, knowing that Natalie and 
Tommy were in each others arms again. The other was the impending 
desire to call up Chuck and have a drink. 

THE END 


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