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    The Finisher Series: Samuel
    The Finisher Series: Samuel
    The Finisher Series: Samuel
    Ebook167 pages2 hours

    The Finisher Series: Samuel

    By Bert Marshall

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    From as far back as I can remember, I hated the name Sammy, or Sam, or anything other than my given name of Samuel. My mom named me after a profit in the Bible and he wasn't called little Sammy that I know of. I don't think people picked on him either like they did me. Maybe it's because I was shorter than most everyone my age? I don't know.

    My mom began calling me Spike when I was maybe five, because she liked to listen to the old radio comedy featuring Spike Jones and seeing our last name was Jones, it just kind of stuck, if you follow me. I didn't much care for my middle name either. Everett. Samuel Everett Jones. Sounds like a lay preacher's name and I sure as heck ain't no saint.

    Sure, I went to church and catechism, like all the other Lutheran kids, but I never really plugged into it, or so I thought. Years later I would come to realize most of my true values were because of my church teachings, seeing the church became my guardian after my parents and three older sisters died in what I later learned was caused by a drunk driver, who just so happened to be a county judge.

    I was nearly eighteen when a long time friend of my parents told me the whole thing was covered up and the judge is still actively pursuing justice at the Harris County court house in Houston, Texas. Judge Roy Buckhannon is his name and I vowed right then to kill the man who stole my family from me. Judge Roy as he's fondly known is familiar with me, believe it or not because I was arrested when I was fifteen as an accessory in a grand theft auto case. I spent three years in juvenile correction and that is where I learned everything I know about guns, knife fighting, hand to hand combat, picking locks, how to get away with rape, breaking and entering and not leave a trace, ATM machines - well, you name it and I learned it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBert Marshall
    Release dateApr 18, 2017
    ISBN9781370199198
    The Finisher Series: Samuel
    Author

    Bert Marshall

    Bert Marshall lives in Baytown, Texas and is a Baytown Sun Columnist, Blogger, martial artist, geocacher, PC repair specialist, Jeeper, hiker, indoor cycling instructor, past Texas State Emergency Care Attendant, Hunter education instructor, and a USAF Vietnam Veteran with two tours (651 days in-country).

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      Book preview

      The Finisher Series - Bert Marshall

      The Finisher series - Samuel

      By Bert Marshall

      Published by Bert Marshall at Smashwords

      Copyright 2017 Bert Marshall

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      From as far back as I can remember I hated the name Sammy, or Sam, or anything other than my given name of Samuel. My mom named me after a prophet in the Bible and he wasn't called little Sammy that I know of. I don't think people picked on him either like they did me. Maybe it's because I was shorter than most everyone my age? I don't know.

      My mom began calling me Spike when I was maybe five, because she liked to listen to the old radio comedy featuring Spike Jones and seeing our last name was Jones, it just kind of stuck. I didn't much care for my middle name either. Everett. Samuel Everett Jones. Sounds like a lay preacher's name and I sure as heck ain't no saint.

      Sure, I went to church and catechism like all the other Lutheran kids, but I thought I never really plugged into it. Years later I would come to realize most of my true values were because of my church teachings, seeing the church became my guardian after my parents and three older sisters died in what I later learned was caused by a drunk driver. It just so happened to be a unscrupulous county judge.

      I was nearly eighteen when a long time friend of my parents told me the whole thing was covered up and the judge is still actively pursuing justice at the Harris County court house in Houston, Texas. Judge Roy Buckhannon is his name and I vowed right then to kill the man who stole my family from me. Judge Roy, as he's fondly known is familiar with me, believe it or not because I was arrested when I was fifteen as an accessory in a grand theft auto case. I spent three years in juvenile correction and that is where I learned everything I know about guns, knife fighting, hand to hand combat, picking locks, how to get away with rape, breaking and entering and how not to leave a trace, even ATM machines - well, you name it and I learned it. Unfortunately, jail is college for criminals and my fertile mind absorbed everything.

      I can slightly bump into you and get your wallet, watch, keys, and maybe even a ring or two. I'm five-nine and still retain a boyish look and this simple innocent appearance has helped me pull off almost anything I've attempted, including older women instructing me in the fine art of satisfying a woman. At nineteen, I appear to be sixteen and I still find it amazing that a twenty-five or eight year old married woman would risk her marriage to help a young man get his rocks off for the first time.

      I have a pretty vague police record despite the fact that I was semi-busted at fifteen, but I paid my due to society, even though I never stopped doing whatever the hell I wanted... I just didn't get caught and that led me into a chance to get into, of all things, law enforcement. As strange as it sounds, I took it to heart. I mean, it turned me around. I became a very good cop and this is how my life direction truly began.

      To help me rehab back into society, my same judge who killed my family made me get my GED and then forced me to attend the local community college in Baytown, Texas - Lee College. Despite my hatred for the man, I did benefit from this in a way I didn't suspect.

      Believing I was interested in exploiting society, what better degree to focus on than criminal justice? It didn't take me long to become totally fascinated and absorbed - and the further into it I became, I became the teacher's pet. I knew every loophole in the system. I was a walking encyclopedia of wrong doing and by the time I had my four year degree, I was initially hired as a detective working directly for the Harris County District Attorney's office, albeit with more training and an apprenticeship program.

      This was unheard of at the time, but I had spent every available opportunity in the field working alongside Houston's best. To say I was a model cop would be correct and I never strayed. In my eighth year, I was invited into a semi-secret operation where the DA's office collaborated with the FBI. As a major part of my training, I became very proficient with the Israeli martial art of Krav maga. The thirty-one year old female instructor took a rather special interest in me. Annikki Goldman taught me a lot in the six months we were together, both on the mat and on her back.

      At twenty-three years of age, I was the youngest Houston detective in the history of the city and although I had a few nay-sayers who were jealous, all in all because of my street smarts, I was respected. It also helped that it was well known that I was being paid at a patrol man's pay rate, not that of a detective or police sergeant. To most of the veteran cops, this was more than acceptable and no one griped when I showed up at a crime scene and what became common was I usually had an observation that benefited the arresting officer.

      One thing of many that Annikki Goldman stressed was how to get whatever it is you want from a person by appearing to be non-combative. If you do not appear to be a threat, people will open up to you and many times you can defuse a confrontation, simply by appearing to be relaxed. It works on every cop I work with and when I offer my opinion, I usually add, Well hell, you already knew that, so why am I repeating it, right?

      Inevitably, they will take the bait and agree and later will reason that they actually figured it out on their own. I've heard them in the office brag about figuring stuff out before Spike even showed up and I high five them.

      I work directly for a studious looking assistant DA named Bart Maxwell. He's about twice my age and we are the same height, but he's lighter than my one sixty by about twenty pounds. Bart looks like a library assistant and has the IQ of one hundred and fifty-four and is a member of MENSA. He's a no nonsense guy and I listen when I am around him and he picks my brain constantly, like he's field-testing me. I shrug it off as I am clean.

      My second month on the job, I am assigned to the gun range and for reasons I do not understand, I'm taught how to operate just about any firearm the police come in contact with. I average shooting about three hundred rounds a day and am sent down to the College of the Mainland in Texas City for a two week shoot- don't shoot program ran by an ex-secret service agent who cryptically goes by the name Mr. Black. He prefers to remain anonymous, but danged if he isn't hell on wheels with any kind of firearm, tactics, and explosives.

      One of the highlights was the IED training, as we had soldiers from Fort Hood give us three days of extensive training on everything from spotting charges to blowing up buildings. It was damned fun too. By the time I left the gun range work, my mind, fingers, and hands had become weapons of mass destruction, but more than any of that, I began developing a mindset I never dreamed of. In addition I read anything I could find pertaining to guns and bomb-making. My mind is like a sponge and when something interests me, I can’t get enough of it.

      Two days after returning to the DA's office, I am sitting in Starbucks staring at my laptop screen, when three armed muscularly built men rush in with hoodies and masks over their heads and faces screaming for everyone to get on the floor. A black man sitting in front of me draws a shiny pistol and shoots at them. He misses and all three of them blast him in the chest, as if they rehearsed it.

      I hear and see my Sig Sauer .40 Remington buck in my hand as I cycle through six rounds and as if in a first person shooter video game, I pop each of them in the chest twice as they fall. I literally shot all three twice before they hit the ground. The black man who fired was an off-duty Chambers County cop who was applying for a job with HPD because he wanted more action. The poor guy died desperately begging me to save him. This was something I had never experienced and affected me, but not the way it could have. No one has ever depended on me for anything, but there was nothing I could do for the man. I shut off any feeling of helplessness to cover my own feelings.

      As is procedure I am flagged off-duty with pay while they investigate the action, but cameras inside the shop make it perfectly clear what I did was well within the law. Bart tells me my shooting is being studied and shown in police departments all across the country as an example of what exactly a cop should do in a situation like this. Together we watch it on his computer and I don't recognize myself. I remember it as if I was in a dream and afterward I was so scared I had the shakes. The video shows none of this emotion. The shooter looks calm – almost bored.

      I watch the three men charge in waving guns and the off-duty cop attempt to pull his revolver off his belt. The hammer gets caught on a loop in his jeans and he fires into the floor two times. All three robbers train their pistols on the man and cut him down in a horribly violent scene. I am sitting down across the room, maybe forty feet away and I watch as I lead with my left foot and using both hands, I systematically fire six times in rapid order and all three fall away. People are dashing everywhere and I watch as I holster my pistol and run up to the downed man and then pulling my phone from my pocket... I don't remember calling 911, but we listen to that recording and I sound calm and professional.

      Bart looks at me and says, Very professional Spike, very professional. Any problems sleeping?

      Yeah, a little.

      Well, you have to undergo counseling and that's by the book. Most cops never fire their gun in the line of duty and here you are.

      I didn't want to say the truth and tell him I've slept like a baby with no remorse at all. I am no stranger to death and violence. An hour after everything settled down, I ate a bowl of raisin bran and watched a couple episodes of Seinfeld. Kramer cracks me up.

      ----

      After the shooting and that's how it is repeated, there is a sudden interest in being seen with me, especially with the old timers who have used the gun. It appears there is a fraternity that no one wants to actually be associated with, but secretly, wish they could say they have killed a bad guy in the execution of their duties and this street cred gets me my detective pay rate.

      I am assigned to work with a veteran sergeant named Mickey Landry, whose last partner married and quit the force. Apparently her husband was extremely well off and Mickey speaks highly of both of them. The cop is a nerd, to put it in layman's terms and is basically a desk jockey who has solved most of his cases sitting right at his desk. On his lead, his last partner, who was no slouch, would verify his tips, along with her own skills and together they made a formidable team. Mickey, at forty years of age, comes right out and tells me he pretty much plans on keeping the same routine. Hell, he’s senior and we do what he wants.

      This suits me fine; as I have no qualms with working alone, which means I have plenty of time for things like a mid day break at the gym. A healthy body makes a healthy mind and all that. My income is such that I must live in an apartment and outside Houston’s 610 Loop, so I find a place in Galena Park and if I park my cop car there, even though it’s unmarked, rent is free. The manager is maybe mid-thirties, smokes and wears clothes way too tight and pretty much lets me know she is available within five minutes of me signing the lease.

      I subtly pass, but appear possibly interested. I surely don't want to offend her and burn a bridge, especially if I haven't crossed it. Her husband is a nice guy with a pot belly and a perpetual five o'clock shadow and fills me in on the low-life trash that surrounds my apartment. Judy and James Arnold married right out of high school and have risen to the astonishing height of apartment managers! he yells and sits down at the table and lifting his leg, farts real loud. All three of us laugh and as earthy as his humor is, I like the guy. According to him, she farts louder than he does and we all laugh again. She certainly has a fine caboose, but doesn’t even deny it.

      One hour after I get my few items moved in, there is a ruckus in front of the office, which is directly across from my apartment. I step out onto the upstairs balcony and see a man walking down the stairs opposite of me with his head down. Another man walks out of his apartment and points a pistol at him and yells, If you ever fucking come back, I will blow your ass away!

      I step back and remove my Sig Sauer from the holster. The guy keeps walking and doesn't look back. He gets in a filthy gray Ford pickup and drives off slowly. The man on the other side of the way looks over at me and yells, What the fuck are you looking at asshole? and points the pistol at me. Now there are at least ten people watching and as before, I see the pistol in my hand and it kicks back. The spent casing goes floating off like it is in low gravity and the man staggers backward and sits down. His chest is flaming red and he slumps over.

      This one went to the grand jury and was ruled justifiable homicide and this time no one wants their photo taken with me. While the first one was cool and awesome, this one looks like I am looking for an excuse to kill. That of course is not the case.

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