Read Online 21 Tales by Dave Zeltserman - Free Book Online

the base of the well and the gun tumbled down into it. We both froze waiting for the sound of a splash, but there was nothing. It just disappeared as if it had fallen into a bottomless hole. I faced Lena then. The pale grimness faded from her eyes and mouth. She started to look more like she had when I first saw her. Beautiful, vulnerable…
    “Dave,” she said, her voice a breathless whisper, “let’s forget this. We can still work something out.”
    I hit her in the jaw and knocked her out cold. After lowering her to the ground, I searched through her pockets and found my cell phone on her, then called the police and told them a woman had tried to kill me and that there was a dead body in a well. My phone had GPS tracking and I gave them my coordinates. The person I spoke to told me that officers would be right out.
    It took longer than I expected for the police to show up. While I waited Lena started to come to. I flipped her over and sat on her. As she realized what was happening, she started swearing at me but I ignored it. When she heard the police sirens she struggled harder and I saw the same brittle grimness from before come over her face.
    “You’re making a big mistake,” she forced out in something that was more of a hiss than a human voice. “We can still split the money instead of both of us going to prison.”
    I ignored her and pushed down harder to keep her on the ground. When I heard car doors open and slam I yelled where I was and kept yelling until I saw two wide-eyed state troopers come through the woods. They both had their guns drawn.
    “Help!” Lena yelped, her voice mostly a hoarse whisper at this point.
    “Move slowly off her,” one of the officers warned me.
    I shook my head.
    “My name is Andy Lenscher,” I said. “This is Lena Hanson. Five months ago she stole two hundred thousand dollars from the People’s Credit Union of Wichita. She killed the man she stole it with. His body’s in the well.”
    The two officers exchanged glances. One officer kept his service revolver trained on me while the other flashed a light down into the well.
    “There’s something down there,” he said, his face as white as the moon.
    While we waited for the emergency workers to come I told the two officers the whole story. They looked skeptical but they put Lena in handcuffs. I could tell from her expression that for the first time she realized I wasn’t Dave Stevens.
    It didn’t take long for the emergency workers to get Dave Stevens body out of the well. While his face was mostly rotted away, there was enough left for me to see the resemblance. One of the EMT workers noticed it too and remarked to me about it. I asked him why I didn’t hear the gun splash when it dropped in there.
    “Well’s bone-dry. The gun must’ve landed on him.”
    I thought about the sound that distracted Lena enough to keep her from killing me. I know it probably didn’t come from the well. It probably came from an animal in the woods, or maybe it did come from Steven’s body adjusting a certain way. But as I looked at him, I’d like to think that it was some kind of cosmic settlement for all the grief he had caused me. That somehow he saved my life.
    As they carted away his corpse, I nodded farewell to Dave Stevens.
     
    Alternative ending (starting from the point where Andy is being backed against the well):
     
    The base of the well was stone, maybe two feet high. She backed me up until I was against it.
    “Do me a favor, Dave, his time die like you’re supposed to,” Lena muttered half under her breath. With her arm outstretched, her gun was only inches away from me. In the moonlight I could see the knuckles on her gun hand turn white. As she pulled the trigger, I fell backwards. She ended up taking off a chunk of my shoulder instead of shooting me in the chest like she intended.
    I tumbled in the air for what seemed like an eternity. The well must’ve dried up years ago, and when I hit the bottom I hit hard