Joint Ventures by Trish Regan

Author:Trish Regan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2011-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Downers

Not Everything Is Coming Up Roses

It’s a dark, cool December morning in Clear Lake in Northern California, 2005. Shannon Edmonds and his wife and two teenage boys sleep soundly in their modest green-and-beige house on 11th Street. Shortly before 4:20, the sound of glass shattering awakens the household. Three men, masked and covered with hoods, have smashed through the glass in the downstairs sliding door in the rear of the house. The intruders rush inside. One clutches a shotgun, pointing it straight in front of him as he runs through the pitch-dark living room, with only the shimmering moonlight to act as his guide.

Edmonds’s sons, who were sleeping in a downstairs bedroom at the time of the break-in, jump out of bed. They run to stop the men, but the intruders push past them, threatening to shoot. Running into the master bedroom, one masked man flips on the lights. Another reaches for the homeowner, Shannon Edmonds, pulls him up, and points the shotgun in the man’s face, screaming, “Where’s the fucking weed? Give us the motherfucking weed! Give it to us now!”1

The father grabs the barrel of the shotgun with both his hands and tries to wrestle it from the perpetrator. It’s clear to him that the shotgun is not loaded. As the wrestling ensues, the third intruder jumps on the mother, knocking her out of the bed and throwing her to the floor. He punches her in the face, screaming, “Give us the weed! We want the fucking weed!” Terrified, the teenagers race into the parents’ room; one is holding a baseball bat, poised for battle. The boy begins hitting his mom’s attacker with the bat, desperate to get the man to stop punching his mother. The bat distracts the robber, and the boy succeeds in setting his mom free. Barely able to stand, she grabs a cell phone from her bedside table and escapes into the bathroom. Slamming the door behind her, she locks it and frantically dials 911.

As his wife was being attacked, Edmonds was still wrestling over the shotgun. He can barely hear the intruders amid their swearing as they repeatedly yell, “Where’s the weed?” Out of the corner of his eye, Edmonds spots one of the intruders with the bat—the man had somehow managed to get it away from the boy. Edmonds watches as the intruder hits his stepson in the head with full swings. Once, twice, then three, four times.

His adrenaline surges. Mustering all his strength, Edmonds throws the intruder he has been wrestling to the floor. Jumping over the bed, he grabs the man with the bat and tosses him out of the bedroom. Edmonds runs to his gun safe and pulls out a nine millimeter, semiautomatic Browning pistol.

The terrified mother is still hiding in the bathroom. Crying to the 911 operator, she pleads, “Please help me! The guy’s got a gun! We need an ambulance, they smashed my son’s head in with a bat!”

Edmonds glances down at his gun. The magazine is partially in.

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