Black Static #66 (November-December 2018) by 2018 Nov-Dec (retail) (epub)

Author:2018 Nov-Dec (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: New Horror Fiction & Film
Publisher: TTA Press
Published: 2018-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

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Dunbar’s father may have cautioned him to keep his nose clean, but that advice hadn’t saved his own life. Michael Brooks had been a fixture at the town library for over forty years, working his way up from an afterschool job to earning a master’s degree in library science, eventually becoming senior librarian at the same branch where he’d started. There, he gave back to the community by launching a popular afterschool program for high school students with nowhere to go while their parents were at work, and a weekend storytelling hour that packed the library with restless toddlers and grateful, overwhelmed parents.

All of that came to an end because his car had a busted taillight. Later, when Dunbar read the deposition, he learned that the police officer who’d pulled his father over, Officer Benjamin Purcell, already had his hand on the butt of his gun when he approached the vehicle. Purcell testified that he’d been expecting trouble, and when asked why he replied that after four years on the force you could just tell when someone was likely to be a problem. Dunbar found it plenty easy to read between the lines.

It was night, it was raining, and his father had just wanted to get home after a long day. The last act of Michael Brooks’ life had been to reach for his registration in the glove compartment. There was a grand jury proceeding, but as far as Dunbar was concerned it was a farce. Officer Purcell maintained that Michael Brooks had reached for the glove compartment too fast, causing him to fear for his life. Imagine that. Killed by a police officer not for failing to comply, but for complying too quickly.

Because the shooting was deemed justified, Michael Brooks’ life insurance company decided he must have been killed during the commission of a crime and withheld payment while their legal team looked for morality clauses and loopholes that would permit them to void the policy. Dunbar, then in his early twenties, had to drop out of grad school to save enough money to help his mother bury his old man. In the end, the insurance company failed to find its loophole and the payout finally arrived a year later, around the same time that Officer Purcell was promoted to detective.

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