Damien Loose,Episodes 1 -4

By Robert Strasser

Damien Berchshire, husband, father, Englishman, wakes up to find his long lost Uncle Edmund dead on the front lawn. During his ensuing investigation he seeks help from a former eco-terrorist, hunts down an ex-girlfriend/murder suspect, rides public transportation, escapes from a Blues-jersey-wearing bagman, doesn't call his mother, has a drink at Mangia, gambles at a casino where he's been banned for life, tries to get tenure, drinks at Mangia, gets punched in the face, is arrested, shops at the Tower Grove Farmers Market, gets a gun, drinks at Mangia, sees a coyote, visits the St. Louis Art Museum, takes his wife out to dinner, talks politics, drinks at Mangia, gets kidnapped by his ex-girlfriend/murder suspect, puts his daughter to bed, goes to a ball, breaks into an accounting office and tries to figure out what the hell is going on with number 6.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Strasser
• Release date: Jul 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301358755

Robert Strasser

Robert Strasser is a St. Louis author. He co-founded the Tin Ceiling Theatre Company and helped create the seven/24 short play festival. He's reviewed theater for KDHX radio. He's written for the St. Louis Evening Whirl. He is the creator and head writer for the sci-fi web series Artemis Burn. His travel pieces and artist interviews have appeared on numerous websites. He also lived in a bookshop in Paris for awhile, and the Canadian police stole his driver license.

Book preview

Damien Loose

Episode 1

(Blood)

by Robert Strasser

Published by Robert Strasser at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Robert Strasser

Cover designed by Elizabeth Byrd

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Don't Bring a Bar Stool to A Gun Fight

Damien Berchshire sat on the floor of the newly destroyed Mangia Italiano and worried about the blood in his trainers. Wait, down on the south side nobody knew what a trainer was. He shook his head to clear the haze. Sneakers...hightops...gym shoes...running shoe....some adjective plus shoes. Damien decided to keep it simple.

Shoes.

What was that? asked the paramedic holding the nine gauze pads in place against Damien's thigh. Another paramedic wrapped a whole roll of the stuff around the leg and remained silent. The Wrapper carefully avoided the splintered stool leg imbedded at an odd angle through the thigh.

My wife will not be happy with the condition of my shoes, Damien explained. He was pretty sure she wouldn't give a rat's ass either way, but she wasn't here, so it seemed safe to blame her.

Were you two on vacation?

What? Why?

Well...

I live in Fox Park.

Oh sorry. My mistake. Your accent...

Damien Berchshire stood 6'1 and on the American side of lanky. His dirty blond hair was cut short. He'd lived in St. Louis for six years, but still radiated a certain British properness that could unsettle most Americans when used right.

A stretcher smashed into the magazine rack at the front door of the restaurant. All three men involved in gauze stiffened as they watched the gurney wobble. It steadied and thankfully avoided spilling a dead body all over the red tiled floor. The body was dead because of Damien. Another man, on another stretcher, was also dead because of Damien. The body on the second stretcher exited the room with out a curtain call. Damien wondered what the body count would have been if his mother hadn't emailed him ten days ago. Less, he thought, much less.

Gauzeholder turned back to Damien and stated the obvious, the police want to talk to you.

Damien glanced over to the bar and saw a cop standing next to Shelly McCloud. She extended her arm and a finger aimed at Damien. McCloud was the off duty cop that guarded Mangia's doors from the drunk south-siders and college students who flooded the place after the 1 O’clock joints kicked them out. The police officer said something in her ear. A stern look crossed McCloud's face and her arm came down. Her small frame carried a big ego, and she saw Mangia and its patrons as family. Damien knew she was doing him a favor by buttressing him against needless harassment, but his worries weren't with the beat cops. He looked around, but Detective Williams wasn't in sight.

Damien needed to figure out how big of a lie to tell the cops. He looked back down at his leg.

Do they plan on interrogating me with this pole still in my thigh?

The paramedics just shrugged. They finished the roll of gauze and looked over their odd sculpture. The shard of bar stool missed the femoral artery, but the amount of blood pooled on the floor amazed Damien. How was he not dead?

After half the men were, Damien held himself up with his elbows on the pastry counter. Damien's shoe soaked up the blood leaking on to the floor. The shoe squished liked trod on oysters when he tried to put weight on his impaled leg. Pain beyond anything he'd experienced before (and there had been that time in Tangier) shot up his leg. He managed to keep his elbows braced on top of the pastry counter and the gun pointed at the remaining man. He really didn't want to faint. This was all before he fired, before he collapsed to the floor, before the paramedics arrived.

They'll take it out at the hospital, Gauzeholder said, but not to Damien.

Damn it Derek, Damien thought once his blood-drained brain processed the name of the woman talking to the medic. He'd told Derek not to call her, but there stood his wife Theresa. Now where is Zoe at this hour? McCloud held Zoe and bounced her up and down in that motion adults do with babies. Only Theresa would snatch a one-year-old out of the crib at 2am and drag her down to a bar to see her father's pain and blood. At his silent critique, Theresa's eyes left the paramedic's face and fell on Damien's.

How the hell does she do that? he wondered. She always knows when I'm giving her shit even if I'm just thinking it. He smiled, not a weak apologetic smile, but a smile that said he loved the fact that this woman was crazy enough to be his wife.

Theresa did not smile but kept her eyes critical which only caused Dame's smile to expand. A crack appeared in her stern lip, and he knew all her concentration was focused on fighting down the big toothy grin that grew in her belly. God, how he loved this woman.

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Why Fly When You Can Email

A Southwest 707 broke through high gray clouds and glided in for a landing. From his vantage point on the top level of Lambert Airport's parking garage, Damien looked west over the Missouri River's flood plain and noticed a thin blue band above the trees on the horizon. It might be a sunny afternoon after all.

In the rear-view mirror, Damien watched his daughter, Zoe, suck her first two fingers and look out the window of the station wagon. The parade of passenger jets seemed to have tempered the one-year-old's usual impatience. If Zoe didn't mind, Damien didn't mind. He pushed his feet past the pedals, stretched his legs and watch the blue band thicken.

He had played hookey from work, dropped his wife off and kept Zoe and the car for the day. He was at Lambert to do his mother's bidding, and it left a bad taste in his mouth. Marian Berchshire had emailed him last night