At My Grandma’s Funeral, My Dad Opened The Casket And Put His Fingers Inside
The Deadline and The Handler
I turn and walk out of that alley, forcing myself not to run, even though every muscle in my body is screaming at me to sprint.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear sirens getting louder then fading away.
Heading towards some other family’s crisis in some other part of town.
In my car, I fumble with my phone, hands shaking so bad I almost drop it twice.
I pull up my map history and start deleting everything.
The route to Macky’s bar, the pin I dropped, all of it gone with shaky taps on the screen.
Then I pop the trunk and get out, looking around the empty parking lot to make sure nobody’s watching.
The gun goes into the spare tire well under the carpet where the jack is supposed to be.
I press the carpet back down and close the trunk as quietly as I can.
My brain won’t shut up. Just keeps screaming words at me like evidence and accessory and conspiracy and a dozen other legal terms I don’t actually understand.
I’m destroying evidence or hiding evidence or tampering with something.
I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.
My phone starts ringing and I nearly jump out of my skin. Mom’s name lights up the screen.
Her voice comes through completely destroyed from crying, all rough and broken.
She asks where dad went after security dragged him out of the funeral home.
She sounds so small and lost that I almost tell her everything right there.
The whole insane story about the tooth and the gun and the contract.
The words are right there in my throat, ready to spill out.
Instead, I lie. I tell her dad and I got into a fight about his behavior at the funeral and we split up that I don’t know where he went.
The words taste like metal in my mouth, like I’m chewing on pennies.
I promise I’ll come home soon, maybe an hour or two.
She’s quiet for a second and then says, “Okay,” in this tiny voice that makes me feel like the worst son in the world.
I hang up and just sit there in the parking lot staring at nothing.
20 minutes later, I’m pulling into our driveway.
The house looks the same as it always does, but everything feels different now, like I’m seeing it through dirty glass.
I dig the gold tooth out of my pocket as soon as I get inside.
It goes into an old sock that I shove behind the dryer in the laundry room, way in the back where nobody ever looks unless they’re fishing out lost change.
Then I go to my room and try to sleep. I can’t.
I just lay there staring at the ceiling for hours, watching shadows move across the plaster.
Every car that drives past outside makes my heart jump into my throat.
I keep thinking it’s them, whoever them is, coming to finish what dad started.
Around 2:00 a.m., my phone buzzes on the nightstand.
A text from a number I don’t recognize.
“Just two words.”
“Clocks running.”
No signature, no explanation, nothing else.
I stare at those two words until they stop looking like real letters and just become shapes on the screen.
I read them maybe 50 times trying to figure out what they mean or who sent them or what I’m supposed to do about it.
The phone stays in my hand for another 20 minutes before I finally put it down.
I get up and walk down the hall to dad’s bedroom.
The door is open and the room is empty and dark.
His bed is made like he hasn’t slept in it in days.
On the dresser sits his old sobriety chip, the bronze one for 18 months clean.
It’s just sitting there in the middle of the dresser like he placed it there on purpose before he left.
The sight of it makes me so angry.
I have to turn around and leave before I throw something at the wall.
All those AA meetings, all that talk about being honest and making amends, and this is what he does.
This is his idea of being a good father.
I go back to my room and pick up my phone.
I start typing a text to Sarah about coming home for a few days.
Something about wanting to see her and missing her.
I get three words in and then delete them.
I try again with different words. Delete those too.
She’s safe at college, 3 hours away, safe from whatever this mess is.
I need her to stay that way.
Whatever happens next, I’m keeping her completely out of it.
I delete the whole text thread and put my phone face down on the nightstand.
The ceiling becomes my best friend again for the rest of the night.
Just me and the shadows and the sound of cars that might or might not be coming for me.
Morning comes, but I don’t remember falling asleep.
Mom’s bedroom door opens around 7, and I hear her shuffling down the hallway to the bathroom.
When she comes out, I’m sitting at the kitchen table and she looks terrible.
Her eyes are so swollen, they’re almost closed.
Her face has this gray color like all the blood drained out.
She sits down across from me without saying anything and we just stare at the table for maybe 5 minutes.
I tell her we should postpone Grandma’s burial by a day.
She nods and picks up her phone.
The funeral director answers on the second ring and mom explains about family stress and needing more time.
He’s actually really nice about it considering dad knocked grandma out of her casket yesterday.
He says they can do tomorrow afternoon instead and mom thanks him three times before hanging up.
She looks at me and asks if I’ve heard from dad.
I shake my head. The lie comes out so easy now it barely feels like lying anymore.
My phone starts ringing while we’re sitting there. Unknown number.
Same one from last night.
I stand up and walk to my room before answering.
The voice on the other end is a woman this time.
She sounds calm and professional like she’s calling about a dentist appointment or something normal.
She doesn’t say hello or introduce herself, just says we need an answer.
“That’s it.”
Nothing else.
I tell her we’re mourning and we need time. My voice comes out shaky and desperate.
I say anything I can think of to stall.
She cuts me off in the middle of a sentence.
Her voice stays completely calm when she says we are too.
“End of day two.”
Then she hangs up before I can respond.
I stare at my phone for a full minute. The deadline is real.
It’s actually counting down.
I have maybe 24 hours left before something happens.
I don’t know what that something is, but I know it’s bad.
I sit on my bed and open my phone’s browser.
Type in Mackey’s Bar Fire.
The first result is a news article from 5 years ago.
The headline says, “Local bar owner dies in suspected arson.”
I click it and read the whole thing.
The owner’s name was Dennis Fletcher.
He died when the building caught fire around 2:00 a.m.
The article says, “Investigators found signs of accelerant use.”
“There’s a quote from a fire marshal about suspicious burn patterns.”
I scroll down to the comment section. Most of them are normal stuff about how sad it is.
But then I see one that says Fletcher ran a lot more than just a bar, if you know what I mean.
Another comment mentions insurance fraud. Someone else hints at organized crime connections.
None of the comments give actual details, just whispers and suggestions.
I search for more articles about Fletcher and find an obituary.
It lists his family, but doesn’t say much about his business.
I find a follow-up article from 6 months later saying the arson investigation went cold.
No arrests, no suspects named.
None of this tells me how to get out of what I’m in.
I sit there thinking about calling the police.
Just picking up my phone and telling them everything.
The gun, the contract, the handler woman, all of it.
I picture myself walking into a police station and explaining the whole story from the beginning.
For maybe 10 minutes, I seriously consider it.
Then I think about what happens next. They’d ask where the gun is.
I’d have to tell them it’s in my trunk.
They’d search my car right there, find the gun wrapped in plastic in my spare tire well.
I’d be arrested before I finished explaining.
They’d charge me with weapons violations or evidence tampering or something.
I don’t even know what the charges would be, but I know they’d exist.
I’d end up in jail while dad and mom and Sarah are still in danger.
That doesn’t help anyone.
I need something else. Some way to do something without actually doing anything.
I open a new browser tab and search for anonymous crime tips.
Find a Crimestoppers website with a form you can fill out without giving your name.
I type in a message about a suspicious suitcase behind the dumpster at Mackey’s old location on the south side.
Keep it vague. Don’t mention the gun or the contract or anything specific.
Just say there’s something there worth checking.
Hit submit and close the browser.
It feels like I did something even though I know I didn’t really do anything at all.
Maybe someone will find it. Maybe they won’t.
Either way, I can tell myself I tried.
An hour passes. Then my phone rings again. Different number this time.
I answer and hear Dad’s voice, but he’s coughing so hard I can barely understand the words.
He’s trying to say something between the coughs.
Something about fixing this, about how I should just walk away and forget it happened.
His voice sounds worse than yesterday, weaker, more desperate.
Each cough sounds wet and painful, like it’s tearing something inside his chest.
He finally stops coughing long enough to say he can make this whole thing go away if I just trust him.
I don’t say anything, just listen to him breathe heavy on the other end.
He coughs twice more and then hangs up.
I sit there holding my phone wondering what he meant by fixing it, wondering if he even can.
My phone buzzes with a text, maybe an hour after dad’s call.
Unknown number again. Just an address for a strip mall across town.
Then another text right after.
“Bring the tooth tonight at 8:00 p.m.”
That’s it. Short and direct.
No threats, no explanations, just instructions like I’m supposed to follow them automatically.
I screenshot both messages and save them. Not sure why.
Maybe for evidence later. Maybe just to have proof this is really happening.
I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to act normal around mom.
We eat lunch together without talking much.
She asks again about dad and I say I still haven’t heard from him.
She nods like she expected that answer.
Around 6, I tell her I’m meeting a friend for dinner.
She barely looks up from her coffee.
I get in my car and drive toward the strip mall.
Take a route that lets me pass by it twice before actually parking, trying to see if anything looks wrong or dangerous.
It just looks like a normal strip mall.
Half the stores are closed. A pizza place on one end, a nail salon, a check cashing place.
I park three rows back from the main building, far enough to watch, but close enough to see details.
It’s only 7:15. I sit in my car with the engine off and wait.
Two men show up around 7:45. They’re wearing dark jackets, even though it’s not that cold.
They walk to the closed pizza place and stand near the entrance.
One of them lights a cigarette. The other one keeps looking at his phone.
They look exactly like what you’d expect hired muscle to look like.
Big, quiet, alert.
They don’t talk to each other much, just stand there smoking and waiting.
Then at 7:55, a third person shows up. It’s the woman from the phone calls.
I can tell by the way she moves, confident, purposeful.
She’s pacing back and forth near the nail salon, talking on her cell phone.
Her hand gestures are measured and controlled like she’s discussing a business deal.
She looks more like a real estate agent than a criminal.
Professional clothes, nice haircut.
Nothing about her screams dangerous.
That somehow makes her scarier than the two men with their obvious tough guy routine.
She hangs up her phone and checks her watch.
Looks around the parking lot.
I sink lower in my seat, even though I’m pretty sure she can’t see me from this distance.
I watch them for another 15 minutes, checking my phone every few seconds like that will somehow change what I’m seeing.
The woman keeps pacing back and forth while the two men just stand there like statues, barely moving except to light another cigarette.
My hands are sweating so bad I can barely hold my phone.
I open a new text message and type out the excuse about family being everywhere tonight, not safe to meet, and I stare at those words for maybe two full minutes before hitting send.
The second it goes through, I start my car and back out of the parking spot, trying not to look like I’m running away, even though that’s exactly what I’m doing.
I don’t peel out or speed or anything that would draw attention.
Just drive normal, turn left out of the parking lot, head toward the main road, but my heart is going crazy in my chest, pounding so hard it hurts.
I keep checking the rear view mirror, expecting to see headlights following me, but there’s nothing.
Just regular traffic. Normal people going to normal places.
I make it maybe three blocks before my phone buzzes.
I almost drive off the road trying to grab it.
The message is short, just four words that make my stomach drop.
“Tomorrow, noon, or we choose.”
I read it five times, six times. The words don’t change.
I’m not even home yet when I get that text.
Still driving through traffic lights and trying to breathe normal.
I pull into a gas station parking lot and just sit there with the engine running, staring at my phone, or we choose.
That’s a threat.
That’s them saying they’ll pick the target themselves if I don’t show up.
Maybe me, maybe Sarah, maybe mom.
I sit in that gas station for 20 minutes before I can make myself drive the rest of the way home.
When I get inside, the house is dark and quiet.
Mom’s bedroom door is closed.
I go straight to my room and open my laptop, typing in searches for criminal defense lawyers and witness protection programs.
The clock on my computer says it’s barely 9:30, but it feels like the middle of the night.
I read forum posts from people asking about immunity deals and plea bargains, trying to understand what kind of trouble I’m actually in.
Everything I read makes it sound worse.
Conspiracy to commit murder.
Accessory before the fact, weapons charges.
Prison time measured in years, not months.
I find a legal aid website that has a chat feature, but it’s closed until morning.
I bookmark it. Keep searching.
There’s a Reddit thread from two years ago where someone asks about turning in evidence of a crime they witnessed and half the comments say get a lawyer first.
The other half say go to the police immediately.
Nobody agrees on anything.
I read case summaries about people who tried to cooperate with police and still got charged.
People who got immunity deals that fell apart.
People who went to prison for things they only knew about but didn’t actually do.
My eyes start burning from staring at the screen, but I keep reading.
It’s past midnight. Then 1:00 a.m. Then 2.
I find an article about witness protection that says you basically have to disappear completely.
New name, new city, cut off contact with everyone, you know.
I think about Sarah at college, about mom grieving dad and grandma, about just vanishing and leaving them with no explanation.
I can’t do that.
I keep searching until the clock hits 3:00 a.m. and my brain feels like mush.
I close the laptop and head out to the garage through the kitchen door.
The motion sensor light clicks on and I pop my trunk, reaching under the carpet to pull out the gun still wrapped in the plastic.
It feels heavier than before, like the weight of it increased overnight.
I look around the garage for somewhere better to hide it.
There’s a metal toolbox on the highest shelf near the ceiling, the kind dad used to keep his power tools in before he got too sick to do projects.
I drag over the step ladder and climb up, my hands shaking so bad I almost dropped the gun twice.
The toolbox has a combination lock that I set to mom’s birthday because that’s the only number I can remember right now.
I shove the gun inside and close it.
Then push the toolbox as far back on the shelf as it will go.
Those extra 3 ft of height don’t actually make it safer, but it feels like I did something.
I climb down and fold up the ladder, putting it back where it was.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
I try to squeeze them into fists to make it stop, but that just makes my whole arms shake instead.
I’m putting the ladder away when I hear the door from the kitchen open.
Mom comes out in her bathrobe, her hair messy from sleep, squinting in the bright garage light.
She asks what I’m doing out here so late, and I freeze like a kid caught stealing cookies.
Then she looks at me closer and asks if dad relapsed, if this is all about him drinking again, if that’s why he acted so crazy at the funeral.
Her voice is tired and sad and worried all at once.
I just shake my head because I literally don’t know what to say to her.
The real answer is so much worse than drinking.
She stands there for a minute like she’s waiting for me to explain, but when I don’t say anything, she just nods and tells me to get some sleep.
She goes back inside and I stand in the garage alone with the motion light clicking off, leaving me in the dark.
I barely sleep at all, maybe an hour total.
When my alarm goes off at 7:00, I feel like I got hit by a truck, but I force myself up and into the shower.
I need to talk to a lawyer, someone who can tell me what to actually do instead of just reading forums written by people who probably don’t know what they’re talking about.
I search for defense attorneys near me and find a guy named Fletcher Crawford who has decent reviews and offers free consultations.
His office is downtown in one of those old buildings that looks like it used to be nice 50 years ago.
I call and somehow get an appointment for 9:00 a.m., probably because it’s so early, nobody else wants that slot.
I tell mom I have to run an errand and she barely looks up from her coffee.
I drive downtown with the radio off, rehearsing in my head how to explain this whole situation without sounding completely crazy.
Fletcher’s office is on the third floor, cramped and dark with law books stacked everywhere and a desk covered in yellow legal pads.
He’s maybe 50, gray hair, tired eyes, wearing a shirt and tie that both look like they’ve seen better days.
I sit down in the chair across from his desk and just start talking.
I tell him about the funeral, the gold tooth, the coordinates, the gun, the contract, dad’s cancer, the handler, the 48 hour deadline, all of it.
He listens without interrupting, just taking notes on one of those yellow pads, his pen moving steady across the paper.
When I finally finish talking, he sets down his pen and looks at me for a long minute.
Then he explains in plain English about conspiracy charges and weapons violations, about how possessing that gun makes me part of this, whether I wanted to be or not, about how hiding evidence is its own crime.
He doesn’t sugarcoat anything, just lays out exactly how much trouble I’m in.
Then he suggests I contact his brother, Victor, who’s a detective, and might be able to help if I’m willing to cooperate fully with an investigation.
He makes it really clear this is my one chance to get ahead of this before it gets worse.
He writes Victor’s number on a piece of paper and slides it across the desk.
I fold it up and put it in my pocket, my hands still shaking.
The drive home from Fletcher’s office takes me through neighborhoods I don’t usually go through.
I’m stopped at a red light when I notice a gray sedan three cars back.
Nothing special about it except when I turn right at the next intersection, it turns right too.
I keep driving straight for two more blocks and the sedan stays behind me, keeping the same distance.
My chest gets tight.
I take a random right turn into a residential neighborhood, winding through streets with no reason to be there.
I check my mirror and the sedan keeps going straight on the main road.
I sit at a stop sign for a minute, watching my mirror, but it doesn’t come back.
Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe it was just someone going the same direction.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
I finish the drive home, taking a longer route, checking my mirror every few seconds.
When I get home, I pull out my phone and text Sarah before I can talk myself out of it.
“Stay on campus.”
“Don’t come home.”
“Love you.”
I hit send and immediately she responds with a string of confused emojis and question marks asking, “What’s wrong? Is mom okay? Is dad okay? What’s going on?”
I stare at her messages and don’t answer any of them.
Keeping her away and confused is better than bringing her into this nightmare.
She texts three more times over the next hour, but I don’t respond.
Eventually, she stops.
At 11:30, I get back in my car and drive to the strip mall again.
This time, I don’t park far away.
I pull into a spot near the closed pizza place and turn off my engine.
Before I get out, I open my phone’s voice recorder app and hit record, then slide the phone into my jacket pocket with the microphone facing out.
I have absolutely nothing else with me. No tooth, no gun, no leverage, just the recorder running and my pulse hammering in my ears.
I get out of my car and walk toward the nail salon.
The handler woman is already there standing near the entrance with one of the men from yesterday.
The other guy is gone, just these two.
She sees me coming and doesn’t smile or wave or anything.
Just watches me walk up with that same calm, professional expression she had on the phone.
I stop maybe 10 ft away from them and wait.
She checks her watch like I’m late, even though I’m exactly on time.
The man next to her doesn’t say anything, just stands there with his arms crossed, looking at me like I’m a problem that needs solving.
The handler finally looks up from her watch and asks where the tooth is, her voice flat and business-like, like we’re discussing a late payment instead of a murder contract.
I take a breath and tell her I want to understand what happens next first.
I want to know how this actually works before I hand anything over.
She tilts her head slightly and studies me for a second, then starts explaining.
She pulls out her phone and shows me a photo of the tooth with numbers on the back I hadn’t noticed before.
“Those numbers match an account somewhere,” she says.
“And when they get proof the job is done, they release the payment to whoever completed it.”
The proof part is what makes my hands start sweating worse because she explains it so simply, like she’s describing how to return something at a store.
“They need documentation,” she says.
“Photos with timestamps, specific details that prove the target is actually dead and not just hiding somewhere.”
“Listen to 90 seconds and rate me five stars on Spotify.”
“Doing a giveaway for people who did this and show proof on my Instagram.”
“There will be four winners and you get to choose between a Spotify or Amazon gift card.”
The way she talks about my father dying makes me want to throw up right there in the parking lot.
She slides her phone back in her pocket and asks if I understand the process now.
I manage to nod even though my throat feels completely closed up.
I tell her dad has stage 4 lung cancer and maybe a month left anyway.
Trying to make it sound like that changes something, like that makes this whole thing less horrible.
She just shrugs and looks at me like I’m being difficult about nothing.
Her exact words are whether I want him dying in a parking lot instead of a hospital bed.
And she says it like she’s genuinely confused why I’d choose the worst option, like she’s doing us some kind of favor by offering to kill him professionally instead of letting cancer do it slowly.
The man standing next to her shifts his weight and checks his watch, clearly bored with this whole conversation.
She notices me staring at him and explains that her people can handle it cleanly if I just sign off and walk away.
Make it look like natural causes, so there’s no investigation or questions.
She describes it exactly like she’s offering to mow my lawn or fix my car, just another service she can provide for the right price.
My brain can’t process how casual she is about all of this.
I ask for 24 more hours to think about it, and she pulls out her phone again, scrolling through messages while I stand there waiting.
She says the people funding this aren’t patient types, but she can give me until tomorrow morning because she likes me.
The way she mentions the people funding it, calling them a group like they’re some kind of business department, makes this feel even more wrong.
She tells me to have an answer by 9:00 a.m. or they’ll proceed with their own solution.
Then she and her guy walk back to their car without saying goodbye or shaking hands or anything normal.
I watch them drive away and my legs feel weak enough that I have to lean against my car for a minute.
