Guns Don't Kill People...

"I had to do it", Joe Morgan thought leaving his car beginning to make his ascent to the top of the new Memorial Bridge. The steady breeze flowing along the black waters of the Halifax river tugs at his clothing causing Joe to tighten his grip on the object concealed in a brown bag under his arm pit. He couldn't be rid of the package quick enough and the river was the best place to hide a murder weapon. 

The wind whips his thin hair about his bulb like dome. Joe didn't notice the sweat until a drop rolled down his cheek. He wipes it off and has a flash of the look on Janice's face when he pulled out the small automatic weapon with its large silencer barrel and aimed it in her direction. She made a sound that he recognized when they use to make love as he pumped three rounds into her body with the whisper of a mosquito. No one heard a thing. 

Maybe he should have thrown Janice in to the river, a nice watery grave for that lesbionic bitch. She was an embarrassment to him and his family. How could he have not seen it before? Now that she was gone, her body left near a jogging trail where she likes to run at night, Joe was desperate to rid himself of the only evidence that could link him to the notorious deed.  

With eyes darting about like black flies Joe could see the traffic on the bridge was light. Being late, after four in the morning, no one else was on the walk way. Pressing on Joe,s breathing begins to fill laborious and his mouth like a desert, perspiration was drowning his arm pits. This was a bad thing he had done but he couldn't live with the knowledge that he married a woman who wanted to be with another woman. 

Joe continues his hike up the long white edifice, the wind got stronger mocking him with every step. He could see the down- town lights on the opposite side of the river now. They were hazy and bright like the feeling in his head. He had been drinking since early that morning after being sent home from work for his attitude. It was the eleventh hour when Steve, a stranger who Joe had befriended with more booze, offered a solution to his problem. So he stumbled to an ATM and when he returned Steve handed him a black automatic weapon with a large silencer barrel. For the life of him he could not remember Steve's face but he could remember those big oven- mitt like hands that dropped the brown bagged weapon in his lap. Things seem to spiral to a bloody conclusion after that. 

Joe went to push a patch of sweat from his brow when he hears something behind him. He half turns, catching movement out the corner of his eye, startling him. Something was coming fast. Losing his balance Joe slams into the bridge railing causing the brown bag under his now sweaty arm pit to slip and tumble over the side.  

Two teens on bicycles rush by, "Move it, or lose it old man!" One shouts back.  

Joe could not hear them he was too busy watching the brown bag fall further and further from him. Reaching his arm out as if to catch the weapon Joe sees it land, but not in the deep waters of the river but on the rocks below. It was low tide. 

Panicking, Joe looks around. The two bicyclists disappear across the bridge their laughter fading with them. He did not ascend far enough and now the gun and its silencer sat nestle between two rocks looking up at him out of the bag.  

Pushing himself away from the railing Joe thought for one short second to go down and get the bag but he could only think of one thing and that was to get the hell out of there. He hurries back to his ride and in a plum of dust Joe watches the giant bridge get smaller in his rear view mirror. 

"What was that?" Slim ask.  

"You hearing thing's again," Money said, spreading a filthy blanket on the floor of their squatters' camp under the Memorial Bridge. "I told you not to take that last hit. It's just the wave hitting the pilings or a stupid fish."