Loading...

The Accused

The Accused

Nestled between two mountains, there is a quiet little village called Silver Springs.  Everybody knew everybody, except for one strange man who never went outside of his house.  He peaked through his dirty old curtains once in a while when somebody passed by.  What he was doing behind them, nobody knows.  Strange things could have been going on.  
He lived next door to the Collins’s, who were the proud parents of three precious little daughters, aged three, five, and seven.  The oldest one loved riding her bicycle around the neighborhood, and everybody used to wave and greet her with a warming smile when she rode by.  They always looked forward to seeing her.
She was told to come back home around 11:30 AM, time to get ready for lunch.  One day when she didn’t show up by afternoon, her mother started to worry.   She ran outside and started frantically asking the neighbors if they had seen her.  She knocked on the door where that strange man lived, but nobody was home.  Then she started screaming at him.  “If you did anything to my baby, I’ll kill you with my own bare hands.”  
She went to the local police station to file a missing person’s report, but the officer at the front desk told her to come back tomorrow.  Just then the chief overheard the conversation and came running out of his office, then said, in a reassuring voice, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Collins, we’ll go get your daughter.  Let’s go.”  He was a good friend of the whole family.  He told her to drive home, because it was too dangerous to ride in the squad car.  He turned the siren on, so off he and his backup went to her neighbor’s house.
They drove up the driveway, then got out of the car with their guns drawn.  They pounded on the door and shouted, “Come on outside with your hands over your head, Mr. Brown, or we will come inside and get you.”  There was no answer, so they kicked the door in and went inside, but he wasn’t there.  
He knew of an old run down house on the edge of town where all kinds of strange things went on.  So off they went to see if she was taken there.  As they approached the house, they heard screams, so they drew their weapons and started pounding on the door.  A dirty naked man in his forty’s with a blanket wrapped around him, came out and answered the door.  In a friendly voice he said, “No, there’s nobody here except me, officers.”  Just then they heard another scream from the bedroom, so they pushed him aside, and ran into the house.  There she was, lying on the bed, sobbing, “I want my mommy.”  They threw the handcuffs on the man and took him out to the squad car.  
After they read him his rights, they said, “You’ll be going away for a long time, Mr. Brown.”  Then the little girl said, “That’s not Mr. Brown.  He got shot and is still inside the house.” When they ran inside, Mr. Brown was lying on the floor in back of the couch with a bullet wound in his back.  
What had happened was, he had seen the little girl being abducted threw the curtain of his house, so he followed them and tried to rescue her.  When he reached the old house, he ran inside but was shot while trying to save her.  He survived after the bullet was removed from his back, and became the little girl’s friend.  “Thank you, Mr. Brown.”

Liked or faved by...
Other works by Robert L. Martin...



Top