She missed his foot completely, but Colton howled in pain anyway, and as he had told her, shoved her to the left.

He could barely see her waddling away, but he made sure she was what he judged to be fifteen feet away from him before he started yelling.

“We are gonna blow all you mother fuckers to hell!”  He then let out a scream and raised his shotgun.  Upon hearing this, Karen lay down in the freezing snow and covered her ears, sobbing uncontrollably.

Colton never got off a shot.  The first round caught him in the left thigh, the second entered his right lung and collapsed it almost instantly.  A third round shattered his right cheek and the fourth and final round glanced off the top of his forehead.  When the officers heard no return fire, they stopped firing as well.  The officer with the binoculars confirmed they had a man down but there was no sign of the others.

Making his way across the street, Hansen saw Karen crawling through the deep snow towards the fallen robber.  She was crying so hard, she could barely move.  “Damn it, Karen!  Get back!  Get back!”

“There’s no more,” she screeched, her words both muffled by the snow and hindered by her sobbing.  Suddenly Hansen was next to her, asking if she was hurt.  “There’s no more,” she sobbed.  He…he…he w-was the only…,” she didn’t bother finish her statement, only continued to crawl to Colton.

She wasn’t allowed to get much further, however.  Two large officers were instructed by Hansen to remove her to a warm patrol car while he took care of the “bad guy.”  Gun still trained on the dark blotch before him, Officer Hanson Maynard made his way to the unmoving lump that was once Colton Richards.

Hanson was amazed that this would be criminal was still alive.  He knelt down and removed the mask roughly from the perpetrator’s face to get a good look at him, and was suddenly struck with disbelief.  Bleeding, fighting for air and his face a shattered, bloody mess, the young man was smiling at him.  “Th…th…thank…” was all he managed to say before sighing his last gurgling breath.

Almost as soon as he stopped breathing, the snow stopped.  A second later, the sun broke through the clouds giving all those present a clear view of the scene.

“Coroner says he’s on his way, Hansen, said it might take him a bit though because of the storm.”

Hansen simply shrugged and pointed.  “Nothing to worry about,” he replied.  “He’s not going anywhere and all this snow will keep him fresh for awhile.”

Hansen stood shaking his head.  Something wasn’t right.  He then located the shotgun the robber had and cocked the weapon.  Nothing.  There were no rounds in the chamber.  He then let out a small laugh in spite of the carnage around him.  In the snow all around the body were sacks marked with large blue dollar signs on them.

“Now I know what was different,” Karen said from behind him.  Hansen turned quickly and put his arms around her, trying to shield her from the sight, but she simply pushed by him instead.  “They’re blue.”

“What?  What are you talking about?”

Karen pointed to the sacks on the ground.  “The dollar signs on these are blue.”  Hansen instantly surmised that Karen was in a state of shock and told her so.  But she angrily shook her head at him.

“No, damn it!  Listen to me!”  She stooped and picked up one of the sacks and shook it at Hansen.  “He made me fill these sacks with money from the teller’s drawers!  But the sacks he made me fill all had black dollar signs on them!”  To prove her point, she tore open the sack she was holding.  From inside she pulled out neatly cut and bundled piles of newspaper.

“Hansen,” a voice called from inside the doorway of the bank.  “I think you need to come look at this.”  Hansen entered the bank and looked around.  Karen had been right.  There were no other robbers in the bank.

“As soon as he let the other hostages go,” Karen stated in soft monotone, “he let the other robbers go.”

Hansen turned to her.  “But what the hell for?”  He watched as she bent to pick up another sack, this one with a black dollar sign on it.

Karen shrugged in answer to the question.  “Maybe he thought that if you knew there were only the two of us in here, you would get all TV cop on us.” She was smiling as she said that, and her smile caused Hansen to smile also.

“I still don’t get it.  I heard the other men in the background.” 

Karen shook her head as she began to cry again.  “That was him.  All those voices you heard were him.”  Hansen shook his head again, still not understanding any of it. 

“When I pulled his mask off him, he was smiling,” Hansen reflected.  “And he tried to thank me.”

When Karen heard that, she burst into tears and started to collapse on the floor.  Hansen caught her just in time and helped her sit down.  Another officer brought over one of the gym bags.

“We found five grenades.”  He then held up one of the devices for Hansen’s inspection.  “They are all inert.  More like souvenirs or war memorabilia than anything that could hurt anybody.”  Karen sobbed harder at hearing that and Hansen ordered her removed once more.

“Coroner’s here,” another officer called from the doorway.  “Ambulance is here also.”

Another officer then called to Hansen.  “We have a suspicious package here!” 

Hansen walked to the open gym bag and saw a nicely wrapped package inside.  “Everybody out!” he yelled and made his own hasty retreat to the door.

“Call the bomb squad!  In the mean time, nobody but them enters that building!”

From inside the ambulance, Karen chuckled.  “It’s not a bomb, Hansen,” she laughed, and then promptly passed out.

 “Get her checked out as soon as possible.  She’s been through a great deal here.”  The EMT nodded as he shut the door, then Hansen made his way to the coroner.

You need to get him out of here as fast as possible, Henry.”  He then pointed to the bank.  “We have a possible bomb in there, and I don’t want you to be a statistic if that thing goes off.”  Henry nodded as he stood up.  The other two men that were with him placed the body in a body bag, zipped it up and carried it to the coroner’s wagon.  “Thanks for fucking up a lot of people’s Christmas, asshole,” he grumbled as the bag was carried by him.

It took longer for the bomb squad to get there than it did for them to discover that the package wasn’t a bomb, but a tape recorder.  He waited until he picked up Karen from the hospital before he listened to the tape. He had to get her account of the story and thought she had just as much right to listen to the tape as he did.

While she waited for Hansen to arrive, she remembered the letter that Colton had taped to her chest.  With trembling hands, she opened it.

Dear Karen,

First of all, I wish to apologize to you for putting you through all this.  I know this isn’t over yet as I type this, but I want to apologize in advance. I don’t know if you figured it out yet, but I had no intentions of robbing you or your bank.  And most importantly, I had no intention of ruining your Christmas like I did.  I truly hope you can forgive me.

The other letter I wrote needs to be delivered to my ex wife.  Well, I guess she’s my widow now, seeing as we aren’t divorced yet.  Anyway, I truly hate to put this on you, but if you would please drop it in the mail to her, I will be eternally grateful.  Please be safe, happy and well, and please take care of your baby!

Colton Richards

Karen was crying so hard, she could hardly refold the letter.  When it was folded back into thirds, she clutched it to her chest and wept.  “Of course I forgive you,” she whispered over and over, until a concerned nurse asked if she was ok.

By the time Hansen arrived, she had managed to stop crying.  He helped her into the squad car and solemnly informed her that he had to take her back to the station to get her statement.

Karen said nothing, only nodded her compliance.  She decided not to mention the letter from Colton, or the money he had made her deposit into an account for herself.

She had also decided not to mention the letter to Colton’s widow, either.  Knowing Hansen, he would want to open it to read it, and it was none of anyone’s business what it said.

“Before we do anything, Hansen, I need to phone my mother and tell her I’m going to be late.”

Hansen looked at her grimly.  “I have to warn you.  This has been all over the news already, so chances are your mother knows.”

Karen sighed, knowing she was going to be put through a Nazi interrogation when she got to her parents.  “Well then let’s get this over with so I can go through it again at my mothers.”  Hansen was right, of course.  Both her parents were news hounds and watched the six o’clock news religiously.  After she hung up the receiver, Karen took a long drink of the soda Hansen had given her, and sighed.

His questions were all routine and pretty general.  He had her give her account of what happened, and only asked a few questions that her statement didn’t cover.  “Did he rape you or molest you in any way?”  When Karen shook her head, Hansen raised an eyebrow.  “Are you sure?”  The question was so absurd that Karen threw up her hands in exasperation.

“No Hansen, I’m not sure!  After all, there were times when the lower half of my body wasn’t with me, so he could have done anything to it without my knowledge!”

Hansen threw down his pencil and sighed.  “Ok!  All right, I’m sorry.  It was a stupid question, ok?  But we saw what he did to you in the window!”

Karen sighed and nodded.  “True.  What he did to me in the window was obscene, but I promise you, it was just for show.  It’s quite obvious he wanted you pissed off enough to kill him, right?”

Hansen had to agree on that.  “Speaking of which,” he started as he pulled the tape recorder out of his desk drawer.  “You were right about that gift wrapped package not being a bomb.”  He tapped the recorder with his pencil.  “This was his little gift to us.”

“What does it say?”

Hansen shrugged.  “I have no idea.  I haven’t listened to it yet.  I kind of thought you would like to listen to it with me.”

For the first time since the ordeal was over, Karen managed a smile.  “Thank you, I would love to hear it.”

Hansen stopped in mid button push.  “Really?  Why is that?”  It was obvious he wasn’t going to start the tape until Karen replied.

“I guess I’m hoping it’ll answer a lot of questions we both have,” was her only reply.  Satisfied with her answer, he pushed the play button.

“Hello, my name is Colton Richards,” he stated simply, and as soon as Karen heard his voice, she started to cry once more.  She had to stop Hansen from shutting it off because he thought it was traumatizing her to hear his voice.  After assuring him that was not the reason she was crying, he restarted the tape.

“If you are listening to this tape, it’s probably because I’m dead.  Or at least I hope so.

“There are a great many things I need to explain to you, so sit back and relax.  This might take a bit.

“As I said, my name is Colton Richards.  The first and foremost thing I need to stress is, I had no intentions of robbing this bank.

“If anyone was hurt or killed in the process, I am truly sorry and I’m quite sure I will have to atone for it one way or the other.

“If I am dead, I also need to thank you fine police officers for a job well done.  Please don’t feel badly about what you had to do, as it was my intentions for that to happen all along.”

Hansen made an indelicate sound in response, but Karen hushed him so severely he decided to try to keep his mouth shut during the whole tape.

“I suppose I need to explain myself so you know just why things happened.”  There was a slight pause that sounded like he was taking a drink before he continued.  “It all started in September.  I had been getting these really bad headaches, so I went to see my friend and family doctor, Ray Goldberg.

“I had taken off a day from work the month before so Ray could do some tests.  A month later I get a call from Ray.  He tells me I need to come to his office so we can discuss my test results.  I guess that phone call from Ray is what started it all.  The day I got his call, the company I worked for informed us all that it was bankrupt and shutting down.”

There was a slight pause while Colton chuckled slightly.  Hansen wasn’t sure if it was a bitter chuckle or if he was laughing at the irony.

“My meeting with Ray went even better.  To make a long story short, he tells me I have inoperable brain cancer, and I have only a few months to live.”

There was even more laughter this time, and from the way it sounded Karen began to cry again.

“I ask him how long a few months is and he tells me I won’t see New Years Eve.  I laughed so hard he thought I had snapped,” Colton chuckled.

“So THAT’S why!” Karen exclaimed suddenly.  Hansen reached over and shut off the tape.

“That’s why what?” he asked

“Several times during the robbery, he fell to the floor, crying like a baby in obvious agony!”

Hansen threw up his hands.  “So why the hell didn’t you escape?  Several times?  Jesus, Karen!”

Karen pushed herself up out of the chair.  “Take a look, Hansen!” she yelled, pointing at her more than obvious pregnancy.  “You just saw how long it took me to get out of this fucking chair, right?”  Hansen nodded sheepishly.  “Well, his attacks didn’t last very long, and I wasn’t about to risk my babies life trying to get away!”

Hansen helped her sit back down.  “I’m sorry.  Really I am.  I understand completely.”  He waited until she was settled down once more before pushing play again.

“Now let’s review.  I’m informed I no longer have a job, and the next day I’m informed I no longer have a life.  But guess what?  There’s more!

“I take the long way home, trying to figure out what to tell Susan, my wife.  Now Sue doesn’t work.  She never really had to, not that she even wanted to, but that’s beside the point.  To make another long explanation short, I get home and find my wife in bed with my best friend.  And I think after all I had been through in the last 24 hours I took it pretty well.  I gave them both my best wishes and promptly left.  I went straight to the bank and withdrew every cent I had, and then cashed in my life insurance policy.

 “It was on my way to the bank that I came up with what went down today.  I always wondered what it would have been like to rob a bank, so that’s why I decided that was the way I wanted to go out.

 “Contrary to what you might be thinking of me right now, officers, I’m not a bad man.  In fact, I was Joe Model Citizen up until today, with not so much as a parking ticket on my record.  I didn’t drink, smoke or do drugs; I never stole anything other than that candy bar on a dare when I was eight.

“So I said to myself, ‘Fuck it!  You’re a dying man!  Why not go out your own way, instead of in some fucking hospital bed all drugged up?’ I had thought about committing suicide, and even jotted down several cool ways to do it.  My favorite one was to dress all in black, paint a lawn chair flat black, write a nice suicide note, then put the chair under a dark underpass on the freeway and wait for a car or truck to take me out.

 “Again, it wasn’t robbing the bank for the money.  Where I’m going, I won’t need any.  It was for the sole purpose of getting killed, nothing more.  That and just to be able to say to myself that I did one thing before I died that I had always wanted to do.  Anyway, that’s my story.  Pretty pathetic, isn’t it?  For what it’s worth, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

And that was where the tape ended.  Hansen hit the fast forward button while the tape was still playing to see if there was anything else on the tape.  After a few moments, he shut the machine off, and then rolled his chair over to a relic of a computer and started punching in data.  “Suicide by cop,” he grumbled as he typed

Hansen sighed when he was through.  “Everything he said was true.  The boy was as clean as a whistle.”  He turned to look at Karen and jumped slightly when he saw she was right next to him, and when the phone rang, they both jumped.  “Hansen,” he said briskly into the phone.

“Hansen, it’s Henry.”  As soon as Hansen heard who it was, his tone softened.

“What do you have for me?” he asked as he pushed the speaker button then hung up the receiver.

“I just wanted to let you know that the cause of death was several well placed gunshot wounds.  I also wanted to let you know that you might as well have let this guy go.  How he was even able to speak, let alone try to rob a bank I’ll never know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  Both Hansen and Karen thought they knew the answer to that, but let Henry finish.

“What I mean is, this young man’s brain was so loaded with cancer, he shouldn’t have even been able to talk, let alone walk.  He was a dead man walkin.”

Hansen looked at Karen who was silently crying so hard, her whole body shook.  “Thanks Henry.  Put the body on ice and go home.  We won’t be doing anything with him until at least the twenty-sixth anyway.”  Henry said thank you and wished him happy holidays and hung up.  Hansen stood and immediately gathered Karen into his arms to comfort her.  “Hey, c’mon now.  There’s no need for that.”

Karen pulled her red. Tear soaked face away from Hansen’s chest.  “He didn’t deserve to die!” she wailed, and then buried her face in his chest once more.

Hansen was going to try to explain to her that it was what Colton wanted to happen, but thought better of it.  He let her cry a little longer then gently pushed her away.

“C’mon, enough of this.  It’s Christmas Eve and we both have families waiting for us.”  Karen nodded in silent agreement as she gathered up her belongings.   Her head was pounding from all her crying and she still had to face her family.  “It’s going to be a long holiday,” she thought to herself.