Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer

Rosetti arrived that evening with a bomb squad and SWAT team in tow. She commanded the team from a distance—stationed in an ATV decked out with video surveillance—and they stormed the underground bunker aided by assorted gizmos.
    Of course, Gordon Laramie proved to be wilier than assorted gizmos. Expecting their arrival, he had devised a ruse. Earlier that day, he had kidnapped Ruben Howe, owner and proprietor of the Grahamville General Store, and locked him in the bunker. The SWAT team was rocking infrared goggles, so when they detected movement underground, they assumed they had their man.
    Their man
, however, was creeping through the woods, donning the skin and antlers of a recently killed moose as a disguise. As the SWAT team was descending into the bunker, Laramie was creeping up on Rosetti and her small team of unarmed technicians, his makeshift crown of antlers rattling against the low-hanging branches.
    Now, I’m not sure how many people have had a good old-fashioned shootout with a man wearing a moose skin and antlers, but I’m guessing it’s only one.
    You know who.
    The details of the shootout are sketchy at best. In interviews she did for an extended piece about the case in
Salon
, Rosetti described the situation as the “fog of war,” and repeatedly talked about “simply doing her job.”
    Well, she simply did her job pretty damn well, because that evening they carried Gordon Laramie out in a body bag and a hyperventilating, but safe, Ruben Howe out in a stretcher. Apparently they found a manifesto of some sort, but Rosetti never shared that with the press. After all, you don’t want anyone else influenced by the rantings of a madman.
    Reading the
Salon
piece, I imagined the moose-frocked Laramie running at Rosetti with a shotgun blasting, her diving behind a tree, and chunks of bark exploding in the frosty air. I imagined Rosetti pulling a pistol from her boot, rolling over and unloading—
pop-pop-pop
—as the fog settled in. I imagined the fog clearing, and Rosetti standing over Laramie’s dying body and pulling out an e-cigarette, taking a drag and it lighting up all blue at the tip as she said, “Moose season is officially . . . over.”

another part of the story
    T en minutes after Dylan dropped me off at my house, Tess was picking me up and I was giving her a rundown of the date.
    â€œSo many red flags,” she said as she drove us in the direction of the police station. “So, so many.”
    â€œI know, I know.”
    â€œLet’s forget all the Jane Rolling stuff and focus on the whole ‘burn all you fuckers to the ground’ Facebook post
,
why don’t we?”
    I smiled sheepishly, and said, “He was a child. Twelve.”
    â€œPsychopaths have childhoods too. Full of fire and dissected roadkill. And he let his brother take the blame for him? What’s that all about?”
    â€œHis brother wanted to take the blame. Warren wanted out of Connecticut and this gave him an out. Dylan was helping him. Or at least he thought he was.”
    â€œKeep telling yourself that.”
    I would. I would keep telling myself that, because that’s whatDylan told me before he dropped me off. It won’t surprise you to hear that I’m a skeptical person. I don’t even believe half the garbage that tumbles from my own mouth. So putting my faith in Dylan was a big deal.
    â€œDylan hasn’t lied to me,” I said. “Not yet.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œBecause this is precisely the stuff he should be lying about.”
    â€œSo he’s a fountain of honesty. And yet here you are, secretly stalking him.”
    We were now parked alongside the road, between two news vans, a half block from the police station. Dylan’s ice-cream truck was in the station’s parking lot. We hadn’t arrived in time to see him go inside, but where else could he be?
    â€œIf Dylan asks me,