(santiago)
It's been a week or two since Brunetti's death. The police had come minutes after her call. Her statement had been taken, and psychological counseling offered. The house had been cordoned off and investigators crawled over every inch. Brunetti may have been a cop in disgrace, but he was one of the boys in blue nonetheless.
The killer had left no fingerprints, though, and no signs of himself. No spit, no hairs, nothing traceable. What DNA-rich material had been found were traced back to Brunetti's ex-family. Days passed and interest waned. The case will remain open indefinitely, but general speculation has it that an angry victim of Brunetti's alleged corruption finally struck back.
Due to the damage down to the face, the funeral was closed-casket. Afterwards the body was lowered into the earth amidst a small gathering of mourners. Perhaps Eva had been among them. The widow had been, at least - or what would have been the widow, had she not left him three years ago.
Afterwards the ex-Mrs. Brunetti walked away without a word to Eva. It's a thankless job. By the end of the week she's on her next case, though, and her coworkers have forgotten her traumatic experience, and so the world grinds on.
It's unlikely she's forgotten, though. And if ever she went unarmed before, it's unlikely she ever does so now. It is human nature to fight death, or at least to die fighting: to not go quietly into that good night.
A week passes. Two.
Then she comes home one night to a dark apartment, which is odd, because she knows she set the autotimer to click the lights on at 6:20 pm every night. Perhaps her alarms are buzzing already. There's an un(growingly)familiar coat thrown over her coffee table, and now her alarms are jangling.
The door shuts behind her. She hadn't closed it. By the time she turns, there's a (gun!) - no, a computer printout held out for her, and behind it, burning black eyes under dark slashes of eyebrows.
He's in a clean white shirt. She can't see a gun.
The printout is NYTimesOnline on a case she's probably heard of. It's probably even a case someone she knows worked. A botched breaking and entering resulting in a quadruple homicide. The father, the mother, the child, and one of the policemen answering the call. The dead officer's partner stood in court and gave a stirring testimony, even unbuttoning his police dress blues to show the jury the bullet scars where two slugs had punctured a lung and narrowly missed his heart.
A family slaughtered. A cop shot down, another severely wounded. Four upstanding white citizens dead, and the defendant a Puerto Rican immigrant who had run the drugridden slums of his country in his reckless youth and had come to the States eight years ago to steal good American jobs and kill good American people. Just naturalized the past year - that ungrateful wretch.
This one didn't get off clean. Twenty-five minutes in deliberation returned a guilty verdict on all charges. The sentence was laid down harsh and the public rejoiced in the might and glory of the American justice system. And now, 8:22pm that same night, Santiago de Alvera holds the headline out and says,
"This man is innocent."
She probably did not want to hear that. And she probably does not want to hear this.
"What can you do for him?"
(eva)
Psychological counseling had been offered, and quietly declined. She had never before been involved in a crime scene, but it was not unusual among her colleagues. The following morning found them gathered around the coffee pot, jocularly exchanging stories of narrow escapes in what they no doubt thought was a comforting manner, while others quietly discussed Brunetti's crimes, the suspects he had helped to (wrong?) convict, the brutality this client or that client had endured at the man's hands. That was why such a high profile case had come to someone so young, of course: conflicts of interest. Too many attorneys in the regional office had faced Officer Brunetti from the other side, too much ill-feeling remained, there were too many appeals pending in too many cases where his testimony had cinched the prosecution's case. Conflicts of interest.
She no longer goes unarmed. One Beretta in her shoulder holster (the conceal-carry permit renewed), and another at the bottom of her briefcase. The slender cannister of mace in her handbag, the pepperspray attached to her ring of keys. It made every day longer. Five minutes here, ten minutes there, giving her weapons to the desk sergeant or the correctional officers, retrieved again fifteen minutes later, or an hour, accompanied by a knowing look from the official with which she was dealing.
"Ready to come over to the other side?" It was a joke, or so it was phrased, from the assistant prosecutor before arraignments that morning. Éva gave her colleague a mild look, but did not otherwise respond as she swept into the courtroom. Three arraignments in the morning, a hearing on a motion to quash evidence obtained through an illegal search, witness interviews, a long meeting with the investigator whose services she shared with three other attorneys regarding a routine drug charge that looked like it might turn into a capital case: the usual.
Evening. The stairs creak familiarly beneath her weight as she climbs to the second floor flat, keys jingling and ready in her hand. She's thinking about this afternoon, or tomorrow, while dreamily contemplating the evening's menu. She has a nice salmon steak, and there are microgreens in the crisper, a bottle of wine opened two days before with a few glasses still left.
The apartment is dark. Two thoughts occur, simultaneously: the bulb is burned out/someone is here.
She does not have much time to finish either, but already she is reaching for her weapon, caution evident in the sudden stiffening of her spine, tension manifest in the quickening of pulse.
The door swings shut behind her and she turns around, startled, hand curled beneath her jacket, fingertips brushing the hard molded plastic that forms the butt of the Beretta stashed in her shoulder holster.
The apartment is dark, but the diffuse glow of ambient city lights spill in through the large bank of windows facing the street. She had considered, once, asking her landlords to put bars on the windows, but she is no criminal, and has no wish to live in prison. Perhaps that thought occurs again as her eyes skim the paper thrust out for her attention, or as her eyes flicker up from the headline, over the frame of her glasses, to glance across his face. Perhaps it floats to the surface again, flotsam on the suddenly stormy sea of her mind. The windows, the bars. Motion detectors. Some monitored security system as like to go off when a stray cat sleeps the afternoon away on her balcony as when an intruder comes.
Her hand emerges from beneath the curve of her dark gray jacket slowly, fingers splaying wide to show that she is not drawing the weapon. No sudden moves: she knows police procedure. The dark gaze lingers another moment on his face, wide and watchful, wary as an animal startled in its den, then drops back to the sheet, narrowing in focus.
After a calming breath or two (willing her hands not to shake, fingers curled up tightly against the palms), several rapid beats of her still-racing heart, she reaches out and plucks the paper from his grasp. He can see the faint twithes of her eyes as she skims the story with only the amber glow of streetlamps for illumination.
Abruptly, mid-sentence in her perusal of the third paragraph, when she has the wherewithal again to speak, "You can't do this," murmured, quiet.
(santiago)
Behind the 8.5"x11" sheet of printed paper, Santiago tilts his head a half-inch to the side. Black eyes pin her and he asks, very simply, very casually, "Why not?"
As if it were perfectly normal to break into someone's home in the night and wait for her to come home with the lights all out.
As if it were perfectly normal to show her an article and claim the man wrongly convicted, and expect her to do something about it.
As if it were perfectly normal to know for a fact that the man was wrongly convicted.
As if all of this, any of this, was perfectly normal at all.
Perhaps she reaches for a light to fill the time, or to see him better, because monsters are less frightening in the day. He stops her with a look, a single shake of his head. "Leave it off." His eyes are sensitive, sharp even after the desert sunrise that destroyed them for a time, and better acquainted to the night.
(eva)
She reaches for a light to fill the time, to fill the empty spaces between her racing heartbeats, to compose what she will say to him, and to banish the reaching shadows from the room.
It is not unreasonable to fear the night.
Her arm is suspended half-way to the switchplate when he speaks. She looks up sharply, over the thick frame of her glasses and stares. Her eyes are dark in the shadows, pupils dilated, hungry for the traces of ambient light. It is an awkward moment, for the gesture is not easily disguised, cannot be folded into another movement, as if that were not what she meant to do, as if he were giving her orders, and she were obeying them.
Three shallow heartbeats, no more, pass in silence before she allows her arm to fall to the side, before she steps back and away from him, navigating the dark-shadowed room by memory as much by sight. The briefcase drops to the floor with a dull thud. Normally, her shoes - formal well-heeled pumps, which pinch her feet abominably after a long day - would follow.
It is her home, after all. Éva should feel safe here.
Éva does not feel safe here, and the shoes do not come off. Nudging aside the briefcase with the toe of her pumps, she turns. There is more space between them, now, though hardly enough for comfort. She remembers, now and then, how quickly and surely he moved. She remembers how he moved like lightning, three eyes staring bitter and black at her, one the barrel of his weapon so close she could smell the stink of gunpowder, the oil with which he had cleaned it not long ago.
Her face is a smear of pale color against the shadows, framed by the suggestion of dark hair swept back from her features. There is not enough light to define the expression, not enough light for shadows to form and pool beneath the arrogant wings of her cheekbone, nor to cast the (perhaps too long) patrician nose in relief. Her eyes are dark pools of shadow, but he can feel the weight of her brief regard once more, skimming across his face before settling on a point just beyond his shoulder. He can feel the weight of her regard. Like a wolf, he can see in the night.
The shadows filter through the rooms and hall, illuminating them uncertainly. High ceilings. Wide windows, four or six-paned, the glass wavy with age. The slip-shod suggestions that someone lives here: running shoes left tumbled by the sofa, a blanket strewn across the back, a single empty wineglass on the coffee table beside a dog-eared copy of the latest Better Homes and Gardens magazine, open to the feature on succulent spring suppers, domestic.
"Because this is my home." Her words are clearly and precisely enunciated, with just enough quiet force to project them, some subdued thrum of insistence or emotion beneath (that lying lawyer's tongue). But quiet, quiet now, and subdued. "Because I have done nothing to warrant such treatment." The dark eyes focus - fleetingly - on his face before finding that perfect point behind him once more. "Breaking and entering is a crime."
(santiago)
"A crime," he repeats, "of human law. And human law is oftentimes wrong."
The printout snaps softly in his hand, and then he folds it carefully away. Her few steps away are recorded in his pitiless black eyes, but at the least he doesn't follow her.
"The law of the Nation requires that a kin harbor a Garou, and aid him however she might. You are not my tribe, true, but my encroachment will be brief, and I ask you only one thing.
"What can you do for this man?"
(eva)
Dark eyes slide slantwise from the wall back to him, and linger there for a shadowed moment. She nods, then, a quick and dutiful gesture, as she crosses her arms, which had been hanging uselessly at her side.
"You understand that there's little to be done," she says quietly, after a moment, swallowing once before she continues. "Very little. I can review the trial transcript. If there's been some sort of misconduct by the judge or controversial evidence - procured through an illegal search, for example - " still quiet, her voice, but with a level calm gained as she discusses her area of expertise. " - then his current counsel will address that on appeal. In capital cases, defendants are allowed extensive appeals. If his lawyer missed something glaring, he could perhaps get a new trial based on incompetent or inadequate representation, though that would be difficult since his attorney is my direct supervisor.
"The only other possibility is new, exculpatory evidence. There are two possibilities there. If the prosecution and/or police failed to produce such evidence - they have a duty to do so - then he could get a new trial. The second possibility is brand new evidence, somehow unavailable at the time of trial, some new fact not previously in evidence."
She falls silent a moment, drawing in a slow, steadying breath. "You understand that all of these chances are remote in the extreme, don't you?"
(santiago)
As though in echo of her, his arms cross slowly over his chest. The white shirt pulls tighter across his sides, and try as she might, she will not discern the outline of a pistol holstered at his ribs. Perhaps it is behind him, pushed into his belt. Perhaps he doesn't carry one at all.
"I understand that many unlikely things come to pass every day." An angling of his head; a small smile, though his eyes remain impenetrably black. "You of all people should know that as well as I, kinwoman."
A pause. He leans his head back and exhales slowly toward the ceiling. His attention comes back upon her by degrees. In the depths of her mind, she can hear the heavy clank of steel as those eyes lock on hers.
"What would you need to exonerate this man, this Mister..." the paper withdrawn, the name glanced at, "Jesus Delasquez? Tell me exactly."
(eva)
She watches him, sharp, wary attention blunted by the long reach of the shadows. His shirt pulls taut across his flank, and there is nothing but the outline of his body. She exhales, but does not relax at the revelation. Perhaps the pistol is behind him. Perhaps he does not carry one at all. Creature that he is, he needs no such weapons to defend himself, in the end. Within his changing blood, all the defense he needs.
(What do you need? Tell me exactly.)
Except for her fingers, now playing with the uncertain weave of her linen suit (spring. outside, the world - crushed as it is - is awakening. The grass is green, and flowering weeds run rampant - violets, rich and blue, bloom to be crushed beneath the foot. Forsythia smears bright yellow across the gray landscape, and sap begins to flow again in the dormant trees.) she does not move.
"Give me a week - " breaking the silence that falls again after his question. It last no more than a few seconds, but in the darkness feels stretched and strained. The darkness unnerves her, and so too his hard, ungiving gaze, but perhaps the strange, brief smile unnerves her most of all. "I will review the trial transcript and the record and then I can tell you - " pause, the starched suggestion of a smile on her mouth, some mild, distant humor, perhaps, or perhaps merely a byproduct of her internal tension. " - exactly - " her voice is dry. Humor, then. " - what I need to exonerate Mr. Delasquez."
(santiago)
For a second - just a fleeting, single second - his black eyes drop from hers and move over her mouth, inspecting her slight, starched smile as though it were something alien and unknown. Then he holds her eyes again as he takes two, three, four panther-smooth steps toward her, close enough to see his own reflection in her glasses, in her doubtlessly widening eyes.
"Perfect," he says, and like that, just like that, blinks out of existence. The air doesn't even shimmer, but does suck rapidly in to fill the vacuum he leaves so suddenly behind.
The apartment is dark still, but it's hers again.
blindly.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Wed 10:27PM EST
The jury had been out three weeks. Three weeks sequested, away from their ordinary lives, living on take-out in hotel rooms, forbidden television news and newspapers, forbidden internet. The jury had been out three weeks, and her hectic schedule - delayed two weeks by the trial - had swallowed her once more. She was startled when her assistant paged her (arraignments: drug dealers, wife beaters, the scum of the earth, the usual) that the jury had come back, that Judge Hadley was summoning them all back to court. She had stolen a brief look at the jurors - twelve, and three alternates - as they took their seats in the imposing jury box and leaned over to Robert Brunetti, her hand light on the disgraced officer's arm.
"They aren't looking over here," she murmured, quiet, glasses sliding low on her patrician nose. "That's not a good sign."
He knew that. He knew it, because he had been through the process three times before. Two mistrials, one hung jury, and every time the state refiled. Every time the state refiled, because it wasn't double jeopardy in either case. Until they got a verdict, they could and would continue to file. They were out for blood.
They were out for blood, as the public had been out for blood, as the public still was, to a certain extent. Later, as they exited the courtroom with the late afternoon sunlight slanting into their eyes, they encountered a phalanx of reporters and protesters screaming epithets and holding aloft signs.
Later still - after a call from the prosecutor, after reviewing the trial transcripts - she called Lieutenant Brunetti and asked if she could stop by on the way home.
There were no protesters outside his home. It was too remote, hidden by a line of high hedges in which the former police officer had once taken pride, too far from the bright lights of the television cameras. With her briefcase in one hand and a bag of hoagies in the other, she exited her car and picked her way over the muddy walkway, into the house.
It was a quiet discussion. Arrogant as Brunetti had been five years ago, when he was first arrested (before she had even graduated law school) he was, by now, a broken man. His wife and children were gone, his savings long spent on high-priced attorneys (the first three trials) he could no longer afford. He had forestalled losing the house only by filing for bankruptcy, and soon, it seemed, that would be gone too. "Three counts extortion, one count felony murder," she noted, her face carefully blank. " - you should consider the prosecutor's offer. Did you see the news? According to the jurors they interviewed, there was only one hold-out against conviction."
Later, still, "...if there's someone you can give up - " broached lightly, broached quietly, the subject of turning on his fellow officers, whom he had protected for the five long years for reasons she could not begin to fathom. " - we could get better terms."
She was perched, half-sitting, on the dining room table. The chairs were long gone, as was the television, and all but one easy chair in the living room, a hoagie in hand. That's when disaster struck, and her well-constructed sandwich fell apart, all over her pristine white blouse. She swallowed the mild curse that rose to her mouth and rose quickly, putting the sandwich aside.
"Bathroom?" she asked. He pointed the way. "Be back in five. See if I can keep the stain from setting." And then she retreated to the bathroom, footsteps echoing on the hardwood floors.
Santiago
Wed 10:47PM EST
It's night out and the small window in the bathroom is a dark square, but never as it would be in a desert. The lights of the city diffuse off the clouds above. If she stood on tiptoe, she could see the lights of the street as well, of neighboring buildings, of human civilization.
The tap running drowns out most sounds outside the closed bathroom door which, undoubtedly, was locked. She worked with some of the worst of humanity. A girl would learn to protect herself. Along with her wallet, receipts, notes and tampons, her purse undoubtedly carried some small weapons. Mace spray, perhaps. A gun, even, that she knew how to use. Whose trigger she's pulled. Whose bark she's heard.
A gun--
BLAM.
The sound of a gun, not hers, from outside. Close. Living room. Up until now she had not heard anything else from without that was worth noting, except perhaps a single shout that might've been the TV, or a neighbor, but the report of a pistol was unmistakable. Now she has a choice. With the bathroom door closed, the sound of water is soft, but still noticeable. The hallway is lit, but the light strip under the door is still visible. Should she turn off the light? Turn off the water? Emerge? Stay in there?
From outside: silence.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Wed 11:03PM EST
She worked with the worst of humanity, and a girl learned to protect herself. The retort of the weapon finds her leaning over the sink, scrubbing the mustard stain from her blouse. Her blazer is off, cast over the empty towel rack. The impression of her reflection: startled eyes, widen, a furtive glance to the side, the black slash of the shoulder holster harsh against the fine white fabric of the blouse.
The window, small, but perhaps not too small to squeeze through. The window, it's her first choice (though not her first thought, which is: he killed himself. While I was standing here, he killed himself. She knew what bullets could do to bodies, particularly when well-aimed. She had seen the pictures. She saw the pictures almost daily.) and quietly she sidles between the sink and the toilet, stretching to press the heel of her hand against the lip of the pane.
It doesn't budge. Another glance - quick, fleeting, upward - confirms that it is not locked. Another hard thrust upward cements the conviction that it has been painted shut.
She has choices, it would seem: to stay, to hide, to turn off the water, to hope that the intruder is already gone, to curl up in the shower and pray that he is not (they are not?) thorough, and do not push back the nylon curtain to find her cowering in the tub. She has choices, but there really is no choice. If she is caught in here, there is no escape. Her aim must be straight and sure and true, the first time. There is no place to run.
She has choices. There is no choice. And so she eases out of her professional heels (her feet were aching anyone) and feels the tiled floor cool beneath her stockinged feet. Reaches for her weapon and holds it steady her in right hand. Eases open the door, praying that it does not creek.
And emerges, safety clicked off, Berette held close and ready, to creep down the hall, watching the shadows against the wall.
Santiago
Wed 11:17PM EST
There is an unfamiliar jacket thrown over the dining table.
The hall is well-lit. She'd turned on the lights on her way into the bathroom. It's a myth that crimes only happen at night, but something about darkness does seem to encourage the darker sides of human nature. Maybe it echoes back to prehistory, when night was the time of predators and death and blood. Either way old habits die hard, and she is fortunate because the hall light dims her own shadow, cast by the bathroom light behind her.
The shadows from the living room are faint; the lights are many. She sees the outline of a man outside, only one, though he casts multiple shadows from multiple light sources across multiple walls. The living shadow moves smoothly and easily, and she has seen that grace of movement somewhere before.
She sees, also, the outline of Brunetti, who had once been a man, but is now a carcass. The scent of blood is unmistakeable. Where the former officer's head should be is an unrecognizeable silhouette.
Click. Click. The moving shadow is circling the room, and his incarnation diminish one by one. The remaining ones, however, gain greater clarity and sharper relief, as though for every shadow lost, the rest grow stronger. He's turning out the lights, moving from the ones by the window toward the light switch in hall, turning off each light as he comes. Thorough and methodical. Calm.
The outline of what might be, must be a gun in his hand is perfectly steady. Slowly, quantum by quantum, light by light, black night comes into this home.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Wed 11:26PM EST
The many shadows - gray and gray - a kaleidescope of movement against the wall. Many shadows, becoming, gradually, one. She watches the shadow's movement against wall, stills when it retreats or looms too close, and steals herself with a quiet breath.
She is not, by nature, stealthy, but her feet are whisper quiet on the hardwood floor, and though she does not know which boards creak and which will carry her weight without protest, she is slender and confident in her step.
Almost every light in the greatroom is extinguished. Many shadows become few, and soon will become one. Methodical as the man (that much she can determine, from the shape of the shadow against the wall) appears, soon he is coming for the hall. Only the bathroom lays behind her, a narrow deathtrap, with no chance of escape.
And so she steadies herself, one breath drawn quiet and slow, and steps forward, Berette trained steadily before her, and not with the blind hope of someone unfamiliar with the weapon.
"Freeze."
Santiago
Wed 11:38PM EST
And she steps out, using the shadows to triangulate his position, the gun held at ready, braced the way she'd been taught - the way police officers hold their guns, arms extended but not locked, trigger finger on the trigger, off hand cupping the base. She barely needs to adjust her aim at all; where she guessed he would be is where he is, and the sights are lined up on his head even before her mind catches up to what she sees.
What she sees is this. Swarthy skin, black eyes, lean powerful torso bare to the waist except for a pair of leather shoulder holsters, one still loaded with the black butt of a gun, a Sig-Sauer 229 if she follows such things, the other empty, empty because
his gun.
is trained.
on her.
Not police-grip, this. One-handed, gun shoulder-height, the length of arm and length of gun melded as though they were one. He doesn't sight down the barrel because he, evidently, does not need to.
She had not seen him move. By the shadows she could've sworn his back was turned.
A tense moment. Then his nostrils widen briefly, as do the pupils in his dark dark eyes, and he clicks his tongue.
"A rather sticky situation, kinwoman." A cold, inflectionless, unaffected voice, unaccented but flowing. Behind the goatee his mouth does not smile, though his dark eyes pick over her as though cataloguing and evaluating: stance, balance, training, raw guts. "Are you police?"
Where she does not want to look, and will not look as long as there is a gun on her if they have taught her well, Brunetti's burly frame is spreadeagled on the couch as though driven back by some great force snapping his head into the wall. Where his head should be is a red-grey pulp, the sort of damage a fairly large-caliber hollow point at close range can cause. Behind where his head had been is a large dripping red splotch.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Wed 11:53PM EST
What she sees: a man who should not move like that, bare to the waist, his weapon trained on her as if he were the hero (villain) in a movie: one-handed and confident, easy as pie.
What he sees - should he look beyond the balance, the stance, the training, the raw guts, the breeding evident in the faint elevation of her chin, the set, perhaps, of her eyes - dark in the shadow - or the fine arrogant line of her nose is this: a woman of ordinary height, glossy dark hair pulled back and away from her face in a smooth sweep, two long locks falling forward across the curve of her ear, dark-framed glasses sliding down her nose, dressed in a fine white blouse, business-like except for the minor feminine touch of frills at the wrist, and a narrow skirt of dark gray, whose hem falls an inch about the knee.
Words fail. For a moment, words (her stock in trade. She had argued eloquently that afternoon three weeks ago, when she made her closing statement to the jury. The prosecution asks you to infer facts that will link their circumstantial evidence into an air-tight case. They ask you to do this because they do not have the evidence to establish those facts. They have presented you with a bowl, which is on closer inspection no more than a sieve. You are triers of fact. You should not entertain their speculations.) fail. Words fail, and - stalling, blank - she draws a steadying breath, wets her suddenly dry lips as prelude to speech.
"I'm his lawyer." She does not look away. She does not lower her sites. She has been trained well. "Who are you?"
Santiago
Thu 12:03AM EST
"No liar, at least."
No satisfaction. No inflection. Simply fact stated. His hard black eyes blink once and then his trigger finger moves, relenting to the side, though the gun stays train where it is. And if she thinks she can squeeze off a round before his finger finds its way back (though she cannot possibly think that. she's not stupid.), she's dead wrong. Words spoken with ritualistic weight:
"I am the Hand of Tyr.
"I am the fist of Forseti.
"I am the might of Fenris."
Then for the first time, a note of emotion, irritation, creeping into his voice, "I'm Santiago Eyes-of-Flint, and I'm putting to rights what you and your damn devious tongue have helped make wrong. Lawyers. Lower your gun, kinwoman."
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 12:14AM EST
"Not until you lower yours."
Her voice sounds hollow in her ears. This is no turn of the century courtroom, to augment her dulcet tones. This is no jailhouse interrogation room.
She cannot think she could get off a round, or two. She cannot possibly think that she could squeeze off a round and run - and outrun - him. She cannot - she does not - think that she would make it to her car, fumbling for her keys, praying the engine turned over - and succeed in some desperate gamble for escape.
She knows better.
A minute stretches infinite - she can feel it peeling apart, layer by layer, like an onion - before she speaks again. Her voice sounds hollow in her ears, but the words are clear and to the point. Before she speaks, she draws in a breath so that she will not run out mid-statement, softening the question, stumbling through it, like an amateur. "Are you going to kill me, too?"
Oddly enough (just the facts, ma'am), it does not sound like a plea. Shadow Lords do not plead.
Santiago
Thu 12:28AM EST
He ignores his gun, her gun, perhaps even her question. Whatever irritation, whatever emotion, whatever hint of humanity, and thus the possibility of mercy, vanishes again - sealed into the tomb of the judge's objectivity. Impassivity. Impartiality.
Thoth of the golden scales.
Christ the Judge.
Forseti the god of law and balance.
The question comes suddenly, without warning, without preamble, with much direction and purpose. "Do you defend the guilty, knowing they are guilty?" And though he does not have to add it on, "Don't lie to me."
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 12:40AM EST
She does not stare at him, but she watches him with hard eyes, unflinching. She does not stare at him, for she never stares, precisely, for she always holds something back, for she never fully commits to folly.
After all, there may always be a surprise witness. She needs an escape route.
The temptation is there - to glance to the side, to look upon the ruin of a man who was living and breathing moments before, whom she left to contemplate his eventual fate (Maybe we can get you in a minimum security prison. Maybe we can keep you out of general population.) and who is no longer a man, but a corpse. The conviction of a watcher: to witness. The conviction of a judge: to see.
The temptation remains, some physical pull on her reluctant attention, some drag sideways, some shift in the rules of gravity, but he is holding a weapon, and he can fire more quickly than she.
"Yes." Quiet and clear and utterly forthright. "I defend the guilty when I know they are guilty."
She could, perhaps, say more in her defense. It is part of the process. Everyone receives a fair trial. The rules of evidence, the oppositional process of justice is meant to ensure not so much that we punish the guilty, as that we do not railroad the innocent. She could say more, that she has sworn oaths and would not tolerate perjury, that her clients have no one else, that there are extenuating circumstances behind every crime. (There are extenuating circumstances behind every crime.)
She could say more, but she does not. She merely exhales, one long cool breath, not the only sign of her tension, but perhaps the only sign of her fear. Strange, passing strange, the shape it takes: (I haven't...) the choices one suddenly regrets, the paths one wishes one had taken.
Santiago
Thu 12:44AM EST
She could say more, and she doesn't.
But he asks for it.
"Why."
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 12:54AM EST
"Because - "
(...it is part of the process. Everyone receives a fair trial. The rules of evidence, the oppositional process of justice is meant to ensure not so much that we punish the guilty, as that we do not railroad the innocent. Because she has sworn oaths and would not tolerate perjury, because her clients have no one else, because there are extenuating circumstances behind every crime.)
Swallow. hard. Blink back the moisture rising unbidden to your eyes. Steady - just - steady - " - it's my job." - dropped like a stone into dark and bitter waters.
Words, dropped like a stone.
"Because I am a counselor. Because I am not a judge." - when death comes for you - " Because I am not a jury." - do not look away - "Because I am not -
(Do not look away.)
" - an executioner."
Santiago
Thu 01:00AM EST
There is no indication given that he had heard her at all. No inclination of chin, no nod of head, no quiet sound of assent or negation, no blink of eye.
"Do you believe that you could create injustice by blindly doing your job?"
Nothing but another question, and all the while the gun doesn't waver, though he has been holding it straight out for some moments now. The living room is swathed in shadow, all of which seem to fly into the center of his pupils and take fire there. Outside, the night is dark and cold and quiet.
No neighbors around. No one to call the police.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 01:17AM EST
"Who the hell do you think - " Something snaps, open and then closed. The words are uttered in the speeded rush of a single exhaled breath, tumbling over one anouther until they seem to merge into a flood of sound that stops almost as soon as it started. Her eyes do not leave his face, but she can feel her hands shaking - shaking - from excess adrenalin that swims through her bloodstream, urging movement, urging motion, urging fucking anything but this calm, emotionless barrage of questions.
Fight or flight. Fight or fucking flight, baby.
"I don't blindly do my job." She snaps back a moment later, some sudden flash of temper bubbling up through the cloud of fear. "I don't blindly do anything. Everyone is entitled to a vigorous defense. If I decide that someone is guilty and therefore does not deserve my best work, I am no better - " She is speaking with passion, now, and with some shreds of the convictions to which she still clings. She is speaking with passion, but perhaps if he heard the news reports of the trial - if he saw it on Court TV - he saw her speaking with similar conviction, arguing the innocence of a man he knows is guilty.
"Do you think justice is merely a matter of walking up to someone and pulling a trigger? If the evidence is there to convict someone, if the evidence has been gathered professionally, without violating someone's civil rights, without beating a confession out of them or bending the meaning of a search warrant or good cause, if the prosecution does not bungle the case, then the accused will be convicted. If I - if I - "
Short-circuit. Her mind is moving faster than her tongue will allow. In court, she does not have a gun to her head. In court, it is not her life on the line.
"The purpose of the process - the purpose of the process of investigation and trial, the purpose of civil rights and clear limitations on state power is not to punish the guilty, but to protect the citizens from a tyrannical state, to protect the accused from lynch mobs, mob rule.
"Justice? Injustice? I don't know what those are. Those are abstract concepts with a thousand definitions. But I know this much: if I didn't do my job every damn time, there would be a helluva lot more injustice in the world. Maybe you'd be happy, though. If you can kill ten guilty men, who cares if you kill one innocent? Or even two? As long as your ratio is above fifty percent, you're golden."
Santiago
Thu 01:32AM EST
Impassively he listens - evaluates - judges - until the last four sentences. Then, and only then, does the firm hold he keeps over his emotion and his temper slip a devastating notch.
Two.
Five.
Like a natural disaster, he bears down on her. Three smooth fast steps forward, toward her, at her, and then the muzzle of the gun is an inch from her face and three dark holes stare her in the eye: one the gun, two the pupils of his eyes. Two pounds on a five pound trigger. Behind the goatee, his mouth twitches with repressed anger.
A moment passes. His eyes are coal-black, fire-hot.
Then, without any indication that he might do it until he does it, he lowers the gun and puts it away. The gesture is smooth; the motion a lesson in artistic economy. Samurai sheathe their swords without a glance. He sheathes his gun without a glance.
His eyes never leave hers. Some primal urge for dominance. Some primitive drive for power.
"No innocent has ever died at the hands of this Judge of Fenris, kinwoman," scorpion-venomous. When he speaks again he has found some measure of control, "And no innocent ever will."
A distinct pop! of the holster buttoning closed over the gun. Then the rush of air, warm and cool at once, as he brushes past to retrieve his jacket from the table.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 01:48AM EST
The rush of air, warm and cool at once, as he brushes past her.
Somehow - (she does not remember it leaving her hand, she does not remember the crack as the barrel hit hardwood planks, she only remembers his sudden rush forward. She does not remember his two natural eyes, no matter how hot they burned. She only remembers the third eye, trained streadily upon her, an inch from her face) somehow, his weapon is in his holster.
Her own is on the floor.
Though she has learned never to turn her back on a potential threat (keep the wall behind you, look for escape routes, remember your surroundings, any tool is a weapon if you hold it right) she does not turn to watch him as he brushes past.
Instead, she looks (at last) - numbly and blindly at the body cooling on the bed, glances down at her own weapon on the floor, filters through the messages from her senses, that she is still alive, somehow. Above the scent of blood, something scorched, ozone, or perhaps she is merely imagining it. Her skin prickles, clammy with a sudden shocked sweat, her unnecessary glasses slide another three millimeters down her nose, her feet still ache from the long day in heels.
She is still alive, and he is retrieving his jacket, and she does not move. She came this close to death, and his is retrieving his jacket, and she says nothing.
She stares at her hands. The body. Her open, empty hands. She utters not a word.
Santiago
Thu 01:58AM EST
From behind her comes the dry sussurant hiss of jacket liner over bare skin, over leather holster-straps, over cold metal and hard polymer. Pop, pop, pop. Buttons.
Brunetti (or the meat that was once Brunetti) has not moved a bit. This is not surprising, but perhaps she is surprised nonetheless. Those who have never seen the dead body of a known acquaintance can never quite believe it, and then somehow - silently, moving like a liquid shadow - Brunetti's executioner is beside her again, jacketed now, his weapons of judgment hidden. In his hand is her gun, held out to her butt-first. One might read kindness in this gesture, but there is no kindness in his black eyes.
"Take your weapon, kinwoman." Authoritative and quiet. "Call the police. Tell them what happened. You went to the bathroom. You heard shots. You hid until you heard the door shut. You don't know how I got in or where I went.
"You never saw me."
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 02:08AM EST
It's startling, how quickly she looks toward him then, as if she were a sleepwalker, awakening. It's startling, the sudden, sidelong glance, eyes made dark in by the long shadows in the room (cast by the single remaining light, beside the door, cast by the bare bulb illuminating the hall) rising above the frame of her glasses. One long look: startling and perceptive, though not piercing, as her hand opens and fits itself to the butt of the gun.
She entertains no notions of sudden heroism. (She entertains no such notions, for she does not believe in hereos.) Her mind does not leap, even momentarily, to the fantasies of vengeance and triumph: turning him in, hunting him down, bringing him before the bench he so despises, called out before a jury of his peers. She entertains no such notions because his peers are not her peers, and she is too well-trained for that.
"Of course." She has to will her arm not to shake, but, rather surprisingly, her voice does not quaver. "I hid. I never saw you."
Santiago
Thu 02:10AM EST
The slightest indication that he has heard her, this time: the slightest inclination of his goateed chin. One last question, "What is your name?"
It's a dangerous one to answer.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 02:16AM EST
Dangerous, perhaps, though for all that, she hesitates only a moment, long enough to look away. Long enough to look away to the far wall - still intact, pristine - against which their long shadows loom. Her mouth moves, as if tasting the weight of her name on her tongue, and then gives shape to the words.
"Éva Jozsefa Illésházy."
Santiago
Thu 02:26AM EST
"Éva Jozsefa Illésházy," repeated carefully, neutrally, "I can find you now. Anywhere, anytime. Remember that the next time you open your mouth to lie for a guilty man."
Without another word, he crosses the room to the door. Every light in the living room is off. He is lit by the just-past-full moon, silver upon dark clothing, swarthy skin. He throws the door open and slams it deliberately shut.
"Now I'm gone. Call the police."
He has other means of exiting this place. He has a mirrored surface, dark eyes, and the concentration to lock one upon the other and part the fibers between worlds. Whether she makes for the phone or not, his image becomes translucent, transparent, nothing.
Wed 10:27PM EST
The jury had been out three weeks. Three weeks sequested, away from their ordinary lives, living on take-out in hotel rooms, forbidden television news and newspapers, forbidden internet. The jury had been out three weeks, and her hectic schedule - delayed two weeks by the trial - had swallowed her once more. She was startled when her assistant paged her (arraignments: drug dealers, wife beaters, the scum of the earth, the usual) that the jury had come back, that Judge Hadley was summoning them all back to court. She had stolen a brief look at the jurors - twelve, and three alternates - as they took their seats in the imposing jury box and leaned over to Robert Brunetti, her hand light on the disgraced officer's arm.
"They aren't looking over here," she murmured, quiet, glasses sliding low on her patrician nose. "That's not a good sign."
He knew that. He knew it, because he had been through the process three times before. Two mistrials, one hung jury, and every time the state refiled. Every time the state refiled, because it wasn't double jeopardy in either case. Until they got a verdict, they could and would continue to file. They were out for blood.
They were out for blood, as the public had been out for blood, as the public still was, to a certain extent. Later, as they exited the courtroom with the late afternoon sunlight slanting into their eyes, they encountered a phalanx of reporters and protesters screaming epithets and holding aloft signs.
Later still - after a call from the prosecutor, after reviewing the trial transcripts - she called Lieutenant Brunetti and asked if she could stop by on the way home.
There were no protesters outside his home. It was too remote, hidden by a line of high hedges in which the former police officer had once taken pride, too far from the bright lights of the television cameras. With her briefcase in one hand and a bag of hoagies in the other, she exited her car and picked her way over the muddy walkway, into the house.
It was a quiet discussion. Arrogant as Brunetti had been five years ago, when he was first arrested (before she had even graduated law school) he was, by now, a broken man. His wife and children were gone, his savings long spent on high-priced attorneys (the first three trials) he could no longer afford. He had forestalled losing the house only by filing for bankruptcy, and soon, it seemed, that would be gone too. "Three counts extortion, one count felony murder," she noted, her face carefully blank. " - you should consider the prosecutor's offer. Did you see the news? According to the jurors they interviewed, there was only one hold-out against conviction."
Later, still, "...if there's someone you can give up - " broached lightly, broached quietly, the subject of turning on his fellow officers, whom he had protected for the five long years for reasons she could not begin to fathom. " - we could get better terms."
She was perched, half-sitting, on the dining room table. The chairs were long gone, as was the television, and all but one easy chair in the living room, a hoagie in hand. That's when disaster struck, and her well-constructed sandwich fell apart, all over her pristine white blouse. She swallowed the mild curse that rose to her mouth and rose quickly, putting the sandwich aside.
"Bathroom?" she asked. He pointed the way. "Be back in five. See if I can keep the stain from setting." And then she retreated to the bathroom, footsteps echoing on the hardwood floors.
Santiago
Wed 10:47PM EST
It's night out and the small window in the bathroom is a dark square, but never as it would be in a desert. The lights of the city diffuse off the clouds above. If she stood on tiptoe, she could see the lights of the street as well, of neighboring buildings, of human civilization.
The tap running drowns out most sounds outside the closed bathroom door which, undoubtedly, was locked. She worked with some of the worst of humanity. A girl would learn to protect herself. Along with her wallet, receipts, notes and tampons, her purse undoubtedly carried some small weapons. Mace spray, perhaps. A gun, even, that she knew how to use. Whose trigger she's pulled. Whose bark she's heard.
A gun--
BLAM.
The sound of a gun, not hers, from outside. Close. Living room. Up until now she had not heard anything else from without that was worth noting, except perhaps a single shout that might've been the TV, or a neighbor, but the report of a pistol was unmistakable. Now she has a choice. With the bathroom door closed, the sound of water is soft, but still noticeable. The hallway is lit, but the light strip under the door is still visible. Should she turn off the light? Turn off the water? Emerge? Stay in there?
From outside: silence.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Wed 11:03PM EST
She worked with the worst of humanity, and a girl learned to protect herself. The retort of the weapon finds her leaning over the sink, scrubbing the mustard stain from her blouse. Her blazer is off, cast over the empty towel rack. The impression of her reflection: startled eyes, widen, a furtive glance to the side, the black slash of the shoulder holster harsh against the fine white fabric of the blouse.
The window, small, but perhaps not too small to squeeze through. The window, it's her first choice (though not her first thought, which is: he killed himself. While I was standing here, he killed himself. She knew what bullets could do to bodies, particularly when well-aimed. She had seen the pictures. She saw the pictures almost daily.) and quietly she sidles between the sink and the toilet, stretching to press the heel of her hand against the lip of the pane.
It doesn't budge. Another glance - quick, fleeting, upward - confirms that it is not locked. Another hard thrust upward cements the conviction that it has been painted shut.
She has choices, it would seem: to stay, to hide, to turn off the water, to hope that the intruder is already gone, to curl up in the shower and pray that he is not (they are not?) thorough, and do not push back the nylon curtain to find her cowering in the tub. She has choices, but there really is no choice. If she is caught in here, there is no escape. Her aim must be straight and sure and true, the first time. There is no place to run.
She has choices. There is no choice. And so she eases out of her professional heels (her feet were aching anyone) and feels the tiled floor cool beneath her stockinged feet. Reaches for her weapon and holds it steady her in right hand. Eases open the door, praying that it does not creek.
And emerges, safety clicked off, Berette held close and ready, to creep down the hall, watching the shadows against the wall.
Santiago
Wed 11:17PM EST
There is an unfamiliar jacket thrown over the dining table.
The hall is well-lit. She'd turned on the lights on her way into the bathroom. It's a myth that crimes only happen at night, but something about darkness does seem to encourage the darker sides of human nature. Maybe it echoes back to prehistory, when night was the time of predators and death and blood. Either way old habits die hard, and she is fortunate because the hall light dims her own shadow, cast by the bathroom light behind her.
The shadows from the living room are faint; the lights are many. She sees the outline of a man outside, only one, though he casts multiple shadows from multiple light sources across multiple walls. The living shadow moves smoothly and easily, and she has seen that grace of movement somewhere before.
She sees, also, the outline of Brunetti, who had once been a man, but is now a carcass. The scent of blood is unmistakeable. Where the former officer's head should be is an unrecognizeable silhouette.
Click. Click. The moving shadow is circling the room, and his incarnation diminish one by one. The remaining ones, however, gain greater clarity and sharper relief, as though for every shadow lost, the rest grow stronger. He's turning out the lights, moving from the ones by the window toward the light switch in hall, turning off each light as he comes. Thorough and methodical. Calm.
The outline of what might be, must be a gun in his hand is perfectly steady. Slowly, quantum by quantum, light by light, black night comes into this home.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Wed 11:26PM EST
The many shadows - gray and gray - a kaleidescope of movement against the wall. Many shadows, becoming, gradually, one. She watches the shadow's movement against wall, stills when it retreats or looms too close, and steals herself with a quiet breath.
She is not, by nature, stealthy, but her feet are whisper quiet on the hardwood floor, and though she does not know which boards creak and which will carry her weight without protest, she is slender and confident in her step.
Almost every light in the greatroom is extinguished. Many shadows become few, and soon will become one. Methodical as the man (that much she can determine, from the shape of the shadow against the wall) appears, soon he is coming for the hall. Only the bathroom lays behind her, a narrow deathtrap, with no chance of escape.
And so she steadies herself, one breath drawn quiet and slow, and steps forward, Berette trained steadily before her, and not with the blind hope of someone unfamiliar with the weapon.
"Freeze."
Santiago
Wed 11:38PM EST
And she steps out, using the shadows to triangulate his position, the gun held at ready, braced the way she'd been taught - the way police officers hold their guns, arms extended but not locked, trigger finger on the trigger, off hand cupping the base. She barely needs to adjust her aim at all; where she guessed he would be is where he is, and the sights are lined up on his head even before her mind catches up to what she sees.
What she sees is this. Swarthy skin, black eyes, lean powerful torso bare to the waist except for a pair of leather shoulder holsters, one still loaded with the black butt of a gun, a Sig-Sauer 229 if she follows such things, the other empty, empty because
his gun.
is trained.
on her.
Not police-grip, this. One-handed, gun shoulder-height, the length of arm and length of gun melded as though they were one. He doesn't sight down the barrel because he, evidently, does not need to.
She had not seen him move. By the shadows she could've sworn his back was turned.
A tense moment. Then his nostrils widen briefly, as do the pupils in his dark dark eyes, and he clicks his tongue.
"A rather sticky situation, kinwoman." A cold, inflectionless, unaffected voice, unaccented but flowing. Behind the goatee his mouth does not smile, though his dark eyes pick over her as though cataloguing and evaluating: stance, balance, training, raw guts. "Are you police?"
Where she does not want to look, and will not look as long as there is a gun on her if they have taught her well, Brunetti's burly frame is spreadeagled on the couch as though driven back by some great force snapping his head into the wall. Where his head should be is a red-grey pulp, the sort of damage a fairly large-caliber hollow point at close range can cause. Behind where his head had been is a large dripping red splotch.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Wed 11:53PM EST
What she sees: a man who should not move like that, bare to the waist, his weapon trained on her as if he were the hero (villain) in a movie: one-handed and confident, easy as pie.
What he sees - should he look beyond the balance, the stance, the training, the raw guts, the breeding evident in the faint elevation of her chin, the set, perhaps, of her eyes - dark in the shadow - or the fine arrogant line of her nose is this: a woman of ordinary height, glossy dark hair pulled back and away from her face in a smooth sweep, two long locks falling forward across the curve of her ear, dark-framed glasses sliding down her nose, dressed in a fine white blouse, business-like except for the minor feminine touch of frills at the wrist, and a narrow skirt of dark gray, whose hem falls an inch about the knee.
Words fail. For a moment, words (her stock in trade. She had argued eloquently that afternoon three weeks ago, when she made her closing statement to the jury. The prosecution asks you to infer facts that will link their circumstantial evidence into an air-tight case. They ask you to do this because they do not have the evidence to establish those facts. They have presented you with a bowl, which is on closer inspection no more than a sieve. You are triers of fact. You should not entertain their speculations.) fail. Words fail, and - stalling, blank - she draws a steadying breath, wets her suddenly dry lips as prelude to speech.
"I'm his lawyer." She does not look away. She does not lower her sites. She has been trained well. "Who are you?"
Santiago
Thu 12:03AM EST
"No liar, at least."
No satisfaction. No inflection. Simply fact stated. His hard black eyes blink once and then his trigger finger moves, relenting to the side, though the gun stays train where it is. And if she thinks she can squeeze off a round before his finger finds its way back (though she cannot possibly think that. she's not stupid.), she's dead wrong. Words spoken with ritualistic weight:
"I am the Hand of Tyr.
"I am the fist of Forseti.
"I am the might of Fenris."
Then for the first time, a note of emotion, irritation, creeping into his voice, "I'm Santiago Eyes-of-Flint, and I'm putting to rights what you and your damn devious tongue have helped make wrong. Lawyers. Lower your gun, kinwoman."
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 12:14AM EST
"Not until you lower yours."
Her voice sounds hollow in her ears. This is no turn of the century courtroom, to augment her dulcet tones. This is no jailhouse interrogation room.
She cannot think she could get off a round, or two. She cannot possibly think that she could squeeze off a round and run - and outrun - him. She cannot - she does not - think that she would make it to her car, fumbling for her keys, praying the engine turned over - and succeed in some desperate gamble for escape.
She knows better.
A minute stretches infinite - she can feel it peeling apart, layer by layer, like an onion - before she speaks again. Her voice sounds hollow in her ears, but the words are clear and to the point. Before she speaks, she draws in a breath so that she will not run out mid-statement, softening the question, stumbling through it, like an amateur. "Are you going to kill me, too?"
Oddly enough (just the facts, ma'am), it does not sound like a plea. Shadow Lords do not plead.
Santiago
Thu 12:28AM EST
He ignores his gun, her gun, perhaps even her question. Whatever irritation, whatever emotion, whatever hint of humanity, and thus the possibility of mercy, vanishes again - sealed into the tomb of the judge's objectivity. Impassivity. Impartiality.
Thoth of the golden scales.
Christ the Judge.
Forseti the god of law and balance.
The question comes suddenly, without warning, without preamble, with much direction and purpose. "Do you defend the guilty, knowing they are guilty?" And though he does not have to add it on, "Don't lie to me."
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 12:40AM EST
She does not stare at him, but she watches him with hard eyes, unflinching. She does not stare at him, for she never stares, precisely, for she always holds something back, for she never fully commits to folly.
After all, there may always be a surprise witness. She needs an escape route.
The temptation is there - to glance to the side, to look upon the ruin of a man who was living and breathing moments before, whom she left to contemplate his eventual fate (Maybe we can get you in a minimum security prison. Maybe we can keep you out of general population.) and who is no longer a man, but a corpse. The conviction of a watcher: to witness. The conviction of a judge: to see.
The temptation remains, some physical pull on her reluctant attention, some drag sideways, some shift in the rules of gravity, but he is holding a weapon, and he can fire more quickly than she.
"Yes." Quiet and clear and utterly forthright. "I defend the guilty when I know they are guilty."
She could, perhaps, say more in her defense. It is part of the process. Everyone receives a fair trial. The rules of evidence, the oppositional process of justice is meant to ensure not so much that we punish the guilty, as that we do not railroad the innocent. She could say more, that she has sworn oaths and would not tolerate perjury, that her clients have no one else, that there are extenuating circumstances behind every crime. (There are extenuating circumstances behind every crime.)
She could say more, but she does not. She merely exhales, one long cool breath, not the only sign of her tension, but perhaps the only sign of her fear. Strange, passing strange, the shape it takes: (I haven't...) the choices one suddenly regrets, the paths one wishes one had taken.
Santiago
Thu 12:44AM EST
She could say more, and she doesn't.
But he asks for it.
"Why."
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 12:54AM EST
"Because - "
(...it is part of the process. Everyone receives a fair trial. The rules of evidence, the oppositional process of justice is meant to ensure not so much that we punish the guilty, as that we do not railroad the innocent. Because she has sworn oaths and would not tolerate perjury, because her clients have no one else, because there are extenuating circumstances behind every crime.)
Swallow. hard. Blink back the moisture rising unbidden to your eyes. Steady - just - steady - " - it's my job." - dropped like a stone into dark and bitter waters.
Words, dropped like a stone.
"Because I am a counselor. Because I am not a judge." - when death comes for you - " Because I am not a jury." - do not look away - "Because I am not -
(Do not look away.)
" - an executioner."
Santiago
Thu 01:00AM EST
There is no indication given that he had heard her at all. No inclination of chin, no nod of head, no quiet sound of assent or negation, no blink of eye.
"Do you believe that you could create injustice by blindly doing your job?"
Nothing but another question, and all the while the gun doesn't waver, though he has been holding it straight out for some moments now. The living room is swathed in shadow, all of which seem to fly into the center of his pupils and take fire there. Outside, the night is dark and cold and quiet.
No neighbors around. No one to call the police.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 01:17AM EST
"Who the hell do you think - " Something snaps, open and then closed. The words are uttered in the speeded rush of a single exhaled breath, tumbling over one anouther until they seem to merge into a flood of sound that stops almost as soon as it started. Her eyes do not leave his face, but she can feel her hands shaking - shaking - from excess adrenalin that swims through her bloodstream, urging movement, urging motion, urging fucking anything but this calm, emotionless barrage of questions.
Fight or flight. Fight or fucking flight, baby.
"I don't blindly do my job." She snaps back a moment later, some sudden flash of temper bubbling up through the cloud of fear. "I don't blindly do anything. Everyone is entitled to a vigorous defense. If I decide that someone is guilty and therefore does not deserve my best work, I am no better - " She is speaking with passion, now, and with some shreds of the convictions to which she still clings. She is speaking with passion, but perhaps if he heard the news reports of the trial - if he saw it on Court TV - he saw her speaking with similar conviction, arguing the innocence of a man he knows is guilty.
"Do you think justice is merely a matter of walking up to someone and pulling a trigger? If the evidence is there to convict someone, if the evidence has been gathered professionally, without violating someone's civil rights, without beating a confession out of them or bending the meaning of a search warrant or good cause, if the prosecution does not bungle the case, then the accused will be convicted. If I - if I - "
Short-circuit. Her mind is moving faster than her tongue will allow. In court, she does not have a gun to her head. In court, it is not her life on the line.
"The purpose of the process - the purpose of the process of investigation and trial, the purpose of civil rights and clear limitations on state power is not to punish the guilty, but to protect the citizens from a tyrannical state, to protect the accused from lynch mobs, mob rule.
"Justice? Injustice? I don't know what those are. Those are abstract concepts with a thousand definitions. But I know this much: if I didn't do my job every damn time, there would be a helluva lot more injustice in the world. Maybe you'd be happy, though. If you can kill ten guilty men, who cares if you kill one innocent? Or even two? As long as your ratio is above fifty percent, you're golden."
Santiago
Thu 01:32AM EST
Impassively he listens - evaluates - judges - until the last four sentences. Then, and only then, does the firm hold he keeps over his emotion and his temper slip a devastating notch.
Two.
Five.
Like a natural disaster, he bears down on her. Three smooth fast steps forward, toward her, at her, and then the muzzle of the gun is an inch from her face and three dark holes stare her in the eye: one the gun, two the pupils of his eyes. Two pounds on a five pound trigger. Behind the goatee, his mouth twitches with repressed anger.
A moment passes. His eyes are coal-black, fire-hot.
Then, without any indication that he might do it until he does it, he lowers the gun and puts it away. The gesture is smooth; the motion a lesson in artistic economy. Samurai sheathe their swords without a glance. He sheathes his gun without a glance.
His eyes never leave hers. Some primal urge for dominance. Some primitive drive for power.
"No innocent has ever died at the hands of this Judge of Fenris, kinwoman," scorpion-venomous. When he speaks again he has found some measure of control, "And no innocent ever will."
A distinct pop! of the holster buttoning closed over the gun. Then the rush of air, warm and cool at once, as he brushes past to retrieve his jacket from the table.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 01:48AM EST
The rush of air, warm and cool at once, as he brushes past her.
Somehow - (she does not remember it leaving her hand, she does not remember the crack as the barrel hit hardwood planks, she only remembers his sudden rush forward. She does not remember his two natural eyes, no matter how hot they burned. She only remembers the third eye, trained streadily upon her, an inch from her face) somehow, his weapon is in his holster.
Her own is on the floor.
Though she has learned never to turn her back on a potential threat (keep the wall behind you, look for escape routes, remember your surroundings, any tool is a weapon if you hold it right) she does not turn to watch him as he brushes past.
Instead, she looks (at last) - numbly and blindly at the body cooling on the bed, glances down at her own weapon on the floor, filters through the messages from her senses, that she is still alive, somehow. Above the scent of blood, something scorched, ozone, or perhaps she is merely imagining it. Her skin prickles, clammy with a sudden shocked sweat, her unnecessary glasses slide another three millimeters down her nose, her feet still ache from the long day in heels.
She is still alive, and he is retrieving his jacket, and she does not move. She came this close to death, and his is retrieving his jacket, and she says nothing.
She stares at her hands. The body. Her open, empty hands. She utters not a word.
Santiago
Thu 01:58AM EST
From behind her comes the dry sussurant hiss of jacket liner over bare skin, over leather holster-straps, over cold metal and hard polymer. Pop, pop, pop. Buttons.
Brunetti (or the meat that was once Brunetti) has not moved a bit. This is not surprising, but perhaps she is surprised nonetheless. Those who have never seen the dead body of a known acquaintance can never quite believe it, and then somehow - silently, moving like a liquid shadow - Brunetti's executioner is beside her again, jacketed now, his weapons of judgment hidden. In his hand is her gun, held out to her butt-first. One might read kindness in this gesture, but there is no kindness in his black eyes.
"Take your weapon, kinwoman." Authoritative and quiet. "Call the police. Tell them what happened. You went to the bathroom. You heard shots. You hid until you heard the door shut. You don't know how I got in or where I went.
"You never saw me."
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 02:08AM EST
It's startling, how quickly she looks toward him then, as if she were a sleepwalker, awakening. It's startling, the sudden, sidelong glance, eyes made dark in by the long shadows in the room (cast by the single remaining light, beside the door, cast by the bare bulb illuminating the hall) rising above the frame of her glasses. One long look: startling and perceptive, though not piercing, as her hand opens and fits itself to the butt of the gun.
She entertains no notions of sudden heroism. (She entertains no such notions, for she does not believe in hereos.) Her mind does not leap, even momentarily, to the fantasies of vengeance and triumph: turning him in, hunting him down, bringing him before the bench he so despises, called out before a jury of his peers. She entertains no such notions because his peers are not her peers, and she is too well-trained for that.
"Of course." She has to will her arm not to shake, but, rather surprisingly, her voice does not quaver. "I hid. I never saw you."
Santiago
Thu 02:10AM EST
The slightest indication that he has heard her, this time: the slightest inclination of his goateed chin. One last question, "What is your name?"
It's a dangerous one to answer.
Éva Jozsefa Illésházy
Thu 02:16AM EST
Dangerous, perhaps, though for all that, she hesitates only a moment, long enough to look away. Long enough to look away to the far wall - still intact, pristine - against which their long shadows loom. Her mouth moves, as if tasting the weight of her name on her tongue, and then gives shape to the words.
"Éva Jozsefa Illésházy."
Santiago
Thu 02:26AM EST
"Éva Jozsefa Illésházy," repeated carefully, neutrally, "I can find you now. Anywhere, anytime. Remember that the next time you open your mouth to lie for a guilty man."
Without another word, he crosses the room to the door. Every light in the living room is off. He is lit by the just-past-full moon, silver upon dark clothing, swarthy skin. He throws the door open and slams it deliberately shut.
"Now I'm gone. Call the police."
He has other means of exiting this place. He has a mirrored surface, dark eyes, and the concentration to lock one upon the other and part the fibers between worlds. Whether she makes for the phone or not, his image becomes translucent, transparent, nothing.
john kingsley.
6am on a monday morning. Papers delivered. Alarm clocks going off. Mothers dressing their children. Businessmen and women going to work. Commuters crowding the highways. One man in one cabin in one neck of the woods reading the newspaper over a mug of steaming liquid: not coffee but hot chocolate. The morning sun slants through a window and fuzzes off worn jeans, glints off skin that has seen a sun far harsher. No shirt, no shoes. Twinned shoulder holsters slung over bare ribs.
Glock-22 on the left side.
SIG-SAUER P229 on the right.
Sitting a roughhewn wood table, flipping through the A section to the B. Forget the international, the slipping trade crisis in Asia, the burgeoning storm of war. Forget the national, the teenager found brainwashed, the Dixie Chicks boycotted for speaking out against Bush.
Find the local.
Kingsley Found Not Guilty
By Victor Cromwell
CAMDEN (Reuters) - At 3:20 yesterday, a mixed jury found John Kingsley, a Camden native, not guilty of the double murder of Daniel Beaumont and Georgiana Kingsley. Mr. Beaumont's family was not available for comment. Nor was Charles Kingsley, 18 year old son of the deceased Mrs. Kingsley...
Dark eyebrows rise just a notch. He sets the paper down and leans forward, scrutinizing the grainy picture of Kingsley walking free out of the courthouse. He looks about forty, forty-five, fit, with sandy brown hair and a wide grin. Kingsley's teeth are slightly crooked.
A breath exhaled, stirring the goatee. He sips coffee and then runs the tips of his fingers over the printed name, murmuring it to himself.
John Kingsley.
John Kingsley.
Interesting.
He sets the coffee mug down and gets up. The chair rasps over wooden floor. Stretching, swarthy skin sliding over lean sprinter's muscles gliding over long-boned frame, he pads off to the other room, shuts the door.
Behind him, the mug blots out Kingsley's face entirely.
***
6pm on a monday night. Garage doors opening. Mothers feeding their children. Businessmen and women returning home from work. Commuters clogging the highways. One man in one cabin in one neck of the woods opens the bedroom door, comes out yawning, doing up his jeans. The guns slap lightly against his ribs. He finds a jacket and pulls it on, the lining slick against his skin. A quick dinner is fixed, a sandwich and a mug of hot coffee. He flips on the television in the small, sparse living room, adjusts the antennae and watches a while, now and then taking small notes on a pad of paper.
The 6 o' clock news finishes. A sitcom comes on. He clicks the television off and sits back, rubs his goateed chin, closes his eyes for a moment as though drowsing. Then he leans forward and pulls a small carton out from under the coffee table. Long fingers sift through the contents and removes one smooth, small stone. It's milky white, rather pretty. He also removes a ball of yarn.
Swiftly and expertly, he ties a string of yarn around the stone. Now he has a Questing Stone.
The last bite of sandwich is finished. The last of the coffee is downed. He holds the Questing Stone out and speaks a name.
"John Kingsley."
The Stone begins to pull.
***
2am and the bars are closed. 2:23am and John Kingsley, reeking of alcohol and a prostitute's cheap perfume, bids farewell to his lawyer and his buddies and staggers up the stairs of his condo. They drive away. He gets his mail from the box and stands at the door and fumbles for his keys, chuckling to himself under his breath as he remembers the loud coarse laugh of the prostitute and the strength of her thighs.
The door opens. He whistles as he steps in and closes it behind him, making sure to lock the deadbolt. His lawyer warned him that the Beaumonts might want vengeance of their own, so he should be careful for a while. John Kingsley intended to listen, but really, what could they do? He was found not guilty in the blind eyes of justice herself. And damn, it was good to be free. Good to be off the hook, and those dumb fucks in the jury, in the world at large, won't know him from Adam in a week--
He turns from the door and comes two steps toward the kitchen table where he'll drop his mail off and frowns as he sees an unfamiliar jacket thrown over the table. He wheels and sees in a flashing instant the stranger in his home silhouetted against the window. He gets an impression of broad shoulders and lean, hard muscles, of dark guns saddled in leather holsters under his arms. As the stranger moves forward fast and sure, light glints off his face and John Kingsley sees the angled high cheekbones, the broad open brow, the dark Latin eyes under dark Latin eyebrows.
John Kingsley puts up his fists and, panting hard the way they taught him in college boxing years ago, unleashes a roundhouse that the stranger ducks neatly under, still coming on. John Kingsley feels a twinge of panic and jabs for the face and the stranger catches his fist like the third baseman catches the ball, stopping it dead, and behind his neat goatee the stranger's mouth doesn't even twitch.
The stranger shakes his head once, beratingly.
Then John Kingsley's on the floor. A terrific blow rings in his right ear and stars wheel before his eyes. He hadn't seen it coming. When the stars stop swarming he can see a pair of hiking boots pacing around him, slow and deliberate, unhurried.
"Wh-what the--" John Kingsley swallows his fear and remembers how it felt to kill that cheating bitch and her gigolo, "who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing--"
Another blow leaves him curled upon himself, writhing on the floor. Strong hands grab him by the bicep and roll him forcibly on his back, then drag him off the ground and heave him across the room to land sprawled on the couch. Fluid as a panther, the stranger drags a chair up and sits straddling the back, forearms crossed over the back, fire flashing in his eyes.
John Kingsley tries again, gasping now, blood trickling from one ear: "Who the fuck are you? What the fuck--"
"John Kingsley," and he is interrupted again by the stranger whose voice is calm, free of accent but not free of the rhythm and music of the latin-based languages, "you stand accused of the murder of your wife, Georgiana Kingsley, and her lover, Daniel Beaumont. What say you?"
"I-I-I never--"
Another blow. He sees this one coming, but barely: the open palm blurring forward, leaving an afterimage behind itself, striking the same wounded ear with such force that John Kingsley curls fetal on the couch. It's some time before he realizes he can hear the stranger, still seated, still composed, repeating the question through his other ear.
"...her lover, Daniel Beaumont. What say you? Don't lie, now. I can tell."
"I didn't, I--" John Kingsley looks at the flinty dark eyes and changes his mind suddenly. "She was a cheating whore," he screams, anger giving him courage. Impassive, the stranger listens. "A cunt, a no-good lying bitch. I slaved twenty years of my life for her to get her her fucking house her car her nice fucking clothes and her french perfumes and she goes out and sells herself like a whore to some kid from Atlantic City who could play the fucking piano and what was I to do, stand here like some fucking gape-eyed idiot while he fucked her in my bed? I was too kind, I shoulda cut his throat and made her watch, I shoulda--"
"Your wife's trangressions, and those of her lover, will be judged by Forseti, god of justice and friend to Great Fenris. Their crimes are not yours to judge. Their punishments are not yours to command."
"Who the fuck are you?"
"In taking their punishment upon yourself you have broken the natural order of things. Yes or no?"
"Who the FUCK are you? What the fuck are you talking about? I want my lawyer--"
Another blow, a lashing-out of his fist, a delving of fingers into John Kingsley's mouth, a brutal pull down, dislocating the jaw and ripping the corners of the mouth. John Kingsley is reduced to the open vowels of a scream.
The dark eyes remain impassive. "John Kingsley, you have already condemned yourself. Your lawyer's lying tongue will do you no good now. You face a judge of Great Fenris, heir to Forseti himself, and you cannot hope to deceive me. You can die slowly, forcing me to rip each confession from you, or you can cooperate and know peace."
The guns gleam dully.
"Now I ask you again: you have broken the natural order of things. Yes or no?"
John Kingsley weeps.
"Yes or no?"
John Kingsley nods.
There is no satisfaction, no triumph in the dark eyes. There is no sign the stranger has even heard him. "You have judged when you have not the right. Yes or no?"
John Kingsley nods.
"You have murdered when you have not the right. Yes or no?"
John Kingsley nods.
"You have taken prey from the maw of Great Fenris himself. Yes or no?"
John Kingsley nods.
The stranger's lean muscles seem to relax a notch. He lowers his head, those implacable, impassive eyes shutting at last. John Kingsley sobs silently, not daring to hope.
A minute passes.
Two.
The stranger raises his head and speaks quietly but firmly. "John Kingsley, you have been found guilty of your crimes: of sinning against the natural order of things. Of insult to Forseti and his chosen, who alone have the right to judge. Of insult to Gaia and her warriors, who alone have the right to choose who lives and who dies. Of insult to Great Fenris and his children, who alone have the right to punish those who transgress against him.
"Your atonement for these crimes is death, sentence to be carried through immediately. Die bravely, and perhaps Great Fenris will spare your spirit."
Glock-22 removed, the black barrel pointed at John Kingsley's face. Behind it, the black eyes burn, emotionless, intense, fanatical. John Kingsley is shaking now. The scent of urine is acrid in the air.
"John Kingsley, have you any last words?"
"aye hohn, aye aah a hohn--"
"You should have remembered your son before you killed his mother," says the stranger, and pulls the trigger.
***
3:07am and he pulls the bathroom door shut behind him. The condo stinks of blood and brains and urine and gunpowder. He uses hollow-points, and the bullet is as distorted inside John Kingsley's skull as John Kingsley's skull itself - split open like a melon. The bullet casing was carefully picked up off the floor and taken with him, and the ground, the table, the couch, every surface he contacted thoroughly vacuumed. He takes the bag with him as well.
He does not wear gloves, but nor does he worry about fingerprints. He burned them off with silver a long, long time ago, when first he chose to walk upon the lonely harsh road of the Hand.
The neighbors are calling the police. His car is parked half a mile away. He looks into the bathroom mirror, looks himself in the face, meets his own dark gaze. His eyes as blank as those of blind Justice.
Conscience, pity, remorse, mercy: such were the sacrifices he made to sate the anger of Great Fenris.
3:09am and Santiago Eyes-Like-Flint, Forseti of the Hand of Tyr, Cliath Son of Fenris, fades across the barrier between worlds.
Glock-22 on the left side.
SIG-SAUER P229 on the right.
Sitting a roughhewn wood table, flipping through the A section to the B. Forget the international, the slipping trade crisis in Asia, the burgeoning storm of war. Forget the national, the teenager found brainwashed, the Dixie Chicks boycotted for speaking out against Bush.
Find the local.
Kingsley Found Not Guilty
By Victor Cromwell
CAMDEN (Reuters) - At 3:20 yesterday, a mixed jury found John Kingsley, a Camden native, not guilty of the double murder of Daniel Beaumont and Georgiana Kingsley. Mr. Beaumont's family was not available for comment. Nor was Charles Kingsley, 18 year old son of the deceased Mrs. Kingsley...
Dark eyebrows rise just a notch. He sets the paper down and leans forward, scrutinizing the grainy picture of Kingsley walking free out of the courthouse. He looks about forty, forty-five, fit, with sandy brown hair and a wide grin. Kingsley's teeth are slightly crooked.
A breath exhaled, stirring the goatee. He sips coffee and then runs the tips of his fingers over the printed name, murmuring it to himself.
John Kingsley.
John Kingsley.
Interesting.
He sets the coffee mug down and gets up. The chair rasps over wooden floor. Stretching, swarthy skin sliding over lean sprinter's muscles gliding over long-boned frame, he pads off to the other room, shuts the door.
Behind him, the mug blots out Kingsley's face entirely.
***
6pm on a monday night. Garage doors opening. Mothers feeding their children. Businessmen and women returning home from work. Commuters clogging the highways. One man in one cabin in one neck of the woods opens the bedroom door, comes out yawning, doing up his jeans. The guns slap lightly against his ribs. He finds a jacket and pulls it on, the lining slick against his skin. A quick dinner is fixed, a sandwich and a mug of hot coffee. He flips on the television in the small, sparse living room, adjusts the antennae and watches a while, now and then taking small notes on a pad of paper.
The 6 o' clock news finishes. A sitcom comes on. He clicks the television off and sits back, rubs his goateed chin, closes his eyes for a moment as though drowsing. Then he leans forward and pulls a small carton out from under the coffee table. Long fingers sift through the contents and removes one smooth, small stone. It's milky white, rather pretty. He also removes a ball of yarn.
Swiftly and expertly, he ties a string of yarn around the stone. Now he has a Questing Stone.
The last bite of sandwich is finished. The last of the coffee is downed. He holds the Questing Stone out and speaks a name.
"John Kingsley."
The Stone begins to pull.
***
2am and the bars are closed. 2:23am and John Kingsley, reeking of alcohol and a prostitute's cheap perfume, bids farewell to his lawyer and his buddies and staggers up the stairs of his condo. They drive away. He gets his mail from the box and stands at the door and fumbles for his keys, chuckling to himself under his breath as he remembers the loud coarse laugh of the prostitute and the strength of her thighs.
The door opens. He whistles as he steps in and closes it behind him, making sure to lock the deadbolt. His lawyer warned him that the Beaumonts might want vengeance of their own, so he should be careful for a while. John Kingsley intended to listen, but really, what could they do? He was found not guilty in the blind eyes of justice herself. And damn, it was good to be free. Good to be off the hook, and those dumb fucks in the jury, in the world at large, won't know him from Adam in a week--
He turns from the door and comes two steps toward the kitchen table where he'll drop his mail off and frowns as he sees an unfamiliar jacket thrown over the table. He wheels and sees in a flashing instant the stranger in his home silhouetted against the window. He gets an impression of broad shoulders and lean, hard muscles, of dark guns saddled in leather holsters under his arms. As the stranger moves forward fast and sure, light glints off his face and John Kingsley sees the angled high cheekbones, the broad open brow, the dark Latin eyes under dark Latin eyebrows.
John Kingsley puts up his fists and, panting hard the way they taught him in college boxing years ago, unleashes a roundhouse that the stranger ducks neatly under, still coming on. John Kingsley feels a twinge of panic and jabs for the face and the stranger catches his fist like the third baseman catches the ball, stopping it dead, and behind his neat goatee the stranger's mouth doesn't even twitch.
The stranger shakes his head once, beratingly.
Then John Kingsley's on the floor. A terrific blow rings in his right ear and stars wheel before his eyes. He hadn't seen it coming. When the stars stop swarming he can see a pair of hiking boots pacing around him, slow and deliberate, unhurried.
"Wh-what the--" John Kingsley swallows his fear and remembers how it felt to kill that cheating bitch and her gigolo, "who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing--"
Another blow leaves him curled upon himself, writhing on the floor. Strong hands grab him by the bicep and roll him forcibly on his back, then drag him off the ground and heave him across the room to land sprawled on the couch. Fluid as a panther, the stranger drags a chair up and sits straddling the back, forearms crossed over the back, fire flashing in his eyes.
John Kingsley tries again, gasping now, blood trickling from one ear: "Who the fuck are you? What the fuck--"
"John Kingsley," and he is interrupted again by the stranger whose voice is calm, free of accent but not free of the rhythm and music of the latin-based languages, "you stand accused of the murder of your wife, Georgiana Kingsley, and her lover, Daniel Beaumont. What say you?"
"I-I-I never--"
Another blow. He sees this one coming, but barely: the open palm blurring forward, leaving an afterimage behind itself, striking the same wounded ear with such force that John Kingsley curls fetal on the couch. It's some time before he realizes he can hear the stranger, still seated, still composed, repeating the question through his other ear.
"...her lover, Daniel Beaumont. What say you? Don't lie, now. I can tell."
"I didn't, I--" John Kingsley looks at the flinty dark eyes and changes his mind suddenly. "She was a cheating whore," he screams, anger giving him courage. Impassive, the stranger listens. "A cunt, a no-good lying bitch. I slaved twenty years of my life for her to get her her fucking house her car her nice fucking clothes and her french perfumes and she goes out and sells herself like a whore to some kid from Atlantic City who could play the fucking piano and what was I to do, stand here like some fucking gape-eyed idiot while he fucked her in my bed? I was too kind, I shoulda cut his throat and made her watch, I shoulda--"
"Your wife's trangressions, and those of her lover, will be judged by Forseti, god of justice and friend to Great Fenris. Their crimes are not yours to judge. Their punishments are not yours to command."
"Who the fuck are you?"
"In taking their punishment upon yourself you have broken the natural order of things. Yes or no?"
"Who the FUCK are you? What the fuck are you talking about? I want my lawyer--"
Another blow, a lashing-out of his fist, a delving of fingers into John Kingsley's mouth, a brutal pull down, dislocating the jaw and ripping the corners of the mouth. John Kingsley is reduced to the open vowels of a scream.
The dark eyes remain impassive. "John Kingsley, you have already condemned yourself. Your lawyer's lying tongue will do you no good now. You face a judge of Great Fenris, heir to Forseti himself, and you cannot hope to deceive me. You can die slowly, forcing me to rip each confession from you, or you can cooperate and know peace."
The guns gleam dully.
"Now I ask you again: you have broken the natural order of things. Yes or no?"
John Kingsley weeps.
"Yes or no?"
John Kingsley nods.
There is no satisfaction, no triumph in the dark eyes. There is no sign the stranger has even heard him. "You have judged when you have not the right. Yes or no?"
John Kingsley nods.
"You have murdered when you have not the right. Yes or no?"
John Kingsley nods.
"You have taken prey from the maw of Great Fenris himself. Yes or no?"
John Kingsley nods.
The stranger's lean muscles seem to relax a notch. He lowers his head, those implacable, impassive eyes shutting at last. John Kingsley sobs silently, not daring to hope.
A minute passes.
Two.
The stranger raises his head and speaks quietly but firmly. "John Kingsley, you have been found guilty of your crimes: of sinning against the natural order of things. Of insult to Forseti and his chosen, who alone have the right to judge. Of insult to Gaia and her warriors, who alone have the right to choose who lives and who dies. Of insult to Great Fenris and his children, who alone have the right to punish those who transgress against him.
"Your atonement for these crimes is death, sentence to be carried through immediately. Die bravely, and perhaps Great Fenris will spare your spirit."
Glock-22 removed, the black barrel pointed at John Kingsley's face. Behind it, the black eyes burn, emotionless, intense, fanatical. John Kingsley is shaking now. The scent of urine is acrid in the air.
"John Kingsley, have you any last words?"
"aye hohn, aye aah a hohn--"
"You should have remembered your son before you killed his mother," says the stranger, and pulls the trigger.
***
3:07am and he pulls the bathroom door shut behind him. The condo stinks of blood and brains and urine and gunpowder. He uses hollow-points, and the bullet is as distorted inside John Kingsley's skull as John Kingsley's skull itself - split open like a melon. The bullet casing was carefully picked up off the floor and taken with him, and the ground, the table, the couch, every surface he contacted thoroughly vacuumed. He takes the bag with him as well.
He does not wear gloves, but nor does he worry about fingerprints. He burned them off with silver a long, long time ago, when first he chose to walk upon the lonely harsh road of the Hand.
The neighbors are calling the police. His car is parked half a mile away. He looks into the bathroom mirror, looks himself in the face, meets his own dark gaze. His eyes as blank as those of blind Justice.
Conscience, pity, remorse, mercy: such were the sacrifices he made to sate the anger of Great Fenris.
3:09am and Santiago Eyes-Like-Flint, Forseti of the Hand of Tyr, Cliath Son of Fenris, fades across the barrier between worlds.
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