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.