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.