Judgement and Wrath

45

Rink and I made an unscheduled visit to the local FBI field office. We were in cuffs and treated like we were the ones responsible for slaughtering upward of two dozen people. But then Walter Hayes Conrad IV arrived and a few asses were metaphorically kicked. When we walked out of the FBI building it was with handshakes all round and congratulations on a job well done, even if the plaudits weren't reflected in the faces of the men doing the congratulating. Maybe the way in which I'd killed Dantalion had something to do with it.

Not that anyone lamented Jean-Paul St Pierre's passing. He was a psychopath with delusions of grandeur. He was responsible for murder from a very young age. He'd murdered his mother, an uncle and a school friend when he was only thirteen years old and had spent the next eight years incarcerated in a high-security hospital. At age twenty-one, he'd been released into an unsuspecting world. He had enrolled in a school for performing arts where he'd learned all about theatrical make-up and the assuming of other personas. Later he'd trained to be a stuntman and studied driving, guns and unarmed combat. He should have stuck to the fantasy world of movies. His training was all make-believe. All fake skills when it came to the very real, very serious world of a contract killer. He thought he was a professional, but he wasn't. He was simply crazy. But that was what had made him so dangerous.

Walter didn't hang around.

He stayed only long enough to remind me that his debt to me was cleared.

'Nothing like this can happen ever again. I can't keep on advocating murder, Hunter.'

'Won't ever come to that again,' I promised him. But we both knew our words were hollow.

Violence follows me around like stink on a mangy dog.

Anyway, my treatment of Dantalion wasn't murder. The fact I'd stopped a maniac who'd murdered dozens outweighed my 'drug-clouded' actions and I wouldn't be facing any charges.

Rink took a flight out of Miami International, headed across the country chasing the setting sun. I promised him that I'd follow in a day or so, as soon as I'd finished up here. I told him to give his mom a kiss for me.

'Kiss her yourself when you get there,' Rink told me. 'She isn't going anywhere. She's getting stronger all the time.'

I called Richard Dean.

We met at a diner a whole lot nicer than Shuggie's Shack. The food must have been good judging by the clatter of cutlery on plates. People talked and laughed with each other. Patsy Cline was playing on the jukebox.

It wasn't the kind of atmosphere I wanted, so I led him round the back into a service alley. The smell of garbage rotting in a dumpster was more conducive to setting the scene. It kind of fitted my mood.

I felt like smashing him in the face there and then. But I didn't. For all that Marianne had been an inconsequential pawn in his scheme, his daughter still loved him. I wasn't going to hurt her by hurting her father.

Plus, he was a pathetic man when all was said and done. Beating him wouldn't have proved anything.

'When we first met I told you I wasn't the man you were looking for,' I said to him. 'I told you I wasn't a hit man. But that's what you wanted.'

'I only wanted my daughter back,' he said, but his eyes told the lie.

'No, Dean. You wanted your son back. But you knew that couldn't happen. So you wanted the person you blamed for his death to die also. Sending me after your daughter was just an excuse. It was a way to get at Bradley Jorgenson.'

'Bradley Jorgenson killed my boy.'

'You're wrong.'

I explained to him how Bradley opposed the military contracts, how he was working hard to make amends for the mistakes made by his predecessors. I explained how Marianne had brought all this about. How ultimately Stephen's death had brought about the change. How he should be proud of all that his children had done. But my words fell on deaf ears.

He remained a bitter, twisted man who refused to see the truth.

'You lied to me, Dean.' I pulled out the photographs he'd falsely used to build his case against Bradley. Then I jammed them into his jacket. All but the one lifted from the police file. I pushed that under his nose. 'I don't know how you managed to get a hold of this — it doesn't really matter — but I want you to take a good look at it. This girl loves you, Dean. And you did that to her.'

His eyes clouded as he looked at the photograph. I thought he'd accepted that his anger had been misguided. Of all the people in the world, Marianne should have been the last one he should strike out at.

'She won't be coming home,' I told him. 'But it was never really about getting Marianne back. You didn't care what happened to her. All you cared about was that Bradley got hurt along the way.'

'How do you expect me to feel? She was in bed with the man who killed my son,' Dean said. 'Marianne betrayed Stephen's memory. She betrayed me.'

'No, Dean, you betrayed her. I sympathise with the loss of your son. You blamed the Jorgensons for that, but losing your daughter I don't sympathise with. That is all down to you.'

Dean blinked up at me, and I could see that his tears weren't of shame; they were too bitter for that.

'I paid you,' he said. 'You have to bring her back.'

Pulling an envelope from my pocket, I slapped it against his chest.

'It's all there. Every stinking cent of it.' When he didn't reach for it, I allowed the twenty thousand dollars to fall at his feet. 'Take that as notice of my resignation,' I said. 'Effective immediately.'

'You can't back out. You gave your word.' He set his jaw angrily. 'You have to finish what you started.'

'I just quit, Dean.'

'Suit yourself,' Dean hissed. He stooped quickly, grabbed the envelope and waved it in front of me. 'I'll send someone else?…'

Grasping him by his jacket, I pushed him up against the alley wall.

I stared into his eyes. 'A short time ago I killed a man who was trying to hurt Marianne. An old friend of mine told me he couldn't advocate murder. I promised him it wouldn't happen again. But, do you know something, Dean? I'm not sure I can keep that promise.'

Releasing him, I smoothed out his jacket. I fixed his tie. 'Let it go, Dean. Let it all go.'

Then I left him to consider what would happen if he raised a finger to Marianne again. Or to Bradley.

I was twenty grand down, but it didn't hurt too badly. While I'd been smoothing down Richard Dean's jacket I took payment in another kind.