Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them.
Author's Note: This is the last of the STAR for BK pieces and I bid farewell to that endeavor while happily releasing this final epilogue into the wild. Again thanks to those who so kindly subscribed to the effort, and also thanks to my dear partners in crime--Cheri and Owl.
Epilogophilia: Did You See the One That Got Away?
In the midst of this episode, the judge and Mark visit the 'L.A. County Hall of Records' where they are given a brief introduction to the amazing power of computers. Rosie, in her file room lair, shows the guys that with a few keystrokes, 'Milton C. Hardcastle' could be made to disappear.
Unfortunately, she forgets to reverse the changes. In the original epilogue, Mark discovers, in mid-shower, that the now non-existent Hardcastle is no longer being allocated water, and a few moments later the electricity is out, too.
This episode first aired one week after the conclusion of 'The Homecoming' and a year and a half before 'She Ain't Deep but She Sure Runs Fast'.
Epilogue—by L.M. Lewis
He'd finished scrounging, with the help of a flashlight, and had found two candles and a lighter, all courtesy of Jennifer Ann, who'd been several girlfriends ago and the one who was very into candles.
"Whaddaya think," he studied the labels, squinting in the dim light, "vanilla, or strawberry?"
"I'm not hungry," the judge groused, chin in hand, sitting morosely on the sofa.
"You don't eat 'em." Mark strolled back in, keeping the beam directed down. "They're candles." He sniffed again and frowned. "I suppose you could eat them, if you were desperate. But things aren't desperate yet, just dark."
"You don't have any that just smell like candles, huh?"
"Nope," Mark replied. He set both on the table. He put the flashlight down, as well, then dug in his pocket for the lighter and thumbed it on. He lit the wicks, waited for a moment for the flames to steady, then pushed one of the candles gently toward Hardcastle's end of the table. "There," he said, "you get strawberry."
"Thanks," the judge sighed.
"And in the morning, we'll just go down to the hall of records, and you can have Rosie straighten it all out." Mark was smiling again. It might be dangerous, but less so than laughing.
"You think it'll be that easy?"
"Sure, look how easy it was to get rid of you."
Hardcastle nodded once but said nothing more. Mark sat down in the chair and pulled the other candle in close enough to contribute some light. He studied the older man a moment longer.
"Not that she actually did," he said. "Get rid of you, I mean." He shook his head slightly. "It's not that easy."
"I dunno. It's kinda scary when you think of it." Hardcastle's tone was pensive, and a little gloomy. "A couple of clicks and 'poof', we're gone. They did it to Eric Goodburn—"
"But he wanted to disappear. Besides, he was always a shady character, lived on the edge, no friends. That's all he was, just a name on a couple of lists. Get rid of those and he wasn't anybody at all." Mark sat back and crossed his legs, settling into his argument. "But you, you're a retired judge. You know everybody; you're somebody. Lots of friends, lots of important rulings."
He cocked his head, observing the obvious differences, and nodded once sharply.
"Friends, huh?" Despite the flickering light, Hardcastle's eyes had gone almost as flat as his voice. "Yeah," he drawled. "It's a funny thing," he added, in a tone that suggested nothing funny at all, "I think sometimes there's more people out there who'd rather see me dead, as not."
The reference was obvious. They hadn't been back all that long from Hardcastle's hometown, where four of his childhood friends had attempted to kill him. Mark took in a slow breath. He still wasn't in much of a mood to make light of that. He'd been afraid, and the memory of it was still tight in the pit of his stomach. But he hadn't even organized a response to the comment before the judge meandered on.
"Guess it came with the territory. On a good day ya gotta figure half the people I dealt with were angry over the results. Hell, some days it was more than that."
"Yeah," Mark gave that assessment a nod, "I suppose. It's a tough job, being a judge. Even when you're right, somebody's bound to be unhappy."
"'Unhappy', huh?" Hardcastle expression barely qualified as a smile. "Is that what you were?"
"You weren't right that time."
Mark had heard the words come out almost before he realized he was speaking them, certainly before he had a chance to consider them. He swallowed once. It was the honest truth, as he saw it, but he wondered why the hell they had to pick now to thrash it out again.
Then, just as suddenly, he realized that it was always there, under the surface—sometimes near the top, sometimes submerged deep in the cold, dark waters. He just hadn't seen it rising up this time, or he might have attached something heavy to it and pushed it right back under again.
From Hardcastle's side of the table came a solid silence. Maybe he didn't want to discuss it either. But after a moment more he uttered a grumbling grunt, and then, "Lots of guys hated me. I got letters sometimes. Mostly anonymous—from the smart ones, at least. Sometimes they'd send 'em here, kind of a little jab, you know, 'I know where you live', like it was some big secret. I gotta figure that was the tip of the iceberg, the ones that took the risk of writing."
"Letters?" Mark frowned. "You mean death threats?"
"Yeah," he nodded, "lots of creative stuff, though. Hardly anybody just said 'I'm gonna kill you', and then shut up."
Mark swallowed. He would almost have preferred their usual pointless discussion of California v. McCormick to this darker, more ominous road. He'd been down this one a few times, but never before in the judge's company.
"Guys talk," he finally said. Even that was a reluctant admission. It already sounded guilty in McCormick's ears. "It's just to let off steam. The judge who sent you up is the face on the system, but it's really the system that they're mad at."
"Yeah," Hardcastle grunted again. "But it's hard to send the system a letter—all caps, red ink."
"I wonder where Rosie'd file those?" Mark smiled thinly, feeling as if maybe they'd skirted the darkest part of the woods. "Hey," he frowned, "what did you do with them? You got a special file cabinet—asbestos-lined or something?"
He got a half-smile from the judge. "Nah, mostly passed them along to the police. Frank said he was going to cross-reference them some time under 'methods of death'." Hardcastle's smile had gone quizzical, and he added, with a note of curiosity that was almost resigned, "Did I get any from you?"
Mark blanched. "No." He froze, wanting to say more but suddenly thinking of all the things he had said, on nights even darker than this one. Buddy Denton had listened; hell, Teddy Hollins had, too. Honesty forced him back off of his indignation. "Guys say stuff," he said quietly. "It's talk, that's all."
He was staring down at the table top, at the candles burning brightly there, their own small pools of light in the middle of the darkness. He gradually became aware of the silence, and lifted his gaze again. Hardcastle was still smiling, a little absently though, as if he, too, was thinking about another time and place.
The judge must've realized he was being watched. He drew himself up a bit, and his smile twitched once. "Don't worry; I thought you were a punk kid—with a bad attitude, too. I just didn't have all that time to sit around and dwell in it, that's all.
"That bad?" Mark asked and then, after a moment, "So how come you picked me?" Then he shook his head wearily. "'Cause you thought I needed saving or something like that?"
There was no immediate response—none of the gruff jocularity that Mark would have expected. Instead, by the flickering light that was all the brighter for the darkness that surrounded them, the judge said, "I'll have to explain it to you sometime . . . when I figure it out myself."
Mark felt his mouth open, not that there were any words to come out, for once. It was more the effect of surprise. He closed it, and spared some attention to keeping it that way. This wasn't the moment for a smart remark.
"Okay," he finally said, when he gotten a grip on his startlement. It came out surprisingly calm and accepting. "I guess I can wait."