"I am here to kill you, Roddy."
Anna Maru said those six words with as much restraint as she could muster when the bad man entered his hotel room. She had been sitting on the couch with the shades drawn, basking in the wonderful oblivion of darkness. It had been a while, too. She actually considered leaving for the evening when he walked through the door. Fortune smiled that afternoon, though good or bad was anyone's guess.
"Do you mind if I remove my coat first?" Roddy asked with a playful tone in his voice. If he feared her, he didn't show it. Anna believed he might have been high on cocaine at the time.
"Be my guest," Anna replied, gesturing towards the coat rack behind the now closing door with her Glock 18.
Rodman shrugged off his overcoat calmly and turned toward the coat rack. As he turned his back to hang the coat up, Anna noticed the pistol tucked down the back of his pants. Quickly, Anna stood, leveled her weapon at the back of the bad man's head, and cocked the bullet into the chamber.
"Hands up, asshole," Anna commanded, and Rodman obeyed. A smile played along his lips. "The gun. Lose it."
"Of course," Roddy replied, the smile widening into a grin.
Slowly, carefully, Roddy reached behind his back with his right arm, removed his gun, and set it gently on the floor. He turned slowly, looking into Anna's eyes for the first time. Almost repulsed by his gaze, Anna blinked and nodded her head. Roddy kicked the gun softly, causing it to skitter across the floor.
"Can I sit down? It's been a long day," Roddy asked, his hands still raised.
"Yeah, raping, murdering and thievery can really wear a guy out," Anna sneered, her aim not leaving Roddy's forehead. "Sit down if you must."
Roddy did so, slumping down on the LA-Z-BOY recliner. He reached for the pack of Marlboros on the coffee table, plucked one from the box, and brought it to his lips. He acted as if he were with an old friend, every bit as comfortable with her as she was not with him. Anna shook her head in quiet annoyance.
"Okay, we've established that you remember who I am," Anna said as she circled the chair, heading for the window. "Good. Most of your friends remembered me too, right before they met the wrath of God at the end of a gun barrell. You know why I'm here."
"I think you made that pretty obvious when I walked through the door," Roddy smirked. "The whole gun to the head and 'I'm here to kill you bit' sort of gave it away."
"Wrong, Roddy. I am here because you forced me here," Anna continued, opening the shades to the window. The orange and red lights of sunlight cast themselves inside the hotel room as Anna returned to Rodman's view. She hopped up on the coffee table and sat, Indian-style. You and your friends, you ruined what was the start of a beautiful life. How many others had you done this to? How many lives did you shatter just because you wanted to get your rocks off? Or wanted a few extra bucks?"
"Dunno…A few, maybe," Rodman grinned like a hyena. "Got a light?"
Anna removed her Zippo lighter from her jacket pocket and threw it at Roddy. It was then that she got a good look at the man who had invaded her nightmares for so long. The rapist was a slim man, with sunken eyes and stringy black hair. He wore a ratty and frayed pair of denim jeans, and his belt was unbuckled. His face was long, and his fingers bore cocaine tremors; making them twitch and jump like they had minds of their own.
"You, Rodman, are a disease. You and your dead friends, you were all plagues upon humanity, the nails in society's coffin. You destroyed the lives of whoever you came in contact with, everyone from the girl in a nightclub to a liquor storeowner who decides to defend his livelihood. Well no more, Rodman. Do you hear me?"
"Oh, for the love of Christ, woman. Spare me the melodrama," Rodman rolled his eyes. "If you've got a point, get to it or shoot me. Don't bore me with the speech that you've been rehearsing for the last two years."
"Actually, you interrupted me at the point where I was going to shoot you. I didn't really plan much of a speech."
"Well, my point was, why waste the words on someone who doesn't care? You and I are alike, you know. We both like to inflict pain. We get off on it."
"You made me this way," she replied angrily.
"No I didn't. You've been like this for years, I'm sure. I was the catalyst that got the ball rolling, yes, but I don't think it's fair to be blamed for your current state of mind," Roddy said, opening the mini-fridge beside his chair. He removed a bottle of Jack Daniel's and a glass from the top of the refrigerator, and poured it. He offered the bottle to Anna politely. She shook her head 'No.' He knew that she was not ready to kill him.
"I mean, is there any real hurry to kill me, KnightShade? That is what you prefer to be called, isn't it?"
"What you call me is of little difference to me. Call me a victim, for that is all that I was to you."
Roddy nodded with a yielding shrug. "Sure. Whatever. So what I mean is, wouldn't you like to draw out my death? It's a soundproof, private room and there are knives in the kitchenette area. Make me scream, beg for mercy? Why don't you take some pleasure in my death?"
"I'm really not interested in that. I've drawn out your death for the last two years. Let's just say that my patience has worn thin."
"So shoot me, and end it now," Rodman said as his smile dropped. He leaned forward into the gun, pressing the top of his head into the muzzle stamp.
Anna's finger tightened on the trigger, pushing the gun hard into Roddy's temple. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth…and then relaxed. She removed her finger from the trigger, and let her hand fall to her lap. She opened her eyes to find Rodman reclining in the chair again, a yellow-toothed grin etching his face. Anna was just not ready to kill him. She needed more. With a sigh, she reached forward and plucked the cigarette from the rapist's fingers. She took a drag off of it, and then returned her gaze upon him.
"Couldn't do it, huh? A shame," Roddy said softly, meaningfully. He grabbed the pack of cigarettes again. He took a sip from the glass of whiskey.
"No. There is more to this," Anna murmured disappointedly. She closed her eyes as her psychic ability pounded in her skull for a moment. It hurt for her to be there. "Something distant."
The rapist barked a laugh.
"Oh, there is more, sweetheart," he said between chortles. "You think that you have found, in me, the one who killed your child. You think that you can just pull a trigger and justice will be served. You're wrong."
"Are you trying to plead for your life by claiming that you didn't rape me and cause me to miscarry my first and so far only child? Perhaps stalling for time?"
"Don't flatter yourself, sweetheart," Roddy chuckled. "I would not plead with God Himself."
"What do you know of God?" Anna glared.
"The Villain is quite known to me."
"Villain?"
"I'll explain this, as it does tie in with what I was trying to tell you," Roddy said as he lit another cigarette.
"I'm listening."
"I was the first to rape you. I will admit that. Do you work out, by the way? Because…" Roddy drifted off at Anna's look. "Sorry. I admit that I also attempted to kill you. I was probably the one who ruptured the little bundle of joy too. But who am I? A man whose greatest pleasure was raping very small boys raised me. I tell you, it was not a pretty childhood. I never knew my mother, but I've heard that she was a crack-head prostitute that was murdered in the street by her pimp after keeping a few dollars for herself. My upbringing, sweetheart, was what made me what I am."
"Oh, I've heard that one before," Anna mused. "No one shall be responsible for their own actions, blame thy mother and father."
"If I may continue uninterrupted?" Roddy said. A nod from Anna. "Okay. My parents made me what I am. But who made them? I was a victim of my father's sexual abuse and brutality, who was in turn, a victim of his father's abuse. My mother was a victim of society, forced from her home by a mother who did not care, and ended up on the streets making money the only way she could. And then she was murdered. Victims. It's all about victims, don't you see? You're a victim of me, but it would be pointless to kill me. If you do, you make me a victim of your wrath, and the cycle begins again. It's all a perpetual cycle of victims…no end in sight. That, my friend, is human nature. So in this world of victims, KnightShade, who is to blame?"
The room went silent a moment. Anna soaked in this new information and frowned in annoyance. The bastard was actually right!
"Who made Hitler? Who made Stalin? Bin Laden? And who did those men kill in the name of?" Suddenly, Roddy sprang from his seat and pointed his trembling cigarette hand Anna, and quoted from the book of Job. "'Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of earth? Who hat laid the measures thereof, if though knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it?'"
"Ah," said Anna. "I see your game now. Unfortunately, blasphemy is not my department. It is you I have quarrel with. Not God."
"We are but his children, my dear."
"I see this," Anna said, rubbing her temple with the muzzle stamp of the Glock. "So if the truth is that we are all victims of each other, and God resides in all of us… Then I am God and you are I, and I am you. I myself am the one ultimately responsible for my own state, my own actions. And the truth is paradoxical."
"So you understand that there is no point in killing me, correct? For if you did, you would only be killing yourself."
Anna hesitated, and then heard sirens wail from the street below. She stood and walked over to the window again, looking down upon the ant-like cars and people scurry about in fruitless exercises in humanity. Suddenly, she sensed the presence of Detective Mark Wallace, the man she had come to know through his investigations of her "cleansings" over the last few years. She was reminded of that night alone with him, and the insightful words he gave her back at the police station. "No one is above right and wrong. The law falters on occasion, but right and wrong stay the same."
The rapist sat shaking, awaiting his answer. Would the KnightShade let him go?
"We're all children of God, right? There is no point in my death, is there?"
"No, there isn't, Roddy. As much as I would like to kill you, I won't. I see now that you made me sink to your level… And I became the thing I hate. I hate myself for that, and it's going to take a long time for me to deal with that. Perhaps I can now redeem myself. Besides, it would be too easy. I want you to suffer. Like you made me suffer. Do you know what they do to rapists in prison?"
The realization hit Roddy like a ton of bricks. "You…you had no intention of killing me, did you?"
"I can't remember who said it, Roddy… 'Hell is truth seen too late.' Tell me. Do you see the truth now?" It was Anna's turn to smile. "I merely kept you occupied until the police could arrive. I can't believe you went along with it…and actually started up a conversation with me. I thoroughly enjoyed our time together, by the way."
Anna opened the window and climbed through, on to the fire escape. Before she began her descent to the busy street below, she peeked her head back in and whispered; "Goodnight, Roddy, and pleasant dreams!"
With that, KnightShade disappeared into the night.
EPILOGUE
Detective Mark Wallace nodded to the officer escorting the suspect to the squad car as he approached the Motor City Lodge's front doors. Two cops conversed on either side of those doors. Wallace was happy to see that Rodman was alive, given the history of the woman he tracked. Perhaps what he told her that night had some kind of affect.
He had explained in the police report that the vigilante killer broke custody before she could be identified, although that wasn't exactly so. He let her go. In all his years, he let a woman go because she made some decent points. What had he been thinking?
"What have we got here, officers?" Wallace asked in quiet reflection.
"There were two guns at the scene, detective. One of them was Rodman's… He had the certificate of ownership and concealed weapons permit on his person at the time we apprehended him. The other… I don't know. It's a Glock 18, standard issue. Serial number filed off. The suspect isn't saying 'Jack' until he talks to a lawyer," said one of the officers.
"'Course not, he knows he's screwed. We've been looking for him for some time, eh?" Replied Wallace, removing a cigarette from his silver case, in his left jacket pocket.
"One more thing, Detective," the other cop said as Wallace started to go into the building. "There was a note on the coffee table."
"A note?"
"Yeah. To you, sir," replied the cop as he handed Wallace a slip of parchment paper, sealed in a plastic Ziploc baggie.
Wallace opened the baggie and removed the note, and began to read.
"Detective Wallace,
Sorry I couldn't stick around to see you again. I'm sure you understand. I owe you a lot more than you shall ever know. What you taught me that night helped me make a decision I might not have made otherwise, and I would hate myself forever. I have decided to spare Roddy. I trust that the wheel of Justice will finally begin to turn now that he is in your custody.
I cannot go back and change the things that have happened to me or the horrible things I've done in the name of vengeance, no matter how I might regret it. I just want you to know that I now have a sense of closure that I have not felt before, and I have you to thank for that. Maybe now I can get a decent night's sleep. So shall you, Detective Wallace. I won't be sending any more corpses your way.
-K.S."
Wallace smiled as he tore the fine paper to shreds and threw them in the nearest trash receptacle. He glanced at the two officers, who were staring in quiet shock.
"Uh, keep this part under your hat, boys," Wallace said quietly, patting each of them on the shoulder. "Just like the pot that's been disappearing from the evidence room on your shifts, get me?"
"Of course, sir," the officers mumbled, embarassed.
Anna Maru said those six words with as much restraint as she could muster when the bad man entered his hotel room. She had been sitting on the couch with the shades drawn, basking in the wonderful oblivion of darkness. It had been a while, too. She actually considered leaving for the evening when he walked through the door. Fortune smiled that afternoon, though good or bad was anyone's guess.
"Do you mind if I remove my coat first?" Roddy asked with a playful tone in his voice. If he feared her, he didn't show it. Anna believed he might have been high on cocaine at the time.
"Be my guest," Anna replied, gesturing towards the coat rack behind the now closing door with her Glock 18.
Rodman shrugged off his overcoat calmly and turned toward the coat rack. As he turned his back to hang the coat up, Anna noticed the pistol tucked down the back of his pants. Quickly, Anna stood, leveled her weapon at the back of the bad man's head, and cocked the bullet into the chamber.
"Hands up, asshole," Anna commanded, and Rodman obeyed. A smile played along his lips. "The gun. Lose it."
"Of course," Roddy replied, the smile widening into a grin.
Slowly, carefully, Roddy reached behind his back with his right arm, removed his gun, and set it gently on the floor. He turned slowly, looking into Anna's eyes for the first time. Almost repulsed by his gaze, Anna blinked and nodded her head. Roddy kicked the gun softly, causing it to skitter across the floor.
"Can I sit down? It's been a long day," Roddy asked, his hands still raised.
"Yeah, raping, murdering and thievery can really wear a guy out," Anna sneered, her aim not leaving Roddy's forehead. "Sit down if you must."
Roddy did so, slumping down on the LA-Z-BOY recliner. He reached for the pack of Marlboros on the coffee table, plucked one from the box, and brought it to his lips. He acted as if he were with an old friend, every bit as comfortable with her as she was not with him. Anna shook her head in quiet annoyance.
"Okay, we've established that you remember who I am," Anna said as she circled the chair, heading for the window. "Good. Most of your friends remembered me too, right before they met the wrath of God at the end of a gun barrell. You know why I'm here."
"I think you made that pretty obvious when I walked through the door," Roddy smirked. "The whole gun to the head and 'I'm here to kill you bit' sort of gave it away."
"Wrong, Roddy. I am here because you forced me here," Anna continued, opening the shades to the window. The orange and red lights of sunlight cast themselves inside the hotel room as Anna returned to Rodman's view. She hopped up on the coffee table and sat, Indian-style. You and your friends, you ruined what was the start of a beautiful life. How many others had you done this to? How many lives did you shatter just because you wanted to get your rocks off? Or wanted a few extra bucks?"
"Dunno…A few, maybe," Rodman grinned like a hyena. "Got a light?"
Anna removed her Zippo lighter from her jacket pocket and threw it at Roddy. It was then that she got a good look at the man who had invaded her nightmares for so long. The rapist was a slim man, with sunken eyes and stringy black hair. He wore a ratty and frayed pair of denim jeans, and his belt was unbuckled. His face was long, and his fingers bore cocaine tremors; making them twitch and jump like they had minds of their own.
"You, Rodman, are a disease. You and your dead friends, you were all plagues upon humanity, the nails in society's coffin. You destroyed the lives of whoever you came in contact with, everyone from the girl in a nightclub to a liquor storeowner who decides to defend his livelihood. Well no more, Rodman. Do you hear me?"
"Oh, for the love of Christ, woman. Spare me the melodrama," Rodman rolled his eyes. "If you've got a point, get to it or shoot me. Don't bore me with the speech that you've been rehearsing for the last two years."
"Actually, you interrupted me at the point where I was going to shoot you. I didn't really plan much of a speech."
"Well, my point was, why waste the words on someone who doesn't care? You and I are alike, you know. We both like to inflict pain. We get off on it."
"You made me this way," she replied angrily.
"No I didn't. You've been like this for years, I'm sure. I was the catalyst that got the ball rolling, yes, but I don't think it's fair to be blamed for your current state of mind," Roddy said, opening the mini-fridge beside his chair. He removed a bottle of Jack Daniel's and a glass from the top of the refrigerator, and poured it. He offered the bottle to Anna politely. She shook her head 'No.' He knew that she was not ready to kill him.
"I mean, is there any real hurry to kill me, KnightShade? That is what you prefer to be called, isn't it?"
"What you call me is of little difference to me. Call me a victim, for that is all that I was to you."
Roddy nodded with a yielding shrug. "Sure. Whatever. So what I mean is, wouldn't you like to draw out my death? It's a soundproof, private room and there are knives in the kitchenette area. Make me scream, beg for mercy? Why don't you take some pleasure in my death?"
"I'm really not interested in that. I've drawn out your death for the last two years. Let's just say that my patience has worn thin."
"So shoot me, and end it now," Rodman said as his smile dropped. He leaned forward into the gun, pressing the top of his head into the muzzle stamp.
Anna's finger tightened on the trigger, pushing the gun hard into Roddy's temple. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth…and then relaxed. She removed her finger from the trigger, and let her hand fall to her lap. She opened her eyes to find Rodman reclining in the chair again, a yellow-toothed grin etching his face. Anna was just not ready to kill him. She needed more. With a sigh, she reached forward and plucked the cigarette from the rapist's fingers. She took a drag off of it, and then returned her gaze upon him.
"Couldn't do it, huh? A shame," Roddy said softly, meaningfully. He grabbed the pack of cigarettes again. He took a sip from the glass of whiskey.
"No. There is more to this," Anna murmured disappointedly. She closed her eyes as her psychic ability pounded in her skull for a moment. It hurt for her to be there. "Something distant."
The rapist barked a laugh.
"Oh, there is more, sweetheart," he said between chortles. "You think that you have found, in me, the one who killed your child. You think that you can just pull a trigger and justice will be served. You're wrong."
"Are you trying to plead for your life by claiming that you didn't rape me and cause me to miscarry my first and so far only child? Perhaps stalling for time?"
"Don't flatter yourself, sweetheart," Roddy chuckled. "I would not plead with God Himself."
"What do you know of God?" Anna glared.
"The Villain is quite known to me."
"Villain?"
"I'll explain this, as it does tie in with what I was trying to tell you," Roddy said as he lit another cigarette.
"I'm listening."
"I was the first to rape you. I will admit that. Do you work out, by the way? Because…" Roddy drifted off at Anna's look. "Sorry. I admit that I also attempted to kill you. I was probably the one who ruptured the little bundle of joy too. But who am I? A man whose greatest pleasure was raping very small boys raised me. I tell you, it was not a pretty childhood. I never knew my mother, but I've heard that she was a crack-head prostitute that was murdered in the street by her pimp after keeping a few dollars for herself. My upbringing, sweetheart, was what made me what I am."
"Oh, I've heard that one before," Anna mused. "No one shall be responsible for their own actions, blame thy mother and father."
"If I may continue uninterrupted?" Roddy said. A nod from Anna. "Okay. My parents made me what I am. But who made them? I was a victim of my father's sexual abuse and brutality, who was in turn, a victim of his father's abuse. My mother was a victim of society, forced from her home by a mother who did not care, and ended up on the streets making money the only way she could. And then she was murdered. Victims. It's all about victims, don't you see? You're a victim of me, but it would be pointless to kill me. If you do, you make me a victim of your wrath, and the cycle begins again. It's all a perpetual cycle of victims…no end in sight. That, my friend, is human nature. So in this world of victims, KnightShade, who is to blame?"
The room went silent a moment. Anna soaked in this new information and frowned in annoyance. The bastard was actually right!
"Who made Hitler? Who made Stalin? Bin Laden? And who did those men kill in the name of?" Suddenly, Roddy sprang from his seat and pointed his trembling cigarette hand Anna, and quoted from the book of Job. "'Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of earth? Who hat laid the measures thereof, if though knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it?'"
"Ah," said Anna. "I see your game now. Unfortunately, blasphemy is not my department. It is you I have quarrel with. Not God."
"We are but his children, my dear."
"I see this," Anna said, rubbing her temple with the muzzle stamp of the Glock. "So if the truth is that we are all victims of each other, and God resides in all of us… Then I am God and you are I, and I am you. I myself am the one ultimately responsible for my own state, my own actions. And the truth is paradoxical."
"So you understand that there is no point in killing me, correct? For if you did, you would only be killing yourself."
Anna hesitated, and then heard sirens wail from the street below. She stood and walked over to the window again, looking down upon the ant-like cars and people scurry about in fruitless exercises in humanity. Suddenly, she sensed the presence of Detective Mark Wallace, the man she had come to know through his investigations of her "cleansings" over the last few years. She was reminded of that night alone with him, and the insightful words he gave her back at the police station. "No one is above right and wrong. The law falters on occasion, but right and wrong stay the same."
The rapist sat shaking, awaiting his answer. Would the KnightShade let him go?
"We're all children of God, right? There is no point in my death, is there?"
"No, there isn't, Roddy. As much as I would like to kill you, I won't. I see now that you made me sink to your level… And I became the thing I hate. I hate myself for that, and it's going to take a long time for me to deal with that. Perhaps I can now redeem myself. Besides, it would be too easy. I want you to suffer. Like you made me suffer. Do you know what they do to rapists in prison?"
The realization hit Roddy like a ton of bricks. "You…you had no intention of killing me, did you?"
"I can't remember who said it, Roddy… 'Hell is truth seen too late.' Tell me. Do you see the truth now?" It was Anna's turn to smile. "I merely kept you occupied until the police could arrive. I can't believe you went along with it…and actually started up a conversation with me. I thoroughly enjoyed our time together, by the way."
Anna opened the window and climbed through, on to the fire escape. Before she began her descent to the busy street below, she peeked her head back in and whispered; "Goodnight, Roddy, and pleasant dreams!"
With that, KnightShade disappeared into the night.
EPILOGUE
Detective Mark Wallace nodded to the officer escorting the suspect to the squad car as he approached the Motor City Lodge's front doors. Two cops conversed on either side of those doors. Wallace was happy to see that Rodman was alive, given the history of the woman he tracked. Perhaps what he told her that night had some kind of affect.
He had explained in the police report that the vigilante killer broke custody before she could be identified, although that wasn't exactly so. He let her go. In all his years, he let a woman go because she made some decent points. What had he been thinking?
"What have we got here, officers?" Wallace asked in quiet reflection.
"There were two guns at the scene, detective. One of them was Rodman's… He had the certificate of ownership and concealed weapons permit on his person at the time we apprehended him. The other… I don't know. It's a Glock 18, standard issue. Serial number filed off. The suspect isn't saying 'Jack' until he talks to a lawyer," said one of the officers.
"'Course not, he knows he's screwed. We've been looking for him for some time, eh?" Replied Wallace, removing a cigarette from his silver case, in his left jacket pocket.
"One more thing, Detective," the other cop said as Wallace started to go into the building. "There was a note on the coffee table."
"A note?"
"Yeah. To you, sir," replied the cop as he handed Wallace a slip of parchment paper, sealed in a plastic Ziploc baggie.
Wallace opened the baggie and removed the note, and began to read.
"Detective Wallace,
Sorry I couldn't stick around to see you again. I'm sure you understand. I owe you a lot more than you shall ever know. What you taught me that night helped me make a decision I might not have made otherwise, and I would hate myself forever. I have decided to spare Roddy. I trust that the wheel of Justice will finally begin to turn now that he is in your custody.
I cannot go back and change the things that have happened to me or the horrible things I've done in the name of vengeance, no matter how I might regret it. I just want you to know that I now have a sense of closure that I have not felt before, and I have you to thank for that. Maybe now I can get a decent night's sleep. So shall you, Detective Wallace. I won't be sending any more corpses your way.
-K.S."
Wallace smiled as he tore the fine paper to shreds and threw them in the nearest trash receptacle. He glanced at the two officers, who were staring in quiet shock.
"Uh, keep this part under your hat, boys," Wallace said quietly, patting each of them on the shoulder. "Just like the pot that's been disappearing from the evidence room on your shifts, get me?"
"Of course, sir," the officers mumbled, embarassed.