The next day after work I went over to Mike’s house. He was pretty riled up about this whole Sheryl Bowman thing, and while I couldn’t blame him, it’s always dangerous to get too emotional. Mike really isn’t all that good with emotions anymore. It’s too bad; he used to be the calm one between us.
When I got there I let myself in per normal and found Mike in the garage, also per normal.
“Alright, I’m here. What’s the big deal?” I asked.
“What’s the big deal? Did you read any of this shit?”
“Wrong phrasing. What do you need?”
“I think we need to talk about this one, it’s not like the others.”
“That’s for sure.” I said.
“Look Will, I’m going to need you to back out of this one. I’m going to go solo from here on out.” Mike said.
“Solo?” The idea that Mike was freezing me out hit me pretty hard and got my head spinning. He’d never wanted to go alone on one of these things, and it just felt bad to me. I sat down on the couch and looked around a bit. I never really inserted myself into the, ahem, conclusion of our fishing expeditions. But I was always involved in the process, and got the feeling Mike wanted me to get in deeper, not less. Him changing his method did not feel like a good thing.
Then I saw one of the crime scene pictures pinned to the wall. “What the hell is that?” I asked.
“Motivation.” He responded calmly.
“Picture like that will make you hate her.”
“I don’t want to like her, Will.”
“Yeah, and hatred makes you sloppy you stupid prick. Take it down.” I tried to sound calm, but could hear that I wasn’t.
“What do you care? You’ve seen all the pictures already; nobody else comes back here. It’s safe.”
“I don’t care about it being safe. What I care about is you keeping your shit together, Mike. I can’t have you get all self-righteous and start making mistakes. That’s when bad stuff happens.”
“That’s why I need you to back off. I’m not going to just kill her, I’m going to hurt her.” He said.
“What do you mean ‘hurt her’?”
“She’s going to feel what they felt.”
“That’s not what we do.”
“It’s what I’m going to do.”
“Like hell you are! What do you think we’re doing here? You can’t go torturing the woman.”
“Why not? She gave out her fair share of torture. It feels like justice to me.”
“That’s not who we are, it’s not what we do.”
“It’s what I’m going to do. C’mon Will, your not part of the final stages of these things, you’re not the one killing anybody anyway.”
“I am this time. Sheryl is mine.” I said.
“The fuck you talking about? You’re not killing anybody.”
“Why not? You think you’re the only one who can pull a trigger?”
“You can’t do it Will, you don’t want to.”
“But I should let you torture her to death?”
“Look, you can’t understand this. I mean, you just can’t really understand it.”
“Here’s what I understand,” I said. “I understand that this woman needs to die for what she’s done. I understand that you are taking this one too personal, and that you aren’t going to be able to control yourself. I understand that it’s my turn to share the load. Now you understand that there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Is that some kind of threat? I’m not letting you kill anybody.”
“Like hell you are!”
“You can’t, you have too much to lose.”
“Oh bullshit, what makes me so different from you?”
“Ella.” Mike said. “You have Ella and a life to live, maybe even a family to start. You can’t take on this kind of guilt, it’ll ruin your life.”
“But I can let you…” I said.
“Don’t you fucking get it?” Mike said. “It’s all gone, everything is gone. I have nothing to lose anymore, my entire life is gone. I’m already dead. I can do this because I don’t matter anymore. What do you think, this is some kind of romantic notion of justice? I’m a murderer, Will. I kill people. I’m the bad guy in this story.”
“We’re not the bad guys here.”
“Oh no?” Mike said. “I kill people in cold blood, how is that the good guy?”
“Sheryl Bowman kidnapped two 8 year old boys and made them sodomize each other with a plunger. She hog tied them and threw them down her basement stairs when she was done playing with them. She consistently raped and beat them for three months, and then she strung them upside down, cut their wrists, and bathed in their blood. Killing her may not be righteous, but it sure as hell ain’t wrong either.” I said. “I don’t need to be the good guy here, but killing her doesn’t make us the bad guy either. She’s out free from all that, I can’t let it go.”
“You just get the information Will, I’m the killer.”
“You’ve killed three people.” I said dismissively.
“The FBI requires three kills to classify someone as a serial killer.”
“You aren’t a serial killer, Mike.”
“Really?” Mike said. “I track people down and kill them. Is there something I’m missing here?”
“We’re not doing this for some kind of lust or murderous rage. We’re fixing some wrongs. Doing what needs to be done.”
“I have a murderous rage, you know that. Normal people don’t do this.”
He was right, he’d been tracking and killing people since his family died. I’d never really thought it as a serial killing; I guess I figured that I didn’t really want to know. I was only helping him because he was killing the right people, though I guess that shouldn’t matter. But it did. Mike was becoming a monster of sorts, and I guess I was helping.
“But you can’t torture her.”
“She deserves it.”
“Doesn’t matter, it’s crossing a line.”
“What line?” he asked.
“Torture is a sickness, and if you go that far you’ve gone too far. I mean, if she hid some kid and we needed to find out where, that’s one thing. If that was the case I’d help you do it. But we’re not doing it for kicks Mike, that’s just fucking wrong.”
“She deserves to suffer.” He said.
“She does, but that’s not our job.”
“Our job.” He said thoughtfully. “Some fucking profession.”
“Yeah. But I’m still going to be the one to kill her Mike, and I’m not letting you stop me. It’s my turn to start helping, you’ve got enough of a burden as is. It’s time I helped carry the load.”
“It’s mine to carry.”
“Not anymore. You can only handle so much at a time Mike.” I said. I don’t know if I really wanted to help him or not, or I just wanted to be the one to kill the most disgusting human being I’d ever encountered. She was like a nightmare, and I felt that killing her wasn’t killing a person, it was something else. Maybe I did have some sort of romantic idea about us, like we’re vigilante justice seekers. Batman and shit.
“Go home and look at your wife, then you think about what you’re saying. It’s not worth it.”
“She’d understand.” I said.
“You think so?”
No, I don’t think she would.
Whoa.
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ReplyDeleteI did post a warning...
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