“Justice”
by Stephen Lochton
Kincaid
It was not until
the hammer of the .357 revolver clicked back, breaking the silence like a
short, sharp crack of thunder, that Richard Guildman hesitated.
“Come on ... you
rich asshole,” Creighton prompted. Even
in the noiseless interior of the cabin, it was little more than a rasp. Creighton
was half-dead already. He slumped against the ropes which bound him
securely (Bubba had cinched the ropes so tightly that Richard thought they
would slice through Creighton’s limbs) to a kitchen chair. His hair was
tangled and greasy, he stank of
piss and dirt, and his eyes had rolled up until only two crescents of his
pupils stared disinterestedly at Richard.
“Do it.”
Richard heard
boards moan in the kitchen as the big black private detective, Marcus “Bubba” McCallum
(as his business card was printed, one of the best detectives in the country,
and Richard would have laughed if the man wasn’t so goddamn huge),
scrounged for food. Slowly, Richard let
the gun drop to his side.
Bubba had closed
in on Creighton Michaels – the man who brutally raped and murdered Richard
Guildman’s daughter – five days ago in Raymont, California. Bubba
had called Richard at his office today
at one o’clock when Bubba and Creighton arrived in Spring Hill, Missouri. Richard
Guildman had simply left. No packing his bags, referring his cases –
which would undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows (but no questions) from his
partners at the law offices of Guildman, Brackner, and Cunningham – or even
changing his clothes. He had chartered a
private flight from Chicago, Illinois, to Spring Hill, Missouri, and left. His
secretary had been startled at his sudden
appearance from his office and said his name hesitantly, but he shut the outer
door on her words. He looked, she would
later tell a girl friend on the phone, like a man who had just won the lottery.
Richard had met
Bubba two hours later at the Spring Hill Airfield (which looked to Richard like
little more than a couple of dirt runways lined with Christmas lights). They
had walked to Bubba’s car, a huge
jet-black Cadillac, and Bubba explained how he had caught Creighton in a run-down
Mexican bar in California and drove him to Spring Hill where Bubba’s “special”
cabin was, deep in the country.
“In fact,” Bubba
had said, “he’s still in the trunk.”
An expression of
sick horror had crept across Richard’s face.
“You don’t mean you drove here from California with him in your trunk?”
Bubba McCallum
had nodded his large black head. “Didn’t
wanna get the seat dirty. But don’t
worry, he’s still alive and kickin’.”
Bubba had patted the Caddy’s trunk and Richard heard scuffling sounds from
inside. Then Bubba had smiled, gold
teeth flashing and winking in the sun, and said, “But not for long.”
But Bubba had
been too hopeful, maybe. There was now a
thin stream of drool running down Creighton’s slack chin. Richard held
Bubba’s .357 revolver at his
side, disliking the feel of its dead weight in his hand. He had thought he would
feel the power of
justice now, something he had never had when his wife died in the car accident
years ago and left a bewildered Richard Guildman and his young daughter, Kelly,
behind. Something he had not had when he
identified Kelly’s body – her drained white face, her soft golden hair, and the
limp, meaningless shape beneath the sheet – at the morgue. The coroner
had carefully folded down the
sheet so that Richard could not see the jagged pink flesh gaping from the slash
ripped through her throat, but Richard could imagine. Oh yes, he had imagined
very well. Kelly had been fourteen.
Powerless. That was the word Richard would have used to
describe himself as he watched his daughter’s coffin lowered into the
grave. The same word he would have used
the night after Kelly’s funeral that he burned every suit in his closet (some
which cost more than many people’s cars) in the fireplace of his affluent
suburban home out of some half-formed sense of self-loathing. Powerless, despite
being one of the
wealthiest and most prestigious lawyers in Chicago. But he had called Bubba
even before the
police gave up on finding Kelly’s murderer.
Powerless, but
not helpless.
Richard had
waited three years – three years of Bubba’s expenses and weekly reports as he
hunted Creighton down – for the power to bring his daughter’s killer to
justice. Except there was no power in
justice; he saw that now, in Creighton’s indifferent stare and his emotionless
face. There was no power, only a bleak
finality.
“You can’t do
it,” Creighton whispered incredulously.
Creighton grinned; there was a growth of beard on his face that looked
like dirt. “Rich motherfucker, you
really can’t.”
“No,” Richard
said truthfully. He had seen too much
death. A life was too precious for
Richard to take, even one as wasted as Creighton’s. He called for Bubba
in the kitchen. He appeared at the door with a chicken leg
clutched in one giant fist.
“Yeah boss?”
“No,” Richard
said to Creighton again, “I can’t. But,
like you said, I am rich, and I did hire someone who can.”
Bubba flashed his
gold smile.
Stephen Lochton Kincaid grew
up in the flatlands of Kansas. After spending most of his life there, he
now lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he draws upon the lowering gray skies
and primeval forests for inspiration to write the stuff of nightmares.