“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.