Steven James - The Rook

“I’ll wait for you outside.” She grabbed the khaki canvas satchel that she uses as a purse and hurried for the door.

After taking care of our bill, I stepped outside and found Tessa waiting beneath one of the orange-yellow vapor streetlights nearby.

She was writing something in the small notebook she often carries with her. When she saw me, she surreptitiously slipped the pen and notebook back into her satchel.

I decided not to pry.

The wind had picked up even more since we’d entered the restaurant, and it whipped her shoulder-length black hair around her head in a small frenzy. “So,” she said. “How many people were in there when we left?”

“Tessa, I don’t want to do this.”

“Sure you do, c’mon.”

“Let’s go, OK?”

She folded her arms. Leaned against the streetlight. I knew she wouldn’t budge until I answered her.

“All right. Sixty-two.”

“When we entered?”

“Forty-nine. How did you know I’d keep track?”

“It’s what you do. Which one of the servers worked there the longest?”

“Tessa-”

“You don’t know, do you? That’s why you’re avoiding the question.”

“Allison Reynolds. She was the one with six piercings in her left ear, three in her right. Based on her route proficiency, I’d say she’s been working at Geraldo’s for over two years. I heard a few snatches of dialogue. She’s from the Midwest, most likely south-western Michigan or northern Indiana.”

After a quiet moment. “You can’t turn it off, can you?”

I drummed an anxious finger against my leg. “You ready to go?”

“I don’t really want to go back to the hotel yet.”

I thought for a moment. I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point in the last couple months, I’d first started calling Tessa

“Raven.” She’d always reminded me of a raven, and sometimes the nickname just slipped out, as it did now, “Well, then, Raven, how about a walk beside the world’s only ocean?”

She shrugged. “I guess so.”

We grabbed our windbreakers from the car and found a stretch of sand that was damp enough to walk on easily but not so close to the water that we would have to be constantly avoiding the in-coming waves. We walked for a while, side by side, but also oceans apart. Every once in a while, a rogue wave would slap farther up the shore than the others and we’d scurry up the beach to stay out of its path.

Mists carried by the steady surf began curling around us.

After one of the bolder waves had chased us up the beach, Tessa said softly, “So do you ever wonder what it would be like? Being one of them? You know. On the other side? An arsonist, a killer, something like that? The people you help the cops find?”

Everyone is on the side of being human, of being fallible, but I knew what she meant. “Sometimes I do. Sometimes I wonder those kind of things. But I try not to get caught up dwelling on them.”

“It’s scary to think about, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she said. “I’m glad you’re not like them.”

“Thank you.” A dim silence spread between us.

“Right?” She stopped walking and waited until I’d stopped as well. She stared at me through the moonlight. “You’re not like them, are you?”

“No, of course not.” I couldn’t tell her what was really bothering me. It was something I’d never told anyone. “Of course I’m not like them.”

It feels good, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does.

She stood there, a raven in the moonlight. “Something’s bothering you, isn’t it? Tonight, I mean?”

Sometimes I wish she wasn’t quite so astute. “I’m sorry, Tessa.

He’s been there, in the back of my mind. It doesn’t mean you’re not important-”

“The arsonist?”

“That’s right.”

And it was true, I was thinking about the arsonist. But it wasn’t the whole truth.

I was also thinking about someone else.

Richard Devin Basque.

We walked for half an hour, talking some, but mostly keeping our thoughts to ourselves. The moon inched its way higher into the sky, and eventually we sat down on some dry sand next to a clump of sea grass that the waves had deposited on the shore earlier in the day.

And as we sat together on the sand, I let my thoughts take me back thirteen years to my early days as a detective in Milwaukee; to the night I arrested Richard Devin Basque in that abandoned slaughterhouse on the outskirts of Milwaukee.

Even though I was on the beach, I could see the slaughterhouse all around me. Dusky sunlight slanting through the windows. Huge, rusted meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. The image of a man holding a scalpel, standing over the bleeding woman. She was still alive, choking on her own blood. That was the most disturbing part of all to remember.

The doctors never could explain how she survived as long as she had.

Then, the moment outside of time when I ordered him to drop the knife, to back away, and how he just stood there instead, holding the red glistening blade, staring at the barrel of my gun.

I yelled again, followed procedure after procedure, warning after warning, until at last he spun, took three steps, then pivoted with a Smith amp; Wesson Sigma in his hand and fired. Missed.

I pulled the trigger of my. 357 SIG P229, but for the first time in my career my gun malfunctioned, refused to fire. I lunged to the side as he took another shot, pegging my left shoulder, sending a bright splinter of pain riding up my neck, across my chest. I rolled to my feet, rushed him, and swung one of the meat hooks at his face. When he ducked out of the way, I threw my arms back and tackled him.

As we crashed to the concrete floor, I could hear the moist sounds of the woman struggling for breath only a few feet away, gasping, coughing.

Dying.

Basque drove the scalpel into my right thigh, but I knocked his gun away, and as he crawled for it, I snagged his arm and twisted it behind his back, my shoulder and leg screaming at me the whole time.

Pinned him to the ground.

Cuffed him.

Then, I shoved him aside, and as I bent to help the woman, I heard him say softly, “I think we may need an ambulance, don’t you, Detective?” I could hear a smirk in his voice.

I tried to help her, tried to save her, but the bleeding was coming from so many places it was impossible to stop. There was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could have done.

The scalpel was still in my leg, but if I removed it, the wound would bleed badly. It throbbed as I awkwardly dragged Basque to his feet to read him his rights.

I couldn’t help but take note of his face. Hollywood handsome, and yet possessed with pure evil. He was staring at the motionless, blood-soaked body of the woman. “I guess we won’t be needing that ambulance after all.”

And that’s when it happened.

Something inside of me snapped.

Rage and fear cascading through me. Rage, because of what he’d done to her. Fear, because if humans were capable of doing that, and I was human…

Well.

I lost it.

I punched him as hard as I could in the jaw. The force of the blow sent him spinning to the ground. I dropped to my knees beside him and raised my fist. Punched him again. Drew my fist back, ready to unload a third time.

When I was training for law enforcement, my instructors taught me to control myself. To avoid getting emotionally involved. But sometimes you can’t help it. The violence and suffering get to you.

And in that moment, I was ready to hit him again and again and again until I’d made him suffer as much as the woman he’d just killed. Part of me wanted to take the scalpel and cut him. Cut him just like he’d cut her.