Jason Pinter - The Guilty

A man lay on the sidewalk. A pool of blood was spreading around his head. Or at least what was left of it. When I saw the piece of brain sliding down the polished glass door, my stomach lurched and I felt dizzy.

Aside from the crowd of New York's finest, a small crowd of onlookers watched from across the street. Several officers were shooing away ghouls with cameras. I could see a tuft of gray hair amidst the mass of blood and gore. Then the wind caught it, and took it away.

The dead man was wearing a tailored suit. From the liver spots on his hands, I guessed him to be in his late fifties or early sixties. A white handkerchief, once tucked neatly into the jacket pocket, now fluttered like a trapped dove.

When he put the walkie-talkie down, I approached Curt.

"What the hell happened?"

"Not now, Henry."

"Please, just one minute…"

"I said not now, " Curt said, pushing me away.

Not now didn't compute. I had to know. And if Curt wasn't talking, none of the cops would. And enough people were milling about that somebody had to know something.

Pushing the nausea aside, I walked across the street, right into the mass of onlookers.

I took out my press pass and held it above my head.

"Did anybody see anything?" I shouted. "Please, we need witnesses."

Nobody said a word. They were either too frightened or too busy relaying the news to their entire address book. I scanned the crowd. Looked each person in the face, tried to understand their emotional state, if there was anything more to them being there.

One woman stood out. She had stringy brown hair, a cheap pantsuit and a brooch that looked way out of her price range.

There was a speck of red on her white blouse that I knew had to be blood. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open. She stared at me for a moment, then looked away.

Slowly I walked up to her. I extended my press pass, along with my hand. She stared at me, unsure of what to do. Her eyes were terrified, but something was shackling her to the scene. She had to be here. She was much closer to all this than she wanted to be.

"You were next to him, weren't you?" I asked softly. She nodded. "I'm Henry," I said, taking her hand in mine. Her whole body was shaking. I put my hand on her shoulder, tried to comfort her. I felt silly. I'd seen people die in front of me. And no hand in the world could comfort that.

"Betty Grable," she said. "I'm-was-oh God-I'm Mr.

Lourdes's assistant."

My jaw dropped.

"That," I spat out. "That's Jeffrey Lourdes?"

She nodded again, then burst into tears.

Jeffrey Lourdes was the publisher of Moss magazine, and one of the most influential figures in popular culture for nearly thirty years. He'd been credited for discovering dozens of headlining acts, some of the greatest reporting the country had ever seen, and now he was a mass of flesh torn apart by a piece of lead.

"I didn't know what was happening," Betty said. "I swear."

Her hands were a trembling mess, tears cascading down her cheeks. "I was just telling him he had to be in early tomorrow for a photo shoot, then out of nowhere-"

She covered her mouth with her hand, choked sobs into it.

I stayed silent. Had to let it come to her.

"Then he shot him!" she cried. "He shot him!"

"Who?" I asked.

"The young man," she said, her lip quivering. "He did it."

"Who was he? Young man? How old was he? What did he look like?"

"I don't know," Betty said. She looked at me as if having a revelation. "He looked about your age."

I stopped writing, looked at her.

"What happened?"

"We were standing there, Jeffrey was about to hail a taxi, and all of a sudden this man came out of nowhere. He was holding this giant-gun isn't even the right word-this giant thing. This fucking cannon. He just walked right up to Jeffrey and pulled the trigger, and then he ran. Oh God, Jeffrey!" She was staring at the body. One foot was visible through the sea of blue and white. I saw a police car pull up in front. An ambulance behind it. Two EMS workers popped out, ran to the body. I could tell from their body language they weren't going to work too hard on this one.

"What did he look like?" I said.

Betty shook her head. Not because she didn't know, but because she didn't want to.

"He was tall," she said. "Maybe an inch taller than you.

Jeans. A jacket." She trailed off.

"What else?"

"I don't know!" she cried.

"Trust me, I know this is hard," I said. "But did he have any distinguishing features. Facial hair, tattoos, piercings…"

"The gun," she said.

"The gun?"

"The way he held it after he killed Jeffrey. I'll never forget that look in his eye. He stared at his gun for a second and then he ran. Looked at it the way somebody looks at a lover. This sick, sick boy. Oh my God…"

"The gun," I said. "What did it look like?"

She looked at me as if in shock that I could be asking such a trivial question.

"Please. It's important. Think. "

"It…it looked like something out of a movie. Not a recent movie, something old. And the way he held it, like it was fragile."

"What about what the gun looked like?"

"The handle was brown…"

"Could it have been made from wood?" I asked. She nodded.

"There was this terrible explosion…" She stopped.

"Please, I can't do this right now."

"Can you tell me anything else about it? Was it one barrel or two?"

"I don't know! I've never seen a real gun before in my life, now please leave me alone."

Just then a cop seemed to take notice and jogged over to us. He separated me, whispered, "Get the fuck out of here, scum." Then he said, "Miss, did you see the shooter?"

As I walked away, I looked over my shoulder long enough to see her nod and then collapse in his arms.

Ten feet from the carnage, a man clicked open his cell phone. Sweat was streaming down his face. He'd thankfully skipped lunch. Breathing heavy, he pressed Redial and waited for an answer.

"Hello?"

"Miss Cole?" He mopped at his brow with a shirtsleeve.

"It's James Keach. You'll never believe what just happened."

I arrived home tired to the bone. After spending hours writing my piece on the Jeffrey Lourdes murder, my fingers ached, and my head throbbed. I'd had enough death for a lifetime, and I was growing tired of seeing it up close. I tossed my wallet and keys on the table, fell into the couch next to Amanda. She put her hand on mine. I squeezed it with whatever energy I had left.

We sat there. Tried to talk. Conversation came in bits and pieces. Amanda had ordered dinner for both of us. I wasn't hungry, just watched her poke at a salad. I stirred my pasta with a disinterested fork. All I could think about was Jeffrey

Lourdes, and how ironic it was that the first time I ever saw him in person, his most recognizable feature had been reduced to blood and bone.

Betty Grable's words still rang in my ears. Between what

Curt Sheffield told me about the ammunition used to kill both

Athena Paradis and Joe Mauser, and her description of the weapon used to kill Jeffrey Lourdes, there was no doubt in my mind that the killer was using a rifle that took magnum bullets, and he was using that weapon for a reason. And somehow I had to find that reason, and use that to find the killer.

"How's work?" I asked Amanda. It was just a conversation starter, something to break the mood. Death was an inevitable part of reporting, but it had no place at the dinner table.

"The judge is still being a dick on the Mary Westin case," she said. "Three abuse complaints from the neighbors, two cigarette burns and Judge Jellyfish still doesn't realize it's in

Mary's best interest to be taken the hell away from her sickass parents."