Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

“Let’s don’t kill anyone, okay?”

“You said you were going to kill me. ”

“Things happen, Harry, and things change. You make a plan, then reconfigure. So relax. You’re the one with the gun in your hand.”

“Now toss yours, like I told you.”

“Harry-”

“ Do it — before I work up enough nerve to shoot somebody!”

Hall cocked his head and smiled. “Harry, you have a genuinely unique way of putting things sometimes.”

Hall’s right hand moved to his belt holster. He gripped the gun with his pointing finger and thumb, slowly lifted it out, and tossed it through the bathroom door. It hit the tile with a sharp clatter and skidded across the floor.

“Now sit down on the couch,” Harry told him.

Hall did so, the smile still playing at the corners of his mouth.

Harry took a step back from Ray, keeping the gun aimed at the shallow gully between the man’s eyebrows. They both noticed that Harry’s hand was shaking.

“Scared, asshole?” said Ray.

“Parkinson’s. Forgot to take my meds.” He switched to a two-handed grip on the gun, which helped reduce the trembling. “Now get on your knees, Ray.”

Ray shook his head. “Not happening, man. You’re not gonna shoot me, and I’m not getting on my knees.”

Harry saw Hall’s chin dip wearily toward his chest. “Ray, we don’t have time for this. Do what he says.”

“Not part of my job description.”

“Ray,” said Hall, “get on your fucking knees!”

As Ray knelt down, Harry was almost certain he saw sparks of rage leaping about in his eyes.

“Let’s have your gun, Ray. Same way.”

“Motherfucking…” Ray said, the rest of his thought fizzling out into a mutter as he took out a shiny snub-nosed revolver and tossed it behind Harry.

Harry couldn’t keep his eyes on both Hall and Ray and see Lily, but he wasn’t confident enough to take a quick glance her way.

“Lily,” he said. “Can you stand up, Lily?”

“Sure she can,” Ray said. “Then she’ll recite the Pledge of fucking Allegiance.”

Harry’s head felt lopsided and his knee was squishy and hot. For a moment he forgot that he was holding the gun.

“Know what, Ray?” he said.

“What?”

Harry stared down at him, his mind suddenly blank. He’d meant to deliver a clever rejoinder, but when nothing came he swung his arms around as hard and fast as he could. The Beretta met Ray’s sneer with such force that he arched backward and landed flat on his back while his spouting blood was still suspended in the air. A wave of drops floated and then fell, dappling his pants and sweatshirt with scarlet.

Hall sprang up from the couch as the room filled with the reflexive, slurping sound of Ray trying to breathe.

Harry shifted his weapon in Hall’s direction. “Stay!”

Harry glanced down at Ray. He’d rolled over onto his side to keep from suffocating and now let out a syrupy moan. His hands were wrapped tightly around his face, but blood seeped through his fingers.

“Muhjerfushur,” Ray gurgled.

Sunlight had spread through most of the room now, and Harry let his gaze wander across it for a moment, knowing that what had been his home, his sanctum, was lost to him. But what truly hurt was the recognition that everything he’d be leaving behind had come to him because of his chosen line of work.

The sloshing sound leaking from behind Ray’s palms was growing louder. He finally managed to get himself up into a sitting position without moving his hands. Harry took a step back.

“Shit,” said Harry. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

Hall snorted and sat down on the sofa again. “Yes, you did, Harry. My guess is you’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. You just didn’t know it till now.”

To Harry’s chagrin, he realized that he had, in fact, felt a joint-loosening sense of release, a cleansing liberation. He turned and looked at Lily. She was sitting up, hands in her hair, fingers twirling and untwirling a long black hank of it in a mute, private ritual.

“I’m going to put on some pants,” Harry said.

He picked up Ray’s gun and walked to the bathroom, his eyes still on Hall. He put the gun in the sink, pulled the sport coat from around his waist, and took his trousers off the toilet seat. As he stepped into them, he heard Ray spit out something thick and viscous. Harry tried not to think about what it was.

“I’m going to have a smoke,” Hall said. “Reaching in my pocket, okay?”

Pulling on a shirt and then his sport coat while switching the gun from hand to hand, Harry came back out into the living room. “Be my guest.”

Hall took a pack of Camels and a lighter from his pocket. Lighting a cigarette, he said, “Why’d Geiger do it, Harry?”

“He figured if you were willing to take the kid to Dalton, then he was expendable-and so maybe we all were. I’m gonna get out of here now, with my sister. Do I need to take all the guns?”

“If you’re asking whether I’m going to come out into the street running after you, guns blazing-then no, you don’t have to take the guns.”

Harry stuck his feet into his loafers, grabbed a towel from the bathroom, and came back out into the living room. He was getting used to the weight of the Beretta in his hand, but he felt like a stranger in someone else’s place.

He got halfway to Lily and stopped. Turning to Hall, he held out a palm. “My cell phone.”

Hall tossed it to him. Harry lifted Lily up and held her close. He could feel her heart beating against his chest. She started humming something very softly, stopping and starting in even, repetitive intervals. It sounded vaguely familiar to Harry, but he couldn’t place the tune.

“How long has she been like that?” Hall asked.

“Too long,” Harry replied. “I’ve got to ask you, Hall. Would killing both of you end this?”

“Think you could do that?”

“Strictly hypothetical. Would it?”

“De Koonings are hard to come by, Harry.”

Harry nodded and looked over at Ray.

“Hey, Ray,” he said. Ray raised his head, his large, blood-soaked hands still clamped onto his face. Harry tossed him the towel. It landed at his knees, and Ray reached down with both hands to pick it up.

Harry saw that the Beretta had done tremendous damage to Ray’s face. The proud, aquiline nose was pancaked and off-center, and the plane of the upper lip was crushed and raw. The unseen teeth beneath the bloody plexus were broken if not gone.

Harry set Lily on her feet, turned away from her, and vomited. He had watched DVDs of Geiger’s sessions with the keen, assiduous eye of an analyst, but this was his handiwork. He ran his tongue across his three false front teeth and remembered parts of him coming asunder, the searing clarity of pain and breakage, the stirring knowledge that death was an even-odds bet. He straightened up.

Ray had the towel pressed against his mouth, and his eyes held Harry like a prey in crosshairs. He mumbled something indecipherable, but the promise of vengeance was crystal clear. Harry took Lily’s hand in his.

“Come on, Lily. We gotta go.”

“We gotta get outta this place,” she sang, “if it’s the last thing we ever do.”

Harry started leading her toward the door, walking backward with the gun still held waist-high in his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said.

Hall nodded. “Tell Geiger I’ll see him around.”

Hall ached from his waist to the top of his head. He’d never had a problem dealing with the physical aspect of pain, but it made him feel stupid, because in his job, pain meant you’d screwed up. You always had the “just in case” mind-set. You always assumed that a wrench was perched somewhere, waiting to fall into the gears. But the last twenty-four hours had rolled out a brutal trifecta: Matheson shakes them, Geiger decides to play moral relativist, a computer geek turns into Rambo. Hall took a last drag of his Camel, stubbed it out on the coffee table, and went over to Ray.