A Question of Will

by Craig Spector

  "Work was work," Paul said. "Jule, where’d you go?"

  "What do you mean, ‘where’d I go’?" she shot him a defensive look, her tone both weary and caustic. "What are you, my keeper?"

  "What do I mean?" Paul said, on edge now, as concern polluted, turned ugly. He didn’t understand, she wasn’t helping, and it was pissing him off. "Jesus, Jule, I come home, you’re gone, no note, the back door is wide fucking open. I’m just asking..."

  "I was at church, okay?" she suddenly blurted, cutting him off. Paul stopped. She sighed, reiterated, "I went to church..."

  Paul was shocked -- whatever he expected to hear, that wasn’t it. Julie was beyond lapsed Catholic, clear into renegade; she’d long ago rebelled against and abandoned what she’d always viewed as the hypocrisy of the Church. His reaction was as immediate as it was unchecked. "Mass?!" he said incredulously. "What the hell for?"

  "You figure it out," she hissed, then put the glass down and stalked off. Paul watched, momentarily stunned, then followed her into the living room. Julie sat on the couch, elbows to knees, fingers steepled to forehead, tense and pensive. Paul stood before her.

  "I don’t get it -- you go to church, and suddenly I’m an asshole?" he asked. "What’s that about?"

  "I don’t want to talk about this," she said flatly.

  "Why not?" Paul demanded. "Why not talk about this?" Cold fury uncoiled inside him, snaking through his guts. He felt it rise, wanted to unleash it -- not at her, but at the world, at the universe... at God. "What good is the Church gonna do us, babe? You heard that jerk priest at the funeral... ‘God needed Kyra in Heaven’...well, we need her here! The Church is full of shit!"

  "It’s not about the Church," she countered. "It’s about God..."

  "Oh. God..." Paul scoffed bitterly, and something inside him snapped. "Where was God when all this happened? What does God have to do with any of it?" He was pacing now, stalking the room like a chained dog. "I was there when Kyra died, Julie... God wasn’t! I see people die every day -- their houses burn up, their lives burn up, their families... they’re all looking for God, too. But He’s not there, either!"

  "No," Julie shook her head, her gaze casting wildly. "No."

  It just pissed him off all the more. The anger was subrational, feeding off itself. "You think you can go and light a candle, and God is suddenly gonna give a shit?" Paul spat. "It’s been, what -- fourteen, fifteen years...?"

  "Sixteen," she said, then looked up, her eyes piercing him. Sixteen years, Paul. Since Kyra..." She stopped, suddenly.

  Paul looked at her, then realized... Since Kyra was born.

  And then it hit him.

  His mind tripped back to the battle: Julie’s folks on one side, Paul & Julie, the good girl gone bad and the bad boy made good, on the other. Her parents, however absent in their attendance, were still stalwart Catholics, and baptism was a must; Paul was just as obstinately agnostic, wary of in-law intrusion into matters of how they would raise their daughter, resentful of forced subscription to any belief whose credo was, give them your children till they’re six, and they were the Church’s forever. Leaving Julie, poor Julie, caught in the middle, feeling emotionally hijacked by the mother of all parental guilt trips on the one hand, torn about her own misgivings on the other.

  The harder her folks pressed, the more bitterly entrenched things became...until Paul & Julie finally snapped, and she told her parents in no uncertain terms that they had decided to let Kyra decide for herself, when she was old enough to comprehend, exactly what she wanted to do about her own immortal soul. It was, for Julie, a stunning display of self individuation. It did not go over well.

  But Paul and Julie stuck to their guns, fully intending that, in the fullness of time, they would grant Kyra the right to determine her own spiritual fate. And they would be there to guide her, should she so require. It was a great and noble plan.

  But somehow, they never got around to it...

  Paul looked at Julie, the shared history flashing before them. Tears welled in her eyes. "She wasn’t baptised, Paul..." her voice was aching, poignant. "We always said we’d let her make up her own mind, but she never did, and we never did, and now..." The tears came, spilling down her cheeks. "So where is she now? Where is her soul?"

  Paul felt the anger dissipate as quickly as it had flared -- suddenly he felt shitty, exposed, vulnerable. He went to her, and they hugged, clinging to each other, seeking sanctuary in each other’s arms. But there was none to be found.

  "Where is my baby?" Julie whispered, a lost lament. "Where is she now?"

  Paul just hugged her tighter. He didn’t know. He couldn’t say. He wanted to believe she was in a better place. He wanted to believe that there was a God who watched over the innocents of the world and kept them safe from harm. But he couldn’t. As many times as he had walked willingly into mortal peril, Paul had always thought: wherever and whatever God was, they had a deal -- that whatever happened to him, God would take care of Julie and Kyra. The picture in his helmet was more than talisman or good luck charm -- it was a covenant, an unspoken agreement that Paul would watch God’s back in the trenches, as God watched his above.

  But now God had gone and broken the deal.

  "Where is she?" Julie whispered, and began to sob. "Oh, God... oh, God, please..."

  Paul held her, feeling utterly powerless, utterly wretched. Frustration and fury swelled and swirled inside him, laced with a sad and bitter pathos. Julie needed to believe. He could not. Miracles were beyond all hope or imagining; beyond burning bushes or parting seas or cheap wine transubstantiating into blood; as unlikely as his murdered girl walking through the front door. If God was real, he reasoned bitterly, where was the proof?

  And that was when the telephone rang.

  NINETEEN

  "Paul, get down here right away. We got something."

  Buscetti’s words were still ringing in Paul’s ears as he arrived at the three-story brick building that housed Glendon P.D., downtown division. He had come alone, Julie being in no condition to face whatever news awaited; Paul had left her with a lie offered only in mercy, a mumbled something about urgent business at the firehouse. Julie had accepted it without question, and repaired to the scant comfort of weary sleep.

  It was shortly after dark as he pulled into one of the diagonal parking slots lining the curb, jumped out and took the stone stairs two at a time. The darkened sky hung low and oppressive with heavy clouds, distant thunder rumbling like a rumor.

  The detective was waiting for him on the second floor landing as Paul bounded up, wired and winded. "Stevie, what’s going on?" he asked.

  "C’mon," Buscetti said, low, clearly not wanting to talk yet. He led Paul through the cluttered confines of a once large and high-ceilinged room later subdivided to accommodate space for Homicide, Robbery, and Grand Theft Auto, Narcotics, Vice, and Bunko residing in similarly cramped quarters upstairs. The resulting renovation managed to eradicate all of the charm of the original architecture while creating a series of improbably truncated offices, all joined by a narrow hallway, and each crammed to capacity with grey government issue metal desks, grey metal filing cabinets, and grey metal chairs with grey vinyl cushions. The walls themselves were half wood, half wire mesh safety glass, presumably designed to lend an airy nature to the proceedings but which had the net effect of making everyone who worked there feel like something in a Kafka science project. The wood trim was painted grey. Buscetti often cracked wise how, if the city could figure out how to install gray air, they’d jump at the chance.

  The two men headed down the row, past a half dozen denizens of the department’s 4-12 shift engaged in the act of keeping the forces of evil at bay. Assorted others - victims, P.A.’s, uniforms, and perps -- went about their business on the respective ends of the legal machine: giving information, filling out reports, taking or making phone calls, or sitting cuffed to a chair, awaiting their sorry fates.

  There was another hallway at the end of the room; a p
erpendicular offshoot leading to an older and unmolested part of the building which housed the euphemistically named interview rooms. Buscetti brought Paul up to speed as they turned the corner.

  "This is an unofficial heads-up," he explained. "We picked him up about two hours ago. Figured better you hear it from us than off the news."

  Paul nodded, his heart racing. Roughly twelve billion questions gridlocked his mind at that moment, but only one made it out.

  "Who is he?" Paul asked, voice tight and dry.

  "Wells," Buscetti told him. "His name is William Wells."

  They arrived at a pair of wooden doors, set side by side. Behind one Paul could hear voices: muffled, angry. Buscetti opened the other one, revealing a small, darkened room, the size of a walk-in closet. A two-way mirror loomed on the wall. Paul hesitated, looked at Buscetti. "Has he..." Paul began, "...has he admitted anything?"

  Buscetti shook his head. "So far, he’s been less than cooperative," he said sardonically, adding, "He did tell us to go fuck ourselves a couple of times."

  Buscetti ushered Paul in, gestured to the glass. Paul stepped up to the window, his palms suddenly moist. everything felt hyper-acute, oversaturated: the shadows deeper, the close confines of the room even more claustrophobic. His heartbeat thudded in his skull, his breath a staccato counterpoint. Since her death, Kyra’s killer had taken a million different shapes in his mind, each more lurid than the last... slavering wild-eyed crackhead dope fiend... lunatic escaped asylum inmate... sociopathic homicidal maniac... and beyond, to forms inhuman, indescribable, nightmarish. But whatever shape they took, they all shared a common theme. All were brutish. All were savage. All were incalculably, irredeemably evil.

  Paul stared, in shock. Through the looking glass he saw two detectives -- a svelte, thirtyish black woman named Gardner and an older, fatter white guy named Parrish -- circling a figure seated at a table. The suspect was clad in a battered black leather biker’s jacket, his slightly built frame slouched in the chair. His t-shirt was dirty as if from a scuffle and torn at the collar, revealing a neck Paul instinctively felt like snapping. His face was downturned, pale and lupine features obscured by a shock of thick black hair.

  The cops stalked the table, tag-teaming intimidation, their voices projecting muffled threat. Will said nothing, kept looking at the floor. Parrish slammed his fist down on the table. Wells looked up.

  And Paul got his first good look.

  "Jesus," he gasped. "He’s just a fucking kid."

  And it was true. William Wells, the monster at the heart of his darkest nightmare, Paul’s very own angel of violent, untimely death, was barely old enough to shave.

  And not even old enough to vote.

  His face was a paradox of angled bone and soft skin, youthful and hard by turns -- a face caught in the crossfire between boy and man. A wispy bar of stubble graced the skin below his lower lip and down to his chin, the barest beginnings of what jazz musicians called a soul patch. As an attempt to project toughness it failed miserably, but it was not necessary: Wells' real edge was in his eyes. Dark, deep, heavy-lidded, his eyes stared at no one and nothing, radiating practiced indifference. They flared for the tiniest fraction if one of the detectives got too much in his face, like shades rustling in an abandoned building, revealing... something else. Then the blinds would go down again, revealing nothing.

  "Sixteen," Buscetti said. "We got his name off a second canvass at Kyra’s school. First one turned up zip, but we went back and checked absences the day after she..." he stopped, let the sentence trail off. "Anyway, his name was on the list."

  Paul gulped. "He went to school with her?"

  "Technically," Buscetti replied. "More like they sometimes occupied the same building with a thousand other kids. Judging from his jacket, school for him is just one more institution to go through before landing here. That’s why it took us so long - we were looking for unusual absences. For him, it was just another day in the life."

  "How do you know it was him?" Paul asked, still unable to comprehend.

  "When we went to his house, he ran," Buscetti said. "Always a good sign. Had to chase the little bastard for a block and a half. Took a swing at us when we caught up to him." He paused, watching Paul watch the boy. "You recognize him? Maybe from the neighborhood, anything?"

  Paul shook his head. He’d never seen him, never even heard of him. He regarded the boy slouched at the table as one would some rare and poisonous bug. "Does he have a record?" he asked.

  "Dinky shit," Buscetti shrugged. "Shoplifting, curfew, misdemeanor possession, vandalism... regular upstanding little citizen in training. We went back and ran his prints off the squat in the Marley Street house," he added. "Got a hit off a beer bottle."

  Paul looked from Buscetti to the kid and back. "So he did it," he said.

  "Allegedly," Buscetti cautioned. "So far, we can put him at the scene, but we can’t link him definitively to Kyra. He could have just been crashed there."

  "But you think - "

  "We like him for this," Buscetti said. "We’re checking phone company LUDs to see if any of the calls to your house trace to him. Now we just gotta get him to give it up, preferably before he lawyers up..."

  "And how do we do that?" Paul asked.

  Buscetti shook his head. "You don’t do anything," he said adamantly. "This was a courtesy, Paulie, ‘cause you’re a stand-up guy, and we thought you oughta know. But anything beyond this is our job. Let us do it. You know the system. You gotta let it work."

  It was an odd beat between the two men - a sudden underscoring of the dividing line. Paul’s firefighter status meant nothing - he wasn't a cop, thus not part of the empowered forces of justice. And his role in whatever happened next would be that of civilian, of spectator.

  Buscetti put a reassuring hand on Paul’s shoulder, feeling his friend’s pain. "Go home, Paul. Get some rest. Be with your wife."

  Paul nodded, thought of Julie, and how... even what... he could tell her of the sullen creature on the other side of the glass. Of how she would take it when she learned that their child had died at the hands of, however feral, another child.

  In the interview room, Wells looked up, staring deadpan into the reflective surface of the glass. Though he could not see Paul, for a moment it seemed their eyes met. And there Paul saw, not mystery, but enigma. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, William Wells was not an empty house. Something was in there, lurking in the shadows, like staring into the abyss, only to find the abyss staring back.

  Paul felt his blood run cold. His hands clenched into fists, unclenched again. He turned away. "I’ve seen enough," he said softly.

  Just then, another detective entered, handed Buscetti a file folder. The label read H4687 Kelly, Kyra LAB. Buscetti nodded thanks, then opened it. "Lab analysis of blood samples," he explained to Paul. Buscetti scanned the contents, nodded grimly.

  "AB negative," he said. "It’s a match." He looked at Paul. "We got him."

  Paul’s heart raced as Buscetti reached up and rapped the glass. The detectives in the room stopped talking. Paul watched as Buscetti exited, appeared a heartbeat later on the other side of the glass. He nodded to Gardner and Parrish; they hauled the kid up and cuffed him. Paul heard Detective Buscetti’s voice in the tinny speaker ...

  "William Wells, you’re under arrest for the murder of Kyra Kelly. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law..."

  They started to exit; Paul moved to the door. He made it just as they came out -- Wells sandwiched between the interrogating detectives as Buscetti continued the Miranda.

  "You have the right to an attorney," he said, "if you can’t afford one, one will be appointed for you..."

  They pushed past, heading for a stairway leading to booking; as they did William Wells looked up, saw Paul, staring at him. Though the boy’s eyes remained flat and dead, his upper lip curled ever so slightly, into a faint but unmistakable sneer.
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  Then they turned the corner, and were gone.

  ~ * ~

  Paul made his way back to the outer stairs, feeling both chilled and weirdly elated. Buscetti appeared behind him just as he was descending. "Paul," he called out.

  Paul turned. The two men shook hands. "Thanks, Stevie," he said.

  "Glad you got to see it," Buscetti replied, then added, "He’s being booked as we speak. You might wanna beat it before the vultures come." Paul nodded, pensive. Buscetti picked up on it.

  "We’ll nail him, Paul," he promised. "Right to the wall. Just give it time."

  "Sure, Stevie," Paul smiled wearily, a thin and humorless gesture. "Sure." He gave one last baleful glance, then turned and went down the stairs.

  Outside, Paul opened the truck’s door, paused. A chill wind had picked up, parting the gray cloud cover; the moon shone through, hanging high and silvery above the old brick building where monsters and their keepers dwelled. He shuddered and flipped his collar up.

  Just give it time, he thought coldly. Of course. It was only the logical thing to do.

  But as it turned out, it would take a little more than that.

  PART THREE

  SMOLDERING

  TWENTY

  And thus did the wheels turn.

  For thousands of years, societies viewed murder as a fundamentally personal crime, justice belonging first and foremost, if not to the victim, then to the family of the slain. If the killer’s family were not forthcoming -- if they resisted or failed to act in accord with the needs of the aggrieved -- a vendetta would ensue, a blood feud which could last untold generations.