Red Mist
Page 28
The photo was of this place, the crime scene. A body lay where the Watchdog lay. Karen, dead. Some photo snapped off a phone before the cops got here to cover her body, probably by the guy who discovered her. The same photo that the whole country had seen in a newspaper, but the Watchdog stared at it as if he'd never come across it before. Maybe that was just the impression his wide, lidless eyes gave, but maybe not. Maybe the Watchdog had not viewed his own handiwork. It was one thing to see a "skank" across a dark road and point and say her, and quite another to view the product of your plan. And that was why Matt brandished the photo. His way of saying:
This is who you killed.
He tossed away the photo and used the glue to fill the Watchdog's nostrils. He clamped them tightly shut, held them. Ten seconds. Had had to peel his fingers away because they'd stuck to the guy's skin.
"What about the guy who killed her? What about him?" the Watchdog moaned. He reeled off a name and an address. "He gets away with it, does he?"
Matt shook his head and held up another photograph. Karen in a summer dress, seated at a garden table with a piece of cake. Another party Matt had missed. He held the photo just inches from those wide eyes to make sure the Watchdog saw it clearly, every pixel. It was one thing to see a ragged corpse, and quite another to know that your victim could present as a smiling, sweet, vibrant young woman, a work of art.
This is who you killed.
The breathing was hard, the throat constricted with fear.
"Killing me changes nothing. She's still dead. I'll go to prison. But don't do this. Please."
Matt smiled at him. Just to show he was beyond reason. Just to increase the shock. He placed the photo carefully aside. Reached for the glue. Lips this time. He forced the lips tightly together when the Watchdog closed his jaws to gulp against the glue that had gone into his mouth and throat. Ten seconds again. Lips joined, teeth melded, throat closed up. He met the Watchdog's eyes and held them as the body tensed and the cheeks puffed as air was sought and air wouldn't come.
The final photograph was grainy, low quality. Not here a ragged corpse or even a vibrant woman. Not even close. It was one thing to see your victim as a handsome young lady, and quite another to know you'd orchestrated the brutal murder of this. Here was the beauty and innocence of a thousand summer flowers and a million sparkling blue oceans, clad in a pink dress, smeared around the smiling mouth with chocolate, her eyes showing the eternal fascination of a brain just nineteen months into the world.
This is who you killed.
Matt pushed open the back door and slipped inside. The kitchen was dark, but his eyes were already adjusted to the lack of light from his time waiting out in the garden. He moved through the room, through a door in the far wall.
He found himself in a tiny hallway. There was a set of stairs, and two doors, both open. He saw a dining room beyond one, a living room beyond the other. The TV was on in the living room, but nobody was there. The dining room was empty, too.
He crept up the stairs, flexing his fists, warming the muscles up, ready for what he needed to do.
He could hear noises from the bathroom, but first made sure the other rooms were empty. The bathroom door was ajar, light spilling out. He kicked it open.
A cat had been on the edge of the bath, splashing a paw in the water. As the door flew open, the cat leapt down and scampered out past his feet.
A man was in the bath, but he wasn't relaxing.
Matt stumbled like a drunken man and had to steady himself by sitting on the toilet. He stared at the dead Judge, at the still bathwater, where there floated a medicine bottle. Empty. Just to confirm, he reached over and touched the man's arm. It was pale and wrinkly and very cold.
He stared at the face, running his eyes over every detail. Here he was, finally. Karen's killer. But for the second time, one he hunted had escaped by taking his own life. He leaned back against the wall, angry and full of lost hope, and that was when his eyes were caught by an anomaly on the pristine white ceiling. He stood on the bath's edge and yanked it down. A piece of paper, held there by tape.
It was a photo of Karen.
She had red hair and a fluffy white coat and some kind of glittery tank top that barely covered her breasts. She was standing as if facing the camera for the shot, but her head was slightly turned, eyes off somewhere other than the lens, and Matt got the impression she had been snapped without knowing it. Behind her, part of a window in a brick wall. An outdoor shot. Combined with that outfit…
He wanted to tear the photo into pieces. He knew the photo had been taken not long before her death, out on the street while she hunted clients. Taken by someone to give to the Judge, so he would know which girl had been selected for death.
But he couldn't. She looked so different to how he remembered her. It was how she had looked at the end, and that meant a lot to him, although he wasn't sure why. So he took a photo of the photo using his phone, then put the original in the dead man's hand, so that the connection would be made by the police and Matt's family could find their own solace.
But as he was jamming the photo between cold, dead fingers, he caught sight of something on the back. Some scrawl of black pen. He turned it over and exposed something that almost stopped his heart.
He had seen it before, of course. Back then, the diagram had given him a million questions. Now, it answered everything.
A letter C on its back with a child's version of a cloud inside it: three bumps together.
The Judge had not taken his own life to avoid judgement and punishment, but because he was wracked by guilt. Every waking moment spent with the photo in his hands, using the image of the girl he'd killed to fuel his examination of the only clue he had: a decal ghost glimpsed on the side of a van, maybe one he had been transported in by the Watchdogs. Unable to work out what kind of decal had left the residue, and knowing he had a date with death, he had somehow passed that clue onto someone else who wanted justice.
Matt had assumed he was being watched, tested, but that was not the case. The clue had landed in his hands simply because the Judge had figured the family of a dead prostitute would be the only ones who would care enough to try to use it to find those responsible. Maybe the lack of an accompanying explanation was in case the family went to the police and the police found the judge, because the diagram alone held no weight as evidence of anything.
Matt rubbed his head. He could theorise all day and never know if he was right or wrong. None of it mattered. He had come here intending to leave a dead body behind, and at least that had happened. Not by his hand, but dead nonetheless. The Judge had felt overwhelming remorse in the end, and Matt couldn't ask for much more than that.
So he left.
Lisa didn't speak when he got in the car. He did not tell her that the Judge had taken his own life. And he knew that by not doing so, she would probably think he had killed again. He looked at her, and she looked at him, and he couldn't read her eyes. Didn't want to, in case he saw something he didn't like. So he lowered his gaze.
She put the car in gear and they drove away.
THE END