Silver Justice (35 page)

“What did you do, Howard?”

“Theodore Dendt, the chairman and CEO of Grisham Caldren, spent last night sleeping the untroubled sleep of the all-powerful on his sumptuous, custom-made, king-size bed, which exposed him to enough radiation so that he’ll be dead within three days, tops. There’s nothing he can do to stop it. No cure. Money won’t help. Nothing anyone can do will slow it. He’s already as dead as if I’d blown his head off. Only now, like me, he has to get up each remaining day and spend every second thinking about how little time he has left. How his life has been terminated by someone he’s never met, for no other reason than because he was accessible. A target of convenience, you might say. Kind of a ‘shit happens’ thing, just like shit happened to me. It seemed fitting.”

Both Richard and Silver stared at him in horror.

Richard leapt up and pounded on the door. A second later it opened, and he disappeared, clutching Silver’s note as a guard entered the cell in his place.

Howard yawned. “How’s the head?”

“How do you think?” She slipped her pen into her jacket pocket. “You’re…you’re acting like you’re a monster. But you’re completely logical and aware of what you’re doing. I don’t understand it. How can a decent man do such things?” she asked, as much to herself as to him.

“Silver, Silver. I’m not a monster. That’s the worst part about this. I’m not insane – at least, not in the textbook way. I don’t hear voices. I don’t believe I’m pursuing God’s hidden plan. I’m not delusional. I’m simply a man without much time to live, who identified a way he could spend the remainder of his life doing some good.”

“Doing
good
?”

“Yes. I’ve rid the world of seven parasites who brought with them misery and sadness and suffering. Their actions, and the actions of their like-minded colleagues, have ensured that the quality of life for countless people who never did anything wrong will be diminished. I simply did what the government and the law refuse to do. I brought accountability into the equation.”

Richard returned, dismissed the guard, and resumed his position at her side.

Silver glanced at the mirror along the far wall and exhaled with frustration and fatigue.

She looked at Richard. “Do we have enough?”

“I’d say so.”

She turned back to Howard. “What are you going to do now? You keep saying you had a reason for doing all this that goes beyond revenge. What’s the grand plan, Howard?”

“I’m writing a book. I’ll have to write fast, I know. But I figure that the memoirs of The Regulator will be interesting reading to a public with a short attention span, and I can document what was done and name the names of those even more deeply responsible than the few I exterminated – then perhaps there will be sufficient awareness so more action takes place. At the very least, it will be impossible for the system to pretend it doesn’t know what was done, or by whom. That’s my final gift. My legacy.”

“Then this was all a publicity stunt for the book?”

“I suppose if you were cynical you could say so. I prefer to say this was a way of ensuring people were interested in receiving a message they need to hear.”

The interrogation lasted another fifteen minutes. After it had concluded, Howard was taken away, leaving Silver and Richard alone.

“You hungry?” he asked her.

“Not really. I think I lost my appetite for the rest of my life.”

“Want to watch me eat? I’m sloppy, and I make noise.”

“You do know how to lure the ladies in.”

“I hear my belching is irresistible.”

“Then lead the way.”

~ ~ ~

“They sent a team to the penthouse. We both know what they’ll find,” Richard said as he scanned the menu of a little Italian place two blocks from headquarters.

“Can you imagine what it would be like to find out you’re going to die in another two or three days? In agony?”

“I’d say that’s what Howard is looking forward to, only in another few months. I don’t know which is worse.”

“He’s so calm. Do you think he’s a sociopath?” Silver asked.

“You know, I really don’t. He shows regret and obviously cared about others. He even seems to care how you’re doing. It could all be an act, but I don’t think so. I think Howard is something different. I’m not sure there’s a word for it. He’s a man who’s simply seen too much.”

“That’s what creeps me out. He’s so normal. And he makes it sound so rational.”

Richard didn’t say anything. The waiter came, and he ordered cannelloni. She opted for a salad.

“It’s a hard one, Silver. I have to say I’m glad I’m not going to be on the jury.”

“We both know he’ll never live long enough for this to go to a jury.”

“It’s really the perfect crime.”

“You sound like you…like you understand him.”

“I sort of do,” Richard admitted.

“But you can’t condone what he’s done. It’s wrong. You can’t just kill everyone you think has been bad. That’s what the law is for. The system.”

“Yes. I know. But he does raise an interesting question. What do you do when the system is broken?”

“Obviously, you need to work within the system to change it.”

“Sure. But if your research has shown that change is impossible? That the bad guys are just going to get away with it because the system itself is so flawed meaningful change is impossible?”

“I don’t know, Richard.”

“If someone broke into your house and raped Kennedy, and then you discovered that it was the mayor’s son, and because it was him, that he’d never be prosecuted…what would you do? No, even better, if you discovered that he did it all the time and had never been stopped and never would be?”

“I don’t like that kind of question.”

“I know. But that’s the question he’s forcing us to consider. It’s very much like that. We know who committed the crime, we know they’ve done it before, we know they’ll do it again, and we know nobody is ever going to stop them. So what’s your responsibility in that case?”

Their food came, and they ate in silence.

After a while Silver said, “I suddenly don’t like the world I’m living in.”

“I know. Me neither.”

“Then what’s the solution? What’s the right answer?” Silver asked, putting her fork down disgustedly.

“I don’t think there is one. I think there’s just a right answer for you. I think the hard part is when you remove all the rules and have to decide what’s right, not because you’re afraid of being punished or caught, but because of what you’ve decided. For me, I think all we can do is try to be happy and be glad we’re not in Howard’s position.” Richard took another bite of pasta.

“That’s it? Try to be happy? That’s your solution?”

“I didn’t say it was a complete solution. But it’s the only one I’ve come up with. So I’ll keep going to work every day, put one foot in front of the other, put a bad guy in jail every now and then, and try to focus on the good in my life – of which you are one of the big things at the moment.”

“The good?”

He nodded. “The best.”

“Is this where we talk about us?”

“I think we just did. You want a chocolaty dessert?”

Chapter 27

The guards moved with Rob through the prison corridor, his feet shuffling due to the hobbling from the restraints around his ankles. His wrists were likewise bound, and the two huge guards escorting him towered over his lanky frame.

He had been pulled out of his cell at seven a.m. with no warning or explanation other than that he was being transferred to a new facility. No reason had been given, but he knew when he heard the words super max that his life was about to change for the worse.

The larger of the two guards grinned his enjoyment of Rob’s predicament. “Hey, buddy, I hear you’re headed to Southport. That should be fun, huh? Rest of your life in an eight by twelve box. If you’re good, you get one hour a day in the yard. Rest of the time you’re in solitary.”

“I’ll be back before you know it. They got no grounds to move me to super max,” Rob said with confidence.

“I won’t be putting any money into that pool. I hear you pissed off the wrong people.”

Rob struggled vainly against the four point restraint system as he was led to the prison loading dock, where a truck much like an armored car waited to ferry him to his new home. Three guards stood impassively by as he was manhandled into the back of the truck, which was a specially constructed vault designed for prisoner transport. The driver signed a sheaf of forms, and the back slammed shut with a heavy thud. A few moments later, they were moving.

After several hours on the road, the truck lurched to a halt, and the door opened. Four guards stood waiting, and a fifth signed the paperwork, taking receipt of the former motorcycle gang chief. He glared at them. The guard that had signed for him moved into his field of vision. Rob noted that part of his face had burn scars on it.

“Hello, douchebag. Welcome to Southport. This is your new home until the end of time. There are some rules you’ll need to learn, and I’ll let the boys fill you in about them. But I’m here to let you know about the only ones you need to remember. You are not here to be rehabilitated. You are not here to improve your mental health. You are not here to operate a criminal enterprise, or network with others, or piss anyone here off, or you will find yourself in an absolute world of hurt. Contrary to what you might believe, you have no rights. You have no expectation of fair treatment. You live and you will die by however I feel, and I’m usually pissed-off that my life consists of looking after scum like you. That makes me very angry on a good day. You do not want to test that anger. It is sudden and swift, and it will land on you like a piano dropped from a twenty-story building if I even imagine you’re giving me problems. I’m the head of the day shift on your block. The night guy is not as patient or compassionate as I am. You will sit in your cell and rot until you die, which for me can’t happen soon enough. I won’t bother asking you if you have any questions because I don’t care. You are nothing. A zero. So begins the rest of your miserable life, which my sole aim is to make as unpleasant as humanly possible.”

Rob blinked at him without expression. The man nodded at his fellow guards, who jerked him into motion.

A solitary figure in a suit stood watching the procession at the far end of the receiving facility and nodded when the head of the day shift approached him.

“If there’s anything you can do to make his life worse than it will be just by virtue of being here, think of it as my special request for you to do so. He put out a contract on an FBI agent. We’ll keep him here until that works its way through the system, or until he dies – whichever occurs first,” Agent Heron said.

“People die all the time. He doesn’t look particularly healthy.”

“No, I suspect he isn’t.”

“Consider it my pleasure, then. You need an escort out?”

“I was never here.”

~~ ~

Silver adjusted the cushion at the base of her spine and swiveled the chair a little as she tried to get comfortable. The headaches had receded over the last three days, but the back was still prone to aching. Her doctors had assured her that in time it, too, would fade; as far as she was concerned, it couldn’t happen fast enough.

This was her first full day back at work, and she studied the pile of paperwork with loathing. A week off and she’d accumulated enough on her desk to require a month of her time just to get even. The good news was that she didn’t have much else to do – with Howard in custody, the task force had wound down, so she was between assignments at present.

Sam avoided her as much as possible, which was fine. If she never had to deal with him again that would be too soon. He’d taken her success in apprehending Howard almost personally, as a deliberately contrived sleight, and had been moping all morning after coming in and giving her a desultory, obligatory congratulation.

Some people were just magnets for bad karma. Sam was clearly one of those.

Whatever – it wasn’t her problem.

Dendt had died the prior morning from radiation poisoning. She’d deliberately avoided paying too much attention to the descriptions of his decline. Perhaps he was a malignancy, as Howard had posited, but still, nobody deserved to go that way.

Seth knocked lightly on her door jamb. She looked up from her pile with relief.

“How does it feel to be back in the saddle?” he asked with a smile.

“Like being a third grade teacher with five hundred homework assignments to grade.” She gestured at the mounds of reports.

“Hey, at least it’s over, and the good guys won again,” he said as he sat down. “And you’re now an official legend in Bureau history. I think taking a serial into custody while flat on your back and on leave is a first. I’m not sure how you top that.”

“I’m not planning to. Besides, that was mostly luck.”

Seth gave her a disbelieving look. “I sort of figured.”

“Sam doesn’t look too happy about it,” Silver observed.

“Yeah, well, he was gearing up to hang the whole thing on a Muslim fundamentalist terror cell, or the mob, or both, and you spoiled his party. It would have made quite a name for him if that had turned out to be right.”

“I was thinking exactly the same thing when I didn’t win The Big Spin again last night. If only…”

They both chuckled, then Silver raised an eyebrow in warning.

Brett’s suited form filled the doorway, causing Seth to jump to his feet.

“I was just leaving,” he said.

Brett nodded.

Once Seth had departed, Brett closed the door behind him and took a seat in front of her desk.

“How are you doing?”

“Not bad. Tough to get back into the swing of things, but then again, I was never much for pushing a pencil.”

“I know the feeling. I’ve put you in for a commendation, by the way. I’m pretty sure it will be a laydown.”

“Thank you for that. It means a lot to me.” Which was true. Recognition of her excellence on the job was one of the ways she measured herself, and it never hurt to hear you were doing a good job.