The Ethical Assassin

The morning after the incident, after he’d gone home and showered- angling his body to keep the water from hitting his ’nads, keeping his head up so he wouldn’t have to look at the purple, swollen horror- he’d managed to get dressed, although the underwear and pants were a bit of trouble, and had gone back to the police trailer and called up the Florida Highway Patrol.

“This is Jim Doe. I’m chief of police and mayor over here at Meadowbrook Grove.”

“Is that so?” said the voice on the other end of the phone. Then there was a snicker, half-hidden. They all knew about Meadowbrook Grove.

“Yeah. Look here, this is kind of embarrassing, but I was ticketing this woman last night-”

“I’ll alert the media,” the smart-ass said.

“I was ticketing this woman last night,” Doe continued, “and I guess I let my guard down. She was young and seemed harmless, and, well, she kind of caught me by surprise. She knocked me down with her car door and took off before I could get back up. But I still got her license and registration.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, it’s so. I don’t know why she would take off that way, but she must be hiding something, I figure.”

“You worked that out, huh?”

“And she knocked me down. She assaulted a police officer.”

“She assaulted you and a police officer?”

“Now look here. I don’t have no beef with you, and I’m sure if it were a highway patrolman she knocked down, you’d have the helicopter dragnet out right now.”

“A highway patrolman wouldn’t have got knocked down,” he said.

“I’m just trying to report a dangerous person. She knocked me down, maybe she takes a gun at one of you boys. I don’t know. You telling me I shouldn’t have called this in?”

He let out a long sigh. “Fine. Give me the info.”

Doe read off the information to them and hung up. He says she tried to get away. She says he tried to attack her. If necessary, he’ll concede that it is possible that she might have, for whatever reason, believed he was going to attack her, and he’d be okay with her getting off with a warning this time. But now he’d made it so it was her word against his. That had to be worth something since, days later, he hadn’t heard a thing.

Half an hour after the last inquiry. “How’s the family jewels?” Pakken asked.

“Whyn’t you go and get some speeders?” Doe said.

“I’m off duty, that’s why.”

“You ain’t got no initiative.”

“Maybe so, but I got ‘initiate,’ ” he said, turning his book so that Doe could see the word ovaled in red ink.

“Get some tickets or go home.”

Pakken must have figured out this meant that Doe wanted to be alone, so the kid grumbled a bit and took his time collecting his worthless shit, but finally he made it out the door ten minutes later. Doe rose to his feet and hobbled, legs wide apart, to the counter, where he took out what he thought of as his law enforcement fu

The phone rang. It was probably fucking Pam again; she’d been calling him twice a day to bitch at him about forgetting Je

Best to let it ring, but he had responsibilities to the community, so he yanked it from the cradle.

“Meadowbrook Grove police.”

“I’m looking for Chief Doe. This is Officer Alvarez with the Florida Highway Patrol.”

“This is Doe.” Name like Alvarez, Doe figured he’d have an accent or something, but the guy habloed ingles pretty well.

“Yeah, we’re following up on that report you filed. Listen, we spoke to the woman in question. She said you let her off with a warning and that was the end of it.”

“What?” Doe swung his legs too quickly, and he had to control the urge to yelp into the phone.

“Yeah, she says you stopped her, gave her a warning, and let her go.”

When the fuck have I ever let anyone off with a warning? It almost came out, but he checked himself. “So, is that it?”

“Well,” Alvarez said, “sounds to me like one of you isn’t telling the truth.”

“Now wait a minute,” Doe began. Just then the other line began to ring. The pain in his balls, the ringing of the other line. He was going to lose his fucking mind.

“No, you wait a minute,” Alvarez was saying. “One of you isn’t telling the truth. We can open an investigation if you like, or we can let the matter sit. What do you want to do?”

How was he supposed to know what he wanted to do with his balls aching and the phone ringing? It was on something like its twelfth ring now. Who was it that wouldn’t give up?

But the thing was, the woman didn’t want to press charges. Maybe that meant she was saving her thunder for her own report. But no, that wouldn’t work. She had denied to the state police that there had been an incident. To make public allegations now would be to set herself up as a liar. She’d shut herself and her story down.

“Just drop it, then,” Doe said.

“You sure, Chief? I hear an officer of the law was assaulted.”

“You heard me, señor.” Doe figured he was done with this asshole, so he hung up by slamming his finger into the blinking light of the endlessly ringing line. “Meadowbrook Grove police. What’s so freaking important?”

A sob and then a pause. “Jim?… Jim, is that you?… Oh, Jesus. Jim.”

The voice was all broken and messed up, choking and crying. A car accident, maybe. If it happened on their turf, it was their problem, which always pissed him right off. Maybe he should buy a tow truck, have a towing service on the side, so at least accidents might be worth a few dollars. Or better yet, haul the cars over the city limits line. Let the county handle it.

Then he placed the voice: Laurel Vieland. Shit, he hadn’t spoken to her for five or six years, probably. Not since she went and moved to Tallahassee. But her daughter. Now, that was something else. Karen had been fine a few years back, before the crank. And if she hadn’t wanted to give it up back then, she sure had no problems nowadays. No inhibitions at all.

Laurel and Karen were the only mother-daughter team that Doe had ever fucked. Not at the same time- and now he sure as shit wouldn’t want to. Still, it was something. And Karen had that daughter. The girl lived with her father up north somewhere, and he knew that the father didn’t even let her see Karen, not since Karen went crazy with the crank a couple years back. But there’d be a family reunion one day. Girl would come on home to Meadowbrook Grove, thirteen or fourteen, and Doe would work his magic on her. Then he would have fucked three generations of one family. He didn’t know anyone who could say he’d done that.

“ Laurel, is that you, honey?”

More sobbing. “Jim. They’re dead.” It came out like a ghost’s whisper. “Bastard and Karen. They’re dead.”

“Christ,” he said. “Where’s the accident?”

“Not that,” she said. More crying. Crying, crying, crying. Jesus fucking hell, just spit it out. Of course you couldn’t say things like that, because people took offense, even if it was what they needed to hear. Even if they secretly wanted you to say it, you still couldn’t.

Doe was already thinking about the money. Maybe Karen a little, too, but mostly the money. Bastard had been over there again. He still couldn’t believe that Bastard was stepping in on Karen. He knew, knew, Doe had been fucking her, and he’d moved in anyhow. Doe had seen it for himself tonight. And he’d seen Karen see him, too. Just like he pla