The Ethical Assassin

“I guess it didn’t do him much good.”

“As near as I can figure it, he was hanging with some of the wrong kids one day when one of them decided it was time to stick up a convenience store. Kingsley thought they were there for candy. This other kid, he pulled out a gun. Stupidest thing. I don’t think the others knew he was pla

“That’s a real tragedy,” I said, doing my best to sound as though I meant it. I was having a hard time focusing on George Kingsley’s problems when I had some doozies of my own.

“Yeah, it is a real tragedy. You want that to happen to you? You plan to head off to Columbus University, don’t you? How about the university of getting raped every night?”

She was trying to u

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you can raise that with the warden once you’re inside.”

I didn’t want to think about Melford’s prison riddle, but that was all I could think about, because I now knew the answer. I understood what Melford had been getting at. I understood why we had prisons if they didn’t work. I understood why we put lawbreakers in criminal academies to turn them into more dangerous, more bloodthirsty, more alienated criminals. I knew why Kingsley had gone in a victim and come out a victimizer. Prisons were set up that way because they did work, they just worked at something more sinister than I’d ever realized.

We sat in a small interrogation room around a flimsy metal table that had been bolted to the floor. I guess the cops thought some thief might try to make off with it if they weren’t careful. The surrounding walls were all the same pale green cinder block as the hallways- except for the billowy mirror facing me. I had no doubt that someone could be watching from the other side, though I thought it unlikely that anyone would be bothered.

Toms sat across from me and leaned forward on her elbows. “Okay,” she said. “You know why you’re here.”

“No, I don’t,” I told her. “I have no idea why I’m here.” Only partially true. I had no idea what they knew and what they didn’t know. What struck me, however, was how calm I felt. Maybe it was because I believed Aimee Toms to be basically friendly and maybe because I’d faced scarier moments than this- a whole bunch of them- in the past couple of days. I felt okay. I felt like if I played it cool, the way Melford did, I’d be all right.

“Let’s talk about Lionel Semmes,” she said.

I felt myself suck in a breath. Not out of recognition, but out of exasperation. Lionel Semmes? There was yet another player in all this? How deep did all this go? “Who is that?”

Toms sighed. “You might know him as Bastard.”

“Oh, Bastard. Right. What about him?”

“Tell me about him.”

“Well,” I said thoughtfully, “I tried to sell him some encyclopedias, but he and his wife didn’t want to buy. I remember him because I don’t usually spend so much time with a family without making a sale. Plus he was kind of intense and creepy.”

“And?”

I shrugged. “That’s all. I don’t know anything else. Why?”

“Bastard wasn’t married, but he and his girlfriend are missing. No one has seen them since Friday night. As best we can tell, you are the last person to see them alive. That might or might not on its own make you a suspect. But then I find you at Bastard’s place of work being hassled by Jim Doe, Bastard’s employer. And then you were going around to Bastard’s neighbors asking questions about him. You can see how my mind is working here, can’t you?”

I suddenly felt dizzy. At the time, I had suspected the canvass of the neighbors to be a colossal mistake. Now I knew it. Why had Melford insisted I do it? I couldn’t help but hear the echoes of Chitra’s doubt in my head. Had he wanted me to be seen?

“I never did that,” I lied.

“We have neighbors who say they saw you yesterday, asking questions about Bastard and Karen. At least they say they saw someone who fits your description. We can do a lineup if that’s what you want, but I think we both know what the lineup will show.”

“Do a lineup,” I said with a shrug. I could think of nothing to do but bear down, act tough. I had to choke back a little smile because I could feel it happening to me the way it happened to the others. Here I was, nothing more than a suspect, but the system was already turning me into something else, something more badly socialized. If I stayed in prison long enough, I might even turn into something dangerous.

“We searched his trailer,” Aimee said. “We found blood samples.”

I studied her. She did not mention having found a dead guy with a comb-over, so I could only assume that Doe had removed him.

“We found lots of fingerprints, too. I suspect that some will be yours.”

“I already told you that I tried to sell them books. Of course some will be mine.”

She shrugged. “And what about the blood? Any thoughts?”

“Not really. No one was bleeding while I was there.”

“It could be theirs. Could be you killed them and cleaned up, but made mistakes.”

“That’s crazy. Why would I kill them? I don’t know them. How would I have gotten rid of the bodies? I don’t even have a car.”

“My guess is that you had help. I’m also guessing that whoever did it might have dumped the bodies in the waste lagoon, and as soon as we have enough evidence for a warrant, we’ll find out. It would explain what you were doing there.”

“Officer, you saw me. Did I look like I’d just hauled two bodies into a seething pile of pig crap? I was a little beaten up and a little bloodied, but I wasn’t covered with sweat.”

“Whatever,” she conceded. “The truth is, we don’t know. We’re working on theories. That blood might have been from Bastard and Karen. It might not. Karen’s mother hasn’t been seen for a couple of days, so she might have killed them.”

Karen’s mother, I thought. The third body.

“There are other possibilities,” she said. “Bastard was into stealing pets. The blood might be animal blood.”

“He was into stealing pets?” I tried to sound both surprised and disgusted. “What for?”

“Hell if I know. We had a bunch of complaints about it, but we couldn’t really prove anything. I talked to him myself, but…” She shrugged. “A lot of people were sure it was Bastard, but without evidence there wasn’t anything we could do. And if he was keeping any evidence he might have at his girlfriend’s trailer, in Doe’s jurisdiction, we were pretty well blocked since Bastard worked for Doe.”

“So you let him get away with it?” I asked. “He was taking people’s dogs and cats, and you just let him do it?”

“Like I said, there wasn’t much we could do legally- not without proof.”

“That sounds pretty lame to me.”

“Can we stick to the point here?”

“I guess so. It just seems kind of odd to me is all.”

“The problem is not that dogs and cats are missing. It’s that people are missing and might be dead. And I think you know something about it.”

“I don’t know anything about it. Should I have a lawyer?”

“You’re not under arrest,” she said.

“Then can I go?”