The Reapers

The boy named Louis was unusual. Here was an individual who had responded to a hostile stimulus in a forebrained way, approaching the threat as a problem to be solved. It wasn’t simply that the second, midbrain filter had been overcome; instead, Gabriel wondered if the issue had ever even reached that stage. This was a cold-blooded, premeditated killing. It indicated significant potential. The difficulty, from Gabriel’s point of view, lay in the physical distance from the killing itself that the boy had maintained. Gabriel understood the relationship between physical proximity and the trauma of killing. It was harder to kill someone up close with a knife than it was to shoot him at long range with a sniper’s rifle. Similarly, the sense of elation that frequently came with a kill was increasingly short-lived the closer the killer was to the victim, because in that situation guilt was as close as the body. Gabriel had even known soldiers to comfort the man whose life they had taken as he lay dying, whispering apologies for what had been done.

In real terms, the apparent ease with which the boy had killed suggested a possible dissociation, a reluctance or inability to recognize the consequences of his actions; that, or an intellectual understanding that he had murdered someone combined with an emotional denial of the act, and with that any real responsibility for it. He would have to be tested further so that his true nature might be revealed. The boy did not appear to be showing signs of undue stress. He had, it seemed, handled himself calmly when faced with sometimes violent interrogation. He had not broken. He was not seeking an opportunity to confess, to expiate his sin. True, stress might reveal itself later, but for the moment he appeared relatively untroubled by what he had done. It was only a small percentage of men, that elusive 2 percent, who, under the right circumstances, could kill without remorse. Those circumstances did not necessarily involve personal risk, or even a risk to the lives of others. It was, at one level, a matter of conditioning and situation. At some point, the boy would have to be placed in the right environment in order to see how he might respond. If he did not react correctly, that would be the end of the matter. It might also, Gabriel knew, mean the boy’s death.

There was also the matter of how he would respond to authority. It was one thing to kill for oneself, and quite another to kill because someone told you to do so. Soldiers were more likely to fire their weapons when their leaders were present, and were more effective when they were bound to that leader by their respect for him. Gabriel was in a different position: his charges had to be willing to do what he told them even while he himself was far away. He was like a general, but without subordinates in the field who could ensure that his orders were carried out to the letter. In turn, leaders in combat had a degree of legitimacy that came from their status in the hierarchy of their nations, but Gabriel’s position was far more ambiguous.

For all of these reasons, Gabriel picked those whom he used with great care. True sociopaths were of no use to him, because they did not respect authority. The younger his charges were, the better, because the young were more open to manipulation. He tried to look for weaknesses to exploit, ways to fill the gaps in their lives. The boy Louis lacked a father figure, but he had not been so desperate to find one that he was prepared to acquiesce to Deber’s authority, or to flee from him in order to seek another when it became apparent that Deber considered him a threat. Gabriel would have to tread lightly. Louis’s trust would be hard-earned.

But from what Gabriel had learned, Louis was also a natural loner. He had no close friends, and he lived as the only male in a household of women. He was not the kind who would form relationships within larger groups, which meant that, if his natural instincts were cha

According to what Gabriel had learned before his arrival at the little police department, the boy was a fighter, one who would stand his ground when provoked. That was good. It indicated an important predisposition to aggression, even a longing for an opportunity to display it. Louis’s experiences with Deber had been the trigger for what followed but, to complete the analogy, the weapon had already been loaded long before then. There were also rumors that the boy was a homosexual; if not a practicing one, for he was still very young, then he had at least exhibited sufficient tendencies to allow rumors about his sexuality to circulate locally. Gabriel, as in so many other areas, was enlightened about matters of individual sexuality. He distinguished between those aspects that were aberrant-a predilection toward violence, for example, or the impulse to abuse children-and those that were not. Aberrant sexual behavior indicated a degree of unreliability that tended to exhibit itself in other areas as well, and rendered its practitioners unsuitable for Gabriel’s purposes. Gabriel was not a homosexual, but he understood the nature of sexual desire, just as he understood the nature of aggression and hostility, for the two were not as distant as some liked to believe. While there were some aspects of human behavior that could be controlled and altered, there were some that could not, and one’s sexual orientation was among them. Louis’s sexuality interested Gabriel only in the sense that it might make him vulnerable or conflicted. Such weaknesses could be exploited.

And so Gabriel watched Louis through the glass, and the boy stared back. Five minutes passed in this way, and at the end Gabriel nodded once to himself in apparent satisfaction, then stood and left the room to face the fifteen-year-old killer.

Like any good leader, Gabriel loved his people, in his fashion, even though he was prepared, at all times, to sacrifice them if the need arose. Over the years that followed, Louis fulfilled, and even exceeded, Gabriel’s expectations, except in one regard: he refused to kill women on Gabriel’s orders. It was, Gabriel supposed, a legacy of his upbringing, and Gabriel made allowances for it, for he did indeed love Louis. He became like a son to him and Gabriel, in turn, became the father of the man.

Gabriel stepped into the interrogation room and took a seat across the table from Louis. The room smelled of perspiration and other less pleasant things, but Gabriel did not give any indication that he noticed. The boy’s face was shiny with sweat.

Gabriel unplugged the tape recorder from the wall, then sat across from Louis and placed his hands upon the table. “My name is Gabriel,” he said. “And you, I believe, are Louis.”

The boy did not answer, but simply regarded the older man silently, waiting to see what might be revealed.

“You’re free to go, by the way,” said Gabriel. “You will not be charged with the commission of any crime.”

This time, the boy reacted. His mouth opened slightly, and his eyebrows lifted an inch. He looked at the door.