Friday, April 8, 2011

Messengers - 20

“What did you find?” he asked. He knew, but you needed to keep the conversation flowing.

“Pictures. He had a scrapbook. He took a picture of each girl. Every one of them…you don’t know what it was like, looking at that. It was like looking at a snapshot of hell. I found the rest of his rape kit. It wasn’t proof. Not really. But it was enough. I knew.

I waited in his house for him. The waiting was hard. Sitting alone in the dark, waiting for a monster. He walked in and I stepped behind him and shot him in the back of the head.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

“I am guilty.”

“I think you know what I mean.”

She smiled at him again, the disarming smile. The soccer mom smile. It wasn’t reassuring.

“No. No, if I was uncertain about Carcetti I was sure about Sinclair. He would have kept on doing what he did. Maybe the angels would have sent a message to someone else and stopped him. Maybe not. I don’t feel bad about him. Not at all. The world is better place if he isn’t in it.”

“And the others?”

“You’ve read the files on them?”

“Sure.”

“Then you know. The other three? The same. The world is better off without them. It is. And they were guilty. No doubt. No innocent people at risk. So do I feel guilty? About them? No. I don’t. I wish, sometimes, that I had never heard of Carcetti. Regret. I’ll give you regret. I wish things had been different. But they weren’t.”

“What gave you the right? Why did you get to decide? What about the law?”

“What about it? The laws were designed for a specific set of circumstances. But circumstances changed. The angels might occasionally be wrong, but they never lie. I didn’t need the system to do what was right. All I needed was to be able to take the blame.

Once I killed Carcetti, the clock was ticking. I had choices. I could wait to come here, and let those animals loose on the world. Or I could do something. I did something. I murdered them and I deserve to be punished for that, but I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t wrong.”

“Do you think the angels wanted you to do what you did?” he asked.

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t know what the angels are. But I know they don’t care about us.”

“They weren’t using you to make the world a better place?”

She laughed. Longer than she reasonable, louder than was comfortable. Dylan cast a glance to the motionless guard in the corner. He shrugged.

“I’m not crazy, Mr. Hobble. At least, I’m not that crazy. I am not the avenging sword of god. I didn’t go on a holy quest. I killed them because down at the core, I knew they needed killing. Not because the angels made me, or even because the angels told me to.

The angels don’t care. If they cared, they would have told me enough to help Amanda Carcetti. If they cared, they wouldn’t have sent the message to my partner. If they cared, I wouldn’t be here. They don’t care about us, and they don’t make us do anything. All they do is show us exactly who we really are.”

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