Justice Lost (Darren Street #3)(18)

I looked over at Granny and Eugene and Ronnie. They were standing by the wall just inside the door, stone-faced. I’d fantasized about choking Fraturra into unconsciousness and then waking him up, choking him again and waking him up, just so he’d know what it felt like for Jasmine, although I had no idea what she’d really felt, if anything at all. I’d thought about waterboarding him. Then I was going to slit his throat and stand in front of him while he bled to death, the same way Grace had.

But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I could kill, but I couldn’t become a barbarian.

I reached into the pocket of my sweatpants and wrapped my hands around the Walther P-22 pistol that I’d used to kill Big Pappy Donovan less than a year earlier.

“You’re the one who has a choice now,” Fraturra said in a tiny voice. Snot was running out of his nostrils and over his lips. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t have to do it, and to be honest with you, Grace wouldn’t want me to. But I choose to mete out justice myself when the circumstances warrant and the system fails me. Your buddy Morris isn’t going to prosecute you, but he should. At the very least, you should become intimately acquainted with some extremely unpleasant animals behind the walls of a penitentiary. And since you’re a doctor, they’d find ways to blackmail you, too, or bleed you for protection money. You’d be much poorer when you came out than when you went in. But that isn’t going to happen, is it? Morris made that quite clear.

“Grace’s parents could sue you. I could sue you. But in the end, how do you put financial value on a human life? I mean, that’s downright sick. You took Grace’s life at a certain age, and she made so much per year and the lawyers would say she would be expected to make so much per year for another certain number of years. Then her income would peak and begin to fall as she got older. Toward the end, she wouldn’t be earning much, so the value of her life at that time would decrease. It’d be all about numbers, not about what Grace actually meant to other people. Malpractice defense lawyers place no value at all on that. It’s just too vague, too uncertain. It’s too human. You can’t quantify it. So tell me, Dr. Fraturra. What’s sicker? The way they do it, or the way I’m going to do it? At least with my way, you won’t feel much pain, it’ll be quick, and your family won’t have to go through all the heartbreak of a funeral and a burial.”

“What will my family know?” His voice was trembling, breaking. He was truly pitiful with the tears running down his cheeks and the snot running over his lips.

I felt nothing for him. I shook my head.

“Hear those hogs back there? They haven’t eaten in a while. I don’t think you’ll last long once I toss you in there.”

He began to scream, but I brought the gun up and silenced him with a shot to the forehead. Then I emptied the clip into his chest.

I shot him a total of ten times.

Granny brought me a mason jar filled with moonshine, and she and I and the boys took turns taking pulls from the jar while we waited for Fraturra’s bleeding to slow. As the corn liquor warmed me, I felt satisfaction in knowing that I had ended the life of the man who, in my eyes, had killed Grace and Jasmine. I also got another dose of the addictive power that one feels when taking a human life. I basked in the glow of the power for a few moments; then I dragged Fraturra to the pigpen and dumped him over the railing while Granny, Eugene, and Ronnie set about cleaning up the rest of the mess.





PART II





CHAPTER 10

Eugene dropped me off three blocks from my place around two in the morning, and I moved carefully around the apartment building until I knew I could get in without anyone seeing me. I’d left my car there and a light on in my apartment. As far as any of my neighbors knew, I was home.

When I drifted off to sleep a little while later, I had a dream in which Grace was standing in the bedroom just a few feet away from me. Behind her was a veil of white mist that looked like a cloud. She was holding a baby wrapped in a pink blanket in her arms. I looked at her and reached out to her, but she shook her head and frowned at me.

“You could have made something worthwhile of our deaths, Darren,” she said. “You could have resisted your urges, shown some growth, but you disappointed me again. Goodbye, Darren. You’ve disappointed me for the last time.”

Then she turned, stepped into the mist, and disappeared.

I sat up on my elbows and reached toward the mist.

“Worthwhile?” I said. “How could I possibly take what Fraturra did to you and the baby and turn it into something worthwhile? Killing him wasn’t an urge, Grace, it was a necessity. It was what I had to do to balance things. How could you fault me for that? What can I do, Grace? What can I do to make you understand? Come back, please. Come back and talk to me.”

The white mist slowly darkened, and a fissure appeared suddenly. Mrs. Judge emerged with the silky red robe billowing around her and her thick, dark glasses. The scales were in her hand and the sword in its scabbard.

“Another one bites the dust at the hands of the assassin,” Mrs. Judge said.

I lay back and covered my eyes with my forearm. “Go away. I don’t need to justify myself to you.”

“I’ll get you eventually,” she said. “Justice always prevails.”