CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The woman has surrendered. From a second-story window of the police station, I watch her being brought in. The local SWAT team forms a line leading from the van to the back door, being careful to create safe lanes of fire. An officer opens the van and she emerges on her own. Because of her constraints, she has to sit down in order to wiggle out of the back of the van.

She shuffles into the building. My warnings against deadly poisons being concealed on her person, in a ring or under her clothes, are being taken very seriously. The police chief wanted to have her strip completely and be hosed down, but I have convinced him to delay such a precaution. The more chances she has to contact others, the more fragmentals she will scatter, so I have given explicit instructions that she be immediately brought to me for personal interrogation. Already federal agents and the police are rounding up anyone who might have had contact with her. I have to collect all the loose fragmentals.

After she disappears beneath me into the building, I resume my favorite seat. The mayor’s chair is soft and exudes a sense of comfortable authority. The most interesting positions of power are oftentimes not found in command of an army or a nation; a simple mayor can offer so much more subtlety.

The door opens and she enters. I think of this council chamber as my room. Here is my most glorious moment, the first killing of a brother, and now the killing of the hated one himself. Though if my father is in this woman, then the situation is so much more dangerous than it was this morning.

Thompson follows her into the room and closes the door behind himself. His pistol is carefully aimed at her.

“Go over there next to that table and lie down on the floor on your stomach,” I instruct.

The young woman, blonde hair hanging down around her shoulders, does as she is told. It is an awkward maneuver in her cuffs, but she manages, lying on her hands.

From the briefcase, I produce an automatic pistol and silencer. Screwing them together, I hand them to my assistant. He returns his own pistol to his shoulder holster. “Thompson, shoot her if she so much as moves when I touch her.”

“Yes, sir.” There is a catch in his voice.

I can see that this instruction concerns him. I killed the last suspect, and he fears the consequences of killing this one himself. I move closer to him. “You are in this until the end,” I whisper. “Do you understand?”

A brief touch confirms that he understands.

Like a wary handler approaching a deadly snake, I suddenly kick out and touch the calf of the woman. My father leaps at me, desperately clawing at my mind, but the swing of the foot has broken contact.

The woman wiggles after me, but I easily step away, laughing in glee. I feel good, really good. Seeing the futility of the exercise, she stops her efforts.

“So you are my father?” I say, casual and conversational.

“You call me your father?” she says from the floor, her voice sounding amazed. After a bit of thought, she continues. “I guess I am your father. That means you are a wayward son. Please search your heart and change. Quit hurting people. Come to me, my son, reintegrate and follow a better path.”

“Don’t waste your breath. If I haven’t converted in the last two thousand years, why would I suddenly fall into folly? Besides, I prefer to think of myself as a bastard child.”

“Only your behavior makes you a bastard. Come to me and we will be one again. I can forgive you.”

I laugh. The conversation is delicious. “It is hard to imagine you as a woman. It’s such an excellent disguise.”

“Your life has no meaning, no purpose.” Her tone pleads with me for communication, an understanding to create a bridge between us. She is wasting her breath; I already have my understanding.

“Meaning?” I ask playfully. “Have you been reading Viktor Frankl again?”

“You know of Frankl?”

“Of course, you had the good senator read him, and he dutifully followed your prescription. Frankl inspired him, gave him a reason to continue to live. I mean, if a Jewish psychiatrist can survive the Holocaust, why can’t a simple senator survive his wife’s death?”

The woman chastised me. “You should not be so cynical about a man who exhibited great moral courage.”

“Which man?”

“Both of them, Dr. Frankl and Senator Handlin.”

I perch on the edge of a chair, my muscles afire with tension. “Yes, that is what you like, isn’t it? Moral courage. Strong backbone. You were a psychiatrist. I’ll bet you fancy yourself a healer.”

She does not respond to my mocking tone and I suddenly grow angry. Enough of this playing.

Motioning Thompson toward me, I take the silenced pistol from him. I like the feel of the metal.

She looks directly at me. “May God hasten your end,” she says, almost a prayer.

“You will find that there is no God,” I respond as I walk around to her feet. My shot is right on target. Base of the skull, sending the soft lead ricocheting around inside all that gray matter.