I’d like to tell you that I felt sick, traumatized by guilt, but I crossed the mountain, returned to the Range Rover, and drove away from Gibson’s execution with the calm resolve of the righteous. Evil is a stain on the world, and it felt good to wipe some of it clean.
The moon shone on the creases of the valley, making silver ghosts of everything around me, and I admired the beauty of the world as I drove along Topanga Canyon Road toward the ocean. When I reached the intersection with the Pacific Coast Highway, the water stretched ahead and touched the hem of the blanket of stars, and that’s when doubt whispered at me.
Were those the eyes of a guilty man? Walter’s ghost asked.
You’ve got the wrong person, Farah’s spirit added.
You did have the wrong person, Gibson’s specter said, and I wanted to cry. I’ve never hurt anyone.
“You were a drug dealer,” I said aloud to Walter. “And you laundered money for cartels,” I told Farah. “And you were worst of all,” I said to Gibson. “You abused children.”
Did I? Gibson’s ghost replied.
The question was devastating. I’d set myself up as his judge and executioner, but what if I was wrong? What if I’d killed an innocent man?
What if we were all innocent? Walter’s spirit asked.
“Shut up,” I said.
Then you’re just a murderer for money, Farah’s ghost whispered.
“Shut up,” I repeated, but their sour words had washed over me and were getting me drunk on guilt.
I’d seen evidence of Walter’s wrongdoing with my own eyes, but what if he’d later repented of his crimes and settled into a new life as a good man? Did I have the right to punish him for a self he might have already killed? Our histories are grains of sand on an infinite beach, and in the end, aren’t all our wrongs washed away by the sweep of time? I looked up at the stars, the only true witnesses to the countless wrongs perpetrated here on earth, and they neither remember nor care about any of it. The torture and murder of innocents in centuries past, now just footnotes in rarely thumbed textbooks. Weren’t perps and victims equally forgotten? Had I robbed Walter, Farah, and Gibson of the chance of redemption?
But then I wouldn’t have gotten my five hundred grand, and when it came down to it, all my rationalizations about being a vigilante and fighting evil, all my cockamamie ideas about guilt and justice, I was killing for money. Farah’s ghost was right, the payday mattered. It was a future for my daughter and me.
A vengeful father caught in the heat of retribution might have driven straight home, but I wanted an alibi, a reason that might explain my presence in the neighborhood. I’d driven to the coast for an evening walk in the hills and dinner at my favorite fish place, the Reel Inn. The military man was finally shining through, using his training and strategic thinking to execute targets. But without the uniform, I was just an assassin. A monied serial killer.
I pulled off the PCH and went inside the Reel Inn to order grilled sea bass from the counter. It was too late for civilized folk to eat dinner, so the place was quiet. I took a booth by the front window and watched the traffic on the highway, and the ocean shimmering in the moonlight.
Once finished with my meal, I hung around until the place closed and made sure plenty of people saw me in that booth before I left and drove east toward Laurel Canyon.
My headlamps lit up the road into the hills, and all was tranquil until I reached my front gate and my twin beams shone upon a blue Chevy Tahoe.
Detective Rosa Abalos stepped out of her vehicle, and I considered speeding away, but she’d seen me, and running would make me look guilty.
Realizing the gun was still in the glove compartment, my heart thrashed around like a fish on a hook.
I fought the urge to panic and showed nothing but calm as I lowered my window and slowed to a halt by my gate.
“Mr. Collard,” Rosa said. “We need to talk.”