As I sat there, looking down at the Berretta in my lap, I wondered how I’d arrived at this point. I was sitting in the driver’s seat of a dark Hyundai, and in less than twenty minutes I would fire that gun into the brain of a human being. Or maybe the chest, then the brain; it really all depended on how this one went down.
The guy might recognize me, and then maybe figure out what was coming. If he did, he’d probably try to run or dodge or jump, and I’m not that good of a shot. They don’t teach marksmanship in law school.
Either way, I was going to pull the trigger, and he was going to die.
I always made sure to do these at night because, well, it’s just harder for everyone to see you. I had thought about doing one during the day, just because the guy wouldn’t be expecting it, and there are more loud noises and whatnot to cover the sound of a couple gunshots. I figured if the right situation presented itself – a back alley, or a stairwell or something – it might be worth it, but I had yet to test that theory.
I did my first one at night, more by accident than anything else. The guy had just walked on rape and murder charges due to a huge legal blunder by the slapdick cowboys who arrested him. That was the first major case I worked for the district attorneys office, straight out of school. The defendant was one of five men who abducted an 18-year old and her boyfriend on the beach one night. They raped the girl in the back of an unmarked white work van while they held the boyfriend at gunpoint. Eventually, they stabbed the boyfriend and left him for dead on the side of 95 before pointing the van toward Orlando. He lived, but they found the girl’s body with no pants and a bullet in her head. She had a “Hello Kitty” backpack.
This particular defendant’s defense, if you can call it that, was that he hadn’t personally raped the girl, he just watched. He wouldn’t rape her, he’d said, because his brother raped her first, and he had HIV. How the cops fucked this one up isn’t important; it involves a lot of esoteric legal bullshit and arguments about civil liberties versus individual justice and blah blah blah. Just know they fucked it up.
I wasn’t at the hearing when the judge dismissed the charges against this defendant. Rather, my boss called me into his office to talk about the case against the other four. He told me to let it go, and that there was nothing we could do. I don’t remember exactly what I said during our meeting, but eventually he sent me home for the day, only after the blood had drained from his face, and cold beads of sweat had formed on his brow.
One of the great things about working a case for the DA’s office is that you get access to all kinds of information. Like where a particular defendant lives, works, eats, sleeps, and gets drunk.
I waited until three in the morning outside a crack den in Sanford, Florida. When I walked up to the guy and said his name, he looked confused but smiled as his soggy mind recognized me. He stumbled a little bit while told me his charges had been dismissed, and told me to go fuck myself. I beat him to death on the sidewalk with an aluminum baseball bat from Target. It had duct-tape on the handle.
I wiped the bat on his flannel shirt and left his body for the world, next to his teeth and part of his skull, but I took the Beretta he had stuffed in his jeans. I drove north on the Turnpike and threw the bat out the window before turning around and driving home. I called in sick to work and spent the next day in bed.
After the first, things just started to click. Every few months somebody would stumble into a technicality and find legal absolution. The scholars told us that civil liberties were more important that justice in a single case, and I agreed with them. But why not have both? Working for the D.A., I knew the truth from the evidence. I knew guilt beyond any doubt, reasonable or not. And I knew where they lived.
I saw a light flick on in the apartment across the street. During my little philosophical detour I missed my target coming home. No big deal; I’d been in his place before when we examined the crime scene, and he didn’t have a deadbolt. I put the gun in my jacket and got out of the car.
He was number twenty-four.
10 Chickens to Maine 