If he found my two holsters, bulletproof vest, utility belt, and the weapon in my hand alarming, he concealed his concern quite well. Still smiling, he raised his right fist and said, “Contumax,” which was the word on the bronze door to their temple. He said it not as a challenge but as one member of a men’s club might have called out a greeting to another member, using a secret word that helped them tell the difference between themselves and the Odd Fellows or the Freemasons.
I was somewhat surprised to hear myself answer him with the word in the center of the temple floor: “Potestas.”
Evidently I pronounced it correctly and it was the right thing to say, because he didn’t frown with suspicion. “I’m Rob Burkett.”
“Scottie Ferguson,” I replied, not sure why I took the name of the lead character in Vertigo.
Rob appeared to be delighted with me, perhaps somewhat envious, when he indicated my weaponized appearance and said, “So you’re all dressed for the stage. Be hard as nails, man, make it memorable. Which have you been assigned, a little bitch or a little bastard?”
I popped him twice in the chest. The sound suppressor proved to be of high quality, producing only one whifff and then another, which echoed quietly along the corridor like a pair of heavily muffled kitten sneezes that couldn’t have been heard through a closed door.
Even an unsentimental head-collecting child-murdering fanatic with big-time hoodoo tricks and a friend in the hierarchy of Hell can make a serious mistake. But only one.
In this place infested with human cockroaches, one mistake would be the end of me, too. I dared not leave a corpse sprawled in plain sight, and not just because the state of Nevada had anti-littering laws. I cautiously opened the door through which Rob had stepped less than a minute earlier. A small office with one desk, a computer, two chairs, no people. I holstered the Glock, gripped the dead man by his wrists, dragged him out of the corridor.
In books and movies, at moments like this, the good guy—a title that I’m taking the liberty of attaching to myself—goes through the pockets and the wallet of the thug he had to kill, searching for and discovering clues that tell him who his enemies are. I already knew what these people were, and I didn’t care who. I tucked him into the knee space under the desk.
I’m not sure what I expected the office of a hardworking devil-worshipper to look like. Maybe a lamp with a shade made of human skin, a baby’s skull used as a pencil holder, wallpaper after a design by the Marquis de Sade, and a desk calendar with 365 pages featuring the wit and wisdom of Hitler. The reality included a poster headlined THE 12 RULES OF SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT and another poster made from a photo of a house cat cornered by a crocodile above the words SHIT HAPPENS. On the desk were a bank statement and spreadsheet. Stuck here and there, Post-its provided neatly printed reminders: SHERRY’S BIRTHDAY GIFT, the culinarily specific HOT SAUCE, GREEN AND RED, and an almost desperate PAPER CLIPS!
I snatched a box of Kleenex from beside the computer, returned to the corridor, and quickly wiped up the blood on the gray vinyl-tile floor. There wasn’t much of it. One of the rounds had stopped his heart.
When I picked up the sheet of paper that he had been reading, it proved to be a joke going around the Internet. It concerned two dogs, a famous newspaper, Valentine’s Day, and urination. I couldn’t imagine why he’d found it funny enough to laugh out loud.
In the office again, I dropped the tissues and the paper in the waste can. I drew the Glock that now held thirteen rounds, turned off the lights, and stood in the dark, taking slow, deep breaths.
There is a keen distinction between the words murder and kill. Because of envy or greed, jealousy or rage, ideology or sheer blind hatred, the murderer takes the precious life of another. To prevent the murderer from doing so or to deal justice, or to save myself, I may kill him. He murders, I kill. Funny, then, that killers tend to be the ones who have to overcome nausea in the immediate aftermath and who struggle with guilt in the long run, while the murderers go from slaughter to celebration without a hiccup.
I returned to the hallway, pulled the door shut behind me, and almost shot Mr. Hitchcock, which would have been regrettable even if he was a spirit who couldn’t be harmed. He stood farther along the corridor, waving at me as if I might be so preoccupied that I wouldn’t notice him.
As I approached the director, he turned to his left, giving me his famous profile, and walked through a door. I almost sang the tune from his old TV show: Dunt-da-da-da-da-dunt-da-da, dunt-da-da-da-da-dunt-da-da.
When I opened the door through which he had passed, I found him waiting for me in a room about twenty feet square. Deep sturdy metal shelving units lined all four walls from floor to ceiling. They were packed full of just two items: thousands of rolls of toilet paper and paper towels. It was such a strange hoard that I couldn’t help but marvel at it for a moment.