Although I had never before had my chin licked by anything other than a dog, I felt pretty sure that this lick would proceed to a kiss either directly or after she licked other facial features that she found appealing. I can fake a lot of things convincingly, but I knew I couldn’t fake the rough and hungry kiss that she would expect from me, and in that moment her suspicion would soar.
When she had come out of Rob Burkett’s office and had seen me, Jinx had left the door ajar.
I lifted my wet chin and cocked my head and said, “Rob?”
Puzzled, she said, “Who, what?”
“Did you just hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That was Rob’s voice.”
I separated myself from her. Although I would rather have turned my back on a crazy man with a chain saw than turn my back on Jinx, I did it anyway. I went to the office door, pushed it open, and turned on the light.
“Rob?” I said.
“I told you, he’s not there.”
“No. I heard something.”
I went into the office and thought that she followed me at least to the threshold. Pretending to be perplexed, looking this way and that, I crossed the room, rounded the desk, registered peripherally that Jinx was just this side of the threshold, glanced down, and said, “Rob, no. What the hell?” As I spoke, I dropped to my knees, hunching my head and shoulders, out of Jinx’s line of sight, and I drew one of the Glocks.
“Lucius?” she said.
I heard her coming, and when she rounded the desk, she had a straight razor in each hand, too smart for me, rushing in fast and mean, slashing at me. She hadn’t known Rob’s body was here, but I had done something to make her suspicious. The first round from the Glock knocked her back just far enough that the razor sliced the air about an inch from my eyes, the blade having been stropped so thin that it seemed to disappear for part of its arc. That was as close as she got, because the next two rounds kicked her off balance and sent her sprawling.
For a terrible moment, she lay there on her back, arms at her sides, the straight razors no longer in her hands but still tethered to her wrists, the blades rattling against the vinyl-tile floor while she spasmed as though trying to hold on to life and stave off death.
And then silence.
Jumpy, half convinced that Rob was reaching for me, I twitched toward him. He was still dead.
No lingering spirit had risen from either Rob or Jinx. They had been collected without delay.
I didn’t want to look in Jinx’s face. When you’re forced to kill people, however, you’ve got to look at them afterward, at what you’ve done. It’s like an acknowledgment that you owe the dead, no matter who he or she might have been, an acknowledgment that, in this case, she was potentially your sister even if she had fallen farther than you, a recognition that you have brought an end to someone who, no matter how unlikely a candidate for redemption, might nevertheless have been redeemed if she had lived. You’ve got to look at them for your own good, too, so that it never becomes too easy, so that you never begin to think of your adversaries as animals, even if they think of themselves that way.
I crawled to Jinx and looked at her face. One of the contact lenses had popped out when she fell. Her left eye was sour yellow, but her right was cornflower blue, as innocent a blue gaze as it would have been when, as a newborn, she first opened her eyes. She had been somebody’s daughter, and maybe eventually they had abused her or been indifferent to her, but they must have had hopes for her at some point, must have loved at least the idea of her, because they hadn’t aborted her. For however short a time, she had been loved—until somebody turned her into an engine of hate.
If I had a time machine that would take me back through Jinx’s life, so that I could find who twisted her mind with an ideology or sick philosophy … Well, no, I wouldn’t kill them to spare her from what she became. That way lies madness.
The wisdom of the most sagacious ancient Greeks, the wisdom of the most perceptive rabbis of ancient Canaan, and all the parables of Christ teach us to believe not in justice, but in truth. In a world of rampant lying, where so many lies are used to inflame passions and justify false grievances, the indiscriminate pursuit of justice leads sooner or later to insanity, mass murder, and the ruin of entire civilizations. Therefore, those who wish to punish the current and future generations for the inequities of a generation long gone, and who equate justice with revenge, are the most dangerous people in the world.
I got to my feet, crossed the room, and turned off the lights. In the hallway, I holstered the pistol and pulled shut the door.
There were now ten rounds in one Glock, fifteen in the other. I hoped I would need none of them, but I knew otherwise.