Prior Bad Acts

26

STAN DROVE CAREFULLY, observing the speed limit and all traffic laws. The fact that what he was planning in his head was against the laws of God and man registered in his mind in only an abstract way. The only law he was operating under was an eye for an eye.

That was his job now, his mission. To take the guilty parties and make them pay for what had been done to Marlene Haas and those two little children, for what they were allowing Karl Dahl to get away with. As if a piece of crap like Karl Dahl should have rights. What about the rights of the victims?

If the system wouldn’t give them justice, then that was Stan’s purpose. That would be his last job here on earth. He had no other reason to be here. His career was gone, and he had nothing else. If he ceased to be a cop, then he ceased to be at all.

In a way, that had already happened. The Stan Dempsey people thought they had known was gone, not that anyone had ever really made an attempt to know him. That part of his being had shut down, leaving him numb in some ways, but more alive than ever in other ways.

This is what it’s like to lose your mind, he thought, but there was no emotion attached. No fear, no panic, no despair.

Kenny Scott, Karl Dahl’s attorney, lived in an unremarkable house in an unremarkable neighborhood. The house was not unlike Stan’s own, built in the fifties, a story-and-a-half rectangle like every other rectangle on the block.

The juniper shrubs were overgrown, and the grass in the yard looked poor, as if Scott never fertilized or aerated it. Stan shook his head as he parked the truck down the block. Yards needed tending. If a person let their yard go, that spoke to their lack of character as far as Stan was concerned. But then he’d already known Kenny Scott lacked character.

He got out of the truck, taking a small duffel bag with him, and walked down the sidewalk toward Scott’s house. Across the street there were some boys playing with a football in a front yard. They paid no attention to Stan. A woman struggling with a baby stroller was at the side of a minivan in the driveway of the house two doors away from Scott’s. She didn’t even glance at Stan as he walked past. He had always been a person no one noticed. A lot of times that had worked to his advantage.

He turned down Kenny Scott’s driveway and walked around to the back of the house. There was a small concrete patio with a black Weber grill, a glass-topped round table with an umbrella sticking up through the center of it, and four metal chairs with green cushions.

Stan put his duffel bag on the table, unzipped it, and chose a handgun. A.22. Small, quiet. A lot of criminals thought they had to carry big guns,.44s,.357s. That was just crap. That was ego, idiots trying to look like big men. A.22 did the job close range, very little mess, very little noise, and it was easy for the shooter to pocket and simply walk away from the scene with.

He zipped the duffel bag and slung it over one shoulder and across his chest, shoving the bag itself behind him, out of his way. Then he went to the back door and knocked.

A television was playing somewhere inside. Kenny Scott was watching a college football game. Stan himself was a lifelong fan of college football, the Michigan Wolverines in particular. But as with everything in Stan’s life, that was something only he knew about himself, because no one else had ever bothered to ask.

He knocked on the door again.

The attorney came through the kitchen, looking puzzled. Stan could see him through the glass in the back door. Scott looked out through the glass, still confused.

“Detective…?” he asked as he opened the door.

“Counselor,” Stan said. “Can I have a moment of your time?”

Scott still didn’t know what to think, but he took a step back, because Stan was, he thought, a known quantity. Stan stepped inside and pointed the.22 in Scott’s face.

Scott’s eyes went round. “What the hell?”

“Turn around, Mr. Scott.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” Stan said flatly. “Turn around. Up against the wall.”

The reality of the situation was starting to dawn on the lawyer. Fear flashed in his eyes.

“What do you want with me?” he asked. “I haven’t done anything to you.”

Stan wanted to laugh out loud, but he didn’t. How could Kenny Scott think his actions as Karl Dahl’s attorney hadn’t had any impact on anyone else?

“Turn around. I won’t say it again, Mr. Scott.”

Kenny Scott didn’t react. He didn’t believe this was happening.

Stan backhanded him across the face with the.22, snapping his head sharply to one side. Blood splattered sideways and hit the dingy beige wall. Stan thought he could see the individual droplets fly in slow motion, changing shape and dimension as they went, skittering along sideways as they hit the surface of the wall.

Sound came to him slightly delayed, then quickly caught up like some kind of strange special effect in a movie, the sound of the gun connecting with Kenny Scott’s cheekbone, the attorney’s grunt of pain, the thump of him hitting the wall.

Stan held him there with his gun hand, pulled handcuffs out of his left jacket pocket, and cuffed one wrist and then the other behind the lawyer’s back.

“Why are you doing this?” Scott asked again.

This time Stan could hear the fear in his voice. Scott could tell this situation wasn’t going to go well for him. He was probably already imagining what Stan might do to him.

Stan felt a rush of power that was exciting. This was what Karl Dahl had felt gaining control of his victims.

“Down the stairs,” he said, jerking Scott away from the wall and shoving him to the right, toward the head of the basement stairs. Blood ran down the wall from where Scott’s face had been. His nose was bleeding, as well as the gash on his cheek from where the sight of the.22 had cut him.

The lawyer had begun to cry. “Please don’t do this.”

He already believed he was going to die, which told Stan he must have felt that that was what he deserved.

“Down the stairs.”

Stan gave him a little push. Scott brought his shoulder against the door frame to block himself. Stan grabbed him by the arm, yanked him sideways, shoved him forward.

The lawyer stumbled, started to fall, twisted sideways, trying to use the wall to stop his momentum.

“You feel helpless?” Stan said. “You think this is how Marlene Haas felt when your client was torturing her? Or how those children felt as he took them down to the basement?”

“Jesus,” Scott said. “You can’t hold that against me. I’m a public defender, for God’s sake. I don’t get a choice who I represent. You think I want to defend Karl Dahl?”

“You’re trying to get him off,” Stan said, pushing him down another few steps.

“That’s my job.”

“It’s just a damn game to you people. You know what Dahl is, and still you try to get him off on some technicality.”

“The rules are there for a reason-”

“For you to bend them around and let that sick bastard get away with what he did to those people. Let him go so he can rape and murder someone else’s family?”

“Defendants are presumed innocent-”

“Innocent?”

Stan felt the rage rise up inside him like a column of fire. “He butchered that woman. He violated those children and hung them from the ceiling. I was there. I saw them. I smelled their deaths. Do you have any idea what that’s like, Counselor? Have you ever been to a death scene?”

Scott didn’t answer him. Of course he didn’t know what it was like to stand in the place where a violent death had occurred. He had never experienced the unsettling feeling of evil lingering in the air, mingling with the last vibrations of terror. He didn’t know what it was like to feel as if he could almost still hear the screams of the victims as their lives were being torn out of their bodies.

“You look for loopholes to get these scumbags off,” Stan said bitterly. “You’re as guilty as Karl Dahl. And you’re going to pay for that.”

He put his foot into Kenny Scott’s back and pushed. The lawyer went headfirst down the final few steps and landed on the concrete floor with a dull thump like a bag of wet cement.

Stan stepped over the groaning lawyer and went to a workbench built up against one wall. The duffel bag went on the bench. Stan unzipped the bag, looked inside, trying to decide what appealed to him most for this situation.

“You’re going on trial, Mr. Scott,” Stan said, pulling his choice from the bag. “And nobody is going to try to get you acquitted.”