and she never wakes at all.
For a while he stands by the bed, enjoying the incomparable tenderness
of the moment. Being present at a death is to share one of the most
intimate experiences anyone will ever know in this world.
After all, no one except treasured family members and beloved friends
are welcome at a deathbed, to witness a dying person’s final breath.
Therefore, the killer is able to rise above his gray and miserable
existence only in the act of execution, for then he has the honor of
sharing that most profound of all experiences, more solemn and
significant than birth. In those precious magic moments when his
targets perish, he establishes relationships, meaningful bonds with
other human beings, connections that briefly banish his alienation and
make him feel included, needed, loved.
Although these victims are always strangers to him–and in this case, he
does not even know their names–the experience can be so poignant that
tears fill his eyes. Tonight he manages to remain in complete control
of himself.
Reluctant to let the brief connection end, he places one hand tenderly
against the woman’s left cheek, which is unsoiled by blood and still
pleasantly warm. He walks around the bed again and gives the dead man’s
shoulder a gentle squeeze, as if to say, Goodbye, old riend, goodbye.
He wonders who they were. And why they had to die.
Goodbye.
Down he goes through the ghostly green house full of green shadows and
radiant green forms. In the foyer he pauses to unscrew the silencer
from the weapon and to holster both pieces.
He removes the goggles with dismay. Without the lenses, he is
transported from that magical alternate earth, where for a brief while
he felt a kinship with other human beings, to this world in which he
strives so hard to belong but remains forever a man apart.
Exiting the house, he closes the door but doesn’t bother locking it.
He doesn’t wipe off the brass knob, for he isn’t concerned about leaving
fingerprints.
The cold breeze soughs and whistles through the portico.
With rathke scraping and rustling, crisp dead leaves scurry in packs
along the driveway.
The sentinel trees now seem to be asleep at their posts. The killer
senses that no one watches him from any of the blank black windows along
the street. And even the interrogatory voice of the owl is silenced.
Still moved by what he has shared, he does not hum his little nonsense
tune on the return trip to the car.
By the time he drives to the motor hotel where he is staying, he feels
once more the weight of the oppressive apartheid in which he exists.
Separate. Shunned. A solitary man.
In his room he slips off the shoulder holster and puts it on the
nightstand. The pistol is still in the clasp of that nylon-lined
leather sleeve. He stares at the weapon for a while.
In the bathroom he takes a pair of scissors from his shaving kit, closes
the lid on the toilet, sits in the harsh fluorescent glare, and
meticulously destroys the two bogus credit cards that he has used thus
far on the assignment. He will fly out of Kansas City in the morning,
employing yet another name, and on the drive to the airport he will
scatter the tiny fragments of the cards along a few miles of highway.
He returns to the nightstand.
Stares at the pistol.
After leaving the dead bodies at the job site, he should have broken the
weapon down into as many pieces as possible. He should have disposed of
its parts in widely separated locations, the barrel in a storm drain
perhaps, half the frame in a creek, the other half in a Dumpster . . .
until nothing was left. That is standard procedure, and he is at a loss
to understand why he disregarded it this time.
A low-grade guilt attends this deviation from routine, but he is not
going to go out again and dispose of the weapon. In addition to the
guilt, he feels . . . rebellious.
He undresses and lies down. He turns off the bedside lamp and stares at