Lonesome Lawmen

Three-1

Three

Jonathan Hayes stood at the sink and watched the water turn red as it ran over the dried blood on his hands. It felt almost as good as it had when it was slick and warm, gushing fresh from gaping flesh in a life stealing surge.

During his time in the CIA, he had learned there were two ways to get away with murder. Disappear the evidence or disappear the perpetrator. Fate had fitted him perfectly to do the disappearing. Hayes had a pale, malleable face, even paler blonde hair and skin so fair it was almost white. His washed out blue eyes were easy to hide behind colored contacts. His lean length easily conformed to various body types, shapes and even sexes.

For one hit he’d done a version of Victor/Victoria, pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man when he’d been hired to kill a paranoid and heavily guarded government official. The i***t had been trying to take too big a bite out of the drug profits passing through his country’s banks.

A strange little man, Hayes recalled with a reminiscent smile, who sublimated his homosexual proclivities by making his whores dress like men. In the end the little man had been ridiculously easy to take down. Like so many of his victims, he was only as strong as his weakest link. A most satisfying kill.

Though not as beautiful as tonight’s kill. How could it match the joy of a nice, clear field with time to enjoy the feel of his knife going through struggling flesh. Time to wash in the blood. Time for the fire that took away his pain. Time to slip away, anonymous once more. Just another Joe on his way to catch the bus.

A Joe with blood on the hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. A Joe with a face no one would remember.

“Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent,” he murmured, “is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?”

They could seek him where they would. They would find him nowhere. He was wind. He was water. He was, he smiled again, harder to find than a tax cut: a visible invisible man.

It was so simple. Only the killing was complicated, though he hadn’t meant it to be that way the first time. They say that anyone is capable of murder in the right circumstances. Theory had merged with circumstances when his former employers at the CIA sent the hit squad after him. He’d started the first fire to hide the bloody frenzy, to burn away his guilt. Fled up the rock face of Long’s Peak to escape society’s retribution.

His fear had been so all consuming that at first he didn’t realize he wasn’t in pain. Hadn’t realized that in killing he’d found a respite from the headaches that had plagued him all his life, something years of doctors and his parents constantly migrating religious beliefs had failed to achieve.

Freedom from pain was something he could believe in and the pattern that brought that ease became his religion. He wasn’t a serial killer. He killed for a higher purpose. With each death, his belief in his new religion grew. Strict adherence to the pattern not only eased his pain, but he came to believe it protected him from discovery. Somewhere along the way he started to believe it freed his victims, too.

“’Let there be light! said God, and there was light! Let there be blood! says man, and there’s a sea!’”

Lord Byron understood the nature of man, understood the call of blood, the wonder of light-giving fire. Hayes smeared the water-softened blood over his hands. Tomorrow the climb up Long’s Peak would complete the pattern. By then, his employer should have deposited his money in the Swiss bank account and it would be available for him to play with.

Luckily his religion did not require a vow of poverty.

He liked the things money could buy. His anonymous existence. Information about his victims. The expensive, high tech equipment that had finally led him to Willow.

The High Priest needed a High Priestess. Abstinence wouldn’t be part of his religion for much longer. He had been alone too long. Soon Willow would submit to the pattern. The student would become her teacher.

Hayes turned his hand, letting the water flow across the back where blood crusted in the blonde hairs, turning them dark and stiff. He rubbed up red, thinking how sweet it had been when the woman fought for her life. Blood smelt so much sweeter when it was filled with fear, was more satisfying when it came out hot and fast. It had been a good kill. A very good kill.

Strange how much he’d needed her death. He’d even dreamed about her in the days before, killing her again and again, only to wake empty with longing for the peace her death would give him.

Now, finally, it was here. It was done. She was dead.

The water ran pale pink now, the blood almost gone. He swirled his fingers in the last traces. He would bathe in it if he could—

He wasn’t ready when his peace detonated. Wasn’t ready when the pain came roaring back like a storm over Long’s Peak, with just about as much mercy. Jagged spikes of agony shot down the sides of his head. He clutched those sides, dug palms into the pain, a low, feral moan squeezed out through drawn back lips.

It was not supposed to happen this way—

“. . . it is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in my flesh!” he cried. “She’s dead. So perfectly dead—“

She had fought death, fought going into the good night on a river of blood and fire—

No. She hadn’t.

He dropped in front of his notebook computer, fumbling for the disk that held the data on Dani Gwynne. A few key strokes brought up her picture for him to compare with his memory of the kill. The differences were slight, but so critically important.

The difference between pain and peace.