Loose Ends
Page 51
CHAPTER 51: DALE
All wise souls living on the first floor hid under their bed.
As I reached the end of the silent hallway, I was forced to deduce any wicked souls two story building, if not on the first floor, must thus be located on the second. I’ll pause while you marvel at my formidable mental powers.
Up the stairs to a metal door that hadn’t a window to what was beyond. It creaked as I pushed it open, far enough to slide my slender frame through.
Halfway down the hall, a door stood open. As much as I appreciated the clue, the open door was brazen and thus unsettling, as if the gaping doorway said to the world, “Witness the nefarious goings-on in this apartment if you please. You can’t stop them anyway.” Yet I inched to the open mouth as it was my job.
Closer, Ravella’s speech grew more distinct and my heartbeat grew less anxious. I reached the wall beside the doorway and was greeted by the most repugnant list of sins against law, man, God, and basic decency that has ever sullied my ear canal. Ravella closed more cases in a few seconds than he had in a decade.
As I waited for Ravella to finish his malodorous laundry list of atrocities, I grappled with my mixed emotions. Elation came from the IA Dale. I had accurately intuited the thick layer of filth that coats Ravella and you were wrong and ha ha. My only error was in underestimating the dirt’s depth.
Meanwhile, a profound sadness welled from the human Dale. Baser instincts are ingrained into each of us, yet we also possess tools to combat them, if not inherently, then in the best intentions of our social structures. Ravella, however, represented an utter failure of higher nature as well as modern nurture. What then remains available so as to prevent another Ravella? Although I haven’t the faintest idea how to answer this question myself, it is evident a satisfactory answer is urgently required if our species is to ever cease to flounder and begin to flourish.
The twin crack of gunshots ended all cogitation and emotional confusion, and my faultless instincts took over. I spun into the room. Zeke Ravella leaned over Adam Sutler’s bleeding body. The hapless s.o.b. was still alive but barely--no longer participating in this world yet not quite a citizen of the next.
I commanded Ravella to drop his weapon. He didn’t. He moved a muscle, all the inventive I needed to fire. I grazed his right bicep. His arm jerked up, a spasm which sent what I had requested arching through the air. It landed more or less at my feet. I thanked him, and then called for an ambulance.
Yes, I could have aimed a few inches to the right and provided one end to the story, an end most listeners and any grand jury would find acceptable. But I wanted to bury him, not, you know, actually bury him. To kill Ravella would’ve been vengeance, or, in a certain light, perhaps vengeance's more respectable sister, revenge. But I consciously aimed for Ravella’s arm because I was aiming for a higher ideal. If I had opted to kill Ravella, I would have killed much more than I am willing to lose.