The Man on Little Sweden

by Sam Harding

  “You didn’t bring me in to stop you, you brought me to stop your puppet.”

  “David? As you can see Detective, stopping David brought you to me in the end. It’s all one in the same. You’ve proven to be the man I hoped you’d be. The son I never had but always wanted.”

  The words make me feel like puking. “You’re fucking insane.”

  “Probably. But I’m right. My conquest has always been just, which is why I turned to David when I became sick. He was my most dangerous, most unpredictable patient, lost in life, afraid of his own urges, of the voices in his head. But, I knew how to use that. It was so easy. Plant the seed that it’s all the will of God, and I could get David to do and believe anything. A shame to see even that wasn’t enough to keep him on track.”

  “A psychotic monster to continue your fucked-up legacy?”

  “Something like that,” Shultz shrugs. “His true test was you, Micah. That’s why I had him take your son and not kill him right away. I wanted to see if David was worthy enough to take over for me when I die. What a disappointment, what an embarrassment. Alas, David won’t be the last.”

  “Oh, he will be, doctor. This ends now.”

  “Ha! Oh, my boy, this will never end. The nightmare you have lived since your wife’s death may as well just be beginning.”

  Dr. Shultz’s words hang in the air like the light smoke coming from the open fireplace. He looks between Kate and I, still smiling, a smug look of victory even though he’s most certainly lost.

  “Are you going to kill me, Detective?”

  I want to. I want to more than anything in the world. I don’t have my gun, but I can still strangle him, I can still beat him to death, or break his neck. There’re so many choices with plenty of time to enjoy it.

  “No.”

  “No?” He looks genuinely puzzled. “Why? Because you’re afraid if you do then I’ll be right? That you’ll only prove you’re just as much of a monster as I am?”

  The thunderous crack comes out of nowhere, piercing through my left eardrum, and forcing me to jerk back from the sudden noise. Amidst the ringing in my ear, I smell a familiar smell, and realize what it is when I open my eyes and see the smoke hanging in the air.

  Gunpowder.

  I turn back towards Dr. Shultz, expecting to see him holding a gun that I hadn’t seen before, expecting to see a final flash before he puts a bullet between my eyes. What I do see, confuses me, and I stare for a long time as I try to comprehend what has just happened.

  Dr. Shultz is leaning back in the couch, his cane toppled over onto the floor. Blood trickles down his face like a miniature red waterfall, his eyes are open, his mouth still slightly forming the remains of his wide smile. I see where the blood trickle is coming from, a tiny red hole in the center of his bony forehead.

  I turn to Kate. She’s still pointing the pistol at her father, her hand shaking hard, her breathing short and shallow.

  Slowly, I reach out and take the smoking pistol from her hand. It’s a small .38 revolver, a small caliber weapon, but loud enough to deafen my left ear to all except a continuous ring. I set the pistol on a nearby coffee table, and slowly pull Kate towards me, embracing her in a hug, turning her face away from the murder she’s just committed.

  She starts to sob, just as she’d sobbed before in her apartment when she’d learned her father was a monster. Now having killed the monster, the sobs are identical. I can’t blame her. I’d sobbed when I murdered my father, because, as much as I’d hated him, he was still my father.

  She did what I had done years ago, only she will surely go to prison for murder.

  No. No, that’s not right.

  I slowly push Kate away and look into her eyes. “I need you to focus. The guard will be up here any second.”

  She looks at me, unable to talk, but she gives me a nod.

  “Does your father have a gun? A pistol?”

  Kate looks at me long and hard, and then after a moment, she nods and finally says, “I told you—I told you if I could kill the man who took Simon that I would. I told you—”

  “I know. I know.”

  No. Kate won’t be going to prison for this.

  This wasn’t murder.

  This was justice.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Never End

  It’s been five nights since the death of Dr. Heinrich Shultz—since Kathryn and I planted his own handgun on his corpse and swore to the police that he’d been shot in our own self-defense. That the letter to David had been found on his body, and not taken from David’s, leaving no one to suspect I’d originally hidden the evidence from Detective Blake in order to go after the killer on my own.

  The shock to the local community had been expected, and still, even days later, there are those who refuse to believe the Man on Little Sweden could actually in fact be the Christmas Eve Butcher.

  People had adored him, and some had even gone off to college with aspirations to be like him. Now, his name is spoken with hate, and on multiple occasions, I’ve seen people publicly burning magazines with his picture on the front and books he had authored. To my knowledge, though, nobody has said a bad word about Kate. The media had tried to get an interview with her like vultures to roadkill, but they’d been unsuccessful, and forever will be.

  What happened in Dr. Shultz’s house, along with the events leading up to it, will stay with Kate and Thomas and I. A vow between ourselves to shoulder the burden together, and to keep everyone else at arms length. Thankfully, Thomas is too young to comprehend everything that has happened, but I know someday that will change and I’ll have no choice but to go down this dark road with him in honest detail.

  What matters now is that we are all alive. Life will never be the same again, but at least we have each other. Two people in my life whom I know I can always love, and who I know will always love me.

  A cold breeze chills me, but I don’t dare move. My target is moving closer, and I haven’t spent five nights out in the freezing cold just to screw it up now. My hand grips my weapon tighter, and I focus on slowing my breathing.

  Since Dr. Shultz’s death, Thomas and Kate haven’t been back on my property. They’re at Kate’s apartment, continually being looked in on by Jason and a few friends of his on patrol. Up until now, I thought maybe I was being paranoid, but Dr. Shultz’s words stuck with me, playing in my head over and over again: This will never end.

  What I’d hoped was only a mere threat, proved to be much more than that about an hour ago when I watched a car without headlights pull to the start of my driveway. It was easy to spot. I’ve been sleeping outside, imbedded in the woods surrounding my house, since Shultz’s death, waiting to see if the doctor did in fact have someone to replace David.

  The interloper was hard to see in the darkness, but after walking a few yards down my driveway, he’d entered a spot where the moonlight illuminated him nearly as clearly as the sun would have.

  He wore all white, including a white hood that covered his face, but in his hands was a black rifle with a large night scope. I recognized the weapon to be a semi-automatic sniper rifle, probably an M110 or a MK12, common in the military community. He turned dark again when he’d stepped off the driveway and entered the woods.

  I’m sure he thought he had the advantage, planning to pick me off when I obliviously step out of my house one morning, thinking the bogeyman was long gone and dead. Little does he realize, the only bogeyman here is in the woods with him.

  His movements through the woods are slow, careful, precise. A well-trained warrior, obviously used to the monotony of slow-moving operations. In the moonlight streaking through the trees, I can see his head occasionally tilt towards my house about fifty yards to his front-left, looking for any signs that I may be awake and active at this time of night.

  He’s a little over forty yards from me now, moving closer, closer. Twigs snapping underneath his boots, impossible for him to avoid them in the darkness.

  At forty yards, I li
ft my right hand, my Bear: Divergent EKO compound bow firmly in my grasp. It’s not a rifle, but at this range, I’m just as comfortable with it. My rifle, pistol, and shotgun are still in evidence at the Solace Police Department, so this weapon will have to do. I clip my release around my knocking loop and pull the seventy-pound bowstring back to full draw, pushing my left firing hand into my face, setting my thumb at the base of my neck, creating a solid firing platform, even from my knees. I use the moonlight to line up my shot, placing the optic at the front of my bow in the center of the peep-sight on my bowstring. I then put the front sight pin directly on my target and start to let out my air. Before firing, I adjust my aim slightly up, taking into account for a potential plate-carrier.

  I can feel Dani now, watching me as I prepare my shot. I don’t have to see her to know she understands what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. She knows. She knows this is for her, for Thomas, and for everyone else I love and care for.

  For me.

  I let loose the arrow.

  The slight sound of the arrow being released causes my target to stop briefly, just before the broad-head of the arrow sinks into the soft flesh at the base of his throat. The arrow passes all the way through, and my target goes down hard, his hands flailing up to his throat as he lands on his back.

  I jump to my feet and move forward, nocking a second arrow from my quiver as I do so. My target is still flailing on the ground as I get to him, and I kick away his rifle before it occurs to him to reach for it.

  It’s hard to see in the lighting, but I can just make out the man’s face now.

  It’s Rick. The loud-mouth private security contractor working for Dr. Shultz.

  I look at the man, struggling for life, his mouth pooling with blood. He was David’s replacement, hellbent on avenging his Master’s death. I’m not surprised by this. David hadn’t been like his comrades. He was different, bloodthirsty, wilder, and more savage.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” I say.

  Rick tries to say something, but he’s unable to talk. Too much blood in his mouth and windpipe. It doesn’t matter to me. If more come, I’ll be ready for them, too.

  I pull back the bowstring, aim the second broad-head at Rick’s head, and let the arrow fly.