The Hangman's Soliloquy

by Jeb Bohn

  Sitting alone at his desk, Herman felt like a clueless passenger who was tasked with piloting an airplane that had lost its engines and flight crew. Momentum had propelled him through the aftermath of what occurred in Florida. It had dragged him from interview to interview, pushing words out of his mouth. Most importantly, it had prevented him from drowning in his thoughts, thoughts that were becoming darker by the day. On good days, he could function in a semi-normal manner, though he never felt like he was running at anything higher than sixty percent. On bad days, he thought about giving up on his work and living a life of seclusion.

  He probably could have persevered if that was as bad as it got, but things had escalated. He now had days where his despair grew wide enough that he thought he would be swallowed whole and pulled into a fathomless pit where no light could penetrate. He was drinking more, smoking more, and sleeping less. Marijuana had become a crutch for him to relax and it had worked until it didn’t. The calming warmth it had once elicited was gone, violently evicted only to be replaced by icy paranoia.

  Of course, he’d be lying to himself if he believed that the weed was the only thing making him paranoid. Convinced that he was being watched, Herman bought a Glock 17. He obtained his North Carolina concealed carry permit and began making regular trips to a local shooting range. He had become proficient with the firearm and planned to add a rifle to his small arsenal that also featured a double-barreled shotgun that had belonged to his father. Those plans were put on hold after a bout of terror led Herman to empty a magazine into an oak tree in his front yard with the belief that some boogeyman was hiding behind it.

  Soon after that incident he stopped going out after dusk. He rearranged his home office, bringing in a couch, a mini fridge, a television and his coffee maker. A reinforced and bulletproof door replaced the old wooden one that led into the office. He had developed a routine of keeping groceries stocked in the fridge. There was a half bathroom attached to the space, further reducing his need to leave the office. As time progressed, he had taken to sleeping on the couch in the office, often going days without a shower. No one, not even Ray, was aware of how unraveled Herman had become.

  Any tasks that required him to leave the house were done during the day. After nightfall he hunkered down, drinking coffee, watching TV, and trying to work. Every hour he would get up and look out of the window, staring into the darkness. Soon it was every half hour. Before long the pacing was nonstop. The carpeting in the office showed a circuit of wear from the desk to the window to the couch and back again.

  Now pacing this familiar circle once more, Herman stopped dead in his tracks. Calmness coursed over him like cool rain, starting at his head and slowly trickling down the entirety of his body before pooling at his feet. He sat slowly down on the edge of the couch, a grave smile wriggling its way across his lips. Less than a half-minute after sitting, he was back on his feet again.

  He knew what he had to do.

  Instinctively, Herman reached for his cell phone before remembering that he had destroyed it. He sighed and made his way to the kitchen downstairs, the linoleum-clad refuge of his only landline phone. Receiver in hand, he dialed up Karl Peterson. Karl and his wife Annette had run a veterinary practice for three decades before retiring two years ago and they often took care of Otis when Herman was out of town. As the line rang, Herman wondered what his cover story would be.

  “Hello?” Karl said, his voice stern yet warm.

  “Morning, Karl, it’s Herman.”

  “Hey Herman,” the older man replied with added vibrancy in his voice. “Me and the missus were just discussing your interview. You doin’ okay?”

  Thinking back to that damned interview made Herman’s blood start to boil all over, but he wouldn’t direct any of that at Karl. He knew the man to have a good heart and his words and tone had been free of malice.

  “Yeah, they’ll let any jackass in a suit and tie host a show these days.”

  Karl chuckled at this and Herman relaxed.

  “That’s actually why I’m calling you this morning.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Herman said, working to align the lie in his mind. “I just got a call from a contact in DC; seems he has some big tip and wants to relay everything in person, wanted to know if I could get up there Thursday evening.”

  Karl came back on the line before Herman could continue. “We’ll be glad to keep an eye on Otis. How’s the old boy doing?”

  “He’s good, sat right by my feet during that interview. Truth be told, I think it bothered him more than it did me. Anyway, I shouldn’t be gone more than a day or two.”

  “No worries, I’ll be around all week, just swing by whenever you’re headed out.”

  “Thanks, Karl. I’ll see you Thursday.”

  “Uh huh,” Karl said with a grunt.

  Herman returned the receiver to its cradle before turning to look out of a window that faced his side yard. The morning sunlight brought peace to his enervated mind, lessening the weight of the task ahead. He grabbed his keys and made his way out of the back door and towards his car, running his index finger gently along the vehicle’s roof. A wan smile touched his lips as he felt the warmth from the aluminum bodywork. He stepped back to admire the beauty of the car, every curve and line that had inspired him to drop a small fortune buying and maintaining it.

  Now, after years of careful preservation, the old car was set to serve one final and undignified purpose.

  A Proposition

  A cracked and faded two-lane cut a meandering north-south line through a rural area of southern Colorado. Twin HID beams cut through the pitch-black night, scattering deer and casting an eerie glow on every surface that they touched. The headlights crested a small hill before turning sharply off onto a loosely packed gravel road. For a quarter mile, hills rose and fell off before the roadway evened out, the loose gravel surface giving way to a carefully manicured dirt and rock mixture. Finally, the path began a slow and steady descent, ending at a single-story cabin that sat alongside a narrow creek. Smoke was coming out of its lone chimney.

  Three black SUVs sat silently at the rear as they were splashed with light as a fourth vehicle pulled around and parked alongside them. The passenger door opened, spilling out a trench coat that was quickly followed by a pair of black boots. A tall man emerged, placed a black cowboy hat on his head, and turned towards the driver.

  “Say Chief, you need to escort me in there?” the Tall Man asked.

  “Nope.”

  The Tall Man issued a closed-mouth smile accompanied by a quick nod. “Man of few words. I can respect that.”

  With that, he tipped his hat and made his way to the back door of the cabin. The entryway led into a small, sparsely appointed kitchen inside which a woman was preparing a cup of coffee.

  “Well, now,” the Tall Man said with great excitement, “I will be good and god damned if that coffee doesn’t smell good enough to wake the dead.”

  “That’s because I’m the only one in this entire outfit who knows how to make a proper pot of coffee. Name’s Melanie Stroud.” She held out a hand.

  “The powers of a man’s mind are directly proportional to the quantity of coffee he drank,” the Tall Man said as he shook her hand. “Sir James Mackintosh.”

  “Don’t often come across aristocrats in trench coats and cowboy hats, at least not in this line of work,” Melanie said with a wry smile. “How do you take it?”

  “Black’ll do just fine, thank you.”

  She opened a cabinet above the coffee maker and took out a two-tone white and blue mug bearing the QNI logo. The Tall Man noticed with a chuckle.

  “Nice touch.”

  Melanie cut her eyes up at him as she filled the cup.

  “It’s good to have that extra reminder everyday, it keeps the fires stoked.”

  “I’m the last man to stand in judgment of anyone’s motivations. I’ve done far worse for far less.”

  Melanie’s eyes narrowed as sh
e handed over the warm mug. “You certainly have a reputation. I think you spook some of the guys here.”

  The Tall Man smiled without saying a word.

  “Come on, time for you to meet the boss man.”

  “Lead the way.”

  They walked out of the kitchen, turning left down a narrow hallway and passing a pair of closed doors before reaching and open room on the right. Inside was a desk, a few chairs, and a fireplace. Greg Schultz was leaning on the desk, facing the hearth and flipping through a binder. Melanie was about to knock on the doorframe when the man spoke.

  “Come on in.” His tone was calm and even as he paused to take a sip from his own cup of coffee. “Have a seat if you’d like.”

  Schultz left his perch, closing the binder and handing it to Melanie.

  “Get with the rest of the team and double-check the points of entry, make sure that we’re set with the best routes in and out.”

  She nodded as she took the binder and set off to complete her assignment, closing the door as she went.

  The man pulled a chair behind the desk and sat down, repeating his offer. The Tall Man obliged, easing down into a chair facing the desk.

  “So, you’re the man who brought down Bermuda.” A smile crept across his face.

  “Oh, I was just one small cog.”

  “Come now, there’s no need for modesty, mister?” Schultz ended the sentence as a question, unsure of what to call the man in the trench coat.

  “Mister works just fine.”

  “Okay then, what do your friends call you?”

  “Don’t really have any,” the Tall Man said with a sly grin.

  “What about Herman Ingram?”

  “What about him?”

  “Timothy Hanford, my deceased former boss, hired you to eliminate Mr. Ingram, did he not?”

  The Tall Man nodded, taking a sip from his mug as Schultz continued.

  “As you can probably tell from what we’ve been up to, I admire the work you did in bringing that place to the ground.”

  “What about your former boss?”

  “Hanford?” Schultz asked with a sneer. “The only thing that bothers me is that I wasn’t the one to put that bastard out of his misery.”

  Schultz’s demeanor changed. It was subtle, like a cold wind coming through a tiny crack in a wall, but it was there. Something was festering beneath his calm exterior; the only question was what would happen when the rotting was complete. There was a blaze of madness in his eyes. When he continued, it was gone.

  “What you did inspired the work that we’re doing. I realized that they would never stop; they would never quit unless they were forced to. I was sitting in a bar when the news broke about Bermuda. I have never sobered up as quick as I did when I saw the images of what had been done. In that instant, I knew what I had to do and I have you to thank for that.”

  The Tall Man finished off his coffee, licking the back of his teeth before he spoke. “That’s all good and well, but you didn’t bring me all the way out here to polish my asshole.”

  “No,” Schultz said with a laugh. “I know a fair amount about your track record, your reputation. I know you’re a gifted tactician and that’s something that we could dearly use.”

  The Tall Man eased back in his chair with his hands clasped together, index fingers rubbing his chin. “You seemed to have that Colorado Springs job sealed up nice and tight.”

  Schultz leveled his eyes at his guest, intensity radiating from every square inch of his body. “That one was easy. After Bermuda, all the bigwigs were subpoenaed and tied up in litigation. It became a clusterfuck of them turning on each other, issuing denials, or ‘committing suicide’. For them, the other research centers being put on ice meant nothing more than lost revenue. After all, the project that had landed them on the firing line had no ties to any other facility. Any material deemed questionable was removed and destroyed once the shit hit the fan.”

  The Tall Man sat forward, placing his right hand on the edge of the desk as he met Schultz’s gaze. “I hate to be rude Greg, surely I do, but I’m just not seeing your point.”

  Greg smiled, the expression somehow mean and cold. “I like to plan several steps ahead. I didn’t do that in Colorado Springs. See, I had this nervous energy that was driving me. I wanted to get it done and move on to the next one and then the next until they were all gone. Now, we weren’t careless, I don’t want to give that impression. A lot of work and planning went into that job and we pulled it off, but just by the skin of our teeth.

  “This team was carefully constructed, not only for talent but for motivation. Take Melanie for example. Her brother was one of the those who received a package from George Wilman. He was set to help break the story when he was forced off of a two-lane highway and off of a cliff. Make no mistake, she is an extremely capable and driven woman, but she would never have considered joining up with this cause were it not for the motivation of her brother’s murder. Every person on this crew is similarly motivated to see QNI fall and fall hard. Even with that level of care and commitment, we succeeded, but only just.”

  The Tall Man ran his tongue along the inside of his lower lip as the pieces fell into place. He shifted in the chair, removing his hat to scratch his head. “And your concern is now that a second facility has been targeted that they’ll start guarding the other ones, setting a trap for the saboteurs.”

  There was no question in his words. He knew that this was precisely what Schultz was driving at just as sure as he knew that he wanted to chase the coffee with a shot of whiskey.

  “That’s where you come in, my friend,” Schultz said, pointing emphatically. “It’s the one thing that I overlooked in my haste. These people are here because of a deep sense of justice.”

  “Vengeance,” the Tall Man interjected calmly, rubbing his palms.

  “Vengeance is probably a better word. Regardless of how you choose to define it, they would not be here had I not brought them here and I owe it to them to be as thorough as is possible. A man with your talents could attend to those details, should they arise, with little trouble.”

  “And just what makes you think that I’d be interested in this job?”

  Schultz said back in his chair, looking distractedly at the ceiling. “I have a hunch.”

  “Please,” the Tall Man said as he held his hands out, palms up. “Do tell.”

  Schultz dropped his eyes back to his guest, a much kinder smile on his face. “You were hired to kill Mr. Ingram, yet you didn’t. Instead, you killed the man who hired you and you blew his campus to Kingdom Come. I don’t know exactly why that is, I can only surmise that you had a crisis of conscience. Granted, that seems unlikely for a man in your line of work but it’s the only thing I can think of that even remotely makes sense.”

  The Tall Man fell silent, his mind racing across faded mental images of his family and the ruination that had befallen everyone he had loved. White-hot anger flowed out from his chest and into his hands, which were clenched into fists in his lap. “Where does Herman fit into all this?”

  Schultz sat forward, leaning on his arms against the desk. His eyes were fixed, staring down some buried demons. “You aren’t the only one seeking to atone for past sins.” His voice had become melancholy and distant. “For too long, I was a willing participant, fucking over every person that dared stand in my way. In the end, it cost the lives of my wife and my children.”

  His voice cracked as his eyes welled up. The cold chill that had earlier visited itself upon the room returned tenfold. “I led a dear friend to his death because he had the audacity to stand up against what he knew was evil. I did it because I was afraid to stand up, afraid of what would happen to me. I was a coward and it cost me everything.”

  Self-loathing was dripping from the man’s lips. The Tall Man pitied him on some level. On another, he was deeply disturbed by what this man might be capable of.

  “I can never walk back the consequences of my actions but I can do everything
in my power to make sure that this ends. I want the full story to be told, for the entire ugly saga to be laid out for the world to see.”

  “So you want Herman to serve as a what, a sort of documentarian for this?”

  Schultz snapped his fingers enthusiastically. “You got it.”

  The Tall Man took his hat off, placing it on the desk before running his fingers through his hair. “And you have a hunch that he’ll be game?”

  “I think there’s a very good possibility.” Schultz paused for a moment before continuing. “Even better if the proposition comes from you.”

  The Tall Man nodded slowly, pursing his lips. “Y’know, if anyone gets killed because of your little crusade, he’s gonna disappear and he won’t forget about it when it’s time to put out a story.”

  A rapid twitch struck just below Schultz’s left eye. It was only there for a split second but it did not go unnoticed. “I’m counting on his journalistic integrity. That said, we have a very strict rule and a very simple one: we do not, under any circumstance, kill. In fact, killing goes against everything that we’re trying to accomplish. The guard we encountered last night was subdued nonviolently and moved to a safe location. We aren’t out to harm anyone, not directly at least, and certainly no innocent people.”

  The Tall Man was not wholly convinced and he made no effort to hide that in his tone or expression. “See that it stays that way because if it doesn’t, Herman becomes a liability to you.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes out from an inner coat pocket. “You mind?” he asked in a manner that conveyed no genuine concern.

  Schultz shook his head.

  The Tall Man popped one in his mouth, lighting it with an extraordinarily shiny flip-top lighter. “Know that my allegiance to Herman is a hell of a lot stronger than any allegiance towards you. I need you to know that, understand that, and don’t ever doubt it.”