by Caleb Meeks
“Judas killed his father?” Leo interrupted.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t even end there. After he killed him, they rushed him to the hospital. After they got him stabilized, his mother came in to talk to him. She accused him of tearing their family apart, and said she never wanted to see him again. He said she held up her end of the bargain.”
“Because she’s in a mental institution.” Leo proclaimed, piecing the puzzle pieces together in his head.
“Exactly. He didn’t know how he came to be who he is now, but given the progression in his childhood, it’s not really that hard to imagine.”
“I still can’t wrap my head around it. How does a guy who obliterated fifteen guards and two detectives end up just letting you go after a simple heart to heart?”
“That’s the thing though, I’m not sure he’s done everything we’ve accused him of doing. I mean, he didn’t quite plead innocence on all counts by any means, but he claims that he wasn’t responsible for the altercation four years ago.”
“Excuse me?” Leo doubted.
“I know, it sounds ridiculous. I didn’t believe any of it either at first but hear me out. He claims that he was going to turn himself in. In exchange for a host of information, he was going to end it all that day. Apparently, he had a business partner who didn’t like that he was going to do it and interceded before he could go through with it. It wasn’t his men who killed our guys, it was some other person’s crew.”
“That sounds all fine and good, but why should we believe him? Whether or not he did that doesn’t change any of the other things he’s done. There’s so much blood on his hands that we’d almost be foolish to trust him.”
“I know. But that’s where it gets even more interesting.” He motioned to the duffel bag that he had set on the desk next to them. “He gave me this just before he let me go and disappeared. He said that it’s a bag of black books, tapes, hitmen, everything. I doubted it, but I quickly went through it all before I left, and assuming it all checks out, it could change everything, Leo.” He stopped talking momentarily and pulled out an orange mailing envelope. On the front, there was a sticky note that said, Don’t believe me? Start here. Matthew ripped the package open and pulled a black security tape from inside it. “And then there’s this.”
“Is that what I think it is?” Leo apprehensively asked.
“The missing security tape from that incident four years ago? I think so too.”
“We have to check.” Both men jumped at the thought of the possibility. They hastened towards the security room, which was on the floor just above them. They took the stairs three at a time.
Leo practically knocked down the door the security room. “Hey Ron.”
The security guy, Ron, turned around, a startled look on his face. “Hey, Leo, everything ok? I saw your little speech on the desk.”
“Yeah, everything’s good. Just need to borrow the room. If you could step out for a few minutes, that would be great. It’s kind of classified material.”
“Sure, I can do that for you.” He hesitantly confirmed.
“Thanks.” Leo said, gently catching his breath from running up the stairs. Ron got up from his chair, and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
“Little speech on the desk?” Matthew asked, curiosity filling up his eyes.
“We are holding security tapes that could potentially change the way we take on crime in this city, and that’s what you choose to focus on?” Leo sarcastically responded.
“Fair point.” Matthew conceded. They snapped back into the excitement of the moment, and quickly found the machine to put the tape in. It fed into the large screen in the center of the room. They stood back and watched in anxious anticipation. The black and white security footage started playing on the screen, and both men watched in silence.
It started out with Judas being carted into the room. It had been remodeled in the current building, but both Leo and Matthew recognized it as the room that was four floors below them. Leo grabbed the remote and fast forwarded to the time while Judas was sitting in the chair. There was about two hours of footage of him staring blankly at the wall while the station was getting everything in order. The guards, all fifteen of them, were packed into the room. Each of them had their guns at the ready. Leo clicked play just as he started to notice movement. The angle of the camera only showed the room but didn’t have a shot of the door to the room. From the entrance of the room, gunfire exploded. The guards barely even had a chance to raise their guns to the intruders. Within seconds, the room was full of a new group of people. Just as Martin had explained in his briefing back when this all started, the guards were sprawled out on the ground. Pools of blood immediately started forming around them. Even through the slightly blurry footage, both Leo and Matthew could feel the distress from Judas. He was chained to the chair, so he couldn’t do anything, but he did not look like he knew what was going on. From the entrance of the room, one more person emerged. They could only see him from the back, but he was clearly different from the other men who walked in. He was in a simple black jacket, and slacks. On the streets, he would have blended in as a normal businessman. Judas squirmed in fear as the mystery man pulled out a gun. He pulled the trigger once, and a bullet flew into Judas’ abdomen. Matthew immediately remembered the scar he had shown him, and it was the exact same spot in the footage. Judas wailed in pain, and the man opposite him seemed to just laugh. He gave some silent instruction to the men in the room, and then turned and exited. A couple of the new guards walked up to Judas and started removing the chains form his wrists and feet. Every now and then, they would throw a punch into his face or stomach, just because they could. Once they got him standing, he unsteadily walked towards the door his assailant had just exited from. The guards poured out behind him, and within a few minutes, the whole transaction was done. Martin stampeded into the room, and both men watched the once strong detective break down before them. Leo shakily gripped the remote and turned the screen off.
They turned and looked at each other, noticing the same expression of unease. “If that checked out…” Leo trailed off, deep in his own mind.
“Then it means that whole bag probably checks out.” Matthew finished. The development in the case terrified both of them, but both could see the excitement in the other’s eyes. They grabbed the video tape, and practically ran back to Leo’s office.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Driving away from Dominic’s body was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Even though I knew that his body probably wasn’t there anymore, it was still almost impossible. Abaddon’s men had almost certainly removed any trace of what happened in there to cover their tracks. Still, a large part of me was aching to go back, just to check. Ultimately, I decided to leave it as it was. If I was to go back, and if his body was still there, then I would have to live with that being the last image I’d ever see of him. I’d much rather remember him as the lively, smiling man on the stairs, who I’m well aware was just a near death hallucination. Still, it was the version of Dom that I had come to love all those years ago, and it was the Dom that I was choosing to remember in his death. I know it’s the version that he would have preferred I remember.
Even still, it was difficult to let him go. I chose to focus on the conversation I had with the officer, Newman. Matthew, I think. Interesting man. His ability to be so open and calm in the face of someone he’d spent weeks learning every gruesome detail about was fascinating. Most people who’ve done things just the same as me can’t even be that calm over the phone with me. He seemed to be adamant that we were one in the same, but I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Or wouldn’t, either is possible.
I couldn’t deny that his speech hit me in a way that I didn’t want to let on, even to myself. There was something about the life he lived that seemed familiar, just like I felt when I looked into his eyes the first time I ever laid my eyes on him. The only person who has ever really understood m
e on a personal level was Dominic, and that’s because he watched my life unravel right before his eyes, and then lived it. The fact that someone I’d never met before managed to relate to me in a single conversation sounds almost impossible. Somehow, listening to what he had to say set something loose inside me that I couldn’t even understand. It almost felt like a switch flipped as he was speaking. Not like I was a different person, but like something was growing inside me.
I tried to push the nagging feeling away and distract myself with other things. While it never really went away, and I was always aware of it, it was at least worth a try to think about other things. I rested my arm on the window of the car and held my head while I drove. The street was completely empty except for me. Every now and then, a car would drive past, probably on their way to the town, but they were only ever thirty or forty minutes. Aside from that, there was absolutely no one around. The trees around the town were beautiful. They provided a distraction, since they were so different from the city life I’d grown so accustomed to. In the city, trees and grass were a rarity, and were dead most of the time. Being around the wilderness was refreshing.
There was a lot of silence as I drove down that road. Being alone with your own thoughts wasn’t something I always enjoyed but was generally the only thing I had to keep me company. Now that Dom was gone, I guess I’d have to get used to it even more. No matter how hard I tried, my mind kept drifting back to Matthew Newman. Listening to him talk about losing his brother brought back all the feelings of losing Dominic, and the words he said right before he died. He’s got me. The words hadn’t stopped replaying in my mind since I had left the complex. Like I said, I never knew him to be a religious man, and I like to think I knew him fairly well. After all, if he was a religious man, what was he doing hanging around with someone like me? Still, after listening to Newman’s story of faith, it had me thinking about it more than I ever had before.
The drive was quiet, but louder mentally than I had planned. Eventually I reached my destination. My old facility, the one that Dominic had been taken from just over a week ago. Hard to believe that life can change so dramatically in such a short time. Just pulling into the complex brought back a slew of emotions, but I suppressed them until they receded.
I stepped out of the car a few minutes after pulling in. It took me some time to unglue my hands from the steering wheel, because every part of me wanted to just drive away from this place, but something inside me was keeping me there. I took a deep breath once I finally did step out and started towards the breezeway. It was just as silent as it was when I was there before but felt emptier. Whether that was an emotional reaction to being in the place where I last saw my best friend, or that it was actually emptier than before was still to be discovered.
I instinctively walked towards the door to my office. It was where I had spent so many years of my life, and it was the place I felt most in control. Nowadays, being in control is mostly just a fallacy, but it gave comfort, I guess. Who knows if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I cracked open the door slowly at first, finding it hard to commit fully.
The room was just as I left it. Bloody rags from when Dominic was patching me up were still hanging on bowls of water. The memory, while still raw and somewhat painful, brought a smile to my face.
I walked into the room, being careful to not step on anything that had been scattered on the floor. I had pulled most of the important things when I left the first time, but I decided to go through the room one last time. Chances were, I wasn’t going to come back, so this was the last opportunity I had to take things. I grabbed another duffel bag from the room, and started filling it with ammunition, knives, and the few personal things I’d stored there. After a few minutes of rummaging, I was mostly finished with that room. I walked to the desk sitting in the middle of the room. I took a seat in the chair that had been flung across the room. The drawer on the underside of the desk was where I kept most of my important things. Locations, names, things like that. Impulsively, I decided to rummage through it. Mixed in among the other papers, I found a picture. The edges were tattered, but it was still in good condition. When I flipped it over, I was speechless for a moment. The picture was from almost six years ago. It was Dominic and I standing on a bridge just a couple weeks after I got out of the hospital. I had forgotten that it existed. It was a great day. I felt a tear welling up in my eyes, so I looked away from the picture. After standing up and shaking away the emotions, I wedged the picture into my back pocket.
With that room having been emptied, I took a deep breath, and walked out of the door. The sound of the door clicking shut behind me was hard, knowing that it was a goodbye, but it also felt healing, in a way. I headed out to the breezeway again. The feeling of aloneness I had when I first arrived had lifted, and I couldn’t determine if it was just being in the building or something else. I kept my senses attuned from that moment on.
I quietly crept across the long breezeway, and eventually reached the other side. The last time I walked through the door was when I was looking for Dominic and putting my hand on the doorknob brought back the too familiar memories.
“I didn’t actually think you’d be stupid enough to come back here. Miss your friend, is that it?” The sound of the voice crept under my skin. I slowly released my iron grip on the door handle and turned around. Part of me begged for the voice to be in my own mind, but it wasn’t. “Did you think that coming back to the place where I took him would make you feel better? Closer to him?” My breathing intensified, and I felt like my heart was going to stop beating. “You know, he was a hard one to break. He took a beating let me tell you. I’ve beaten people to death, but he probably lasted the longest I’ve ever seen.” His voice was dripping with victory. “I kept telling him that if he would just give up and give me what I wanted, that I would stop. I mean, I wouldn’t have, but it just showed how strong his resolve was. Maybe he got that from you. You took an impressive beating yourself, just about four years ago. You pulled through, though. He had the indecency to bleed all over me, and then give up, only to die right after his saving grace arrived. Coward.” That last word resonated throughout my mind. It made the muscles in my neck tighten, and my hands made fists instinctively.
“Dominic Trebino was a lot of things. He was imperfect, he was selfless, he was loyal, strong, reliable, and a friend, but he was not a coward. That is you, Abaddon. A coward doesn’t give up his own life to save the life of someone he cares about. A coward enslaves people to do his dirty work by hiring them on without any foreknowledge of what they are doing. A coward disappears for four years after being shown up by someone beneath him. Last I checked, that was you.”
“Wow, someone grew up. You know, four years ago you never would have spoken to me like that.” He said, subtle disdain in his voice.
I smiled, taking pride in it. “Yeah, I was a different person four years ago. I know we disagree, but I like to look at it as a good thing. Like I said, you just enslaved people to do what you were too afraid to do. I was just one of your pawns.”
“Maybe, but you were an extraordinary pawn. We could have done incredible things together.”
“I think you and I have different definitions of incredible.” I stated.
“Well that could be. I’m not the one who proclaims to have broken free from being a bad guy, but still kills like one, though.”
He had a point, but I didn’t have the time or care to discuss philosophy with him. “I can’t argue that one with you.”
He smiled, beaming with the obvious feeling of victory. “Exactly. Unfortunately, only one of us is going to get to walk out of here, and lucky for me, I’ve already got plans, so I don’t think it’s going to be you.”
“I don’t have plans, but I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one too.”
“That’s up to you Judas. You always liked the hero mentality. No matter how hard I tried to beat it out of you, it was engrained in who you are. A pain, truly.”
&
nbsp; “I’m tired of this. We both know what you’re here to do.” I admitted.
“It’s about time. I’ve let you get away from me twice, I don’t think I’ll let it happen again.”
I pulled a gun from the back of my pants, lined up a shot, and within a two second moment, fired a shot. The bullet landed in his shoulder, knocking him back. He looked up at me, locking eyes with me. With a sick smile on his face, he reached up to his shoulder, and, with two fingers, dug into his shoulder. A few seconds later, his fingers emerged holding the bullet that had just entered his body. He casually dropped it at his feet, tilting his head slightly to the side, silently saying, Is that all?
The duffel bag was sitting at my feet. He started his steps toward me, and instead of engaging in a fight in the open breezeway that we were in, I turned and entered the building I was standing just in front of. I knew that, even though I had healed well from the last interaction, I wasn’t strong enough to handle him in the wide-open area. It would be a few seconds before he was in the room, so I had to decide what I was doing quickly. The putrefying body of my guard, as well as the many of his were still just where I had left them. I stepped around them as quietly as possible and made my way to a room in the back. I hugged a wall just out of eye’s reach from the hallway.
A few seconds later, I heard the door fly open, smacking into the wall. “What did you do to my guys, Judas?” He yelled loud enough that his voice went throughout the whole building. I could hear him making his way through the rooms, though not uttering a single word. His footsteps were heavy as they made their way towards me. Eventually, I heard him turn the corner of the hallway that I was down. “I never took you for a hide and seek kind of guy. Clearly you lost some of that spunk you had when you were with me.” He stopped at the entrance of the room I was in.