His only identification was an expired driver’s license. The picture looked like him and the description was accurate, 6 feet tall and 200 pounds with brown hair and green eyes. If his date of birth was to be believed he had just turned 48. Nobody thought his real name was John Smith. All anyone was sure of was that he was one of the hardest working men they had ever known. Showed up to work every day ten minutes early, and out worked men half his age. The other men on the crew were cautious around him, suspicious of his brooding silences, amazed at his endurance and just a bit annoyed by the standard he set every day. The boss had noticed and already given him two raises in less than three months on the job. And to think he had almost not hired him. The man had showed up on the job site one day out of nowhere looking for work. He had said more words in that moment than he had spoken in the entirety of his three months of employment. “I know how to do this work and I will outwork every man on your crew, and if you don’t hire me it will be the biggest mistake of your life. I only have one condition. I would like to be paid in cash.”
Each Friday he took his envelope of fresh cash from the slot in the spinning wheel with his name taped to the side, John Smith. He would slide the envelope into the pocket of his jacket then walk to the curb and wait for the E bus that arrived at 5 o’clock. The bus took him down town to the boarding house where he rented an apartment in a run down building across the street from the YMCA. When he got off the bus he would stop at the YMCA to take a shower, then walk to his apartment to change his clothes. The shower in his flat had stopped working weeks ago and no one had come to fix it. So he improvised. There was no point in complaining. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be there much longer. The appointed time was coming soon. He could feel it.
After changing into clean clothes he walked several blocks to the Bird’s Eye Cafe for a dinner of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, and black coffee. He ate slowly at a table in the corner with his back to the front window. His field of vision swept over the entire length and width of the 100 year old building, every booth visible. He had found the Bird’s Eye to be a mostly pleasant and agreeable establishment, but there wasn’t room in his world for carelessness, no future in assuming peace when there was no peace. He ate his meal carefully, and paid close attention to everything around him. When he was finished he laid thirty dollars on the table, half of which covered the food, the other half a gratuity for his every Friday night waitress, Margaret, who smiled at him when she cleaned off his table.
“You are so generous, John. Need me to top off your coffee before you go?”
“No ma'am.” He smiled back.
Margaret balanced the dishes on one hip and placed her free hand on the other. “You know, you can call me Margaret. Calling me ma’am the way you do makes me feel old.”
John walked past her on his way out without responding to her latest flirtation. He had no time for the distraction. There wasn’t room in his life for anyone else, and never would be. He would soon be dead, of this he was certain.
He turned left out of the Bird’s Eye, walking north towards the two bars he frequented every evening. He didn’t drink anything stronger than coffee, which puzzled the bar tenders at both establishments. He walked in every night, first at the Ball Peen Hammered, then later at the Flying Squirrel, sat at the same seat at the far end of the bar, ordered a cup of coffee and listened to the swirl of sounds around him. On this night at the Ball Peen his attention had been captured by a thin and increasingly inebriated woman at a booth in the back corner. She swayed a bit from side to side as she listened to the man across from her. The corners of her eyes drooped downward, a fragile smile flashing across her face then running away as quickly as it had appeared.
He watched her carefully, shutting out the extraneous noises of the bar to concentrate on their conversation, such as it was, since the man was doing all the talking. He suggested that she get another drink. She didn’t need another drink. She needed coffee. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. This might be it, he thought. Then she excused herself, clumsily got to her feet, walking past him on her way to the bathrooms. He listened to the man’s raised voice, saw his extended hand and heard the snapping of fingers. Their waitress brought two drinks to the table. The man took a long drink of his as he deftly dropped a pill into her’s and gave it a stir with the plastic straw. John slid off his stool and followed her to the women’s bathroom, waiting at the door. When the door opened he stepped forward close enough to be heard, “Ma’am, the gentleman at your table just dropped a pill into your drink. I wouldn’t go back there if I were you.”
Her eyes were glassy and she looked younger close up then she did through the dim light of the bar. “Yeah, well you aren’t me, are you?” She answered slowly.
He persisted, “I feel certain that he does not have your best interests at heart…”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” She snapped as she squeezed past him and made her way back to her booth.
This was how things worked sometimes. It seemed that there was nothing he could do to prevent bad outcomes. Normally by the time he encountered a tragedy, it was over. In the few cases where he could see it coming, his efforts at mediation were always fruitless. He walked back to his barstool and waited.
He noticed that she didn’t take a sip of her drink. He could feel the man’s frustration. When they both rose from the table to leave he noticed that his grip on her elbow was unnatural, his fingers white with strain. He followed them at a discreet distance, watching as they disappeared into the darkness of the alley that led to the poorly lit parking lot in back. He ran quickly through a smaller alley that opened into the lot underneath the only light pole. He knew that he would need to confront him before they made it to the car. Time was running out. Maybe this was the night when it came to an end, maybe this was his last fight.
They stopped at the back door to the car. He was a tall man but thinly built. But when he leaned her against the car his body hovered menacingly over hers. He began his advances and she seemed accommodating, but then his hands ripped at her blouse and suddenly she began to struggle against his superior strength. He heard her voice asking him to stop. John reached into his pocket, removed a black onyx six inch switchblade and touched the release mechanism as he raised his right hand into the air. With his left hand he reached around the tall man and grabbed tightly onto his clean shaven chin, then placed the tip of the blade firmly enough on the man’s neck to break the skin.
“I saw what you did back at the bar,” John began. “While your date was using the ladies room you dropped a drug into her drink so slickly it was like you had been doing it for years. I tried to warn her but she chose to ignore me…which was her right. But, I couldn’t just let it go because I know people like you. It’s almost like a sixth sense. I can smell a rapist in the wind. So here I am holding an instrument of death against your carotid artery. The only question that remains is should I let you go with a warning or should I put you and the rest of humanity out of its misery?”
The woman’s face was frozen wide with horror, the man immobilized with fear. John was taking a chance, like he always did. Although the parking lot was poorly lit, anyone could stumble out of the bar and see what was happening. But the risk never occurred to John until hours later. In the moment all he could think of was the power of life and death which he held in his hands.
“Tell me something,” John whispered into his ear, “Just between you and me, just us guys. You were planning on raping her weren’t you? I would be willing to bet all the money in the world that this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve raped a woman either, am I right?” It always surprised John at the willingness of people to confess their sins when they think they might soon perish. The man nodded his head up and down in the affirmative. John sighed and whispered, “That’s what I figured.”
John plunged the edge of the blade deep into his neck, severing the artery and sending a fine mist of blood across the the woman’s face. She screamed, then swallowed the scream in her throat fearing that she was next. John lowered the dead man to the ground then looked at the woman. “If I were you I would run from this place and never return. Next time you agree to go on a date, be more discriminating.”
The woman was shaking with fear looking at the opened eyes of the dead man in a pool of blood at her feet. She looked at John, “Who are you?”
John removed the blood off the blade of his knife by wiping it clean on the dead man’s shirt. Then he rose to his feet. “I am the hand of God.”
Thirty minutes later he was laying on his back under the covers of his single bed staring at the ceiling fan above his head, finding it hard to fall asleep after all the coffee. But sleep finally came, deep and dreamless.
He would wake up the next morning renewed, endowed with a fresh sense of purpose. He would step off the bus early for work, ready for the day’s labor. Upon arriving back home, he would stop by the convenience store around the corner from the boarding house to pick up a newspaper, where he would search for a mention of his previous nights work. His time in the city might be coming to an end. His face along with his routines were becoming too familiar.
The thin man at the Ball Peen had been his third execution in less than three months, an unacceptable kill rate if he wished to remain at liberty. The first two had been unavoidable. When you find yourself present during the commission of a heinous crime, you have no choice but to intervene, which he would have told anyone who cared for an explanation. The most recent one had been a gift. Being present at the birth of evil intention, then being able to thwart its implementation, felt like a miracle.
How it was that he kept stumbling into the middle of crimes of passion remained a mystery. Some might call it bad luck, a propensity for showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time. But John knew better. It had been this way for close to twenty five years. Luck had nothing to do with it. He was an instrument of wrath, a terrible swift sword. Every single neck he had sliced belonged to someone who was irretrievably evil, most caught in mid-desecration. The justice that John brought was swift and sure, and for a quarter of a century—unattributed. If he wanted to keep it that way, he would need to move on soon. It was a shame. He had grown fond of the shower facilities at the YMCA.
###
He was only 15 when his life had been transformed from one thing to another, the pivotable event now a 30 year old memory. But time had done nothing to erase any of the details. Every movement, every word, each monstrous sound etched on the stone tablets of his heart.
It was in the middle of winter, a fire blazing in the fireplace. His mother was setting the table for supper, his father reading the newspaper. John sat on the floor playing with the family Dalmatian, ten years old and nearly blind, but endowed with supernatural hearing, his ears now suddenly perked and facing the front door. When the door burst open, a four hour ordeal began with a gun shot that rendered John temporarily deaf. In an instant the dog dropped limp onto the floor, a bullet hole in his head. Two sweating hysterical faces presented themselves in the family room pointing guns at the adults, leaving the boy screaming on the floor next to the dead dog.
Later he would learn of their escape from the penitentiary the next county over, how the two convicts had hidden themselves in laundry bags, how they had strangled the van driver, stolen the gun he had holstered to his side and the one he had stored in the glove box. The family that lived hidden from the main road at the end of a quarter mile gravel drive way would be their first stop.
Once the dog had been dispatched the taller of the two men stepped forward smiling from ear to ear. “Well, would you look at this? Just in time for dinner!”
Thirty years later John still remembered the meal. Sausage spaghetti bolognese, with Caesars salad and sourdough rolls.
The wild men arranged the family on the sofa, with the boy in the middle. They searched the refrigerator until they found four cans of beer. They ate the food like they hadn’t eaten in days, taking time along the way to compliment the cook. Once the food was gone and the beer cans crumpled on the floor they asked if there was any hard liquor in the house. His mother answered “no”. His father’s face must have betrayed the truth. The tall man grinned, “Looks like Pops here might have a secret stash somewhere.” His father had given up hard liquor years earlier when his drinking had almost cost him his marriage and his family. Now he seemed more distraught over his secret drinking coming to light than he did the fact that his family was being held hostile by two madmen.
The shorter man returned from the attached garage with half a fifth of bourbon, a strand of rope and a shiny black onyx switchblade.
###
Two patrol officers found the body, called it in and roped off the perimeter. Within minutes the detective arrived on the scene, kneeled down to get a closer look at the wound in the dead man’s neck. The same slashing motion as the two previous killings he had been investigating for months without result.
“Looks similar to them other two, huh Detective Miller?”
Miller grunted something under his breath, then stood up to face the officer. “Any witnesses? You guys questioned anyone inside the bar?”
“No sir. No witnesses, but we have questioned some of the patrons and three of them said that they watched him leave with a woman. That’s all we got at the moment.”
Miller walked around the car, kicking pebbles out of the way as he scoured the ground. “Why is it that there’s never a CCTV camera where you need one? The alleys up and down this street have been the scene of three goddamned murders in three months and these people still haven’t put up cameras?”
Miller drove back to his office running all the facts of the three murders through his mind over and over looking for similarities and finding quite a few…all three within a quarter mile stretch of King street, all the victims with slashed throats and no sign of a struggle. All three murders in the alleys behind bars. But this latest was different in one major way. The two previous killings had interrupted criminal activity, the first a drug deal gone bad, the second a rapist caught in the act. In neither case could anyone provide a reliable description of the killer, all of them too traumatized by the encounter to offer anything specific enough for a sketch artist to go on. But now this latest victim lay dead in a heap on the ground next to a car registered in his name with a bubble pack of Rohypnol in his jacket. Miller knew in his heart what he had no evidence for—that the dead man had evil intentions for a woman and the same vigilante who had killed the previous two lowlifes was at it again. He had to find the woman if he had any hope of ever finding the killer.
For three months Miller had spent every waking moment searching the data base of the National Crime Information Center. What he discovered had taken over his life. Over a nearly twenty-five year time frame this was now the seventeen death by a slashed throat reported in a total of eleven cities across the country, all of them unsolved, nearly all of the victims had been killed during, or just after, the commission of a deadly crime. In none of the attacks had anyone come forward with a description of the killer. Miller was convinced that all of them were killed by the same man. He had no proof. All he had was a firm conviction, and the one tangible clue, the photograph of which hung in the middle of the evidence wall in his office. At the scene of the first killing, on the ground where the victim lay in a pool of blood, someone had scratched three initials in the pebbles…HOG. The same three letters had been etched into the ground at a previous killing in Spokane. The three letters had also been written on a blank post card and placed inside the victim’s shirt pocket in an alleyway in Detroit. It was only three out of the seventeen, but it was the only thing he had to go on.
Whoever the killer was, he liked to move around. The seventeen victims lived in different cities from Spokane and Portland in the Pacific Northwest to San Antonio and Dallas in Texas, on to Atlanta and Birmingham in the Deep South, and then Norfolk and Wilmington in the Mid-Atlantic. The killer had left no trace of himself behind, no credit cards, no banking information, no record of employment, no address. A drifter with a preference for cash, was Miller’s guess. Perhaps one with a Messiah complex. If his theory was correct and all seventeen killings were attributable to the same man, it was plain to see that the killer had rid the world of seventeen despicable human beings. All of them had long criminal records, nearly all of them had spent time in prison for something, and several of them had outstanding warrants at the time of their deaths. Miller had become obsessed with the case for obvious reasons, but the more he had researched it the more conflicted he became. If he was lucky enough to ever apprehend the man Miller wasn’t sure he wanted to see him in the electric chair or give him a medal for his service to the country.
Then he heard a tap on the glass door to his office. “Detective Miller, there’s someone out front who wants to speak to you.”
The woman looked pale and terrified. Miller offered her coffee which she declined.
“I was told that you were the detective working the case of the man murdered behind The Ball Peen.”
“Yes ma’am, I am. How can I help you?”
“I was there,” she answered just as the tears came.
###
It was his mother who he missed the most. He hated to admit it even to himself, but John loved his mother more than anyone in the world. His father was a good man, and except for his occasional trouble with the bottle, had been a good father to him. But his mother was special. She was the one who taught him about how the world worked. She was the one who helped him see beauty, to feel compassion, to discover what empathy meant. She seemed to know the bottom line truth of everything. It was her face that he saw last each night before falling asleep. But it wasn’t the smiling face filled with light and warmth, it wasn’t her loving smile and searching eyes he saw. It was something else, his last memory of her that came up for review each and every night.
The two madmen passed the bottle back and forth for a while, laughing at some secret, silent joke between them. Then the shorter man approached the sofa and took his father to one of the kitchen chairs and tied his hands and feet together. Next, it was John’s turn to be tied to another kitchen chair. All the while his father had started to plead with the men for mercy. His cries were loud and hysterical and resulted in a lightening fast fist across his face that sent a splash of blood running out of his mouth dripping in a red line down his shirt. John’s fear became overwhelming at the sight of his father’s bloody face and he began to sob, pleading for the men to stop. “What do you want??!!” He finally screamed.
The taller man, the man who had not once stopped smiling since he shot the dog, answered. “That’s a good question Junior. What do you suppose we want? It sure ain’t money because you folks don’t look like the kind who would have a lot of cash lying around…no offense. And your lovely Momma just made us a meal fit for a king. Now we’ve had our after supper whisky…so what do you think we might want now?”
John might have only been 15 when introduced to savagery, but he was old enough to realize what was about to happen. He opened his mouth to scream but couldn’t draw in enough air to make a sound. He looked across the kitchen at his father and saw him screaming through his bloody mouth but heard not a sound. Suddenly the madmen swept all the dishes off the table, a violent crashing sound that John couldn’t hear. He looked on in horror as both men lifted her onto the kitchen table and tied her down. Then, with her son and husband not more than six feet from her each man took his turn. She struggled and screamed in defiance, and her bravery cut through the curtain of silence. When they were done, each of them took a final draw on the bottle. Then the tall man, still smiling, looked at John and held his gaze. Then without looking away he turned his gun on his father. The sound was monstrous, made more so by the stilling of his father’s voice. Then he looked down at his mother and smiled before pulling the trigger.
“Alrighty then,” he said to the shorter man, “Time to go.”
“What about the boy? Whatcha gonna do about him?”
The taller man took a few steps closer to John and held his gun out until the tip of the barrel pressed firmly against his forehead. “What should I do about this boy, you say?” John’s breaths were shallow and his eyes shut tight when he heard the madman say, “I’m thinking we’ve done enough damage to this boy for one night.”
John heard the men leave with the slamming of the front door. He heard the faintest hint of his mother’s voice. He struggled with all of his might to break free from the chair but couldn’t manage. Then he began rocking slowly side to side, inching ever closer to the table where his mother lay dying. When he was close enough to hear, her words were whispered but clear, “…everything works together for good, you must redeem the evil done this night, fight against despair…fight against…” and then she was gone.
###
The pale woman gathered herself after Miller brought her a glass of water. She dried her eyes with a cotton handkerchief that Miller always carried with him for times like these. “So the deceased was your date that night?”
“Yes sir. I know I shouldn’t have run away. But I was so afraid and wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Tell me what happened. Start at the beginning.”
She spoke of everything she knew. She told the detective about the encounter with the man at the bathroom and of seeing that same man later in the parking lot. She described the slashing of the neck. She told everything she could remember about the killer, but seemed anxious to make sure that the detective knew that he had tried to warn her. She made sure to mention that he intended her no harm. Miller jotted her words down in a small pocket-sized spiral notebook. Then she said, “I only said one thing to him after he killed him…I asked him, I said, who are you? And you know what he said? He said ‘I’m the hand of God’…and I swear Detective, when he said it his eyes were as warm and kind as any two eyes I’ve ever seen.”
Miller brought in a sketch artist and from her description a reliable image was produced. “Yes, that looks very much like him, at least what I can remember,” she said after seeing the finished product. “Am I in trouble, detective?”
“Not yet,” he answered. “For the moment you’re free to go, but if you remember anything else, call me.”
As Miller watched her leave he knew she was telling the truth. For the rest of the day he walked King street showing the sketch drawing to businesses within walking distance of the Ball Peen until he entered The Bird’s Eye and spoke to Margaret.
“Yes, I know him. That’s John. He comes in almost every night for supper. Best tipper I’ve ever had.”
“What’s his last name?” Miller asked.
“Just John is all I know. Always paid in cash. He’s not in trouble is he? I can’t imagine him hurting a flea.”
Miller smiled. “I just need to talk to him, thats all,” he lied.
“Well, he comes in here almost every night around 6:30 for the meatloaf. Come back then.”
###
The State Troopers caught up with the madmen two days later. There was a gun fight and the shorter man was killed. The taller man went back to prison and lived another twenty-five years on the public dime, eating his three squares a day, sleeping in his cell and playing basketball every afternoon. The news of his death—from COVID—reached John through a story in the Spokane newspaper, the Spokesman-Review. That very night, he stumbled upon a drug addict attempting to rape a teenage girl. He felt the rage rising higher and faster than ever before. He threw the man to the ground, turned him over and faced his victim for the first and only time. He wanted to see the terror in his eyes as he slowly slid the switchblade through his throat.
John had gone to live with his uncle after losing his parents. His father’s brother did the best they could with the boy, but he was lost to the world. They shepherded him through high school after which he enlisted in the Marine Corps. It had been John’s decision. His Uncle agreed with the idea, thinking that the boy could use a purpose and some structure to his life. Although he was a standout during basic training, he discovered that he was quite uncomfortable with firearms training, the sounds of gunfire still had the ability to send him to dark places. He found himself attending culinary training where he spent his entire time in the military as a cook. But his Uncle had been right. He did need the structure, along with training in hand to hand combat. He discovered that he had a natural affinity for it. His hands were lightening quick and the techniques he learned as a Marine would stay with him forever. But he would never own a gun.
Upon his release from the Marines he began a life of drifting from one city to the next working as a cook at one restaurant after another. But after a few months he would become restless. Soon after the restlessness, an overwhelming grief would wash over him, along with the soft sound of his mother’s last whispered command to redeem that horrible night.
The redemption started after a night shift at an Applebees in Des Moines, Iowa when John happened upon two homeless men taking turns with a runaway girl in the alley behind the restaurant. He saw them behind two dumpsters and heard the cries of the girl through the falling snow. He stood still, transfixed by the sight of them, as the long suppressed memories began to flood back. He took the switchblade out of his pocket, wiped it clean and approached the men with a tragic confidence. He stood over them watching their life blood mingling with the fresh snow. He then helped the girl up and pressed a fifty dollar bill in her hand and said, “Go back home. It can’t be worse than this.” She ran down the alley making tracks in the snow. For the first time since that night with the madmen, John felt the warm glow of redemption.
###
John found his regular table at the Bird’s Eye empty, took off his jacket and hung it on the hook of the booth. He was unusually tired. He felt old this week. Maybe it was time to slow down. He wasn’t getting any younger. He smiled as Margaret approached the table.
“You want the usual, John?” Without asking she placed a coffee mug in front of him and poured it full. He took it black.
“Sounds perfect,” John answered as he took a sip. Margaret didn’t linger, apparently not in the mood for flirting on this chilly evening. John placed his elbows on the table and pressed his thumbs into both temples trying to fight back a headache. When he looked up there was a man wearing a black raincoat with his hand extended.
“Hello John,” he smiled. “I wondered if I could speak with you for a moment? Mind if I sit?” Miller didn’t wait for an answer and quickly slid into the booth across from him.
“Sure…” John took another sip of his coffee, glanced toward the counter and noticed that Margaret was watching him.
Miller began with a question. “A couple nights ago a man was murdered behind the Ball Peen just down the street. You hear about that?”
John looked closely into Miller’s eyes. “Yes, I did. I live close by so, yeah…”
“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself” Miller said as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his badge. “I’m detective Miller and I’m investigating the case. I’ve been walking around this street most of the day showing people this sketch we have of the alleged killer and I was wondering if you maybe have seen this man around here recently.”
Miller unfolded the sketch and laid it on the table in front of him.
John’s senses sprang to life. He could smell the man’s aftershave, see every wrinkle of his face. He could feel the warmth of the heat from the ceiling duct blowing softly across the table, the smell of meatloaf as soon as the kitchen door swung open and long before Margaret arrived and placed it in front of him. He calmly sat the sketch to the side and looked at Miller with a relaxed smile. “Detective, do you mind if I say a blessing before I eat?”
Miller nodded cautiously and kept his eyes wide open as he watched the number one suspect in over 17 vigilante killings say grace.
“…God in heaven, giver of all good gifts, sustainer of all life, and the last and final judge of all mankind, I thank you for this food I am about to eat. Please bless it to my body and my heart, mind and soul to your service. Amen.”
John took a fork full of mashed potatoes to his lips, picked the sketch up again holding it closer to his face, then placed it gently back on the table.
“Detective, I have not seen anyone matching this sketch,” he said without looking up from his meal. “However, I have to say it looks quite a lot like me, don’t you think?”
As he ate, he wondered why it was that his favorite meal at the Bird’s Eye had never tasted better than at this moment.
Miller took the sketch back and glanced at it again. “There is an uncanny resemblance. You’re right. Earlier today a young lady came in to the station claiming to have been with the deceased at the time of his death. She was the one who gave the description that this sketch is based on. Right now this is our only lead. John, could you tell me where you were Monday evening between 7 o’clock and 9 o’clock?”
John took another bite of his meatloaf, then wiped his mouth with the napkin he had placed in his lap. “I was drinking coffee at the Ball Peen Hammered, and then afterwards turned in early like I usually do in my room across from the YMCA.”
“Is there anyone who could verify your presence at either of those locations?”
“I’m sure the bartender at the Ball Peen can. He always teases me because I never drink anything but coffee. As far as my room goes, I live alone so I suppose you’ll have to take my word for that one.”
Margaret returned to top off John’s coffee and asked Miller if she could get him anything. Miller asked for coffee, then waited for her to bring it in silence.
“How long have you been in town, John? Do you mind me asking?”
“Not at all,” John answered. “About three, four months maybe. I move around a lot.”
“What do you do…I mean for a living…what is your occupation?”
“I’m what people used to call a jack of all trades, master of none. I used to be a cook—learned that skill when I was in the Marine Corps, believe it or not—but there’s not a lot of money to be made as a cook in a chain restaurant, so more recently I’ve taken up finished carpentry as a trade.”
“You say you move around a lot. Ever been to Spokane?”
“Matter of fact, I have. Beautiful country up there.”
“What about Detroit?”
“Yep. Been there too. Not my favorite city, Detroit. Cold and dirty.”
“Its interesting that you would say that because I’ve been doing some digging. That’s what detectives like me do when they are fresh out of leads. Ha. Several years ago they found a man in Detroit who had his throat cut while he was in the commission of a crime. They never caught whoever done it, but they found a postcard in his front shirt pocket with three capital letters on it…HOG. A few years after that, another man had his throat cut whilst he was raping an old woman in an alley behind a bar. Never caught him neither, but somebody had scratched out those same three letters in the gravel where they found the man’s body.”
Miller took a break to add some sugar to his coffee, then kept his eyes fixed on John as he stirred.
“Then, just three months ago—maybe you heard about this one—we found another drug dealer with his throat cut just behind the dumpsters in that alley just up the street from the Flying Squirrel, and damn if we didn’t find those same three letters carved out of the dirt. Then, this morning when that woman came by my office she said the oddest thing about the killer. She said she asked him who he was and damn if he didn’t say…I’m the hand of god.”
Miller took the last sip of his coffee.
“—hand of god— H. O. G.”
John felt the weight of the world lifting off his shoulders and it felt like a great uncoiling of a tightened spring. He felt every muscle in his body begin to relax, and for the first time in years his thoughts were clear, unobscured by the fog of doubt.
“Detective Miller, are you a religious man?”
“No, I can’t say that I am.”
“Well, thanks to my mother, I am. I always have been. I believe that every step I take was preordained for me before I was even born. I believe that it is every man’s job to find out the will of God and then bring that will to life.”
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it? How in hell are we supposed to know what God’s will is, right?”
“I believe that its God’s will to protect the innocent, to pursue justice. Isn’t that what you do for a living, detective?”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Are you any good at it?”
“Some days are better than others.”
John leaned forward with his hands folded on the table in front of him, warming to the conversation, feeling lighter with each tick of the clock on the wall.
“For example, what percentage of the crimes that you investigate end up getting solved? What I’m trying to get at—with all due respect—is what is your closing rate, detective?”
“About half.”
“Well, you must be very good indeed, because all around the country most murderers and rapist get away with it. Most rapes aren’t even reported. Where is the justice in that?”
Miller leaned back against the soft padding of the booth. He fought hard against a rising tide of panic. He had his man, there was no doubt in his mind. He felt inches away from closing the biggest case of his career. He touched the handle of his service revolver in its holster beneath the table. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down. Despite this man’s easy charms, Miller reminded himself that he had never been this close to another human being capable of 17 murders.
“I’m going to level with you John. I have a theory about you. I believe that you have spent most of the past twenty years or so roaming around the country executing very bad people for doing very bad things. You landed here three months ago and a couple nights ago you slit the throat of your third victim in those three short months. And I’m pretty sure you think that you’re doing God’s work. And honestly, when I look through the bio’s of your victims its hard to argue that you haven’t done society a great favor. But here’s the thing John—I’m not the kind of man who gives a shit what someone’s motives are for slitting someone’s throat. All I care about is catching the killer. I let the courts and the justice system deal with motives and circumstances and how screwed up your childhood might have been. That’s for someone else to wade through. All I want is the killer off my streets. So John, tell me the truth…are you the hand of God?”
“Detective Miller, my Mother taught me the prayer you heard me say before supper. Every word. She insisted that I learn it by heart. There is a phrase in it that has guided me ever since I was fifteen years old—the last and final judge of all mankind. Yes, I am the hand of God and in those hands I bring two words that are seldom spoken today…God’s Wrath.”
“In my line of work John, I also have two words that guide me—due process. We can’t let every citizen freelance his own brand of justice. We put restraints on the law. We make it hard to convict killers and rapists and sometimes they go free. But with all of its flaws, the law is still our best hope. At least I believe that most days.”
They both were finished talking. They sat silently staring at each other waiting for what was next. Miller spoke first. “John, I’m going to have to take you in, you know that, don’t you? Are you going to give me any trouble?”
“I don’t have a gun, detective. I will go with you freely, but before I do I will need to give you something. It is attached to my belt so I will have to reach underneath the table to get it so there’s no need to reach for your gun. I would like you to know that at any point during our time together I could have slit your own throat before you even had the chance for a final thought. I have not because I believe you to be a noble man trying his best to do a noble job.”
John placed his switchblade on the table between them and said nothing.
“I suppose this is the murder weapon?”
“Yes. It belonged to my father a long time ago and was unfortunately used for evil by the men who murdered him and my mother many, many years ago. But it has been redeemed and placed into the service of humanity. It has been my terrible, swift sword ever since that terrible night. It now belongs to you. Do with it what you may.”
###
Miller got a full confession from John Smith, from Mcallister, Oklahoma, along with his service records from the Marine Corps as well as a legitimate Social Security number, which helped him fill in the vast empty spaces of his life story. He spent an entire day and night poring over the horrid story of the murder and rape of his family by two escaped murderers from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. The sad story helped him understand in part but not in full. He still had a million questions about the man, but at the end of the day, he was someone who murdered a total of 22 people over the last 25 years of his life. The fact that all 22 were violent killers made him interesting but not innocent. Still, Miller had good days and bad and one of the worst was the day that John Smith was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Miller had driven to the courthouse and sat in the back of the courtroom as the judge asked the prisoner if he had any final words to share. John shook his head slowly from side to side. he had nothing to say. Miller had been disappointed. After the sentence was handed down, the bailiff led him towards the door. John spotted Miller in the back of the room. He stopped and raised his right hand, stood at attention and saluted the detective.
Miller saluted back.
