"Matthew D." (propatria) wrote in repose, @ 2016-06-21 21:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | *narrative, matt devlin |
narrative: matt, capital/motel
Who: Matt
What: Running some errands
Where: Capital suburbs, then the motel
When: After the facility
Warnings/Rating: Violence, vaguely
Thiebauld Wiesz was a good man, a sharp man. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, and had been running a successful law practice for twenty years. He had a wife and a few foster children. He lived quietly in a mid-century ranch just outside the Capital. He liked to take his wife to a nice dinner a couple times a month. Every night he thanked God for the blessings of his changed life, for the world and the man he once was, left behind in the old country, so far in the past.
Nothing in Matt's heart turned over when he shot Thiebauld Weisz. No amount of children and no wife could stir it. This was no distance killing, no sniped target. This was personal, near to the chest, the gun so close the coroner would find burns from the muzzle on the man's skin. Weisz died stripped of his shirt from a single bullet tearing through his pericardium.
His wife didn't find his corpse, nor did his children. Weisz died in his yard, though no one saw death come. The neighbors called the police before his family even knew there was a body.
His wounds were peculiar. No sign of torture, nor of a beating. His mouth was wrapped in duct tape, and he was killed shirtless where the world could find his corpse.
The coroner couldn't know the words that had started to flow from the dead man's mouth before Matt stopped it, stuffed a bandana into his mouth and taped it into place, marched him into the yard, and killed him brazen, in the open air, exposed and humiliated, a raw nerve.
This was not a monster's death. This was the unplanned, erratic madness of revenge that could never be adequately consummated, not with a thousand hours of nightmare. There was not enough that could be done to the man who held the photo and said do you know her, one of the men who flipped the switch, the man who said wipe him, over and over and over.
The death of Weisz was a test, held in reserve. His address had been on a scrap of paper pinned to the wall of the abandoned house in the woods for months, but the risk of what Weisz might say, what orders he might still give, had sent such paroxysms of twitching down Matt's right arm that he hadn't been able to go. Not until the facility, not until now. He was reaching a time where the reckoning would need to be called in. He had to know if his fears were real, or he wouldn't be able to stay another minute.
By the time the police arrived, there was nothing to see. Weisz had gone soft in his old age, and there was no security camera to catch the dark shape with the gun on the grass. No one saw the killer come, and no one saw him go. The dead shot a man between the hedges and the crisp white cement sidewalk. With the victim so thoroughly disconnected from his history, there was not a whisper of evidence to say who his murderer might have been.
In the morning, he was in the motel room. His sharp nose picked up familiar scent, like a still and quiet hound, face still hidden behind the tied knot of a sweat-soaked black bandana.
The books were stacked in odd corners, piled at slightly slanted angles. The stark titles drew his attention first: political exposes, religion where it intersected with the military, the achievements of the 20th century United States, Chinese philosophers, famous writers. A few made him pause, flipping open the cover, shutting it slowly to avoid disturbing a single volume from its place. His footsteps were so light, the pile of the carpet hardly shifted a millimeter.
He had a bad feeling about the box sitting half-in, half-out of the shallow closet. From the opposite end of the room, he eyed it for a few long minutes, weighing whether or not to look inside.
By the time anyone would be back in the room, it was clear of the intruder, and there was no sign anyone had broken into the space. The lock was intact, the windows were closed, and the books had not moved a hair.
But one of the photos from the box was gone, if anyone cared to check.
The photo showed a pair of boys. One was tall for his age, shoulders sloped, dark, hands stuffed roughly in his pockets, head bowed, laughing. The other was small, scrawny, pale, and blonde. They were hovering near the door to a laundry. The bottom margin bore the signature of the street photographer who made the print, part of a series on the working class of Brooklyn in a hard, harsh time. These boys couldn't afford a camera, and neither could their friends.
Nothing was left in the photo's place. Anyone who didn't know the contents of that box well - who couldn't tell when someone had been in their space - would never even notice it was gone. It slipped through the floorboards - it dissolved in the night - it condensed into a square of dust - it scorched and burned and disappeared, crackling, blackened, gone. No one had ever been to the motel room. The picture had simply done a magic trick.