Retribution
It was one of those wet winter days, where the rain seemed to stop falling in mid-air and just hang there, clinging to your clothing and gripping tight at your lungs. This only helped to make his consistent cough that much worse. He coughed deeply now, collecting the phlegm at the base of his tongue and taking one more deep breath before expelling the gooey substance a few feet in front of him onto the sidewalk. The couple walking toward him from the opposite direction sidestepped, either to avoid him or the mucus, possibly both. He looked up into their eyes and registered not only their nervousness but also the sorrow they expressed wordlessly at his situation.
His own eyes were glazed over and bloodshot from the bottle of rum he swallowed down this morning and sheltered by thick, graying eyebrows. The beard on his face was matted and dirty, with his thin lips barely exposed through the facial hair. His nose, large and red, the blood vessels having burst sometime in the past several months from the cold weather and the alcohol abuse, hung on his face as an afterthought. He imagined what his liver was suffering by this point and quickly pushed those thoughts aside, letting his brain go back to his single murderous purpose that drove his actions now.
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Being homeless turned out to be much easier than he had originally imagined. He fell into a routine almost immediately of drinking and walking and finding the occasional unfinished cigarette in the park. He had discovered that a sort of sub-culture existed among the homeless, with certain rules and customs that, even though not stated so directly, nevertheless were quite observable. If you stuck to yourself you would silently become a part of the group,together in their independence. He didn't see it as a friendship, or even as communal bonding due to their similar circumstances. He saw it, more often than not, like a pride of lions in the zoo. From outside the cage one could easily imagine them as a family, raised in the zoo with the momma lion and the poppa lion raising their kids until those lion cubs grew and raised their own lion cubs.
From inside the cage, though, it was much different. The lions are gathered at different times from different places. There is no family, no communal aspect. There is merely the common ground of being forced together in a limiting existence. He envisioned that the same type of attitude prevailed in prison as well, although as yet he hadn't had the opportunity to verify the fact.
He sat down now at a bus stop, his only pair of pants soaking the moisture that had collected on the unsheltered plastic bench. He felt suddenly worn out, more from his mind's wanderings than the physical act of walking. This was a major street, not far from a shopping center, so there would be three different bus lines coming through, twenty minutes apart. He could sit here a while pretending to wait on the next bus without arousing much suspicion, another of those unspoken routines picked up by observing and coexisting with the other homeless residents of the city. He repeated to himself that being homeless, existing inside that invisible cage, where society could look safely upon him, was easy. What surprised him, at first anyway, was how easy it was to become homeless. It seemed to him that he simply walked away from his life one day. It was hard now to remember the downward spiral, hazy as he was from alcohol and malnutrition, and to understand if it began after he was living on the streets or before. In any case, he was here now and singularly focused on murdering the man he felt responsible for it all.
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Marilyn Waters, at age twenty-two, was found dead in an abandoned warehouse just outside Boston city limits. Autopsy reports indicated she had been dead most likely forty-eight hours before police discovered her, responding to an anonymous tip. The cause of death was due to multiple stab wounds to the chest and groin areas. Toxicology reports confirmed the extended use of heroin that the coroner first noted in his report due to the track marks on her arms. Fingerprints had yielded two previous arrests for prostitution, each with a different alias. Her body had been in the county morgue two weeks now and was about to be interred anonymously except that one cop, somewhere along the line, matched the dental records to those submitted with a missing persons report filed a year earlier.
After a phone call and an hour's drive up the coast, Mr. John Walter was about to see his daughter for the first time in almost two years to identify her body, a lifeless shelf instead of the smiling young lady home from college for the Christmas break. He was in a small room painted that industrial green and lit by old florescent bulbs behind rectangular fixtures imbedded into the acoustic drop ceiling. John Waters took in every detail of the room even as he read the police file and the autopsy report they allowed him to hold on to, absorbing each detail of those as well. He was on auto-pilot, he supposed, noting the faded green of the metal door leading back into the corridor as he memorized the address of the building where they found her body; noted the brand name of the television in the top corner of this viewing room as his brain was taking account of the names of those whom the police canvassed in the old port section of the city, looking for leads or suspects. He sensed the eyes of the officer, completing paperwork, behind the single four foot by six foot window that separated himself, county employee, from the viewing room where John Walter sat on a metal and cushioned seat, one of four in the room, papers on his lap; at the same time noting the frustration borne out of the words of the officer in his written report, understanding even then that this was an unsolvable case, a junkie in the wrong place at the wrong time, who still had parents, somewhere, who would want to know why.
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John Waters was still on auto-pilot an hour later as he talked to his wife, cried on the phone with her that their Mari was gone, the little girl who would come into their room at night and quietly curl up under the covers at her parent's feet, not wanting to wake them but not wanting to sleep alone after some eight-year old's unreasonable nightmare. He did not share with his wife the details of this trip. That was a burden to be carried alone. Kind as they were to him here, they still did not allow him to see his daughter's body. Instead, without warning, her face appeared on the television screen up in the corner, her shoulders bare and the sheet folded down crisply just below her throat. He had let out a gasp and found it hard to breathe. He wondered how people went through this, to see your child in that way, unaware, unmoving. No matter how much he wanted to imagine her as sleeping, at rest, the cold hard truth of looking at somebody who just wasn't there anymore, is inescapable; and something he would never find himself sharing with his wife, even a week and a half later, at the funeral, their daughter's face flush from the makeup and in the beautiful blue dress she was now wearing in the casket; when his wife shared with him the similar feelings about her baby girl not being in that body anymore but someplace nicer, free of her haunting demons; To be the first person to verbally state that yes, that's my daughter, was a situation he would carry to his grave.
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At some point he fell asleep on the bus stop, his head tucked into his chest. He didn't know what time it was, but this was not so unusual among the homeless population. Yet somehow, without a watch between them, there were always a hundred people lined up in front of the mission, at five o'clock precisely, awaiting their daily prayer meeting and free meal. Because of the rain it had been dark all day as well, and with his developed sixth sense, the one given only to the truly insane and those living on the street, he knew it was time to walk down to the mission, a mile or so from where he was currently sitting.
He rose to his feet feeling the sharp pain rising from his knees and knew that within a few steps his ankles would be equally sore, giving him the gait of a ninety-year-old man struggling forward, slowly, walker in front of him. He laughed at the unfairness of it. He was forty-eight and had no walker. He was no longer young but his short time sleeping in alleyways and on rooftops had ravaged his body, and his body, in retaliation, had ravaged his mind. He often felt his sanity quickly sliding away from him much like an avalanche occurring down a mountainside during the spring melt. So he hobbled on his tired legs and hacked through his aching lungs down the pavement, equally aware of himself in relation to the well-dressed and clean-shaven men he passed, and of his position, his invisibility to that society he once belonged to. As he neared the mission and wandered into the more dangerous parts of the city, more and more of what he came to think of as his people, the earth people and the street hustlers and the crack addicted, were in evidence. He felt the very curious sensation of being apart from them. It was as if he was within his own isolated cage inside this lion's den. He also felt keenly aware of that den inside the locked zoo, contained within the boundaries of the city itself, in an endless chain of locks and controls. This feeling diminished as his hunger increased and he shuffled his way into line, one more in a rapidly established book of rituals.
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Life was never going to be the same for Mr. and Mrs. Walter and neither of them pretended that it would. They buried their daughter. They cried and they grieved. They both returned to their respective careers and in time opened up to their friends, even beginning to have them over the house, no longer only for support and understanding, but because it was their way of life. Their routine was the semblance of normalcy, although neither one of them felt normal.
They both understood that they had lost their daughter years earlier. She always partied harder than her friends, even disappearing for entire weekends during the final two years of high school. There had been family counseling and even an intervention when they discovered cocaine in her purse. But all and all they held it together, both as a family and individually. Mari had graduated high school on time and after a year of loafing around decided to go away to college. They were on decent terms with each other, parents and daughter, and John Walter never once considered it one of those broken homes. It all seemed typically suburban and not unlike anything their friends had gone through.
After the burial they returned to Boston. They talked at length to the detectives and had detailed discussions with Mari's friends at school They learned about the increased drug use, about the failed classes and the inevitable drop out from school and society, Examining the area where her body was found they understood clearly their daughters downward spiral. The whole neighborhood was an industrial leftover, near the ports but far enough away to crumble under the burden of this latest economic downturn. A subculture had spread there, of vagabond kids and constant rave parties with the homeless taking up residency and eventually the drug dealers and the pimps swooping in and taking control. From the detective's standpoint it was all too typical; a young girl fallen into drugs and then prostitution who would find her end at the hands of a pimp or the stick of a needle. Mr. and Mrs. Walter understood this. They even found some comfort in the fact, knowing they didn't abandon their daughter. They had filed a missing persons report after they received no word from her over spring break, the year before. They first talked to the school at that point, and to several students. They knew where their daughter might some day end up.
None of this, however, softens the blow when you find yourself standing over the spot where your daughter lost her life, stabbed to death in a drugged-out stupor. Her parents could blame themselves or society. They could blame the pimps or the dealers or eventually the person who wielded the knife. But one way or another, Both of them knew that somebody was going to pay for it.
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It was about an hour after their free meal and a number of them where still milling around outside in the back alley, sheltered from the rain by the deep eaves of the building, huddled against the brick wall and sharing cigarettes. He listened often to the conversations back here but seldom got fully involved like some of them did. There were always two or three guys back here praising the mission and praising their god, in heated debate with two or three others who felt deeply anti-religious. Most of the homeless here felt as he did though, grateful for the meal and the temporary shelter, and not so offended by the prayer service that preceded it. Besides, he figured, you didn't have to convert in order to eat, and they never forced their views on anybody. There were, of course, the volunteers, the missionaries, who would strike up a conversation during the meal. Most of them talked about how they had once been there themselves, and had been saved. One or two of them he even believed. But he also quietly avoided these conversations as well. He had a purpose in his life and had no reason of being saved from it. He always believed in his heart that when he finished what he set out to do he would return to his life. And after so many long months, maybe a year and a half now, if he were to guess at how long he had been on these streets, he felt close to accomplishing his goal. After quite possibly becoming an alcoholic; after becoming addicted to crack cocaine and even shooting up on occasion; after the sickness and the stench and the physical toll on his body that would stay with him for life, he finally had his target in sight, and that man had finally broken from the crowd and was heading down the alleyway. He took one final drag from the cigarette that was going around and followed him.
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He had watched this man rape and murder a girl several months ago, and had done nothing. He was high, and there were maybe ten of them in this abandoned apartment, so he was not alone in his inaction. They were in a corner at the time, and perhaps the girl was even passed out. When he was finished he calmly pulled out a knife and stabbed her several times. She hadn't made a sound. Perhaps because it all happened quickly, the shock so overwhelming, or maybe because of the amount of dope in his system, and in the others sitting around the apartment, that was why nobody did anything. But for John Walter, watching in silence unable to move a muscle, he knew he had found the man who had murdered his daughter, the same man he had given up everything to find, and he understood that he would have his vengeance.
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John and Margaret Walter didn't start fighting or anything dramatic. They simply stopped existing in the same universe. Six months after their daughter's murder they knew there would be no new leads, no confessions. They understood there would be no closure and they just stopped talking to each other. The image of normalcy continued among their friends and their coworkers, but one day John up and left, driving away from his house and up the coast toward Boston. He left the car in a hotel parking garage and ceased to belong to society.
He slept in doorways and survived on handouts. He began drinking and eventually ended up in the neighborhood where they found his daughter. He smoked dope and he shot it up and he became a part of the non-society, watching and waiting until he found the man he was looking for. And when he found him, when he watched him take the life of that other girl, he followed him and found out who he was and went searching for a gun.
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The man he was following was known as Dicky and he was a local. Probably not from around here originally, of course. That isn't the way things occur in the streets. But he was no longer a drifter. He was established here, living in an old drainage ditch with a mattress and a table and even a change of clothing. He built a makeshift door out of a piece of fencing to block out the weather and intruders. Dicky was one of the many homeless people with their own sense of normalcy. This is where Dicky was undoubtedly heading now, from the meal at the mission, and this was the night John Walter was going to kill him.
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When he first began living on the street he had assumed a gun would be easy enough to acquire, but that was hardly the case. He heard about the violence on the street from television news reports, after all. But as you get farther down the chain of society, away from the middle class into the gang neighborhoods; deeper into the drug addicted sections of the city; then still down farther into the hell of the truly destitute, there are no more guns, no more turf wars. There is merely the need to survive. John Walter got lucky, finally, as somebody new came through, recently paroled and full of the bravado that you know is only a cover for his fear. This kid had a brother who could get a gun for a price. When the meeting occurred, John had already been hiding in a bush with a baseball bat. With his adrenaline rushing faster than his body was moving, he managed to sneak up on them and beat them down. He grabbed the gun and ran, hiding for a solid week hoping they were gone. After all this occurred he realized he had no bullets anyway. But two weeks had gone by and John Walter was now following Dicky to his sheltered ditch with that same wooden baseball bat against his leg clenched tightly in his fingers.
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He honestly thought he would want a confession when the moment came, at least a confrontation. But in the end it didn't matter. He simply caught up to Dicky at the top of the ditch and swung sideways, the bat connecting solid with the back of the head. Dicky went down immediately and John Walter continued lifting the bat and swinging it downward until there was only a mangled mass of blood and tissue on the ground and covering John's clothing and skin. He sat there, exhausted and wheezing, for a long while. It was finally over and he could go home again.
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The phone call to his wife left john Walter feeling less than satisfied. For the first hour since he hung up with her his thoughts focused mainly on what a hot shower would feel like after so many months without one. His thoughts then turned to the more mundane aspects of his former life, things like getting his job back or finding a new one; what it would feel like to hit a three iron down the fairway again; wondering if he could sleep on a real mattress or need to sleep on the floor now to be comfortable. Even driving a car again seemed an alien thought to him. Now he wondered, finally, what it would be like to be intimate with his wife again, and spent much of the next hour wondering why that was so far down his list of priorities.
He was waiting for her to pick him up. She was actually willing to make the trip up this late at night and he was grateful for that. They arranged to meet at the train station and he spent that first hour, lost in thought, walking the five miles to get there. His mind went back to their conversation and he struggled to grasp at something he was missing. Of course he didn't think she would fully understand his need for retribution, but that need for revenge seemed the one part she did comprehend. Maybe he wanted her to feel the freedom he felt now that it was over. He didn't expect her to feel happy, but at least relieved. He was so deep into this thoughts and didn't realize she had walked up beside him. The sound of her greeting startled him enough that he was already struggling to his feet before even looking up at her.
“Margaret! It's finally over!”
Margaret had the 9mm pistol pressed against his forehead at this point. She calmly pulled the trigger and watched him collapse to the ground.
“Now it's over, John.” She put the pistol back into her coat pocket and walked back down the sidewalk toward the parking lot and her car.
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Margaret Walter spent the ride home reviewing the last half of her life, from meeting her future husband, who even at that point had an addiction to alcohol and cocaine, up to the last six months, when she knew who was really to blame for her daughter's downfall and knew what she would do about it.
The first time they had found cocaine on their daughter she had gotten it from her father. When Mari was seventeen, and they would return from their weekly counseling sessions, her and her dad would go into the garage and drink their beers. Even on trips to see their daughter at college, they would sneak off together and be gone for hours. Margaret knew exactly who was to blame for what happened to her daughter, regardless of who actually wielded the knife. And for the first time in what seemed like forever, driving back down the freeway home, she felt the freedom of retribution.
