Leonard made a sound like a teakettle losing steam. His legs buckled. Victor went down with him, knees on the man’s shoulders, never loosening the cord. He watched the lawyer’s face in the reflection of a dark mirror by the door—purple, then blue, then the gray of old meat.
Victor was their reckoning.
Leonard got the door open. The foyer light clicked on. Victor stepped inside behind him, closing the door with a soft, final thunk .
Tomorrow, he would open the ledger. One hundred and twelve names. Twenty-seven crossed out. Eighty-five left to go. Red Garrote Strangler
The silk cord was the color of dried rust. Victor Han loved that about it. Not the garish red of fresh blood, but the deep, arterial brown-red of a thing that had lived, pulsed, and been silenced. He called it his “little necktie,” and he kept it coiled in a velvet-lined box beside his bed, next to a photograph of his mother.
At 11:17, Leonard fumbled with his keys. Victor slipped out of the van, moving with the patient silence of a man who had done this twenty-seven times before. He wore dark rubber-soled shoes, a black raincoat, and gloves so thin they felt like a second skin. The silk cord was already looped around his right hand, its ends dangling like a scarlet question mark.
He placed a single item on Leonard’s chest: a small, hand-painted tile he had made in his workshop. It bore the image of a marigold. Marigolds were the flowers of the dead in Mexican tradition. A tribute to Maribel Soto. Leonard made a sound like a teakettle losing steam
The coroner ruled it suicide. Victor ruled it murder.
His victims were not random. He was not a beast of impulse. Each name was drawn from a small, leather-bound ledger he kept in the false bottom of his wardrobe. The ledger contained one hundred and twelve names. Each name belonged to a man who had, in Victor’s meticulous judgment, avoided justice for the sin of cruelty against a woman.
Tonight’s reckoning belonged to a man named Leonard Croft. Leonard was a divorce attorney, celebrated for his ruthlessness. His last client, a woman named Maribel Soto, had left his office with a settlement that amounted to bus fare and a shattered spirit. Two weeks later, she had swallowed a bottle of pills. Her teenage son found her. He watched the lawyer’s face in the reflection
Not killers. Killers went to prison or the chair. No, these were the subtler monsters. The husband who smiled at church while bruising his wife’s ribs. The boss who promoted the young woman only after she “understood the terms.” The lawyer who shredded a domestic abuse case for a fee. The doctor who prescribed sedatives to a frightened girl and then visited her room at night.
Victor closed the box, turned off the light, and lay down in the dark.
He watched Leonard’s townhouse from a parked van across the street. The rain fell in silver threads, softening the glow of the streetlamps. Leonard was predictable. Every Thursday, he returned from his club at 11:15 PM, slightly drunk, humming a tune Victor recognized as an old Sinatra song. Disgusting sentimentality from a man with no heart.
He smiled in the darkness. The red garrote was patient. And justice, in his hands, was silent.