Nemesis-continued (Draft)

     When Elise and her companion emerged from the house, darkness had completely overcomed the day. The calmness, and clarity of the night sky seemed in stark contrast to the fact that light flakes of snow fell to the ground. They seemed to sparkle like shards of diamonds under the unusual brightness of the heavens. Elise stood at the bottom of the steps and waited on her companion's descent. The white sedan she'd assumed belonged to her partner remained where it had been, headlights now spotlighting falling snow flakes. When the woman finally descended the stairs she didn't stop. She walked past Elise, almost in a hurry now, and down the pathway that lead to the street. Rather swiftly, her figure cut through the beamimg headlights of the parked sedan as she made her way to the opposite side of the street. A minute later a pair of headlights appeared almost as instantly as a vehicle drove away.

     Well, call me. Or I'll…call you? Elise thought, or muttered, as she walked down the pathway.  

"Must have been a quickie, huh?" Deco said indicating the time on the dash panel as Elise sat in the passenger seat. "Fifteen minutes on the dot!"

"Oh it was nothing too exciting," Elise replied, "she just had her face some place her mother wouldn't be too proud to know of. She's rather good with her…"

   "Don't need the specifics if you don't mind," Deco interrupted, "I'm quite okay knowing that you had a fun time, huh? Let's leave s**t at that."

   "But what's the point in having fun if you're not going to recount the experience in detail, what's the fun in that?"

   "I don't know, write a memoir or something. I mean, considering she's your third catch this week it might turn out to be a really good read." 

   "Nah, not the literary type, I don't have a feel for prose," Elise said winking at her partner and smiling.

   "Yeah I'll bet you're not. And speaking of feeling, how does Debra feel about all this?"

  "I don't know that she feel anyway about it but enlighten me, how do you think she feels about it?" Elise retorted.

  "Beats me…at any rate, she's such a lovely young thing though, isn't she?

  "And that's exactly the problem. Put her up there about fifteen minutes ago, and I'm sure i wouldn't be as clear headed as I am now"there are certain things a woman possesses that a girl reasonably  lacks. Besides, we don't have that kind of relationship, I care for her more like a friend if anything."

  "And yet something tells me she may not necessarily see it that way. But…it's your game and I'm just one of the heads in the crowd, if you will." 

With that Deco shifted the car to drive and slowly pulled unto the road way. The snowfall  increased with every minute the car moved onward.

  "It would be on a night like this that we would have to do what we're about to, isn't it?" Elise asked, grinning. The question was more of a protest, Deco knew. The winter weren't Elise's favorite. A part of the entire reason, sure, but an understandable one--to Deco at least. After all, no one really likes the cold, but for Elise that was a minor point. 

       It was on a night like this that she first killed a man, the memory of which came rushing back to her as they drove away. A burglar that had diligently kept his mark and on that Christmas eve set his plans to action perhaps not expecting it would be his last. 

      It shouldn't have been. But the moment she saw him she was sure she was going to kill him. Not because he broke into her house and attempted to steal from her, no that wasn't it. But of course it would be part of the reason she gave. She wouldn't be much of a detective if she hadn't notice the reconnaissance on his part--the implicit disrespect that it was to her breed. That alone would have been reason enough a detective with a hinge slightly unscrewed would off a guy, but that too was not the case. 

It became even clearer in the moment she confronted him. He having successfully made entry and collected his loot, and, so calmly, charted escape out the back window, came face to face with the barrow of an 870 Remington. She knew that was where he would make his get away and had planned accordingly. She remembered the first line she gave as she held the loaded weapon at the thief attempting to escape.

      "You know, I'm going to kill you… and I suggest you make it easy for me. But, by all means, make me work for it why don't you," she said. The menacing aura in her voice  seemed to carry over the space of the snow coated backyard. The man remained still, stuck in his tracks with a glaring look in his eyes as if his entire life flashed before his eyes; in a ridiculous pose no less. His right foot was planted on the window sail, the other still on the floor of the house. Both his hands were gripping the side edges of the window, out stretched horizontally, in a way that would have allowed him to pull himself through and out, with the things he had taken resting on his back in a knapsack. The image reminded Elise of something that made her smile.

The man, for his part, realizing that his mortality laid in question, pleaded.

      "Listen," he said, "I'm sorry, please don't. I'll give it back, you don't have to do this. Things have been hard! I'm just trying to do right by my kid for once, please." Then he tried to reach for the knapsack…to no avail.

     "Don't move!" Elise commanded. "Remain just as you are." Her voice trembled from the cold which she didn't seem to mind. She cocked the weapon, took a couple steps back and stopped. Then, after a brief pause, she asked.

    "Have you ever been to the Rockefeller Center in New York City?"

    "No, not really," the man answered hoarsely.

    "Well I have, and from an architectural view it's perfect---artistic even. But…there is a flaw, like anything that has ever been considered perfect, it has a flaw. Do you want to know what it is?" she asked. The  man nodded.  

    "Well, outside the Rockefeller Center there is a sculpted portrayal, supposedly of Atlas the Titan upon whose shoulders the burden of carrying the sky was thrusted by Zeus, a condemnation some say. How powerful would it have been if the sculptor had gotten it right? Such a tale of greatness and suffering combined. Instead what you see there is a ridiculous presentation. Instead of holding up the sky, Atlas is carrying what looks like a metallic oval sphere, and its empty and transparent. All the while he's striking an idiotic pose and seemingly growling like a rabid animal. Doesn't seem like he'll ever be able to lift it and if he does, I wonder if he's powerful enough to endure his condemnation." This she said with a laugh, the look of a mad man capturing her face. Then she said: 

      "That pose of yours now reminds me of it. But you are not like Atlas are you? Well.., maybe you are.  After all…you're a man with a burden to bear, right?"

The man didn't answer. His fear grew more apparent, evident by his rapid breathing which formed tiny white puffs on the freezing air like a smoker's exhale. 

"But you weren't condemned to it, were you?" Elise asked gruntingly, with furrowed brows and a scowl.

     "You're right ma'am, I wasn't," the man said.

     "You made choices and acted upon them, and I'm quite certain that I didn't have a part to play in that. Yet here we are. Did you really think I wouldn't notice your little stakeouts?" Now it seemed as if she interrogated him.

     "Listen, I'm sorry okay? From what I hear, you're not the type who would."

     "Well, you heard wrong." Then she stepped forward. 

     "Get back into the house!" she ordered. The man did. Warily. 

She followed him through the window without averting her eyes from him. She shot him as her feet touch the floor, and then a second time as he fell. A smirk captured her lips, and then came a maniacal burst of laughter as she stood over the thief's nearly dead body. He fought to preserve the tiny hint of life still remaining in him. 

      "They say a person's true self emerges at their precise hour of death, but that's a lie, isn't it? Just the words of some smug, pseudo-intellectual trying to come off more insightful than he really was--trying to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless part of life. It's all just fear, really. I can see it in your eyes, especially now, and  I can't say that I blame you, but you'd have to admit that it's a bit hopeless, you must know that. Why fear the inevitable?"

With that she walked away, leaving the man lying in a pool of his own blood. She made her way into the kitchen, poured herself a shot of whisky and sat at the dining table.  After having her drink, she walked back to where the man laid to see if he'd finally met his end, he had. And yet, still, she prodded the corpse as if expecting, somehow, that he would come to. He didn't. In that moment her shoulders grew broader as she stood looking down at the man's dead body.

      "We've all got f*****g burdens to bear," she said calmly and walked back to the kitchen.

When first responders arrived, the scene had been arranged to the man's disadvantage. Aside from the obvious fact he'd broken into her house, the responding officers would be sure  that he as well threatened Elise's life with the kitchen knife she'd placed next to his body. That's how she played it. One of the responding deputies questioned her in the kitchen after the man's body had been taken away by paramedics-a deputy Luxe Barron. Coy and rather timid in his approach to his work-a solemn one. The exact trait not suited to a homicide detective. 

It was a photo of his corpse she stared at in the file Deco handed her as they drove to the crime scene. In a span of nine months, there had been three murders and all the victims had had a connection to Elise, mostly romantic ones. It became clear now that perhaps it was something more then a ghost lurking in the shadows. A phantom maybe, but no ghost. Elise didn't seem to understand how the title came about to begin with. But the clues were there, as you should know.

      "Would I be right in assuming that you had a thing with this guy as well?" Deco asked amid the silence. "Hello?"

     "What?! No!" Elise replied distractedly. It's true. But somehow telling you doesn't feel like the right move. She thought. Then she asked: "Who compiled this file?"

      "We…well, I did. With a little help from my guy at the bureau. Why, are we missing something? Deco replied.

      "It just seems more like a rap sheet than investigative clues is all," Elise said scanning the pages.

      "I said the same thing after I looked it over, believe me. But I think you'll understand why I had to do it once we get there," Deco said.

    When both women arrived at the crime scene the usual formalities ensued. The slain officer's partner greeted both women with a hand gesture as they approached the house. Deco returned the sentiment with a wave, ducking the usual yellow tape cordoning off the driveway. Elise, for her part, didn't acknowledge the man. In fact, she seemed to increase the pace in her step as she reached the man who stood on the front porch-brushing past him swiftly and making her way into the house.

   "Was it something I did?" the man asked with his arms out-stretched as Deco reached him.

   "Probably not," she replied. " There's just a bit more to this case than she already knows now. If you know Elise, then you know she doesn't take too well to that."

   "Well that makes two of us I'll tell you that much," the man replied. "But where does that leave you, Abreu?" he then asked.

   "I have a theory that I'm sure she'll come to once she sees what's up there...she's the smart one you know," Deco said smiling.

   "Right," the man said. Then after a brief pause he asked:

   "Can you believe this is happening, though? I can't believe this is happening right now. I mean...I know this is the sort of thing we deal with often, but you'd never think that it could happen to you," he complained wryly. "Luxe was a lot of things, but he wasn't a bad guy--certainly not to the point that someone would want him dead."

    "I believe you, I do. You knew him better than any of us. But... if there's anything I know for sure in the few years I've done this job is that good people have enemies too. Just as much as those who earn the right to have them. Surprisingly more so.  And so every now and then a good person gets clipped. I've accepted the fact that that's just the way things are. Makes you wonder how good, good really is."

    "Not me. Good is good and bad is bad. Its that simple in my world," he said. "I mean, how can it not be?"

    "Well...," she paused realizing a response, her response, would spark a refrain she wasn't quite ready to partake in---which would have been that the man's perspective of human nature was severely naïve.

   "I'm sure," she said instead. "But listen, Luko, and you may have been through this already, but is there anything we ought to know? anything about Luxe that could clue us in?"

   "Jesus, not you too. Look, it's like I told those guys from Internal Affairs if I knew anything we'd be the first to know about it. Do you really think that I would hold back information now?" He grew agitated with every word. "Luxe was my partner for f**k sakes. And as if that's not bad enough, I somehow get the feeling I'm really being suspected in this." This time he leaned in close to Deco as if his words carried a secret intended just for the woman. "What nerve!"

    "I understand it Luko, believe me I do. But you must know that it's just protocol at this point. Try looking at it objectively: you would at least think of questioning you too, wouldn't you?"

    "Do you even have to ask that? Of course, I would. But it's not that they questioned me, it's how they questioned me. That clown Monvie probably wears that hat to hide the hole in his brain--"

Deco laughed.

   "--kept asking the same question in different ways for 45 minutes straight. Can you Imagine sitting through that knowing your partner of 20 plus years has just been killed?" The man's voice grew hoarse, solemn, his pale face growing red as if in the moment he strenuously pushed back against a burden he couldn't bear.