Star (Team Angst)
Title: Stars to their eyes.
Author: Keenir
special thanks to my beta-reader: Mustangcandi.
(all and any errors arose during my final, post-beta read-through)
also, thank you to everyone who helped me with the blush/flush matter.
Team: Angst.
Prompt: Star.
Theme: the Future.
Pairing/Characters: Robin/Don Eppes, David Sinclair, Alice Chen/Colby Granger, Liz Warner, Nikki Betancourt, Alan Eppes, Don Eppes&Amita Ramanujan.
Rating/Category: PG-13 Gen
Spoilers: s1, s3, s5 up to 5.19
Summary: An agent on loan helps David Sinclair’s team track down a serial killer whose religious bent puts Don at risk.
WARNINGS: Death of two major characters. And a scumbag.
Reference material:
.* The Messiah of Brooklyn: Understanding Lubavitch Hasidism Past and Present, by M. Avrum Ehrlich.
.* Before He Was Buddha: the Life of Siddhartha by Hammalawa Saddhatissa.
This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff. After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how angsty [or schmoopy] the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff. Thank you!
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THE FUTURE
(1)
“Ev’rybody,” David said once his team had gathered together. “I’d like you all to meet our newest member, Jennifer Elks.”
“From Fairbanks. Jenny,” she offered.
“From Fairbanks,” David repeated. “Now we’ve all been new here, so I know Agent Elks’ll get a warm welcome.” And they were quick in proving him right:
“Nice to have you here. I’m Nikki.”
“Colby. We’ll get along just fine.”
“Don,” Eppes said, ignoring how wide Jennifer’s eyes had become, in favor of returning to his desk.
The photo of Don and Robin wasn’t out today, David noticed; but the photo of Don and his son was. That’s progress, of a sort.
Jenny was about to ask something, but stopped when Agent Sinclair gave her a warning look. So she settled for, “Thank you all for such a warm welcome.”
“We do just ask one thing,” Colby said.
“I’ll do my utmost to comply,” Jenny said.
“Don’t be a Chinese spy, he spoke, to which, David and Nikki groaned.
“I have no intention of being or becoming such,” Jenny assured them.
“Oh, speaking of which, Granger,” Nikki said, “Your wife called. Said the doctor rescheduled again, and it’s tomorrow morning at 9:15.”
Colby groaned. “Still don’t see why we need an MRI or whatever it is. Calendars were good enough for my parents.”
“Tell us again,” Nikki said, toying with him, “What was frontier life like, Granger?”
“Ask the new girl. I’m from Idaho.”
Figuring now wasn’t a good time for them to have the first hour-long exchange of quips with the new girl, David interrupted with, “Some people want to know if it’ll be a boy or a girl. And hasn’t Alice always preferred tangible evidence?”
Colby nodded. “Yeah.”
Nodding to say that was that, “Take off as much of tomorrow as you need,” David told him. To the group, “Now I didn’t get any calls while I was at the airport, so I should take it there’s been no new killings or arrests?”
“But we’re not where we were when you left,” Nikki said, pulling up a screen on her monitor, relaying it to the shared officeboard with a click. “I was able to find a connection between the Star Killer’s first two Alaskan victims and his first victim on our turf.”
“We’re the FBI, Nikki,” David said gently, one part gentle ribbing, one part reference, one part reminder.
Our turf is the nation as a whole. “Right,” she said without missing a beat. “So, I think I know who his next victim’s going to be.”
“Great,” David said. “So, why’re you still here?”
“Megan called dibs,” Colby said, answering for his partner.
“You’re kidding,” David said. DC sent her here to supervise and prevent another cock-up. With a sigh, “I suppose that’s why I don’t see Liz.” She’s a great agent, but her left shoulder’s still slow from the healed muscles. And that’s not even mentioning her watching Charlie die while they were pinned down.
Nikki and Colby nodded.
Good as Liz is, if anything happens to Megan, DC will have all our heads. “Colby,” David said. “Take Agent Elk to provide logistical support, and call in whatever plans they’ve been cooking up.”
Trademark grin in place, Colby saluted David. “You got it.” To Jenny, he quipped, “I’m driving.”
“Okay,” Jenny said.
To David, Nikki said, “Poor Colby,” with a grin on her own face.
“Yeah,” David agreed. “No banter, no arguing over who’s a better driver.”
“Faster vs safer, the importance of traffic laws when getting to a potential crime scene… You miss that?”
“Some days, yeah.”
“And what was that whole Evil Glare thing you had there?” Nikki asked.
David mouthed the answer: navi.
Nikki sighed. “Could be worse, I suppose.”
“Yeah.”
“And she was the best they had to offer?”
David nodded. “Agent Elk’s been living and breathing this case for the past three years. You know what that’s like.”
Nikki nodded. From personal experience, oh yeah. “I’ll go easy on her,” she promised.
(2)
Earlier that day…
“Agent Jennifer Elks?” David asked one of the disembarking passengers.
“I am. Agent Sinclair?” she replied.
“That’s me. Follow me, please.” And, just as they got on the concourse, “Did you bring any luggage?”
“Just the bag I have over my arm.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
She nodded.
Neither of them said anything else until they were in Sinclair’s car leaving the airport. “You’ll be working with me and my team. Colby Granger, Nikki Betancourt, Liz Warner, and Don Eppes.”
“I understand. And if I may, I’d like to offer my condolences for the agents you’ve lost.”
David glanced over at her. “Thanks. Though how’d you know we lost agents?”
“One, it’s a fact of our profession,” Elks said. “Two, Fairbanks isn’t so far out that we don’t hear about the success rate you enjoy down here.”
“It’s not a competition,” David said, and half expected her to reply ‘says the guy who’s winning’…which would have been too Granger-ish for his taste. After a mile passed in silence, “Charlie Eppes.”
“Pardon?”
“He’s part of the reason we had such a success rate. He was.” Now he’s one of our fallen. Still not sure who took his death harder - Alan, or Don so soon after what happened to Robin. “If you want to say anything about him, you tell me, and I’ll tell his brother.”
Jennifer nodded, and then - “Wait…the Don you mentioned…he’s the Don Eppes?”
David slowed the car down a few miles per hour. “Is this going to be a problem?”
“It most certainly will not be a problem,” Agent Elk assured him.
“Good to know, because I don’t allow any of my agents to revere or worship their fellow agents.”
Jenny shook her head. “I’m not of the school that believes Don Eppes is the moshiach - messiah. Personally, I’m of the school which views him to be a navi -”
“Prophet,” David translated.
She nodded. “Just so.”
“Just so we’re clear. And just so you know, he doesn’t like talking about that prophethood or anything else related to what he’s written. Got it?”
“Understood,” Jenny said.
And no asking him why he resigned after his wife died. “And that includes asking him why he wrote ‘Leviathan’s Gun,’ just like it includes asking him why he doesn’t want to be recognized, and -”
“I understand, sir,” Jenny Elk replied.
(3)
A leviathan doesn’t need a gun. Point of fact, it doesn’t need to do anything to defend itself - that’s the whole point of being invulnerable. What would leviathan use a gun on, what’s there that couldn’t be just as easily dealt with through judicious use of claws and teeth? Heck, leviathan could simply sit on a threat, literally.
Only GOD can harm a leviathan. Nothing leviathan can do about that - a gun would be useless and pointless. HE can extinguish leviathan easier than I can write one letter.
So why would Leviathan need a gun? Guns are weapons and weapons serve two (purposes/functions) :
-to achieve parity, a level playing field.
-to have an advantage over one or more others.
Neither applies to leviathan. Never can.
It applies to people. All of us. Whether we like it or not.
--excerpt from an early draft of ‘Leviathan’s Gun’ by Don Eppes.
(4)
The Next Day:
“So in other words,” David said once Agent Elks had finished giving her description of what sort of person the Star Killer was, “we’re dealing with a guy who likes to decimate.” Not the sort any of them had grown up with. True, old-fashioned decimation, the sort the Roman Empire would have used. One in ten.
“Which means we were looking in the wrong place yesterday,” Liz said. The victims can’t be unique, because there have to be at least nine others with the same qualifications.
“Nobody said the job would be easy,” Don said.
“Yeah,” everyone agreed.
After the conference was over and everyone was filing out of the room, Liz said, “Hey, Don.”
“Yeah?” Don asked, stopping at the doorway.
She came over to him, stopping at a safe distance - these days, Don literally didn’t let people close. “My parents are visiting, and I was wondering if you and Amita would like to have dinner with us - Alan’s welcome too if he doesn’t have any plans.”
“Thanks, Liz,” Don said. “I’ll pass along the invite to them. I’m sorry, but I won’t be there.”
“Busy?” she guessed. Is it a guess when it’s a certainty?
“Yeah. Lots of work.”
We all cope in our own different ways, Liz knew, just as she knew that Don was coping with more than most, just as she knew David had pulled strings to let Don come back to work when Don had asked. “I’ll save you some of it,” she told him.
He shrugged, not indifferently, but in the way Liz knew meant that he appreciated it but didn’t know what to say.
(5)
His computer was crunching numbers, he’d talked to all the people whose answering machines hadn’t picked up, and it was his turn to hold down the fort while everyone else was out in the field.
So Colby opened his desk drawer of special things, fingers brushing the framed photo of him with his Army buddies, and pulled out the engraved invitation that read:
You are Cordially Invited to the
Barbeque Cookout
of
Don and Robin Eppes
.
the Baby Shower will take place after the cookout.
“Getting ideas?” Nikki asked Colby, having snuck up behind him.
“Some,” he said. “There’s not much of a guest list - you guys, Alice’s family and friends and a few coworkers.”
“What about your family, Idaho?”
Colby snorted. “Have you checked airline fares lately? ‘Cause I have.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“So how about we talk to the Morales’ again?” Nikki asked.
“Second-guessing Liz’s interrogation techniques?” Colby asked, since Liz had already spent the morning questioning Toby Morales about the circumstances surrounding him finding the latest victim.
“Wouldn’t dream of it. I was thinking more about the sister - seemed to me like Toby was covering for someone, and wouldn’t it make sense if it was for her?”
“It would,” Colby agreed. “And if she was the one who found the body, he probably figures he’s protecting her.”
“From police attention and reporters alike,” Nikki finished. “But we’re neither.”
“Bingo,” Colby said, tucking the invitation away and locking that drawer before joining Nikki in heading for the Morales’.
(6)
The Recent Past: Eppes’ Household:
Amita was pacing the living room, little Alex in her arms, when Alan came home. “Everything okay?” Alan asked.
“We’re fine,” Amita said. “Somebody just woke up a little grumpy, so we’re doing the paces.”
Alan nodded as he set down his things and came over to admire his grandson.
Alex gave toothless grins as he watched his grandfather.
Standing next to Amita, the question returned to Alan’s mind: one he hadn’t brought himself to ask at all for over a week now. Alan opened his mouth a few times, but wasn’t sure how to ask what he wanted to ask, or even if there was a way to ask.
Amita smiled. “It’s okay, Alan. My parents are fine with...” with what we have now.
“They are?” Alan asked. “Not that I like looking gift horses in the mouth, but, well, how’d you sell it to them?”
“Precedent,” Amita said.
“Precedent?”
“I’m like Prajapati.”
Alan knew that name, he knew he knew it, and then he placed where he knew it: “Buddha’s aunt? Took care of him when his mom died?”
“I figured it was culturally and contextually more appropriate than explaining a sororate, which isn’t the case anyway.”
“True.” And, to the not entirely unflattering idea of his grandson being so very like Buddha, “No pressure on little Alex, then, huh?” Alan asked lightly.
Smiling, Amita nodded. To her nephew, “I think you’re ready to go to your grandfather, don’t you?”
Alex gurgled.
(7)
“A list?” Liz asked.
“We found it at each of his murders back home,” Agent Elks said. “Nine names, each belonging to an individual highly revered by one or more religions. Jews, Sikhs, Confucianists, Christians… And all of the names are of people who’re still alive now.”
“So why not leave a list when he murders down here?”
“No clue,” Jennifer said with a shrug. “The titles don’t translate into exact matches,” she added. “But…”
“But they’re close enough to work with,” Liz said.
The Alaskan nodded. “And given the Star Killer’s focus on decimation, it always struck me as bizarre that he would only have nine names in a list.”
“Maybe he left the tenth blank in case he had to escape the law - or so nobody could catch him when he was almost done.”
“Possible, entirely possible,” Jennifer said. “And before you ask, while I waited for my flight to your city, I checked - there are three major candidates as to who might be intended as the tenth name, and a half-dozen candidates who aren’t as likely.”
“Great,” Liz said, both meaning it and not looking forward to it.
(8)
Several teams had congregated at the site of a just-overturned minivan; all evidence pointed to this being driven by the Star Killer at the time it flipped over and rolled off the road.
The only person missing right now was Don, who’d been given the day off before the call had come in about the minivan.
Agent Elks was standing next to the driver’s-side door and she swore.
“Find something?” Colby asked.
“Space Above and Beyond,” Jennifer said under her breath.
“What?” Colby asked as he and Nikki came over to the door Agent Elks was standing besides.
“Long winters, a show, very bored,” she said, excusing herself. “Unless this deceased is an In Vitro - a fictional construct - then he shouldn’t have any impressions in the back of his neck that at all resemble a belly button.”
“Huh,” Nikki said, looking at it. “So somebody was holding a gun pretty firmly and damn steady on this guy’s neck to leave that.”
“In which case,” Colby said, irked, “we’re missing a body.”
“A corpse short,” Elks said. “And I think I know where we’ll find him.” Taking a step back from the overturned car, she looked out in the direction the car would’ve been facing if it hadn’t taken a tumble.
“Lots of people live out that way-” Nikki said, and then stopped, her and Colby getting what Jennifer was saying. Grabbing her radio from her belt, Nikki called it in.
“Let’s move,” Nikki and Colby said as one.
(9)
The details don’t matter on this point: Don was home; the Star Killer was at the Eppes house; they were in the same room together. Don was able to get Alan, Amita and the baby out of the room. “Just the two of us now, man,” Don said to the killer.
Nodding absently, the Star Killer hefted in one hand something that Don had set aside over a year ago. “Excellent work, if I may say so.”
In the old days, Don would’ve wasted the man down to a smoldering ember with one stare. Right now, not even the knowledge that a serial killer had been pawing through something that only Robin had read, could get his dander up. “What do you want? Huh?”
“To talk to you,” the Star Killer said.
“Sure got a strange way of going about it.”
“Prelude, I assure you,” he said, continuing in that deferring tone.
Don had heard a lot of whackos in his day - when it wasn’t self-aggrandizing, it was threatening; so very rarely was it like this. It creeped Don out.
“I am that which winnows the chaff from the grain, the maize from the cob, the rice from the stalk,” the Star Killer said. “The others, the ones before, they failed to measure up. They weren’t as great as I’d been led to believe.”
Oh hell, Don thought to himself. A true believer in search of something to believe. And he looked at the man looking at the hand-written pages carefully bound with paperclips and string. Amita’s handiwork, Don recognized, wondering how long ago she’d done that.
Some people say that you write because writing is a catharsis. For Don, it only helped him get partway: just enough to function at work and home. Nothing more. I wrote that famous book so I could throw myself in my work. Before he’d set pen to paper, he had been even worse off.
The irony was that what the Star Killer now held in his hands…that was something that Don thought was much better - something he’d been writing about the joys of marriage, the delights of impending fatherhood, the happiness of family; a work that, when Robin had read it, she’d blushed furiously. And he’d stopped writing that when Robin had died. Even raising his son Alex couldn’t get him to set pen to that paper again.
But, for Alex, he had set pen to paper and started writing ‘Leviathan’s Gun’ to purge as much as he could of the toxins from his mind, to get his soul a little bit cleaner.
“Put that down,” Don said, “and we’ll talk.”
“About what?”
“Whatever you want to talk about. My schedule’s free the rest of the day.”
“Good. The last time I talked to someone who was held to be a maschiach shebador, he wasn’t very nice.”
“You killed him,” Don said neutrally, having thereby gained a bit more knowledge about who he was facing: a shebador was more a concept than an individual - it was what allowed you to identify if someone has messianic potential - usually they came once a generation.
“He left me no choice. I have a role to play…I’m not gifted to reveal revelations or new laws,” the Star Killer said. “But my role is to remove the false ones from the world, so the people are not confused.”
There was a Talmudic word for that, a name…but it never left the tip of Don’s tongue. “Something you’re forgetting, man,” Don said.
“No, don’t think so,” said the Star Killer.
“Actually, yeah, you are.”
“And what would that be? Hm?”
“I’m not just any guy, am I right?” Don asked.
“That’s right.”
“Then you should’ve figured it out by now.”
“Your revelations aren’t for me to decipher,” the Star Killer said.
Don rolled his eyes.
“What should I have figured out?” the Star Killer asked.
“There’s never just one of us,” Don said.
Before the Star Killer could react, a bullet was shot from a silencer into the Killer’s brain, from whence it did not emerge.
The Star Killer fell to the floor.
Colby, Nikki, and Jennifer came into the room as Don went to the next room and embraced Amita and his dad, all of them glad that it was over. “Thanks, guys,” Don said to them.
“It was our pleasure, Agent Eppes,” Jennifer said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(THE END)
Cultural note:
Levirate - a custom of the Jews in Biblical times by which a dead man's brother was obligated to marry the widow if there were no sons: Deut. 25:5-10
Sororate - the custom in some cultures of marrying the younger sister of one's wife, esp. after the wife's death.
(so, like Amita says, not exactly the case anyway)
Author: Keenir
special thanks to my beta-reader: Mustangcandi.
(all and any errors arose during my final, post-beta read-through)
also, thank you to everyone who helped me with the blush/flush matter.
Team: Angst.
Prompt: Star.
Theme: the Future.
Pairing/Characters: Robin/Don Eppes, David Sinclair, Alice Chen/Colby Granger, Liz Warner, Nikki Betancourt, Alan Eppes, Don Eppes&Amita Ramanujan.
Rating/Category: PG-13 Gen
Spoilers: s1, s3, s5 up to 5.19
Summary: An agent on loan helps David Sinclair’s team track down a serial killer whose religious bent puts Don at risk.
WARNINGS: Death of two major characters. And a scumbag.
Reference material:
.* The Messiah of Brooklyn: Understanding Lubavitch Hasidism Past and Present, by M. Avrum Ehrlich.
.* Before He Was Buddha: the Life of Siddhartha by Hammalawa Saddhatissa.
This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff. After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how angsty [or schmoopy] the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff. Thank you!
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THE FUTURE
(1)
“Ev’rybody,” David said once his team had gathered together. “I’d like you all to meet our newest member, Jennifer Elks.”
“From Fairbanks. Jenny,” she offered.
“From Fairbanks,” David repeated. “Now we’ve all been new here, so I know Agent Elks’ll get a warm welcome.” And they were quick in proving him right:
“Nice to have you here. I’m Nikki.”
“Colby. We’ll get along just fine.”
“Don,” Eppes said, ignoring how wide Jennifer’s eyes had become, in favor of returning to his desk.
The photo of Don and Robin wasn’t out today, David noticed; but the photo of Don and his son was. That’s progress, of a sort.
Jenny was about to ask something, but stopped when Agent Sinclair gave her a warning look. So she settled for, “Thank you all for such a warm welcome.”
“We do just ask one thing,” Colby said.
“I’ll do my utmost to comply,” Jenny said.
“Don’t be a Chinese spy, he spoke, to which, David and Nikki groaned.
“I have no intention of being or becoming such,” Jenny assured them.
“Oh, speaking of which, Granger,” Nikki said, “Your wife called. Said the doctor rescheduled again, and it’s tomorrow morning at 9:15.”
Colby groaned. “Still don’t see why we need an MRI or whatever it is. Calendars were good enough for my parents.”
“Tell us again,” Nikki said, toying with him, “What was frontier life like, Granger?”
“Ask the new girl. I’m from Idaho.”
Figuring now wasn’t a good time for them to have the first hour-long exchange of quips with the new girl, David interrupted with, “Some people want to know if it’ll be a boy or a girl. And hasn’t Alice always preferred tangible evidence?”
Colby nodded. “Yeah.”
Nodding to say that was that, “Take off as much of tomorrow as you need,” David told him. To the group, “Now I didn’t get any calls while I was at the airport, so I should take it there’s been no new killings or arrests?”
“But we’re not where we were when you left,” Nikki said, pulling up a screen on her monitor, relaying it to the shared officeboard with a click. “I was able to find a connection between the Star Killer’s first two Alaskan victims and his first victim on our turf.”
“We’re the FBI, Nikki,” David said gently, one part gentle ribbing, one part reference, one part reminder.
Our turf is the nation as a whole. “Right,” she said without missing a beat. “So, I think I know who his next victim’s going to be.”
“Great,” David said. “So, why’re you still here?”
“Megan called dibs,” Colby said, answering for his partner.
“You’re kidding,” David said. DC sent her here to supervise and prevent another cock-up. With a sigh, “I suppose that’s why I don’t see Liz.” She’s a great agent, but her left shoulder’s still slow from the healed muscles. And that’s not even mentioning her watching Charlie die while they were pinned down.
Nikki and Colby nodded.
Good as Liz is, if anything happens to Megan, DC will have all our heads. “Colby,” David said. “Take Agent Elk to provide logistical support, and call in whatever plans they’ve been cooking up.”
Trademark grin in place, Colby saluted David. “You got it.” To Jenny, he quipped, “I’m driving.”
“Okay,” Jenny said.
To David, Nikki said, “Poor Colby,” with a grin on her own face.
“Yeah,” David agreed. “No banter, no arguing over who’s a better driver.”
“Faster vs safer, the importance of traffic laws when getting to a potential crime scene… You miss that?”
“Some days, yeah.”
“And what was that whole Evil Glare thing you had there?” Nikki asked.
David mouthed the answer: navi.
Nikki sighed. “Could be worse, I suppose.”
“Yeah.”
“And she was the best they had to offer?”
David nodded. “Agent Elk’s been living and breathing this case for the past three years. You know what that’s like.”
Nikki nodded. From personal experience, oh yeah. “I’ll go easy on her,” she promised.
(2)
Earlier that day…
“Agent Jennifer Elks?” David asked one of the disembarking passengers.
“I am. Agent Sinclair?” she replied.
“That’s me. Follow me, please.” And, just as they got on the concourse, “Did you bring any luggage?”
“Just the bag I have over my arm.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
She nodded.
Neither of them said anything else until they were in Sinclair’s car leaving the airport. “You’ll be working with me and my team. Colby Granger, Nikki Betancourt, Liz Warner, and Don Eppes.”
“I understand. And if I may, I’d like to offer my condolences for the agents you’ve lost.”
David glanced over at her. “Thanks. Though how’d you know we lost agents?”
“One, it’s a fact of our profession,” Elks said. “Two, Fairbanks isn’t so far out that we don’t hear about the success rate you enjoy down here.”
“It’s not a competition,” David said, and half expected her to reply ‘says the guy who’s winning’…which would have been too Granger-ish for his taste. After a mile passed in silence, “Charlie Eppes.”
“Pardon?”
“He’s part of the reason we had such a success rate. He was.” Now he’s one of our fallen. Still not sure who took his death harder - Alan, or Don so soon after what happened to Robin. “If you want to say anything about him, you tell me, and I’ll tell his brother.”
Jennifer nodded, and then - “Wait…the Don you mentioned…he’s the Don Eppes?”
David slowed the car down a few miles per hour. “Is this going to be a problem?”
“It most certainly will not be a problem,” Agent Elk assured him.
“Good to know, because I don’t allow any of my agents to revere or worship their fellow agents.”
Jenny shook her head. “I’m not of the school that believes Don Eppes is the moshiach - messiah. Personally, I’m of the school which views him to be a navi -”
“Prophet,” David translated.
She nodded. “Just so.”
“Just so we’re clear. And just so you know, he doesn’t like talking about that prophethood or anything else related to what he’s written. Got it?”
“Understood,” Jenny said.
And no asking him why he resigned after his wife died. “And that includes asking him why he wrote ‘Leviathan’s Gun,’ just like it includes asking him why he doesn’t want to be recognized, and -”
“I understand, sir,” Jenny Elk replied.
(3)
A leviathan doesn’t need a gun. Point of fact, it doesn’t need to do anything to defend itself - that’s the whole point of being invulnerable. What would leviathan use a gun on, what’s there that couldn’t be just as easily dealt with through judicious use of claws and teeth? Heck, leviathan could simply sit on a threat, literally.
Only GOD can harm a leviathan. Nothing leviathan can do about that - a gun would be useless and pointless. HE can extinguish leviathan easier than I can write one letter.
So why would Leviathan need a gun? Guns are weapons and weapons serve two (purposes/functions) :
-to achieve parity, a level playing field.
-to have an advantage over one or more others.
Neither applies to leviathan. Never can.
It applies to people. All of us. Whether we like it or not.
--excerpt from an early draft of ‘Leviathan’s Gun’ by Don Eppes.
(4)
The Next Day:
“So in other words,” David said once Agent Elks had finished giving her description of what sort of person the Star Killer was, “we’re dealing with a guy who likes to decimate.” Not the sort any of them had grown up with. True, old-fashioned decimation, the sort the Roman Empire would have used. One in ten.
“Which means we were looking in the wrong place yesterday,” Liz said. The victims can’t be unique, because there have to be at least nine others with the same qualifications.
“Nobody said the job would be easy,” Don said.
“Yeah,” everyone agreed.
After the conference was over and everyone was filing out of the room, Liz said, “Hey, Don.”
“Yeah?” Don asked, stopping at the doorway.
She came over to him, stopping at a safe distance - these days, Don literally didn’t let people close. “My parents are visiting, and I was wondering if you and Amita would like to have dinner with us - Alan’s welcome too if he doesn’t have any plans.”
“Thanks, Liz,” Don said. “I’ll pass along the invite to them. I’m sorry, but I won’t be there.”
“Busy?” she guessed. Is it a guess when it’s a certainty?
“Yeah. Lots of work.”
We all cope in our own different ways, Liz knew, just as she knew that Don was coping with more than most, just as she knew David had pulled strings to let Don come back to work when Don had asked. “I’ll save you some of it,” she told him.
He shrugged, not indifferently, but in the way Liz knew meant that he appreciated it but didn’t know what to say.
(5)
His computer was crunching numbers, he’d talked to all the people whose answering machines hadn’t picked up, and it was his turn to hold down the fort while everyone else was out in the field.
So Colby opened his desk drawer of special things, fingers brushing the framed photo of him with his Army buddies, and pulled out the engraved invitation that read:
You are Cordially Invited to the
Barbeque Cookout
of
Don and Robin Eppes
.
the Baby Shower will take place after the cookout.
“Getting ideas?” Nikki asked Colby, having snuck up behind him.
“Some,” he said. “There’s not much of a guest list - you guys, Alice’s family and friends and a few coworkers.”
“What about your family, Idaho?”
Colby snorted. “Have you checked airline fares lately? ‘Cause I have.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“So how about we talk to the Morales’ again?” Nikki asked.
“Second-guessing Liz’s interrogation techniques?” Colby asked, since Liz had already spent the morning questioning Toby Morales about the circumstances surrounding him finding the latest victim.
“Wouldn’t dream of it. I was thinking more about the sister - seemed to me like Toby was covering for someone, and wouldn’t it make sense if it was for her?”
“It would,” Colby agreed. “And if she was the one who found the body, he probably figures he’s protecting her.”
“From police attention and reporters alike,” Nikki finished. “But we’re neither.”
“Bingo,” Colby said, tucking the invitation away and locking that drawer before joining Nikki in heading for the Morales’.
(6)
The Recent Past: Eppes’ Household:
Amita was pacing the living room, little Alex in her arms, when Alan came home. “Everything okay?” Alan asked.
“We’re fine,” Amita said. “Somebody just woke up a little grumpy, so we’re doing the paces.”
Alan nodded as he set down his things and came over to admire his grandson.
Alex gave toothless grins as he watched his grandfather.
Standing next to Amita, the question returned to Alan’s mind: one he hadn’t brought himself to ask at all for over a week now. Alan opened his mouth a few times, but wasn’t sure how to ask what he wanted to ask, or even if there was a way to ask.
Amita smiled. “It’s okay, Alan. My parents are fine with...” with what we have now.
“They are?” Alan asked. “Not that I like looking gift horses in the mouth, but, well, how’d you sell it to them?”
“Precedent,” Amita said.
“Precedent?”
“I’m like Prajapati.”
Alan knew that name, he knew he knew it, and then he placed where he knew it: “Buddha’s aunt? Took care of him when his mom died?”
“I figured it was culturally and contextually more appropriate than explaining a sororate, which isn’t the case anyway.”
“True.” And, to the not entirely unflattering idea of his grandson being so very like Buddha, “No pressure on little Alex, then, huh?” Alan asked lightly.
Smiling, Amita nodded. To her nephew, “I think you’re ready to go to your grandfather, don’t you?”
Alex gurgled.
(7)
“A list?” Liz asked.
“We found it at each of his murders back home,” Agent Elks said. “Nine names, each belonging to an individual highly revered by one or more religions. Jews, Sikhs, Confucianists, Christians… And all of the names are of people who’re still alive now.”
“So why not leave a list when he murders down here?”
“No clue,” Jennifer said with a shrug. “The titles don’t translate into exact matches,” she added. “But…”
“But they’re close enough to work with,” Liz said.
The Alaskan nodded. “And given the Star Killer’s focus on decimation, it always struck me as bizarre that he would only have nine names in a list.”
“Maybe he left the tenth blank in case he had to escape the law - or so nobody could catch him when he was almost done.”
“Possible, entirely possible,” Jennifer said. “And before you ask, while I waited for my flight to your city, I checked - there are three major candidates as to who might be intended as the tenth name, and a half-dozen candidates who aren’t as likely.”
“Great,” Liz said, both meaning it and not looking forward to it.
(8)
Several teams had congregated at the site of a just-overturned minivan; all evidence pointed to this being driven by the Star Killer at the time it flipped over and rolled off the road.
The only person missing right now was Don, who’d been given the day off before the call had come in about the minivan.
Agent Elks was standing next to the driver’s-side door and she swore.
“Find something?” Colby asked.
“Space Above and Beyond,” Jennifer said under her breath.
“What?” Colby asked as he and Nikki came over to the door Agent Elks was standing besides.
“Long winters, a show, very bored,” she said, excusing herself. “Unless this deceased is an In Vitro - a fictional construct - then he shouldn’t have any impressions in the back of his neck that at all resemble a belly button.”
“Huh,” Nikki said, looking at it. “So somebody was holding a gun pretty firmly and damn steady on this guy’s neck to leave that.”
“In which case,” Colby said, irked, “we’re missing a body.”
“A corpse short,” Elks said. “And I think I know where we’ll find him.” Taking a step back from the overturned car, she looked out in the direction the car would’ve been facing if it hadn’t taken a tumble.
“Lots of people live out that way-” Nikki said, and then stopped, her and Colby getting what Jennifer was saying. Grabbing her radio from her belt, Nikki called it in.
“Let’s move,” Nikki and Colby said as one.
(9)
The details don’t matter on this point: Don was home; the Star Killer was at the Eppes house; they were in the same room together. Don was able to get Alan, Amita and the baby out of the room. “Just the two of us now, man,” Don said to the killer.
Nodding absently, the Star Killer hefted in one hand something that Don had set aside over a year ago. “Excellent work, if I may say so.”
In the old days, Don would’ve wasted the man down to a smoldering ember with one stare. Right now, not even the knowledge that a serial killer had been pawing through something that only Robin had read, could get his dander up. “What do you want? Huh?”
“To talk to you,” the Star Killer said.
“Sure got a strange way of going about it.”
“Prelude, I assure you,” he said, continuing in that deferring tone.
Don had heard a lot of whackos in his day - when it wasn’t self-aggrandizing, it was threatening; so very rarely was it like this. It creeped Don out.
“I am that which winnows the chaff from the grain, the maize from the cob, the rice from the stalk,” the Star Killer said. “The others, the ones before, they failed to measure up. They weren’t as great as I’d been led to believe.”
Oh hell, Don thought to himself. A true believer in search of something to believe. And he looked at the man looking at the hand-written pages carefully bound with paperclips and string. Amita’s handiwork, Don recognized, wondering how long ago she’d done that.
Some people say that you write because writing is a catharsis. For Don, it only helped him get partway: just enough to function at work and home. Nothing more. I wrote that famous book so I could throw myself in my work. Before he’d set pen to paper, he had been even worse off.
The irony was that what the Star Killer now held in his hands…that was something that Don thought was much better - something he’d been writing about the joys of marriage, the delights of impending fatherhood, the happiness of family; a work that, when Robin had read it, she’d blushed furiously. And he’d stopped writing that when Robin had died. Even raising his son Alex couldn’t get him to set pen to that paper again.
But, for Alex, he had set pen to paper and started writing ‘Leviathan’s Gun’ to purge as much as he could of the toxins from his mind, to get his soul a little bit cleaner.
“Put that down,” Don said, “and we’ll talk.”
“About what?”
“Whatever you want to talk about. My schedule’s free the rest of the day.”
“Good. The last time I talked to someone who was held to be a maschiach shebador, he wasn’t very nice.”
“You killed him,” Don said neutrally, having thereby gained a bit more knowledge about who he was facing: a shebador was more a concept than an individual - it was what allowed you to identify if someone has messianic potential - usually they came once a generation.
“He left me no choice. I have a role to play…I’m not gifted to reveal revelations or new laws,” the Star Killer said. “But my role is to remove the false ones from the world, so the people are not confused.”
There was a Talmudic word for that, a name…but it never left the tip of Don’s tongue. “Something you’re forgetting, man,” Don said.
“No, don’t think so,” said the Star Killer.
“Actually, yeah, you are.”
“And what would that be? Hm?”
“I’m not just any guy, am I right?” Don asked.
“That’s right.”
“Then you should’ve figured it out by now.”
“Your revelations aren’t for me to decipher,” the Star Killer said.
Don rolled his eyes.
“What should I have figured out?” the Star Killer asked.
“There’s never just one of us,” Don said.
Before the Star Killer could react, a bullet was shot from a silencer into the Killer’s brain, from whence it did not emerge.
The Star Killer fell to the floor.
Colby, Nikki, and Jennifer came into the room as Don went to the next room and embraced Amita and his dad, all of them glad that it was over. “Thanks, guys,” Don said to them.
“It was our pleasure, Agent Eppes,” Jennifer said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(THE END)
Cultural note:
Levirate - a custom of the Jews in Biblical times by which a dead man's brother was obligated to marry the widow if there were no sons: Deut. 25:5-10
Sororate - the custom in some cultures of marrying the younger sister of one's wife, esp. after the wife's death.
(so, like Amita says, not exactly the case anyway)