Monsters, Matt Rogers [ereader for android .txt] 📗

come in and you don’t seem to be doing this for money. I don’t think anyone’s paying you, because why would they? For this?’

He wiped tears from his eyes before he went on.

He said, ‘So you spoke to me that first day at the gym for no reason. Or, like, I guess there was a reason, but you didn’t benefit from it. And I just didn’t understand that. And now you’re here and you’re alive and all the shitty people aren’t. So I guess that made me think, maybe I shouldn’t lie anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t pretend to be someone I’m not just to save my own skin.’

King stared at him.

Danny said, ‘So, yeah. I killed Jack Sundström.’

‘How?’

‘I told you I put gloves on…’

‘How?’

‘I beat him to death.’

‘Did he feel it? Or was he unconscious from the first blow?’

Danny was hesitant to answer. The canal became ghostly quiet. Then, ‘He felt some of it. He would’ve known what was happening, before he…’

King slowly reached down and pulled the Glock out of its holster at his waist.

Danny went pale. ‘No.’

King let the gun hover there, his palm around the stock, the barrel pointed at the creek floor.

A finger touching the trigger guard.

He could see Danny questioning everything, regretting every word that had left his mouth. Then a shift happened. The young man wiped the fear and the trepidation and the uncertainty out of his face and found something resembling stoicism.

He cleared his throat. His voice still shook, but the bravery was noticeable. ‘Listen, I told you all that because I wanted to do the right thing. Not the comfortable thing. So if that’s what you gotta do…’

He closed his eyes and lowered his head.

He didn’t want to see it coming.

King said, ‘Danny, look at me.’

Danny opened his eyes.

King held the gun up in his palm, barrel toward the sky.

‘This is precautionary,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to shoot you.’

Danny had tried to play the stoic, tried to accept his fate with little emotion, but he couldn’t hold back the relief that flooded him, made his hands tremble and his knees go weak.

Then he furrowed his brow. ‘Precautionary for what?’

King said, ‘You’re coming with me. We’re going for a drive.’

75

If someone told King, as he pulled up out front of the SFPD Tenderloin district station, that right now this car was the worst place to be in the world, he wasn’t sure if he’d argue otherwise.

You could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

Life isn’t the movies. Certain acts are irredeemable, unable to be swept under the rug, and then there’s just no chance of a happy ending. You can’t gift-wrap life, tie it up with a neat bow, find the perfect resolution to every situation. Sometimes the right choice, the right way forward, feels the absolute worst. He’d genuinely hoped for Danny. He’d stayed cautiously optimistic even after catching the young man within Frankie’s inner circle for the Choi job.

Danny had been coerced, manipulated, brainwashed, torn in different directions by a megalomaniac mentor, but there was no skirting around the fact that he’d beaten an old man to death.

You can’t put that aside.

At least, King couldn’t.

Danny sat hunched in the passenger seat with his eyes closed. His hands were shaking. His breathing was erratic. He didn’t look up when they stopped. He knew where they were. He didn’t want to face reality.

He’d have to eventually.

King said, ‘You have the photo of Jack’s body on your phone?’

After a beat, Danny nodded.

Eyes still shut.

King said, ‘You know where the body’s buried?’

Another beat of consideration, then another nod.

Each time figuring whether he should try to lie, then realising it was futile.

‘You turn yourself in and you plead guilty,’ King said. ‘You comply with everything they ask. You throw Frankie under the bus. You tell them every little thing he said to you, everything he did. Don’t leave a word out. You do that and you won’t get the max sentence. Not even close. You’ll have a life after prison, if you do it right.’

When Danny took a breath he nearly choked on it, but he seemed determined to compose himself. Still, when he spoke, his voice shook. ‘There’s no life after that. Not starting fresh at forty, fifty, whenever I get out.’

‘Says who?’ King said. ‘You get your mind right in there — and trust me, you’ll have time for that — then you’ll be starting from a far better place than a decent chunk of forty-year-olds. We’re all lost, really, all trying to sort ourselves out, no matter how old we are. Doesn’t matter if you begin today or twenty years from now. It really only matters that you begin.’

Silence.

King said, ‘My life didn’t truly begin until I was out of black operations.’

It took Danny’s mind off the situation, if only for a moment. ‘Black operations?’

‘I was the guy they make movies about. The lone wolf. But there won’t ever be a movie about me, because no one will know what I did. I gave up nearly fifteen years of my life to serve a government that used me like a wrecking ball. I don’t regret a second of it. But when I got out I started fresh, just like you’ll be doing.’

Danny finally opened his eyes.

Turned to look at King, then swivelled his head around and stared at the police station.

Reality sunk in. He went ghost-white.

He said, ‘I’m scared. I’m so scared.’

King didn’t respond. He thought, Of course.

Danny said, ‘You’d do this to me?’

‘I’m showing you mercy. I’m turning you over to the justice system.’

‘I thought you weren’t a fan of the justice system.’

‘Sometimes it’s the only choice. And it’s a whole lot better than what I used to do.’

‘Which was?’

‘Black ops, Danny. No laws. Someone does the wrong thing, the last thing they see is a bullet.’

Danny swallowed air. Tried not to cry. ‘I got a little sister. Back in the trailer park. I promised I’d go home to see her when I made it.’

King had to bring