His own reflection.
Louis Shalako
Author’s Note. The previous chapters were written in the spring of 2019. This is the first all new material, in two and a half years. The author hopes to finish it this time around. Other than that first line, or even that first paragragh, it really is quite all right—or it should be, when it’s done.
Well, it was a long story, and perhaps not entirely pointless. Every crime had its victim, and in a homicide, any homicide, the victim’s actions, their personality, their character, played some role. Sometimes it was merely a matter of circumstance, which was often a feature in the petty, brutal, street-corner sort of homicide. In those cases where the parties were not known to each other, the motive could be terribly hard to get sometimes. As for circumstances, why were they there in the first place. Sooner or later, all roads lead to Rome. Sooner or later…their path had led them to their fate, as it were.
Everyone made choices in life, and sometimes those choices had a lot to do with circumstance.
It had been a long day.
Gilles stared at his own reflection. He had his own character, his own circumstances to consider.
He too, had made his own choices, and mostly, that had all been a very long time ago. Not that one didn’t think about it once in a while. He might have had a completely different life, after all—
A completely different fate.
He spoke into the quietness of the room, the small noises, with the clock ticking on the wall…
“So, what we have is an unsolvable case. At least until something else, comes along. And I am almost sure that it will come along. The whole thing stinks of an overweening ego. It’s like…it’s like some insane person, deciding that the culmination of their life’s work, obviously criminal work, is to commit a series of grisly killings, and all for what? To get their name in the paper.”
Ultimately, that was all it really amounted to.
It smacked of Victorian melodrama, or what passed for it in the Republique these days.
“This person has a very good mind, a very good brain.”
No one ever does nothing for no reason—
His old man, so many years ago.
The thought carried no irony. He was comfortable in his own competence and ignored fame and publicity for what it was, a kind of self-affirming bourgeois propaganda on behalf of self and social order.
It was a myth.
That sort of shit was everywhere these days.
It was all over the booksellers’ shelves, up on the cinematic screen these days, pulpy magazines, and some of it quite clever…some of which was a little too clever for its own good, in some aspects. It really wasn’t like that, most of the time.
May I have something lurid, please.
Most modern crime was all too stupid. The real genius, the real masterminds, were in finance, banking, insurance...they were in real estate, and living off of unearned rents. They laundered their money. They knew enough to play a longer game.
Those people really knew what they were doing—
It could have been avoided. These were not spontaneous, almost accidental killings.
In a recent confession, it just happened, according to the suspect, and quite frankly, he had been forced to agree. He had, in fact, put in a rare marginal note, a good word and the suggestion of mercy or what passed for it, on the part of the prosecution…all of this was leading him nowhere. But, the prosecution did listen to the police. They pretty much had to, didn’t they? Self-defence, maybe even just an inability to get away from it, it had its role in too many killings. They had wanted to live, and there was nowhere to run to, in order to get away from it all. In the end, the city itself was corrupt, and that sort of thing rubbed off on all who came in contact…
He nodded.
The night was wet, cold, black anywhere that wasn’t a lamp-post, a window, a doorway. The fire was burning low, and he’d put another stick or two on there in a minute.
In the meantime, he was not exactly lost, lost in his thoughts. Moments of quiet reflection had their uses. If nothing else, you could discard things—perhaps some of these things, these so-called facts, simply didn’t matter.
That was probably true of most facts.
They really didn’t matter, when you came right down to it.
The night was wet and black indeed…
Anything that wasn’t automobile headlights or the resulting reflections on wet pavement, puddles and what might become small rivers along the curbs if this kept up much longer…they were saying snow flurries by dawn, but he rather doubted it. More likely, a damned cold fog and more rain. Off in the other room, the radio droned softly, up and down, up and down, and yet there was nothing there to really hang your hat on—it could have been any old piece of music at this point…the radio, catering in all things to the lowest common denominator, it was mostly just shit anyways. Comforting enough for all of that.
He came back to his thoughts, this and that and the other thing.
“No, someone is presenting us with all of this.” They might—or perhaps must, be presenting it to someone else as well. “For reasons which only they can know.”
Did the other people know who or why, and if so, why not take the police into their confidence.
If only we knew why. If only we knew who—
Or whom.
“Surely this is not merely for our benefit…” Gentlemen. And lady—
A small grin stole over him, eyes focused not so much on the window, or even what was beyond, but somewhere far, far away. Or perhaps it was somewhere deep within. Perhaps the answer, or answers, for there were always more than one, would come to him.
Sometimes you were asking all the wrong questions.
The cigarette, half forgotten, was now burning at his fingers.
“Merde.” How long had he been standing there?
“Meow?”
Maintenon turned to his patient and attentive audience, one Monsieur Sylvestre.
The animal regarded him.
Feed me, Gilles.
“Ah, yes. You must be getting hungry, my good friend and colleague.”
“Meow.”
“Sorry. I had forgotten.” No swearing in the house.
That was the rule…especially when the housekeeper was there, and before that, Ann.
Stubbing out the offending smoke, he moved and the cat hopped down from the end of the ratty old settee in this neglected back room, and preceded Gilles through the open doorway.
And again, there was the temptation to either sell the piano, or maybe just try and use it once in a while.
No matter how much it hurt—
Truth was, it still hurts.
END
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