Chapter 12

Once we are in the garage, Paul picks up the boy and carries him into the house. Kurt takes command of the rest of the team, and they spread out to provide security and ensure we aren’t disturbed.

Trying to secure the boy to the chair is a bit more complicated than anticipated. He is not cooperating at all and is squirming about, trying to get free. I punch him hard in the solar plexus. As he struggles to breathe, we tie his legs and arms to the chair. He isn’t able to move. The chair is solid iron.

Now that he is secured, I stick him with an IV, so it is easier for me to administer drugs in a safe manner. Then I remove the sack that is over his head. I recognize him right away and say, “Evening, Devin. Sorry to take you away from your party. You shouldn’t have wandered onto my property.”

He spits at me and snarls, “You’ll never get away with this.”

“That is why you’ll lose. You underestimate me. You came looking for me to recruit me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You came over to recruit me. Don’t you think I would make a perfect addition to your scheme?”

“Why the hell would I do that? We all hated you the day we met you, you arrogant fuck.”

I increase the dosage then try again, “You came over to recruit me. Don’t you think I would want in on your plans? I already have a harem. You could have my girls, and you wouldn’t have to fight me. There is no need to like me. I’m sure there are plenty of other guys in your little club that you don’t like.”

“Fuck you.”

He was already fairly drunk before he was captured, and I don’t want to give him any more drugs. Paul and I head to the kitchen for some privacy, where I tell him, “He was too drunk when you picked him up. I can’t give him any more without him passing out. We have two choices. We can either wait, hoping the drugs will take a stronger effect, or the alcohol to pass through his system so we can give him more. Or, we can come up with a different narrative, that he isn’t so opposed to. Either way, the questioning is on hold.”

We sit and brainstorm for a while but get nowhere. After a while, I can hear something over Paul’s earbud but can’t make out what it is. He suddenly becomes anxious and replies on coms, “Just a sec. I’ll ask Trent what he wants to do.” He then tells me, “Moira appears to be on her way here. She is on her bike and should be pulling up any second.”

“Stay here and let me handle it.”

I quickly get up and head out the front door, stopping on the porch to wait for Moira. It is just getting dark, but there is enough light that she can see who I am as soon as she comes around the corner of the road. She looks a bit confused as she stops in front of me, asking, “What are you doing here?”

“You know I won’t lie, but I should ask you a few questions before I answer.”

“So, you are here to see me.”

“I had no clue you were coming. Why are you here?”

“My Mom and Dad are at it again, and I need a place to clear my head.”

“Why here?”

“I can’t go to my room. My parents don’t respect boundaries. If I go to your place, I have to socialize when I want to just sit and think. If I go to the office as often as this happens, they think they have a little girl checking up on them, and I don’t want to cause any more problems. Of the houses we left standing on the lake, your uncle lives in the closest one to my place, and this is the next closest.”

“I’m going to have to be an ass and ask you to start using the next one down the road.”

She looks disappointed but doesn’t complain. She concedes, “If I’m out for a ride, I might as well add another km or two.”

“Thanks, what would you be willing to do to get the jocks to stop going after girls?”

“In my book, they deserve to die. There are only two types of sins you can’t truly repent from. Murder and some sexual sins. Only, I’m not built like Carol, and I don’t have Kim’s training or skill, so there isn’t much I can do.”

“Isn’t that against your beliefs? Thou shalt not kill, and all that.”

“That always confused me. That is part of the Mosaic Law. At the same time, the Mosaic law is all about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It says thou shalt not kill, but the penalty is to have your life taken away. Is that not killing?”

“I’m glad to see that you don’t follow your religion blindly and question its beliefs. Do you want me to answer that particular dilemma?”

“Yes, I have never heard anybody answer it in any meaningful way.”

“That is because they use bad translations of a bad translation and call it scripture. The Great Uncial Codices are the four oldest Bibles, and all of them are transcriptions of transcriptions. There are many discrepancies between them, even though you can trace their origins back to the original texts. What we use as an English bible is a translation.

“From working with people who speak English as a second language, you can see the confusion caused by using translations. Unfortunately, nobody left alive fully understands ancient Hebrew poetry, and that is what most of the Old Testament is written in. The term, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is a bad translation. In English, we have many different words that mean kill, such as: manslaughter, infanticide, patricide, murder, kill, etc., etc. Ancient Hebrew had a lot more words for kill than English does. When correctly translated, the passage that says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ should read, ‘Thou shalt not kill without just cause.’ Meaning, if a person is a rapist, then it is ok to kill him.”

“Are you sure you’re not a preacher?”

“I was for a short time, but that was literally another lifetime. It was only for a short time in my late teens and early twenties when I studied all the major religions. I was even ordained as a priest of sorts.”

“So, we determined that biblically it is ok for us to perform our own form of justice on them. I’m still not strong or skilled enough to help.”

“There are a couple things wrong with your statement. First, we explored the Mosaic Law, which is Jewish, not Christian. I could use the New Testament to show it is ok, but that is an entirely different conversation that will take a lot longer. The second is that you have the skills we need. They just aren’t what you think.”

“How’s that? If I’m not capable of going after them, I’m not capable of going after them.”

“There is more than one way to skin a cat. You don’t always need a knife. We aren’t going to kill them. We are going to set them up, so the police catch them. To do that, we need to know where they hide their blackmail material, how their organization works and who is ultimately on top. If we don’t take the head, it will just grow a new body.”

“I still don’t have the skills you need. I’m not a spy.”

“I think you may have the skills we need. Did I ever tell you about the time I was a police informant?”

“Is this part of your first life?”

“Yes, if I haven’t told you, then don’t ask. It was a horrid time and once you know something, you can’t un-know it. The short story is, my room-mate got in with some bad people. They ended up using our residence in their business, and I couldn’t stand for it, so I became a police informant. The police sold me out, but that isn’t important. What is important is that I know what is needed to imbed a person into a criminal organization under false pretences. I’m not about to turn you into a spy or informant. I would never put you at risk. But there is something else you can do.”

“What makes you think I have what it takes?”

“The short of it is, I saw your performance in Oklahoma last year. I never told you I went, but I went because you were in it, and I believe in supporting my friends.”

“What does a dumb school play have to do with this?”

“An informant is an actor. The only difference is an actor gets paid better the better he performs. An informant is pass-fail. If you’re good, you get to keep your life. If you’re not, you don’t.”

“I’m not that good of an actor.”

“You are better than you think. Most kids overact. Tell me this, what do you think about when you are acting?”

“What emotion my character is feeling and why she is feeling it.”

“Most kids focus on what their character would do and how they would react. Most don’t understand that if you’re feeling the things your character is, then in most cases, you will automatically act as the character would. If you failed to act properly, it is likely because you didn’t fully understand your character. If you focus on what they would do, then you don’t feel the same. Your expressions are all wrong, and your actions are not true.

“Being an informant, you are playing yourself, so knowing how you would feel in the situation is easy. The only hard part is pretending you don’t know as much as you do and keeping your lies straight. Even that is easy with minimal training. You don’t even need to memorize lines. Once you learn to lie by telling the truth, there is only a minimum amount of things you need to remember.”

“I would think it would be easy to slip up and mess up what lies you told.”

“Not when you lie by telling the truth. That way, you don’t have to remember the lie because it isn’t a lie.”

“How could you be telling the truth if you are lying?”

“I killed Devin today. He followed me home from work, and when I stopped to confront him, he assaulted me. I ended up playing basketball with his head on the pavement. Kurt and John pulled me off of him, but it was too late.”

Hearing this, she turns pale and doesn’t know what to say or do.

“Relax, it’s a lie. There was a serious confrontation with a kid in my first life, and I almost killed him by playing basketball with his head after he chased me on my way home. Four kids pulled me off of him, and he lived.

“I used that fight in my story in case you asked questions. I could tell you all about the confrontation because it really happened. You could interrogate me all night, and you will never discover the lie because I will be telling you a true story. I will always remember the story because it really happened, so if you ask me about killing Devin 20 years from now, I can give you the story as it happened, and you will not catch me in the lie. I will remember I told you Devin because something did happen with Devin and me today. The only thing that wasn’t true in the story was that I didn’t kill him. I lied by telling you the truth. The key is to keep the lie as close to the truth as possible, and they will never catch you lying.”

“Wow, you must have been extraordinarily good at it.”

“I took it one step farther. I always tried to lie by getting other people to lie for me. If I messed up, I wouldn’t get into trouble. It is a lot harder to get others to tell the truth in a lie than to do it yourself.”