And the moment he was arrested, word came down from the pinnacles of the shadowed criminal hierarchies that employed him: a hefty bounty for a quick result. He’d served his masters admirably but now, like a rabid dog, he must be put down before he barks and wakes the neighbors. The first attempt on Slivko’s life came on the very first night the feds had him in custody, during a transport, an amateurish approach, clumsy and easily foiled by Slivko, but he knew that this would now be his life. An endless procession of petty attackers with their makeshift shivs and awkward ambushes. It all seemed so very tiring to him.
So it took little convincing, on the part of the federal agents, to sell Slivko on the notion of providing enough evidence to put three of his bosses—top men, long hunted, masterminds for whom twisted soldiers like Slivko were little more than disposable tools—in prison forever. Big catches, all three of them. And, sure enough, those three men are now interred in three different supermax facilities, serving thirty-six consecutive life sentences between them, with no possibility of parole. Moreover, the agent who solicited Slivko’s testimony is now associate deputy director of the agency.
As for Slivko, his part of the deal was that he got all memory of his transgressions wiped and he got shipped out to live in a place called Caesura. In peaceful oblivion, as the newly christened Errol Colfax. A quiet type who kept to himself and showed little taste for socializing. Those sixty or so lost souls who died at his hands now as forgotten to him as he was to the rest of the world.
So, no, Cooper did not feel remorse for killing Errol Colfax.
Of course, the $50,000 didn’t hurt.
But the killing was not without consequence. Spiritual and otherwise. Cooper understands that now.
Cooper learned of Slivko’s backstory by anonymous fax. The first of which arrived over two months ago.
Cooper was alone in the police trailer, working late, fussing with paperwork, when the fax machine started chugging. That infernal whir. A single sheet, unfurling.
On that sheet: A proposal. Addressed to Cooper.
A proposal. A task. And a price.
To this day, Cooper still doesn’t know who sent it.
The incoming number was blocked, untraceable.
He assumed at first it was a joke, of course. Some clown in Amarillo, probably Brightwell, who got hold of the fax number, having a laugh. Cooper fed the fax into the shredder and thought nothing of it.
Until, a few nights later, the second fax arrived.
This time, it came attached to Slivko’s arrest record. His mug shot. The charges against him, which were never officially filed. A summary of his “alleged” crimes.
This required a much longer piece of fax paper, curling endlessly from the machine.
At the end, another proposal. And an account number. For an offshore bank.
Twenty-five thousand dollars had already been deposited, the fax explained. Cooper could call and confirm.
The other $25,000 on completion.
It took three more days before Cooper finally called the bank, from a phone booth at a gas station a few miles outside of Abilene. Hot as Hades and Cooper crammed into that phone booth, sweating, like Houdini in an upright glass coffin. The booth as small and airless as a confessional. Flies smacking like buckshot at the glass.
On hold. Waiting for confirmation.
Receiving it.
Twenty-five thousand dollars. Fully accessible.
He pondered that figure over whiskey later that night in his bungalow with the ceiling fan turning slowly overhead. This was two months ago. Cooper had just recently celebrated his eighth year as Caesura’s unofficial sheriff.
There are plenty of people in the world, Cooper figured that night, twirling the amber whiskey in his shot glass absently, who would pay good money to find someone like Colfax and make an example of him. Though he didn’t know exactly who was making him this offer, the “who” was not what concerned him. The “who” were bad people, with resources, that much was obvious. The kind of people in whose employ, or debt, you would not want to be. The “why” was not difficult to discern, either: Cooper knew there were many people beyond this town’s fences, from criminals betrayed by testimony to law enforcement officers offended by Caesura’s particular form of clemency, who might wish certain of the town’s inhabitants dead. Slivko once made a habit of hurting people by killing their distant relatives; maybe a distant relative of one of his victims had decided to enact an ironic revenge. In any case, the motive of the proposal, while never made explicit in the faxes, was not difficult to guess or imagine. The “why” is revenge. Retribution. Some distant relative of justice. The “why” was written out in plain English on the long, curling fax that enumerated all of Colfax’s former sins.
Twirling the whiskey.
Twenty-five thousand dollars, already waiting.
Sixty restless ghosts, waiting as well.
Cooper was a good man, or so he liked to believe. There was not much in his previous life to fortify that opinion and, forced to defend it, he’d have scant evidence to present, but he clung to the notion nonetheless. Not a great man—that much he understood; he’d long since given up hope for that and had made his heavy peace with it—but a good man, or good enough. He’d done selfish things, certainly, hurtful things, awful things, made terrible choices, abandoned people who’d offered him love, lied straight to the faces of people who’d offered him trust. There were things buried in his history that he’d do anything to go back and change, but who doesn’t have a few of those? The kind of cold decisions and thoughtless betrayals that had sent his life careening in regrettable directions, before he finally crashed and found himself marooned here, in this town, at this table, with this choice.
But he’d never done anything like this, he thought. Not kill a man.
Not even a man like Colfax.
You can’t stay good after that. If good was a thing you’d ever been.
Whatever his decision, Cooper wondered how he could possibly continue to live with Colfax in the town, now that he knew the full accounting of who Colfax was and what he’d done and what he was capable of. Cooper wondered how exactly he could let Colfax remain, living side by side with the other residents, as just another happy neighbor. Colfax, it’s true, was a homebody now. Almost meek. Rarely smiled. Kept to his darkened bungalow. Maybe he’s haunted, Cooper thought, and he just doesn’t know by what. That twisted brain, now unburdened of all its worst memories. All its guilt. All its remorse. If ever there was any.
Yet still haunted by those sixty restless ghosts.
Cousins. Nieces. By definition, innocents.
Cooper swirled the whiskey.
As for the outside world, as far as they were concerned, Kostya Slivko no longer existed. He’d given his testimony. He’d flipped his bosses. Those cases are closed, those files sealed, those sentences passed, those promotions granted. And as for the man himself, he just disappeared. His exploits are now legends. Whispered of. He lives nowhere now.
Except that he lives here, thought Cooper. A couple of blocks away.
And all those crimes—
All those names—
All those ghosts—
They’re forgotten.
Most criminally, by Slivko himself.
Cooper downed the whiskey.
He remembers it well, the turning point, at his kitchen table in the light of the single fixture under the stir of the fan blades: The moment that the realization hit him.