The Shooter

walked back into the room with a tray.
“Thank you, Beautiful.” DiMarco smiled again. She placed a loving hand on his shoulder and then walked away.
“So, you’re talking about people abusing the system, right?” I awkwardly accepted the tiny cup in my large bear-paw hands, as though receiving a drink at a 6-year-old’s tea party.
“Exactly.” DiMarco clapped his hands. “Karma has to come to these defense lawyers. They’re the ones letting rapists back on the street. Why the hell should we let someone’s wealth determine if they get off or not? If they did it, then put them away. Throw away the key for the rest of their life.” DiMarco leaned back in his chair, satisfied with his audience and the unwinding of his story. “But these defense lawyers duel on words, not principles. They find a loophole, an ambiguity in the law, and exploit it. It’s money that wins cases, and that’s not justice. It’s corrupt. All of it. Lady Justice and her scales have the right to judge us all, regardless of wealth.”
“So, you think that everybody charged should be found guilty?” I sipped on the coffee.
“Of course not. The police make mistakes. Detectives make mistakes. The FBI makes mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. The system, as it stands, is robust if people are sworn to protect it. The problem is that we have people in the system, defense lawyers, who exploit its weaknesses. They exploit the system, and without their dedication to their oath, the system falls apart. It’s now my life’s work to correct that.”
“So let me get this straight,” Casey’s eyes narrowed. “You feel like, out of all the lawyers, judges and other legal professionals around, your views hold more weight about what’s best for our city? What makes you such an expert on this?”
“Good question, young lady.”
“Mr. DiMarco, let’s call her Casey,” I slipped in before Casey exploded.
“My apologies.” He smiled. “What makes me such an expert? Well, let me tell you. I’ve been there. I’ve been that person. Years ago. I had a good lawyer, one of the best, and I walked away free, even though I’d admitted my guilt to my colleagues. The defense lawyer walked me out of that court on a technicality.”
Casey’s eyes met mine across the room and we both looked questioningly at each other. This was news to us; nothing had come through on DiMarco when we’d Googled his name on the drive to his house.
DiMarco stood and wandered towards the fireplace, his back to us. Above the mantel piece hung the head of a deer, its marble eyes glazed and lifeless. A tension seemed to sit heavy in the room as the fire crackled.
“Do you like hunting?” he asked, suddenly spinning around, the accommodating smile back on his face.
“Hang on,” I stood up also, “wait a minute, let’s go back a step.”
“I understand that you have questions.” DiMarco shook his head slowly, “But it turns out I’m not on trial here. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t particularly feel like a walk down memory lane whenever it serves you best. Come, walk with me.”
He took off in long strides to the hall and took a sharp right. Casey and I, confused by the sudden change in DiMarco’s approach, placed our coffee mugs down and hurried to catch up with him at the top of the basement stairs where, after struggling with the key and an old lock, he flung open the door and reached in for a swinging piece of rope, pulling it down to fill the room with light.
“It’s important for a man to feel both that he has a purpose to help keep mankind balanced, but that he’s also the king of the animal world and has a right to power in his dominion. It brings out the best in a man when he understands the delicate equilibrium of his universe, that in a moment, a second, an instant, he can lose it all. But in that same moment, that same instant, he can also control it all. I like to keep myself humble with these thoughts.”
He led us down into the basement. Casey coughed and she reached to her holster, unclipping it and getting ready. There was a sticky heaviness in the basement, and it took a moment before I realized what I was looking at on the walls.
“This? This is what keeps you ‘humble’?” I asked, not trying to keep the surprise from my voice.
Casey automatically reached up and held her hand under her nose to attempt to dispel the smell of the pure alcohol and… something else. Something earthy and rotting. DiMarco watched us both, licking his lips in anticipation of our reaction to his shrine.
The walls were covered with the flayed skins of animals, so many of them that they overlapped like a macabre patchwork quilt. Some still had their skulls attached, like the squirrels with their mouths wide open, their pointy little teeth frozen in time.
One side of the wall had a huge black bear skin surrounded by silver and red foxes, hare, even a coyote. There were the pelts of some deer and some other, smaller animals I couldn’t even identify. In the middle of the room was a huge work bench, covered in DiMarco’s tools: knives of different sizes, a rifle, old fashioned metal snares, jars of ointment and solutions.
“This one right here,” DiMarco moved towards his tools and picked up the recently skinned pelt of a raccoon, wet with brown liquid, “this is what I’ve spent the last week working on. She’s a beauty and it takes some time to achieve a flawless product.”
“Handy with a gun then?” I asked, eyes still roaming around the room, taking it all in.
“It’s one of my greatest talents, passed on by my father. A tradition I carry on gladly. As a cop, I was always happy