The Shooter

to use my weapon. Then, they shifted me to the head office, and I had to get those thrills elsewhere.”
I turned my back on DiMarco for a moment, making eye contact with Casey and mouthed, ‘whack job’ to her subtly. She gave a twitch of a nod and then moved closer to the walls, reaching tentatively out to touch the cold, grey fur of a rabbit.
“I try to shoot my prey. I find that it’s a demonstration of my power. Their deaths are painless.” He picked up a rifle from the bench. “Usually.”
In an instant of instinct, Casey’s hand went to the Smith and Wesson at her hip, adrenalin speeding up her heart rate and pushing her blood through her veins at high velocity. DiMarco placed the rifle down with a metal clank and she relaxed, catching my eye.
“I feel that if I take their life, I have that closeness with them and I thank them for the part they’ve played. You can see what I mean about balance, can’t you? With his own hands and his own actions, a man can determine not only the outcome of his own life, but the lives of others. It’s when we forget this, when we start to make decisions without understanding the power we have, that humans become no better than animals with no sense of right and wrong. We lose our sense of justice.”
“So that’s why you killed Anthony Waltz then? You felt he needed some justice dealt to him?” Casey challenged.
“Oh you just don’t get it, do you? You naïve little girl.”
Casey’s head whipped up and I threw out an arm to keep her back just as she lunged forward towards him.
DiMarco threw his head back and laughed, “Of course I didn’t kill him. Yes, I was hoping for karma for Anthony Waltz, but I didn’t do it myself.” He walked over to a wall and leaned his head against the skin and fur and inhaled deeply. “We’re at the top of the food chain. A man taking another man’s life is never going to restore balance. It makes the levels of power tip. It threatens everything.”
DiMarco seemed calmer now, in amongst the trophies of death. He seemed lulled into a state of euphoria at the power he’d asserted over the creatures that adorned the basement walls. He suddenly picked up the thread of the conversation from the drawing room.
“Years ago, while I was a police captain, I was accused of the aggravated assault of the attendant at my local liquor store. I’d lost my second wife and I’d taken to easing my suffering with a combination of bad alcohol and bad friends. I was so lost in my grief and my anger and my inebriation that I couldn’t piece together an alibi for the night. An hour before he was beaten to within an inch of his life, I’d been seen arguing with the shop attendant because he’d refused me service on the grounds of intoxication. I told the investigating detectives that I did it.” DiMarco’s eyes had closed, he seemed to be contentedly reliving his past anguish.
“You hate defense lawyers even though you benefited from them?
“At the time, I felt it was wrong, but I wasn’t going to go to prison and there was nothing on my record. I even said to my lawyer that I didn’t feel right walking away without any charges, but he dismissed me. He said his job was to get me the best outcome. And he did. He showed that the internal affairs detectives used an illegal tactic to draw out my confession and then all the charges were dropped. I beat a man within an inch of his life, smashed his skull with my fists, and I walked away without retribution. Can you believe that? I sobered up after that.” He shook his head. “Per the contract with the lawyer, I paid him a $50,000 bonus if I walked away without any charges. Even though I told this lawyer that I was guilty, his need for the money was greater than his commitment to the system. His need for justice wasn’t real.”
“That’s one defense lawyer.”
“It’s not. It’s all of them. They’re not driven by the purity of integrity and righteousness. He just had a need to sweep me aside, and move on to the next case. I went straight back to work in the department. I almost beat a guy to death, and I get to go back to work as a cop? Ten years later, I started to reflect on my experience. Some may have seen this episode as something to be thankful for. I didn’t. It felt wrong. And then I discovered it gave me a purpose, it gave me a fight to fight.” He smiled warmly at us. “Shall we go back upstairs for more coffee?”

Chapter 5


“So, your creep-o-meter officially sky rocketed, right?” Casey leaned back in the truck seat and sighed loudly, pleased to be leaving the man, the house, the garden and, above all, the basement in her wake.
She lowered the window and received a cold blast of spring air, still with the bitterness of winter driving it. I rolled my truck down the gravel driveway, looking at DiMarco’s home in my rear-view mirror. He was standing on the top step, watching as we drove past the gates.
“I’m going to say he’s a little left of center.”
“Left of center? That man has lost the plot. Absolutely lost the plot. There were dings galore on my fruity radar. I’m going to go right out there and say it—Jonathon DiMarco has lost his marbles. The weird fireplace chat, the eerie vibe, the fire in his eyes… and then there’s the whole cuddly bunny massacre room,” she shivered. “That’s not normal, is it? I mean guys don’t get to sixty-five and turn into sadistic killers, do