[Episode 136149] [Episode 136149]He stalked the hit man, but as he did, he also stalked the history of the lady killer (he evidently made a specialty of killing women). He'd long since known the manner in which this sort of slime justified themselves, or made a impression so overpowering they felt no need to justify anything to anyone anymore. The lady killer had first been acquired after a special slayer of women had fallen. That this was swiftly followed by the death of Cardinal Rourk, the Senator's brother, seemed no coincidence.
Using arts he'd vowed were only for the most dire need, he checked out the true history of the so called mad dog that devoured women and had so brutally torn apart the Cardinal. As his sense of sick irony had predicted, the hulking nightmare of a warrior had certainly not slain his parole officer nor had he eaten the flesh of the other women in that ugly business. There were subtle signs a diet of cannibalism produced, and that was reflected in the grave of the man executed for that horror. Others would not detect those most subtly horrendous signs in the scent and faded life force of a dead and buried cannibal, but he was hardly normal by anyone's reckoning.
A world like this didn't allow normality to survive long, not in any form. Nor had it ever permitted innocence, once noted, to survive. He killed the hit man, making certain his torture-driven interrogation involved asking all the wrong questions, and he even took the precaution of 'dying' in the conclusion, a burning and exploding vehicle detonating over the main area of graves for the cathedral. His blood on surviving parts of the stolen car and a conveniently similar-looking corpse was all it took. Said charcoal lump having previously been a very dirty cop only sweetened the icing for his personal sensibilities.
The signs he discovered sneaking away from the explosive planting of his seeming demise were about what he had supposed he'd find. The Cardinal had indeed partaken of human flesh. Not enough to have done all the women whose heads had been found in that barn, but enough to indicate he'd supported it before the fall guy came along. He certainly couldn't go to a jury, assuming charges could ever really be honestly considered in this corrupt pustule of a city, but he was assured of his facts. That poor soul Marvin had avenged the women for his own reasons, and then went to the electric chair for the very crimes he'd stopped. All without complaint. Obviously he wanted to protect somebody from the wrath of the Senator, and probably the poor asshole knew that Rourk would quash anything like the truth coming out, anyway.
Next came the infamous barn itself. To his attuned senses, the remaining stink of a long since removed body was what one would imagine opening up a candy box and taking a whiff of the rotting kitten that had been liquified and spread inside it three or four months before. He avoided retching of course, as he'd gone beyond that stage before he even finished his third day in this cesspool of a urban Hell. But he was tempted. He found the soil turned over and acid washed, but he did find a remaining piece, a bit of literally torn off and VERY altered genitals.
The next week was spent slipping away with this evidence, prelude to negotiations with a woman he knew. She was as aware of the foulness of Sin City as anyone, but had reason to leave it lie, preferring to stay distant and let that foulness resolve its own stories. Still, after he'd disgraced himself enough, she consented to get the flesh scrap tested.
It was solved with absurd ease for a bit of body matter left to dry and be bothered by other things for literally years. He'd almost said he didn't want to know when he found the thing was too old to be involved with the slaying of Cardinal Rourk, but her amazed whisper of "How'd you know? Even you.. damn you, mister, how the fuck did you know?" had him stay silent. He'd long since learned the value of letting others make their own assumptions on his terms. She just shook her head then and dropped the bomb. That bit of so-warped sexual tissue, so altered and putrid it would not truly rot nor be eaten by anything even slightly discerning, had belonged to the Senator's son! Said son was reputed to have died some time beforehand, and he'd had that portion of himself shot off by Hartigan, a convicted child molester and disgraced policeman, some eight years before the offending prick in question was removed in that barn. Needless to say, this whole deal stank of the surviving Rourk, and as far as he was concerned it explained why the Senator was acting like this these days.
He knew he should just find a way to off the Senator and leave Sin City behind him, as he'd done at times when the needs to avenge or invoke just retribution required merciless death before. But this tangled mess drew him somehow. And he sensed that Hartigan was as hosed as that Marv guy, maybe even more so. For his many confessions had come not even a week before he was found dead near that damned farm, a self-inflicted head shot and several dead cops having shown up in places they hadn't died at the only public signs of his passing.
He now could piece it together with chilling clarity. Obviously the Senator hadn't liked the notion of his depraved and degraded son being shorn of his unit, so the Senator had.. fixed matters, all the while keeping Hartigan trapped and framed for what he'd actually stopped. There was evidently a lot of that in Sin City.
Then something happened to set off Hartigan, and the ex-cop ran headlong into a trap. Somehow he just knew that at the source what set Hartigan off would be Rourk. It was official, the whole damned family was a set of deviants and sociopathic wastes of skin. It was even rumored that the the hooker that had died before that Marv seemingly went off the deep end and took out the Cardinal had only slept with the hulking man due to getting off on relieving the celibate of sexual pressures. The rumor didn't name the clergy, but you got the feeling it was a unspoken addition. With a sick feeling in his stomach, he therefore settled near Old Town under yet another appearance, humming Life During Wartime to himself as he tended to when he reflected on his way-too-many identity changes. He had to talk to that girl's comrades and learn the truth of this rumor. Before he killed the Senator, he felt it truly required and just to learn all the crimes the utterly amoral politician had covered up and enabled. If only so the dead could enjoy the failure to bury the truth, it truly was important to him that he know the whole sordid saga.
He spent his time (as he observed who took the leadership role of the surprisingly autonomous and unbroken ladies of Old Town) dallying with the Ladies. He was long past shyness near women by now, bitter living and 'dying' and real death all around him having naturally broken him of the fear of emotional attachment. After all that, it was easy to see death was a constant companion. Death could come at any instant, and if you refused to live, you regretted it when death came. He knew this as fact; be it for those you could care for, or for you, the coming of death ended things. You had to live before you died, so he made a point of living.
A few nights into his research into who to ask for the truth of Goldie the hooker, he passed by one site with a great deal of death having gone down recently. He crouched on the roof of the building, looking at the filthy alleyway and noting signs of a rather skillful and totally heartless ambush. They were not signs the unskilled or even the decently trained would notice, but they were there. A bit of natural tar. Grenade fragment. Marks on the walls. Lead and steel deposits here and there, mostly with the traces of pain and violent emotion where the bullets that made the marks before collection had passed through violent and clustered men. The shooters had plugged the alley and ringed the victims from these very rooftops, all but one of the winning side being women.
He rolled aside as the stroke began, the blade passing silently until a slight scraping noise heralded the removal of a television antenna from its base. He deliberately rolled onto his back and did a reverse kick-up, levering himself over his hands and hurling himself into so fierce a backwards somersault that he landed on his feet adroitly on the other side of the kill zone alley. He looked at the lovely and intent killer, and his eyes widened.
For the first time in months since he'd immersed himself in all this filth, he truly felt something. Shock, fear, dawning fury, and love. And for the first time in years he lost control of his voice, whispering out her name before he even knew his lips were forming it. "D-Daughter?"
As the Ladies began to pull a very credible surrounding action, the assassin Miho stopped them all by doing something she'd not done in memory. She spoke to a man. Her words were the true shocker, however, preventing Gail from issuing the kill order from dull shock. As they all watched Miho stare at him, the Ladies blinked a time or two, trying to process her words:
"Father, is that you?" Her words were soft, but their intensity would tear through armor plate.
As much for the benefit of the observers as for Miho's, he answered:
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(Posted Tue, 05 Apr 2005 06:50)
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