That’s How I Roll

they ‘investigate’ Esau’s real motivation, they’re promoting our product. I’ll bet we sell more DVDs of this show than of all the rest we ever did, combined. It’s going to be in criminology classes. Libraries. Cited in textbooks.

“You can’t buy that kind of credibility. It’s not only going to enhance our network image, win us all kinds of awards—it could turn out to have the longest legs ever.”

You could see it on their faces. Even smell it coming off them like a thick, rolling fog of musk. To the other people in that room, what that big shot was saying was more important than oxygen.

With that in hand, I went on to Step Ten.

f everybody keeps up their end of the deal, I’ll die alone. Alone and silent, the way I’m supposed to.

To the newspapers, I’ll be the worst murderer in the whole history of this state.

I guess they should say that. I will have saved Tory-boy by telling the truth. A kind of truth, anyway. The kind of truth the Law feeds on. Once I learned how deep the Feds had their people planted in so many places, I had only one choice if I wanted to keep Tory-boy safe past my time.

The way I explained it was: I’d give all the politicians the truth-plus, if they’d agree to let it also be the truth-minus.

At first, there were some little disputes about who was going to have to kill me. I balanced it out for them: I told the Feds I could get the State to agree to push the buttons to send the poison through the IVs into what was left of my body.

I just came right on out with it: I’d clean up any unsolved murders on the State’s books. If they’d allow me to come home to die, I’d use the mouth of one devil to make a lot of heroes.

And if the Feds had any other undercovers close by who’d met with death, I’d take those on myself, too.

What politician would turn down an offer like that?

And what lawman ever got to tell a politician what to do?

kept my bargain. I confessed to every unsolved killing on the State books. Every killing I could have done, that is. Nobody was going to believe I raped a woman or kidnapped a child, or beat a man to death with a tire iron. The real truth is, I didn’t want my name associated with such things, so I was deeply grateful when the Law agreed—they didn’t want any taint on the big piece of paper they were going to roll out for the whole world to see.

When you took those kind of crimes out of the mix, you left a bunch of contract kills. The Law actually knew who did some of those—or ordered them, anyway—but they couldn’t hope to prove it. And it turned out that the Feds had people planted all over the place. So, when I confessed to those crimes, I made everybody happy.

I had to walk that last bit of the line with great care. Confessing to a crime you didn’t commit is tricky, because you don’t know the little details—things only the killer would know.

Like that little red ribbon tied to a branch of the white-oak tree where a hunter had waited for hours before he put a 30.06 round through the head of a man named Luther Semple.

The Law had to know who shot him. Luther Semple had raped a little girl, but she couldn’t identify him. She wasn’t even the first little girl he had taken that way: throwing a feedbag over her head from behind before he went to work.

The cops were in a bad position. Everyone in that little town probably thought they knew who had fired the shot, and the little girl’s father never denied it—just told the cops he wanted a lawyer and wouldn’t speak to them at all.

The local prosecutor wouldn’t touch the case. If he had, people would have looked at him as if he was the defense attorney for the rapist.

Still, nobody likes an unsolved murder. I don’t mean “nobody” the way you’d talk about actual people; I mean “nobody” the same as the statistics the government keeps on everything. So, when I admitted that I’d killed that man, everybody was pleased. Me knowing about that piece of red ribbon, that was the clincher—even skeptical folks would have to admit that only the actual killer could have known that; it had never been made public.

But it wasn’t all as easy as I’m making it sound. The way it worked was that the Feds would take all my confessions, then they’d call in the Law from whatever area the different crimes had happened in.

When those cops showed up, they’d be smart enough to get certain details out of me, so I could tell a straight story … but that’s as far as they went. I damn near ended up telling them they were being stupid. Knowing a few facts just wouldn’t be enough. The story had to ring true. How was a man in a wheelchair supposed to get into the deep woods? And why would I give a damn about somebody’s little girl getting raped when I didn’t even know them?

It reminded me of when I gave the Beast a story to tell the cops. I didn’t just give him a version that sounded good, or that he wanted to be true. No, I planted it so deep in his mind that it even felt real.

So what I told those cops was this: I’ve got a rifle I built myself. The wheelchair is a natural brace to hold me steady, especially with its entire back made out of three-quarter-inch steel, and I could assemble the tripod by myself by just touching a push button. Any little flicker of doubt they might have had, I erased by telling them where they could find the whole apparatus. I hadn’t even told the Feds that part. I could see in the eyes of the state cops how much they appreciated that.

I also told them that I was a dead shot—I could take a man at a hundred yards as easy as if he was sitting across from me. They didn’t doubt that part.

I already knew that Luther Semple had been killed at a bit more than that distance. He was just sitting on his front porch, having a smoke, like he was pondering some big problem. He was tilted back, relaxing in his big chair, when his head exploded.

I knew more about that particular killing than anyone could imagine. I almost laughed out loud, confessing the truth to cops who were sure I was lying.

I wasn’t lying. In fact, I had details they didn’t have … but not the kind I’d ever speak of. The rifle I’d built was double-barreled with the scope mounted between them, chambered for .220 Swift. I hand-load all my ammunition, and that includes casting the slugs. If one of my home-built slugs hits you anywhere, you’re not going to live long enough to get to a hospital.

There’s almost no recoil, but that wasn’t why I picked that cartridge—my legs are worthless, but my shoulders are like a pro linebacker’s. The reason Luther Semple’s head had exploded was the micro-warhead I had cast into the heart of the first slug.

My second shot was a hardball I always used as a make-sure. But the exit wound from the first was so big that the second slug went right on through, all the way into the woods behind his house. It was never found.

And it never would be. I don’t know what it cost, but the man who’d hired me not only had that slug cut out of a tree, the same tree had been gas-fired right afterwards. I know who got that done, because the intact slug was turned over to me. That was how the man who’d hired me proved he was never going to betray me—he dropped the proof right into my hand.

He never did explain why he wanted that man dead, and I never asked.

The police report said Luther Semple had been ambushed by someone using a 30.06. That was an estimate, of course—the coroner’s jury was told the slug was never recovered.

When the prosecutor from that little town drove down, he wanted to interview me, too. All he really wanted to know was why I’d killed that man. I told him it was over a gambling debt. Three thousand dollars.

It’s common knowledge that there are poker parlors around here, and the man who hired me had a dozen people ready to swear they’d been present when I won all Luther Semple’s money. They particularly remembered that time because I’d been such a gentleman, taking his marker when he wanted to keep on playing. That’s the kind of thing you just don’t see much anymore.

So the man owed me money, and he wouldn’t pay. Even laughed in my face: what was I going to do about it, chase him down in my wheelchair? Plenty of witnesses heard him say that, too.

Since I’d already confessed to quite a number of other killings, that story worked for everyone.

Everybody knew: Esau Till, he was one seriously vengeful man. If he’d take your life just for looking at him wrong, think of what he’d do if you did him