He killed children because it was easy and profitable. There was never a shortage of hot-headed youth with a chip on their shoulder over some insult and fifty bucks to retain his services. Elder adjusted his coat sleeve and the 4 inch blade slipped into his palm with its familiar feel. It was a well-weighted blade, exceedingly sharp and easy to conceal. Elder had found a cutlery expert in Old Des Moines three years ago who quoted him a ludicrous price. Elder had happily paid 60% down and waited the three weeks for the knife to be finished. The old man was truly gifted in the art of bladecrafting. Elder had shoved the razor-sharp steel through the fool's surprise-wide left eye. He retrieved his down payment from a cheap lockbox under the counter plus an additonal wad of dirty bills. It was a really good knife. The target was sitting on the fender of a broken-down, burned out Chevy Cavelier. He was young, probably no more than 13. Tall and thin he hung off the edge of the car trying to give off an air of confidence in how he held himself. He was either waiting for someone or waiting for nothing. Perhaps he was waiting for death. The boy never even looked Elder's way. Elder calmly walked up, slipped the blade into the boys ribcage and opened a hole in his lung. Elder let the boy slump in a heap onto the trash strewn ground beside the car.
Dirty street, dirty city, dirty world. Dirty business. A hundred bucks this one had paid, the client had wanted the boy to suffer before dying. Extras always cost more. Elder worked his way back toward his room. He weaved through the piles of wrecked and abandoned cars. Stepped over broken glass and corpses. The hike was more than three miles. A distance Elder normally wouldn't feel comfortable with. But the client had been pretty or at least she passed for pretty these days. And she was willing to discuss multiple means of payment. As he turned the last corner before his room, Elder saw the sign. It was the normal executioner's mark put in its usual spot for someone seeking his services. But there was something different. This time his brother's severed head was laying on the ground. That got his attention. More later...
---- The GREAT FALL OF WESTERN SOCIETY did not happen in capital letters. Perhaps history books would record the fall in uppercase, but it was extremely unlikely there would ever be another history book written. To those living through it, this was the end of history. Many small cricks and streams flow together to make a mighty river. Many small events and small people who thought they were great contributed to the fall. Most would say the turning point came when the massive flood of immigrants from both borders overwhelmed the government systems. Unable to provide the social services that had been deemed "rights" by the courts, crime became rampant. Rural towns and urban centers both found their streets increasingly becoming battlefields for gangs seeking their own desires through violence and vigilante groups claiming to serve "the rule of law." Those poor souls just trying to stay out of the way of the bullets really couldn't say what the difference was between the two extremes. At first the government tried to respond by deportation. But America's neighbors weren't having any of that. The newly elected president of Mexico dispatched troops to the border to prevent US immigration officials from sending criminals back. Surprisingly, Canada declared it's borders a one-way gate too. Anyone could get into the US, but the dregs couldn't be pushed out. America was coming apart at the seams.
America's criminal court system buckled under the burden of a crushing number of cases. There were not enough courtrooms, let alone attorneys, judges, or jury panels to adjudicate the staggering number of criminal cases from the local to the federal level. The Supreme Court ruled that the number of cases before the court did not alter the fundamental right to a speedy trial. Thus, many accused were simply released if an expedient court date could not be achieved. Realizing what it had done, but unwilling to admit it's error, the Supreme Court then ruled that trial by jury was not necessarily as fixed a right as once thought. Thus, many cases were expidited by having the judge serve the duel capacity of both judge and jury. Having taken the first steps on this path, it was inevitable that expediency would win out over the rule of law. The population cried for a cure to the raging violence in their neighborhoods, their schools, their places of work. Capital punishment was made a mandatory sentence for any first degree murder conviction. The prisons, already packed, couldn't hold any additional death-row inmates while they awaited their execution. The line of logic was already in place. Judges were granted the power to personally provide that service to the public as well. And of course justice has always been for sale...
---- Elder let the surprise wash through him. He shifted his body to the left and broke into a dead run toward the doorway to his room. As he ran his hand slipped into his waistband and he pulled out a small Sig .380 pistol. He swung the gun up in front of him as he charged through the doorway and dove onto the floor his body skidding several feet before coming to a stop. He flipped over onto his back and sat up, his eyes and the gun sweeping the room. Looking for anything, looking for nothing. Looking for death. It had probably been an overreaction. But then again, probably not. It was just too similar to be a coincidence. The head of loved-one laying on the ground. It stuns you. It paralyzes you. You stop to look at it. You can't believe what you're seeing. The emotional reaction causes vomit to begin to erupt up your throat. And that's when your head explodes from the assassin's bullet. You just stood there being the perfect target. Elder knew that scenario. He'd used it before. In fact, as far as he knew, he was the only one who had. Until now.
After five minutes of waiting for the arrival of his death, Elder realized he was hungry. He'd been hungry all day. He preferred to do his work hungry, it made the meal that much better after. Even if he didn't prefer it there wasn't enough food around to fill anyone up anymore. Elder slowly scooted himself to the rear wall of his room and pushed himself into a standing position, his back flat against the cracked and grungy sheetrock. His breathing and heart rate were already back down near normal so he lowered the gun down to his side. Time for a little something to eat. An old Igloo cooler and a battered bookshelf stood in one corner of the room across from hotel mattress he lifted from a burned out Super 8. Elder took off his jacket and tossed it on the mattress as he walked over to the bookshelf. Several dented cans sat amonst the clutter of personal items he ocassionally picked off his targets for use as barter. He picked up a can of Hormel cornedbeef hash and slowly peeled the top off with an old manual can opener he'd found in an abandoned home. Elder sniffed the contents of the can. Of course the date on the can showed an expiration several years back. Fresh foods cost a premium and he rarely chose to shell out the extra. The hash smelled edible and Elder dug a chunk out with his fingers and tasted. Yeah, it probably wouldn't rot his gut out. He walked back over to the mattress and sat down to finish the can. Long ago he'd learned never to contemplate any serious situation on an empty stomach.
----- It wasn't long before police were granted Judge-Executioner status as well. The federal government had bigger issues on its hands. America's enemies saw a ripe target in the chaos acted out on the streets of her cities. Eventually, war would reach US soil. For a while the Judge-Executioners did supress the most violent offenders. Murder was no longer the only capital crime. Blanket shoot-on-site orders were decreed for anyone caught in the act of a violent felony. But since most violent crimes weren't witnessed by law enforcement, video evidence quickly became acceptable as proof of guilt. It is possible that such a system of law enforcement could work in a perfect world. But this tired world had never been and could never be perfect. The human heart is an easily corruptable organ. Greed, anger, jealousy; the Judge-Executioners were susceptible to those ailments just like anyone else. So it didn't take to long for the contract convictions to begin. A wife, beaten by her drunkard husband, could find swift justice from a concerned J-E...for a price. J-E's were busy and, in practice, they had nearly unlimited power. Oversite was for appearance sake only. Politicians reassuring their remaining voting public that they were still in control. At first, only a few J-E's ventured into this for-profit territory of law enforcement. Former cops who were already corrupt under the old system. But corruption is a highly contageous disease and it spread like wildfire through the J-E ranks. Initially, most J-E's tried to put on a show of being "neutral" by requiring that the accusing provide evidence to prove they had been wronged and that the guilty deserved death. But that was a time consuming process and it ate into profits.
----- Elder's stomach had settled and he contemplated the situation. Clearly somebody was trying to threaten him. A relative's severed head 50 feet from your front door is difficult to misread as a friendly gesture. But there had been two messages for him. His brother's head and the executioner's gallow mark on the mailbox. Were both placed by the same person? Elder allowed a deep sigh to escape between his lips. "Ray, who the hell did this to you?" His voice was deep with a gravely texture of age, smoking and hard life. Elder had not seen his brother in five years at least. The last time had been when he had travelled back to his boyhood home for their sister's funeral. Ray had still lived in that rural town. He had fought hard to resist the world changing around him. Fought hard to push back the social decay eating away at the life he loved. Ray had been a doctor. A healer. He believed in compassion and hope. And when his patients could no longer pay, he had tended to them for free. As a reward for his caring (Elder thought it more a punishment) the town of 7,000 had made him mayor. Ray saw it as a calling, rallying the citizens to unite and work as one to keep their community whole and safe. And he had been successful. In the midst of chaos, Raymond Elder had embraced order, community, and self-sacrifice.
But Raymond Elder's brother, older by 3 years, had gone to law school and eventually become a judge. Daniel Elder hadn't resisted the rising chaos, he had embraced it. Somone had gone through alot of trouble to bring Ray's head the 200 miles to greet Elder outside his door. Someone who knew his past.
Second things second. Clearly whoever had put his brother's head outside would make another appearance soon. He'd do some detective work to see if anyone had seen someone suspicious hanging around in the last few hours, but no one ever saw anything. Witnesses had a short life expectancy. His most productive route was to go to the meeting place and see who showed up. Maybe the mark and the head were left by the same person. If so then the meeting spot was the safest location for that confrontation. Elder got up and went into the bathroom. He lifted the broken bathtub and pulled the 12 gauge shotgun out. He also retrieved a box of shells and loaded the gun alternating between slugs and shot shells. He also took his second clip for his .380 and put it in his jacket pocket. His knife was in it's pouch located to the right of the small of his back. He paused and thought for a second. No there probably wasn't any chance of overkill here. He walked back into the main room and went to the mattress and pulled it out from the wall. Bending over he reached into a slit cut into the mattress side and pulled out a machete. The edge was sharp. He took the blade and attached it by a small rope over his back. It was 30 minutes jog to the meeting place. Elder went outside, took a piss and started off to the west. His brother's lifeless eyes watched him trot into the distance.