12.

The Rectory brought back memories for Garrett. Each time he returned, he was forced to fight them. It wasn’t easy -- things here never changed. There was a television, screen smashed in; a couch with one corner ripped off; a mattress, and an awfully raunchy one by the looks of it -- he’d never seen these exact items before, but their predecessors had always been here, and he added up each in his mind: the count of the cost of human waste.
    It was the potter’s field he came to see. The same field where they’d laid Bess in all loss of dignity and humanity, was now his source of prosperity. Strange, how tides turned like that.
    His heart was an iron drum whose beat swung with more vigour at each step he took. Amphion would see soon -- oh boy, that’d be something! -- and there were so many possible reactions the officer could have, so many masks of horror he could anticipate and create in his mind.
    When they turned the corner and came upon the open concrete slab, the stench of rot hitting them full force, Garrett’s eyes never left Amphion’s face.  Much to his disappointment, however, the officer betrayed no awe or horror. His face was a blank canvas.
    “What is this, Garrett?”
    “The potter’s field,” he’d never told anyone his private name for the place before, and wondered why he did now. “Can’t you smell it?”
    Amphion marched boldly into the open and stooped beside a corpse.  It belonged to an elderly man: now his skin was bluish and bloated, his eyes sunken caverns of enmity. The muscles about his jaw had eroded -- his lower teeth were a startling bridge of dull yellow over the black sinkhole of his mouth. His position in society prior to his death wasn’t hard to guess; his clothing was no more than a nest of rags. He’d live a bum and was dumped here in a bum’s cemetery, like the dozens of other corpses in various stages of decay that were strewn about all equally destitute in the potter’s field.
    “They lay up all the homeless here,” Garrett explained. “It’s cheap; hardly anyone knows about it.”
    By Amphion’s side he knelt and pulled back his sleeves, allowing the officer to see his open hands. “First off, the fingerprints. We’ve got a trick for these, needs some newer stiffs though.”
    Amphion turned his eyes upon him. “You’re a pretty sick fellow, aren’t you?”
    A peal of laughter convulsed Garrett’s spine. He lay one hand on Amphion’s shoulder to steady himself. “Not nearly half as sick as most folks, Love. Come on, help me find one that looks fresh!”
    It amused him to watch Amphion hang back with a look of horror and disgust written upon his face while he went to work. This was more along the lines of the reaction he’d been looking forward to. It gave him no more than a trickle of satisfaction, but that alone made having a gun trained between his eyeballs worth it.
    Soon enough, he rounded up the bodies of a woman and a younger boy, and presented them to Amphion with all the glee of a faithful dog. It was amazing, Garrett remarked, how desensitized he himself had become to death. It was practically an old friend now.
    A pair of latex gloves were snapped onto Amphion’s hands. As the officer watched Garrett produce second pair of gloves, surgical blades, and superglue from his kit, he remarked, “This isn’t right. Someone ought to say something about… about -- they’re people, not animals, for heavens sake! There must be dignity, surely!” Eventually, curiosity got the better -- and he knew it would! -- of Amphion, and the man stooped to observe his procedure.

12.
    Amphion flexed his hands and felt the latex gloves contract around them. It was a strange feeling to become accustomed to, but not as strange as the way he could feel slivers of human tissue stuck to each finger of his gloves, tissue which contained the fingerprints of a deceased woman. He studied the grooves and arches and swirls, wondering if they were really a roadmap of every joy and disaster that had wrung her heart -- once upon a time. Now her history was an accessory to be worn and used to deceive.
    As a police officer, he was wary of many a trick used by devious criminals, and Garrett knew all of them. From his rucksack he’d produced a gallon of bleach, hair nets, ski masks, rope, a pillow, and two pairs of sneakers he’d lifted from the Rectory.
    Garrett insisted they walk -- a vehicle’s tracks were harder to cover, he said, and Amphion hated to admit he was right -- and so for nearly three-quarters of an hour they marched silently through deserted alleys and shady side streets. It was a time for Amphion to reflect and clear the cobwebs from his mind. He’d decided on his course of action, and had every step detailed in his head: he would stand aside while Garrett took care of Ryan (it was better to kill two birds with one stone, after all), and then arrest the boy and bring him back to the station. He didn’t care what excuses he’d have to make for the murder; it was his word versus Garrett’s, after all.
    Their destination was an apartment building, one of those city projects that was no more than four walls with a roof over them. Garrett removed a bobbypin from his rucksack, picked the exterior lock and led Amphion up a narrow set of stairs. One more lock picked, and they were in.
    The apartment was a single room and kitchen combo with a washroom off to the side. In the middle of the main room a cot was spread. On the cot lay the pipe-wire form of Tyler Ryan, buried ambiguously beneath a homemade quilt.
    Looking back, Amphion concluded that it must have been the way Ryan slept that bothered him. He seemed too comfortable beneath his quilt, his breathing deep and restful. There was no trace of the terror of his crimes upon his brow; he slept in peace. Had Amphion never seen the man before, he would have come to the conclusion that Garrett was mad -- but he had put this very man in manacles just years ago, and even at the time of his arrest Ryan’s hands had been stained with blood and his eyes wild and bemused.