Invisible Justice

There he was, Mister big shot Wall Street man, puffing on his cigarette outside his office building's main entrance. At first glance, he seemed like a decent fellow—nothing remarkable. He bought flowers for his wife, played pool with his friends, and donated to charity. Meanwhile, he was one of the chief architects of the economic recession. As his clients went broke, he lounged in luxury at a resort on some Greek island. How’s that for justice?

This man first caught my attention a while back, mentioned in an obscure news article as a witness in some murder case. My curiosity piqued, I dug deeper and found much more. Apparently, he hadn’t always been so happily married. About a decade ago, he was a heavy drinker who regularly beat his wife. Somehow, they patched things up. Not sure how.

Still, this was barely enough to justify the action I was about to take. I kept digging and found a police report implicating him in the sexual abuse of his nephew. The charges were dropped, of course. I wonder how much that cost him. There was ample evidence in the report to eliminate any doubt of his guilt. He didn’t even use a condom, the idiot.

In my opinion, that did justify the action I was about to take. Technically, I had already taken it. Like the routine animal he was, he flicked the cigarette butt to the ground and pulled out another from his pocket. It was his way of stretching his break. But this one was special. I had laced it with a potent blend of chemicals, a toxin untraceable in the bloodstream. Oh, and it only started to work hours after it was inhaled. Nothing to trace, no leads to follow. The scumbag would most likely die on the floor of his office, and days later the coroner would rule the cause of death a heart attack. No one would be the wiser.

I watched him from a park bench a short distance away. He smoked his second cigarette much faster than usual. A minute or so later, he tossed it to the ground and crushed it under his expensive Italian shoe. Then he went back inside, returning to work. And my work was done. I got up and walked away, whistling the X-Files theme song.