The Reprisals

Robert Williams had been savagely murdered. Hector studied the report on it that had been laid on his desk. He had been beheaded, as it seemed with a chainsaw, and the body dumped just outside his parents home. The head was laid beside it, severely mutilated. There was not any real evidence against his sect superior Steve, who seemed to be behind it, the report read.

Steve himself had been interrogated, but he had, as always, a fairly good alibi for any time likely by forensic evidence for the killing itself. He had said that it was not he who mutilated a body or a face that way, and implicated a few other people, who were just possibly his inferiors in the sect, but none of them seemed likely to be guilty of murder when interrogated. As for sect membership, none of them said much; everything pointed to that none of them really knew well enough to say, who was the murderer. Most of them seemed to imply that the victim had it coming to him anyway.

Hector asked his boss if there could be a check also on if some Rick Erwin, or similar, had had any reprisal, including those that aren't very easily noticed, such as for example being set aside by his parents, college teachers or whatever. The boss said he would have it checked to the extent he could. Two hours later, Hector received a short report from him that said a Rick Erwin seemed to be in trouble at his university, with some report he was supposed to hand in, but which seemed to have disappeared.

After reading it, Hector again went to his boss and asked if he thought a similar check could be asked for about other such reprisals from the sect. “I mean mostly the small reprisals, this time, but by the way, it is true that an update on real murders and such would probably be useful too.”

His boss looked at him a bit grimly. Then he laughed a little. “Since when have I become your secretary?!” he asked.

“Sorry, boss, but I'm not sure I could have the authority to do so! I might need this for my work and please could you help me with it!?”

His superior muttered something incomprehensible. Then he called in a secretary and asked Hector to repeat his issues for her. He did, and the secretary looked at her and Hectors boss, who nodded. “OK, I will,” she said and left the room.

“I feel that you're over the line a bit with me this morning, Hector!” the boss said gravely after she left.

“I told you I have to get this done and that I can't - or can I - get any authorization for without asking you - or is there someone else that you want me to turn to!?”

“It's not that! It's that you come in here and pretend as if something about it, as if you were my boss on the whole!”

“No, I don't think I did!”

“You did! And if you do it all after this, you will be reprimanded!”

The secretary knocked lightly on the door, opened it and peeked in. “They say they'll send it to you this afternoon,” she said to Hector.

“OK, Cecilia,” the boss said.

At four PM Hector received a “preliminary,” it said, report about the sect's reprisals. He looked through it and noted that what he had reported to them about the body residues in the cabin Suzanne showed them could pertain to one of at least four murder cases in the area. But no one had yet been to the cabin to take any DNA-test or so, since they believed that could easily be discovered and thereby disturb some of the continuing investigations on the sect. Moreover it would very possibly lead to new reprisals, primarily against one or more welfare officers - or so-called, perhaps, Hector thought and swallowed a bit heavily.

One of the possible murder victims in the case was a half-cousin of Suzanne's. She was preliminarily never a sect member, nor wanted to be, but her possible interest for being it could not be ruled out. Another was an ex-boyfriend of Suzanne. The third one was a girl whom Suzanne had apparently seduced, and had her for a while. The forth was a guy who had talked something about Suzanne and her parents, saying they did not seem to actually care about the woods Suzanne proclaimed they loved so much. For all Hector new, all four of them may have been Suzanne's and her sect's victims at one point or another. The latest of the four (the girl Suzanne had seduced and had for a while) was in that case the one who's bone residues, and so, it was. ...

Hector took the report with him home and studied it there as well. When there he looked at the threats he already knew there had been against the two of the welfare officers that were seemingly there. It was the lady that was with them to the cabin, and a man whom he himself must have been mistaken for. He had this time not been aware of that there could be such a confusion.

But the threats had not come to be traced to Suzanne, nor quite even her parents, but almost only form sect leader in some other district. She was at the same hierarchical level as Suzanne. Weirdly, she somehow had taken an interest in having someone threaten on behalf of her peer, or sort of, in the next district.

The next day he handed the report to Leslie and talked to her about it.

“How horrible!” Leslie responded. “I almost took it for granted that there wouldn't be even worse things to discover about them. Her reaction was mostly about a few very recent murders, by ritual this time. The police had infiltrated some of the upper level of the sect, a ritual that was initiated with sexual assault, in order to create a mood of none-cunning in the person that was to be tortured. “I had only sort of thought about that as possible for them, but they did seem sort of too eager tor the sake of care for smartness about not reprising those whom they had no vengeance against! This stuff about sexual rituals for pure fun of torture was worse than I wanted to believe about them!”

“Yeah, it's horrible! ... Perhaps you got confused by that they are calling them reprisals, those ritual murders! They are not actually into reprisals, but into punishing none-cunning attitudes!”

She looked at him. “Perhaps we can find out how to study their actual thoughts if we think about it as a virtue to have reprisals in their sense!”

He wasn't sure about what to say.

After a while she said: “To the extent there is an emotional link to them we can have it our way with them when we're there on special missions. It'll be much easier, I think, to handle them that way!”

“Ah! It takes one to know one, you mean!”

She giggled. “Yeah! That's exactly what I'm about!”

“Then how can we make certain we won't be corrupted by them if we do it!?”

She looked at him, smiled sweetly, and said: “I don't think we will have any notion of what to do about them if we think that way!”

He thought for a while. She watched him, and thought about what he might be thinking.

“It's not like selling out the ideals we stand for,” she said after a while, “but about not to get to know too little about what it would be like not to have them!”

He looked at her for a long time. “OK,” he said at last.