A bitter sweet tale

A bitter sweet tale
Ruthie's POV

Only the cold air hitting my face is keeping me on my feet. It’s a shock after the suffocating stale humidity of the apartment. I crash through the heavy service door and reel onto the roof, my ragged breathing lost in the vast, quiet city.
He is directly behind me. I don’t hear his feet; I hear the relaxed measured pace of his breathing. He's not winded. He's enjoying the hunt.

I sprint across the rough, tar-covered ground, my lungs on fire. The light of the morning is a feeble, washed-out yellow, bouncing off the massive glass pillar of the deserted Pryce Pharmaceutical Building on East 89th Street. It’s too far. There’s nowhere to go.

I reach the low parapet and turn, cornered. He comes out of the stairwell darkness, his figure growing taller as he approaches me. His hands are empty, still the intensity of his violence radiates off of him like warmth.
“Why, Eliot?” I cry, the tears at last breaking free, cascading down my face. Tell me why! Why all the lies? Why me? Why East 89th Street? ”
He halts five feet away, his chest rising, his eyes alight with a terrifying combination of triumph and agony. He doesn't answer right away. Not my husband, but Bartholomew Peter Sanchez, the boy who was consumed by fire.
“You don’t get to ask for answers,” he hisses, bitterness thick in his voice.

"You had your chance. You were my safe place. You were the only clean thing that I had in my life. And you looked in the drawer."

I clutch my chest, wanting to stop the ragged breaths coming out of me. Everything is being recorded by the phone in my pocket. Keep him talking, Ruthie. Keep him proud.
“This address, this rooftop, this is the heart of it, isn’t it?” Trying to trigger his ego, I said, “The letters weren’t just a map. They were your signature. You’re proud of what you did.”

He lets out a sharp, joyless laugh. “Proud? Ruthie, I am past pride. I'm necessary. And I'm doing this because we’re finishing together. Right here. You and me. So I owe you an explanation. Not because you deserve it, but so that you can understand why the law failed both of us before we go to the afterlife."
He takes a step closer. My back strikes the cold, hard concrete of the parapet.
“My father was a lawyer. And he was a monster. He beat my mother until he broke her. She died in a terrible accident—caused by him, covered up by his firm. The law protected him.”

He shakes his head and laughs..Every word is spat out, full of venom.
“He dumped me and my younger brother, Ronnie, on his sister — Aunt Maggie, a children’s advocate — and her husband, George. They gave us the basement. They gave us hell. My aunt… she violated Ronnie. She violated me."

I gasp and bring my trembling hand over my mouth.
"We were locked down there. Nobody ever checked. No cops, no social workers. Ronnie tried to break out," he continues, his voice breaking as if he's reliving his pain. "Maggie hit his head. A massive injury. He bled for me in my arms in that cold, dark basement, suffering for two weeks. He was eight. The law, your sacred system, turned a blind eye to those distress calls, hid from the bruises, was blind to the truth."

He leans forward, his face just inches from mine, his breath hot and stale with old smoke. "As he was dying, I promised him that I would make them pay. After Ronnie they turned to me and made me see hell. I killed my father first. Poison. Then my aunt and uncle. It was clean. It was just. But the rot didn’t stop."
He scratches his arms evidence of too much drugs. “They introduced me to Molly and the rest of the damn drugs. Maggie and George.” He laughs hysterically. “There are others out there. Jeez,” he spreads his arms. “I have to do some fucking clean up.”

He draws back, looking over the city as one would a kingdom. "The victims. The lawyers. These were the next generation, the new generation of corruption, in my eyes. They protected the rapists and child abusers. They took the massive fees. I warned them. I sent them anonymous letters telling them to change. They couldn’t listen.”
He gestures toward the Pryce Building, then back up at my face. “The letters behind their ears? They couldn’ t listen. The single letters were the benchmark for failure. But the double letters?”
His voice turns into a bone-chilling whisper. "Because their sins were double. Chacha Remirez destroyed the most compelling testimony of children who lost their parents, and suffered abuse. Guess what they are dead.
Paige Lang sabotaged a rape victim's case to save a senator's

"They are the worst kind of scum."
He drops his voice more, his eyes boring into mine. "And 89 for Andrea Holt. She got a child trafficker off on a technicality. The number 89 — that’s how many lives that monster has now destroyed and also the address here, little wife. She needed a double mark. The numbers and the letters were my admission and my evidence, all rolled into one.”

I swallowed hard and watch him talk.

‘The earring? A little symbolic revenge for my aunt's evil allegations."
He is wholeheartedly in now. Proud. He is The Cleaner.
"You could just have let the law do its work!" I cry, trembling with emotion.
“The law is broken!” he roars, his voice bouncing against the walls of the Pryce Building. “It is compromised! The failure rate is too high! I am the only one who cleans the ledger!” With a bang, he knocks his fists against the parapet wall, the loosened stones rattling. “And now, it’s time to clean the last debt.

He advances fully toward me, extending a hand that is no longer Eliot's, but Bartholomew's. “I told you, we’re finishing this together, Ruthie. We get out of this dirt for good.”
I close my eyes tight, knowing it’s over. I have the tape. I have the proof. Aiden, please be close.

"FREEZE! NYPD! DROP THE WEAPON AND GET ON THE FLOOR!"
The voice—distorted, cynical, and too influential—is heard from the roof of the Pryce Building. The air is suddenly lit up by the red points of laser sights spread all over Bartholomew’s chest.
He turns around, his face is the glowing embodiment of primal rage.

He disregards the police.
Her ignores the spotlights. His eyes are fixed on me.
"You called them! You betrayed me!" he shouts, running at me with terrifying speed. He’s not going for the gun. He's going for the edge. He wants to bring me down with him.
I make a tiny, frantic step to the side.
He can be within range to catch my arm, near enough to warm his anger, he is that close. As he lunges, I hear the deep, strangled noise he produces as he makes that motion
CRACK!

The volume is tremendous. It tears through the morning air.
As his body jerks away from me, I sense the sharp breeze of displaced air, and the attacker stumbles. He doesn't scream. He cows in before he can voice an immediate answer of a question.
And then in a line of clouds of dust a black hole opened blacker at its center. Then, with terrifying speed, he topples over the short ledge, a black outline against the soft morning sky.

There is a moment of impossible silence.
Then, a noise that I will never cease to hear. A ghastly, wet SPLAT! from the pavement ten stories below.
Suddenly, the air filled with sirens and yelling.
I fall to my knees, weary up on the coarse tar paper. I can feel my body shaking like an earthquake, nerve endings playing tag with one another. I hear a sound above the sirens, above the shouting. An ear-piercing, agonizing, soul-crushing late wail.
I don’t know if it’s my own scream, or the last sound of Bartholomew Peter Sanchez, the kid who promised that he wo
uld get revenge, as he hits the cold ground.
Everything goes black.