Red Tide by G. M. Ford

Author:G. M. Ford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Journalists, Mystery & Detective, Fiction, Seattle (Wash.), Corso, Mass murder, Thrillers, Terrorism, General, Frank (Fictitious character), Espionage
ISBN: 9780060554811
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2005-05-24T05:19:23+00:00

28

They were lined up like so many schoolboys. Standing at attention in their new clothes, still and silent, as Holmes moved around them, inspecting the young men from every angle. Not surprising really. He had, after all, once been a policeman, accustomed to rank and file, to inspections and the chain of command. Their acquiescence was a show of respect from those who had long ago ceased to believe in such inanities as right and wrong, or good and evil…an assemblage who had tasted the bitter backwash of despair in their mouths for so long they had come to imagine it to be nourishment.

In a way, it was worse for Holmes. He wasn’t so much a victim as an unwilling accomplice. While the five young men standing before him had been purely the victims of circumstance, Holmes had played an unwitting part in his own personal doom and thus was as much a victim of himself as of the pack of dogs who had torn their lives to pieces.

Bobby remembered him from way back when Holmes was trying to restore order from chaos. Back when he still believed in something. Back before Bobby learned to make a life on the streets, hustling a living from garbage bins and gutters and before even Holmes learned that certain circumstances required redress regardless of the human toll.

Then he didn’t see him for a long time. Not until he heard someone calling his old name in the street. “Parag,” the voice called. “Parag Dubey.”

He recognized the man right away. “Do you remember me?” the man asked.

“The policeman,” Parag said.

The man looked him over. His sad liquid eyes flowed over the boy’s gaunt frame, to the unkempt mop of hair, over the greasy assemblage of rags that passed for clothes, down to the hard calloused feet that clicked on the pavement like the talons of a bird.

“Do you remember what happened? What came to pass that sent you out here to live this life you are living?”

Parag had never thought of it in those terms. For him, it had seemed a gradual decline. From the hospital and his awful eye, to his ancient uncle in Sanchi. And then his uncle had passed away and he had been on his own, driven from the neighborhood for his insistent begging. Moving from one street to another. Learning to take advantage of his deformity. It was not a single event, it was…a series of unfortunate…And then, for an instant, in his mind’s eye, Parag could see the beasts lying still in the watery fields in the moonlight. He could hear the wailing of the voices wafting above the warm breeze. Feel the awful burning in his eye. Without willing it so, he brought his hand to the fetid crust that had, for the past twelve years, habitually surrounded his left eye.

“I remember,” he had said. “Yes, I remember.”

“Do you know of any other boys? Boys who lost their families as you did and are now forced to fend for themselves?” He stared directly at Parag’s left eye.

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