The Circle of Life

Beat cop Dan Reynolds drew a chalk line around the body. It wasn’t his job—someone from forensic

services typically took care of such chores—but the officer in charge of the scene outranked him, and so

he did what he was told.

At first, his hand shook a little as he brought the chalk across the cold cement, making a crude

outline first around the dead man’s head, down his chest, around an outstretched forearm. Then a strange

thought crossed his mind, and he relaxed, and his line became sharper, truer, more accurate.

The circle of life. He was drawing this man’s circle of life, and soon, when the chalk line met itself

at the back of the man’s head, he would close the circle of this man’s life. He began humming his son's favorite tune from some Disney movie.

As he stood and admired his work, another thought crossed his mind. He wondered

how often a victim had the circle of his life drawn by his own killer.

“Another one bites the dust.” Reynolds looked up, startled, having momentarily forgotten the

presence of seven or eight uniforms, a couple of forensics people, and the medical examiner. It was the

M.E., Rossington, who stood beside him now, smoking, gazing almost lovingly at the dead man.

“Yeah, this one was a real peach. Dealer, pimp, child molester. Looks like he got what he

deserved,” Reynolds replied. He wondered to himself whether that had sounded a little too cold, but

the M.E. just grunted more or less in agreement.

The weapon, which he was now drawing a small circle around with his chalk, was completely

untraceable, given to him specifically for this purpose by the man who had contacted him and given him

this chance to go on with his own life.

Reynolds was deeply in debt, to a bookie who worked for one of the captains of the

local branch of one of the five ruling families of the northeast. He had been given 24 hours to come up

with the money or die. He got the idea they didn’t really care which one he did, but he sure as hell didn’t

want to die.

But there was no way to come up with that much money in that little bit of time. Hell, it had taken

him less than 24 hours to lose the money that got him in all of this trouble to begin with, but 24 hours was

just not enough time to get it back. Never mind that the debt had been hanging over his head for six

months, gathering interest and penalties as set by the bookies' bosses, until the original debt was minute

compared to the vig they added to it.

So when a shadowy man had confronted him in a shadowy place this evening while he was

walking his beat and offered him the chance to start back at zero with his creditors, he hadn’t thought very

hard about it. The man with the chalk outline around him had been a bigger liability to the shadowy man’s

bosses than this little piss-ant policeman and his little piss-ant debt, and they would erase his debt if he

could do them a tiny favor.

The man handed Reynolds the pistol and told him to make it look good. He told him where the target would be and when, and then he disappeared into the shadows, saying one

final thing: “Don’t worry. When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll be squared with everybody.”

True to the shadowy man’s prediction, the dead man had shown up in this alley at the appointed

time. Reynolds stood behind a dumpster and waited until the man passed by, then he stepped out and

pulled the trigger three times fast. The man went down, and Reynolds turned and walked quickly out

of the alley, dropping the gun to the ground as he walked away.

Quick as that, Reynolds, who had been a hero in Operation Desert Storm, who had a good

marriage to a beautiful wife and had a wonderful young son, who had what anyone would consider a

perfect life, had become a murderer. But he had also become a free man.

Reynolds placed the chalk he had been using back in the forensics kit and reported to the

officer in charge that he had completed his chore.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch.” Reynolds turned to see who had spoken. One of the forensics

people, kneeling and examining the murder weapon.

“What’s up, Mike?” The officer in charge walked the few feet to stand over the shoulder of the

forensics man.

“I know this gun. I just checked it into evidence last week.”

Reynolds turned and walked to the police tape encircling the crime scene, separating this tiny

plot of shadows and blood from the rest of the world. His hands began to shake, and he realized he was

humming that song again under his breath.

He turned to face the area where the dead man lay, and he felt the circle of life begin to close

around him.