Dead Waters - Anton Strout [31]
The Inspectre turned around, looking a little older. He sat back down in his chair. “Mason simply didn’t come in the next day. Or the day after that. I heard from a colleague who ran into him in the street that he looked different. Happy, if I remember it correctly.”
“So he just walked away from the Order?” I asked, anger creeping into my voice.
“Now, now,” the Inspectre said. “Don’t judge so hastily. Mason simply chose to live his life. . . differently.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked. “Did one of those ghouls actually bite him? He went evil?”
“Oh, heavens no! Surely you saw the look on his face when I pulled him out of that fissure. Mason was stone-cold scared and all too willing to walk away from this life.”
“But why?” I asked. “I mean, if I had seen all that he had seen, I don’t think I could turn away from a life of fighting the dark horrors that haunt this city.”
The Inspectre looked at me over the top of his glasses, his face fixed in a very serious expression. “The Fraternal Order of Goodness is not for everyone, Simon. You have to remember that in the old days, there was barely even a Department of Extraordinary Affairs. Life within F.O.G. is thankless work with long hours and few benefits, even fewer now with these recent budget cuts from downtown. An agent of the Order has to love what they do, I suppose, in some perverse, masochistic way.”
Who was I to try to second-guess Mason Redfield? He was a man I had met only twice—once through a psychometric flash and once as a corpse. “I guess I understand.”
The Inspectre gave me a surprised smile. “Do you, now?”
I nodded. “When I came to the D.E.A., I was searching for something, something greater than a paycheck. Up until that moment, I would have gone on using my psychometry for heists and low-level thieving forever . . .”
“You would have eventually been caught,” the Inspectre corrected.
“That’s my point,” I said. “I chose the D.E.A. and becoming a F.O.G.gie because I almost was caught—caught up in betrayal by the old crowd I ran with. You do recall Mina Saria, don’t you?”
The Inspectre nodded. “That psychotic redhead, yes? Currently missing and in possession of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, I believe.”
“Correct,” I said, shuddering at the thought of her. My encounters with her were harrowing enough to fill a book. “Surviving those near misses in my old criminal life with her woke me up. I wanted control of my life, a sense of purpose. Doing good, as simplistic as it sounds, is a far more rewarding fit. It gave me a better purpose.”
The Inspectre steepled his fingers against his chin as he considered what I said. “That’s what I meant about the Order not being for everyone,” he said. “Mason Redfield had his sense of purpose scared out of him that night. He turned to another purpose that had caught his eye prior to joining the Order—his love of cinema and a desire to teach. Ironically, it was his love of horror films that drove him to the Fraternal Order of Goodness in the first place.”
It was hard to imagine the semifailed swashbuckler at the head of a classroom, but hey, it worked for Indiana Jones. “Turned to teaching film,” I said. “Makes sense. There, the monsters can’t really get you.”
The Inspectre’s face sobered. “I hadn’t really considered that when it happened,” he said. “I was too angry at him. You see, at the time I was new to the game myself. I hated Mason for abandoning what I thought was his true calling. I handled myself. . . poorly.”
“How so?” I asked.
The Inspectre’s face turned red and he shifted in his chair, unable to find comfort in it. “I took his leaving as a personal affront. All I knew was that I was left on my own within the Order. I hated him for abandoning me like that, selfish as I was. Stubbornly, I refused to break in a new partner, insisting on doing everything on my own from then on. Some called me foolish, reckless. . . but to me it only meant I had to work harder and be more careful. I kept myself busy and it made it easy not to get in touch with Mason much once he left the Order. By the time I