Chapter 1
The scorpions approached one another atop hot, pink sand; tails poised for battle, or mating, or both, I could not tell. The moment I put my journal down to watch, they shot forward, bodies locked into a knot in the blink of an eye. A minute later, one released itself and began to eat its opponent.
I sat back in my shaded lounge chair and contemplated the event. As the warm, Mexican, gulf breeze coddled my senses, I closed my eyes and considered how very brutal animal nature is. But then, I thought how much worse we humans are, we choose to be violent. Many enjoy it as sport. Animals engage instinctively, humans by volition and/or desire.
I guess that’s what this journal is about; my own participation in violence for the past two years, and an earnest attempt to vindicate my actions in spite of the death and misery I’ve inflicted. There has to be therapy here in my writing, because although I have been relaxing on this delicious beach for the last month, I cannot shut my eyes without seeing uninhibited hostile memories flashing in my mind’s eye.
In reality, I am a vigilante. Of this, there is no doubt. I make no excuse for that. But I have to reconcile that with my Christianity. I was a Christian long before I became a vigilante. And putting the two words together makes me a complete living, breathing contradiction. Christian vigilante? How can this be? Christ would never bring harm to a fellow human. And yet, because I have, in a manner beyond self-defense, the validity of identifying myself with Jesus is in serious question.
I suppose I’ll fill the pages of this journal attempting to give at least partial credibility to my dubious title and the paradox of it. It will be a confession as well as a documented conformation that justice has been served when the ‘law’ either failed to notice, or chose not to. In the meantime, please delay judgment until you’ve read through this bizarre tale. It will reveal raw truth, and a divine justice meted out to a world steeped in moral anarchy, gross injustice and betrayal to the spirit of humanity.
In the spring of 2030, for reasons unknown to me, evil forces flooded into my life and did not stop until I sat down on this pristine beach and decided to record the deeds that had ultimately forced me into seclusion.
It started five years ago when I brought my wife, Jessi, home from the hospital with our new angel-faced baby, Grace. We lived on the lower east side of Manhattan in a great little brownstone on East 18th Street. I worked as a Martial Arts instructor at the police academy. Jessi was a professional photographer who decided to take a few years off when the baby arrived. Of course, she earned more than I did, and socked plenty of money away so we never had to sweat the cost of raising a baby in New York City.
Jessi always thought my job in law enforcement was safe, because I wasn’t ‘outside’ fighting the bad guys, but ‘inside’ training the good guys. I only wished it could have been that simple. All sorts of wackos try to get into the department for reasons far less noble than to serve and protect. Some were terrorists, wanting to learn how the department operates on the inside. Some have shady backgrounds and only want a badge to give them leverage to succeed with their hidden motives. I kept from Jessi any confrontations I had while on the job. As sensitive as she was, it wouldn’t take much to throw her into a daily state of anxiety.
While we were in a cab on the way home from the hospital, my cell phone chimed. “Nathan, this is Captain Rutledge. Can you talk?”
“Kinda. What’s up?”
“Sergeant Rivera was killed at the academy last night when he stepped out of his car. A sniper. That’s two instructors killed in less than a week. Our profilers think it might be an irate student, bent on revenge because he never made it.”
“I’m with Jessi and the baby. Give me time to get us settled and I’ll come down there and go over it.”
I clicked off the phone and knew Jessi sensed something wrong as she opened her jacket, preparing to breastfeed Grace. “What is it, Nathan?”
Looking down at the baby, I smiled and felt her tiny toes beneath the yellow knitted sock. “Just some problems at the academy. After we give some love to this little miracle, and snuggle her into her new bassinette, I’ll need to go in and chat with the captain.”
Five minutes later, the cab pulled up to our apartment. I paid the driver and tipped him a ten spot for the historic ride home. While Jessi buttoned her blouse and jacket, I grabbed her day bag and baby gear and ran up the porch, fumbling my keys.
When Jessi got to the door, I held it open and let her and the baby into the foyer. That’s when a mirror flash on the roof across the street caught my eye. A split second later, I saw a muzzle flash and then heard the crack of a firearm discharging. By instinct, I ducked, while grabbing Jessi, and pulled her and the baby down to the floor.
Jessi screamed, and I felt a white-hot gash open up the side of my head just above my left ear. Blood ran freely onto my shoulder. On the roof, the shooter sprang up and ran back and out of sight. I recognized his body movements at once, but threw that information aside turning to Jessi, who lay on the floor motionless.
When I turned Jessi over, I lost my breath and my mind that moment, watching blood pour from her mouth. She was dead. So was Grace. The high-powered bullet grazed off my head before passing through Jessi’s torso; it finally stopped in the baby’s neck.
I don’t remember anything after that. Doctors said that I went into shock and almost died from the loss of blood. When I finally became lucid in the hospital, and remembered Jessi and Grace lying in that foyer, soaked in blood, I wanted to die. I was no longer the same person. I could only see myself getting well enough to leave the hospital and find a way to end my life. The pain of my loss was beyond excruciating.
The captain and friends at the academy came to visit when I was released from the hospital four days later, but I was absent from body and mind, and could not speak or even acknowledge their care and concern. The only words I managed to utter went to the captain. “I’m not coming back…”
“I totally understand. What will you do, Nathan?”
“I don’t know. I just want to be alone.”
My parents flew in from Austin, Texas, and took care of the funeral arrangements. After a week, I packed my clothes and flew back home with them. They have a small fishing cabin on the Rio Grande River, about an hour from their home. They let me stay there for as long as I wished, checking up on me every few days (as a suicide watch) until they were comfortable I was on the mental mend.
I stayed at the cabin seven months, fly fishing, hiking and thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. As my depression diminished, nothing really appealed to me until my father, Arturo, started coming on Saturdays for a chat. Every time he came, he told me another part of the story about the life my mother, Juliann, and he led when they first met over twenty-five years earlier.
The first story he told was a ’stretch’, but I really wanted to believe him. “Your mother and I were commissioned by God to find every crooked preacher and Televangelist and destroy their ministries. You were named after the angel that helped us, Nathan.”
“How come I didn’t know any of this while I was growing up?”
“Our commission from God had nothing to do with you or your future. We wanted you to grow and develop independent of our passions. And as far as we’re concerned, you did. You chose a life in law enforcement because you identified with your Grandfather’s work with the DEA.”
I closed my eyes and choked. “And look where that’s taken me, Dad. My wife and child are dead because of me.”
“It wasn’t your fault, son. That sniper was aiming for you.”
“I thought about it again last night. If I didn’t duck down and pull Jessi with me, she and Grace would still be alive. When I thought about the path the bullet traveled, I realized I pulled Jessi right into the bullet.”
“Don’t torture yourself over this, Nathaniel. All these IF’S mean nothing when a man is moving on his instinct.”
“Where do I get peace, Dad? I’m so torn up inside.”
Dad handed me a King James Bible. “I knew it would come to this, so your mother and I highlighted all the scriptures that you need at this time. Get back into the word, son. That’s where you’ll find peace.”
My father was right. Although I did not know about my parents’ ‘commission from God’, growing up, they taught me to quote scripture from memory. That night, as I read through the marked verses, it was like a salve put on an open wound- my mangled soul and spirit. It didn’t heal me by any stretch, but a peace, accompanied with a plan, began to brew deep within my heart and mind. Somehow, I knew from that moment, I would work with God for the rest of my life. But little did I know that the path He set out for me would bring me face to face with an evil darker and more powerful than any I’d ever imagined could exist. I would be put to the ultimate tests in life again and again because of that evil, until the very foundations of my moral fortitude and ‘accepted truths’ about life and death, pressed me to the brink of insanity.
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