Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

The police came. I don’t know what else happened. A lawyer came from Torstein’s family, told the authorities that they were Orthodox Jews, and an autopsy was not permitted. In fact, he needed to take the body for burial immediately. Orthodox Jews! I’d never seen any indication of it ... I wondered if this lawyer really even came from their family ... but then I got to looking at him, and I knew I’d seen him a time or two in the park, maybe even on New Year’s Eve. Torstein knew him. His name was Joseph. That was all I’d ever known about him, up until now.

The Medical Examiner wouldn’t give the body to Joseph, but he seemed pretty certain that before the day was over he would have it, and the family would bury it. What family? None of us had ever seen any of Torstein’s family. We were his family.

“That’s right,” Joseph said. “You are. So you’d best come to the funeral tonight.”

“Tonight?” I said numbly.

“This afternoon,” Joseph said. “The family has a crypt at Green Lawn.”

“You can’t get him ready to bury in a day,” I said, looking at the rusty red jacket, unable to see anything there that looked like Torstein.

“It has to be this afternoon or Sunday. The Sabbath begins at sundown. If you want to be there for the funeral, come this afternoon.”

I didn’t want to be there for the funeral. I didn’t know anything about Jewish funerals. I didn’t know Torstein was Jewish. I didn’t want it to be his funeral. Everything was hideously unreal.

But at three o’clock everything was hideously too real. There was no funeral. There was no family. We were there, and Joseph, and the cemetery people who slid the coffin into the crypt and pushed the marble door closed to lock it. Where was Torstein’s father, who supposedly lived up the hill, and where were the two gleaming men — the ones Pete, Jack and Jazz had met when they drove up to that family home? If he really had a dad who lived up there, where was he? Why were the only mourners by the crypt a bunch of shell-shocked losers who hadn’t even stood by Torstein when he needed us most?

That really got to Pete. He’d always thought he’d fight his way out of anything. He’d always prided himself on his strength and loyalty. And in the end he’d done nothing to save Torstein. He was like a man without a center now. He stood staring at the sturdy marble door of the crypt with lifeless eyes and slumped shoulders. We were all heart-broken. But Pete was just broken.

The Dunkers had turned up. Someone had gotten a text out to one of them. They were like a hive mind, I swear. The word had passed around from their cell phones and laptops, their FaceBook pages and blogs. They came to the funeral, such as it was, but they weren’t the exuberant bunch who had reported on the success of their “love is the answer” campaign all those months ago. They were, once again, deprived of a leader, just as they had been when Duncan was killed. They were like an elite fighting unit, or a Borg collective, that took its instructions from one head, and if that head were gone, they were lifeless droids. They tried to talk, to say it would have gone differently if they’d been around. I didn’t know what to say to them. I didn’t know anything. They drifted away in pairs, bereft.

Joseph disappeared as soon as the crypt was sealed. I’d wanted to ask him where the hell Torstein’s father was, but I wasn’t thinking clearly enough. If he was really the family’s lawyer — and I guess he was because he’d got the body released from the M.E. so fast — he maybe would know where this rich dad of Torstein’s was, the one with the house on the side of the mountain and the beautiful view of the sea ... but Joseph was gone, and I couldn’t ask him anything.

The rest of us started to drift away, too. Franz said he would take Tawny home. They’d just been married on Sunday. The first week of their life together had ended in tragedy. Maggie said she would take Mari, Caroline and Van home. But Caroline was already planning to leave town. She wanted to take her son and get away. Len and Angel went home with Maggie and Caroline — they would be moving away, to live in the little mountain town where Len worked at the rehab. But they didn’t want to take Sully and leave so soon when he’d been living with Maggie all these months. They would stay another week with her.

Jack and Jazz said they would go home; they wanted to tell their parents what had happened.

I don’t think any of us really knew what we were doing or saying. It was like the world had shifted out from under us, and we were desperate to get our feet back on the ground. Bruiser and I were standing there with Pete and Phyllis, when Ferdy came. I thought for sure Pete would clock him. But Pete, he didn’t really seem to see him.

“I didn’t want this to happen,” Ferdy said. He was staring at the crypt, same as Pete was.

“What did you want to happen?” Bruiser asked.

“I wanted Torstein to take my advice, to do the TV gig. Nikolai was supposed to rough him up, get him scared. He was never supposed to kill him. Then we were going to get the TV news on the story. Ariel told me if Torstein came to her after he got away from Nikolai, with a black eye and broken nose and whatnot, she’d put the whole thing on the news. I was just trying to get his message out. I was trying to get him to be a hero ... to help get the media and law enforcement after Nikolai and draw attention to our cause ...”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Bruiser said. “Torstein didn’t want to be on TV. Why would getting roughed up by a mobster change that?”

“Don’t you see?” Ferdy said. “Once he realized how evil Nikolai was, he’d want to go on TV and expose him. That’s what Ariel said ... And once he saw what a powerful difference he could make on TV, he’d want to keep doing it, keep spreading his message. It was supposed to jar him into taking action.”

I didn’t want to feel sorry for Ferdy, because he’d done this to all of us. But if you could hear the desperation in his voice, the way he really seemed to have convinced himself that somehow this was a good plan ... it was pitiful. It was painful. It added another horrible layer of heartache to an already horrendous situation.

I didn’t want to feel sorry for him ... but I didn’t want to forgive him, either. I just threw my arm around Pete’s shoulders and turned him away from the crypt, then took Phyllis’ hand and started walking back out of the cemetery. We were done.

Bruiser came with us.

We left Ferdy standing there, his hands held out to us, wanting something none of us could give. Forgiveness, absolution. Maybe, someday, but not then.

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