Vandermein

I

"Villain" is such a loaded word: tired, antiquated to my ears. And yet, if you were to Google the word, my portrait is the first five images, followed by Lex Luthor, Thanos, the Joker, and Jeff Bezos. But I've never considered myself so comically evil.

No, I prefer the term "self-interested," "motivated," "neutrally aligned." In a world which cares so little for any individual, it is the individual's duty to care for themselves. Did you see that? A gender-neutral pronoun. I'm not bad.

But my morals align first and foremost according to my own interests.

This is why I steal from bloated corporate banks, why I hold politicians and royalty hostage. My life's work is to maximize my life, nothing more. We should all aspire to such self-respect.

And where does this stolen money go? My son's soccer camp, my daughter's clarinet lessons, my wife's art therapy degree. After the money is appropriately laundered and all loose ends are tied up, I open art museums, children's hospital wings, after school programs for underserved youth. Donated by the generosity of Dr. Frank Vandermein. Does it sound like altruism? Hardly. It's my name and picture on the front page of the newspapers lauding my radical philanthropy. How do you arrest a paragon of the community, even if you suspect the worst? If I go, so does the money.

But we have our fun with it nonetheless.

Detective Boone's been pursuing me for upwards of a decade. He's come so close so many times, and I've lost a lot of good men to his meddling. But like pieces on a chessboard, I find it more fascinating than frustrating, more fun than frightening. Honestly, I don't even know if I'd be in this business if not for our little cat-and-mouse game. How could I ever return to a cubicle office when I have plans to plot and fools to foil?

At least, this is all as it was. One can only live on the edge for so long, teetering and tilting, before the inevitable fall. And you never see it coming. It's a gust of wind, a pluck on the tightrope, a rogue pollen mote catching your nostril a thousand feet up.

It was a Tuesday night.

I was sitting down for dinner with my family. Meatloaf with a ketchup glaze served with mashed potatoes and green beans. It was a pauper's meal compared to what we could afford, but there is wisdom even among the dregs of society. Plus, it's the only thing my son Hunter would eat.

A knock wrapped at the front door. Someone made it past the gate and the guard stall. It had to be Boone. It seemed not to matter at all how many security measures I set on my property, he always found a way around.

I excused myself from the table, setting my napkin on my chair.

"Tell Bill I said hello," Kenzie smiled to me. She and my nemesis' now-ex-wife had become shopping friends, and she'd been over to their house plenty of times, even while they were still together. I wrote to the detective, offering to take him for a beer after what I'd heard was something of an ugly breakup, but he only returned a promise to see me in a cell. We love to banter.

Beside the front door, I had several concealed firearms. But I didn't need to worry about my safety around Detective Boone. He'd sooner die than see me escape "justice" through death.

I opened the door to find Detective Boone and his assistant, a new girl I didn't recognize, standing with their badges and side pieces visible on their belts.

"Bill! Come in, we're just sitting down for dinner." I'd invited him inside a thousand times and a thousand times he's said no.

"Dr. Frank Vandermein, do you have a moment to answer some questions?" The grizzled detective asked.

I turned on the front porch light, and that's when I truly saw them both. Bill's eyes were glazed, his faces shimmering with a fine sheen of sweat. He stank of cheap whisky and cheaper cologne. I wasn't sure which was meant to cover the smell of the other.

His assistant looked like another rookie, somewhere between 12 and 25 years old. She had jet black hair tied in a tight bun and she was sporting large black sunglasses despite the late hour. Her makeup, too, was heavily and hastily applied. It caked in some spots, crumbles of product collecting in wrinkles she was much too young to have.

"Detective, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting your partner. Hello, dear, it's a pleasure--"

Boone stepped between me and his ward. "Where were you two night ago around 3AM?"

Obviously, I was planting bugs in the boardrooms and executive offices of Balano, one of the world's largest tobacco corporations. I was heavily invested and needed to find out what was holding up their Singapore expansion. It was low-stakes crime, hardly enough for a visit.

"I was asleep, of course. Where were you?"

"Asleep?" He opened his notebook and started writing down my statement. "And you wouldn't happen to know of any goings on around the harbor?"

The harbor? It had once been a common smuggling spot, but that ship had sailed. Literally.

"Dear?" I looked past the wobbling veteran cop to his partner. "Who gave you that black eye? And who split your lip?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but Boone spun quickly around and barked for her to wait in the car. Her eyes, darkened by her glasses, flitted from me to her boss before she gave in and walked back toward the portion fence they'd jumped to get in.

"Bill, is your partner in trouble?"

"It's you who's in trouble when I place you at the scene," he growled back. "Babies, Frank? Babies!?" His voice was a smoldering whisper, tears welling in his eyes.

"What art you talking about?"

"Everything okay, hun?" Kenzie called me from the dining room.

"I'll just be a minute," I called back before turning back to Bill. "Detective, I honestly have no idea what you're telling me."

Bill reached into his pocket, and I nearly reached for my gun, unaccustomed to this level of drunken disorderliness from an interrogation. But he retrieved his phone instead and thrust it into my hands. I could have kept it, refused to hand it back, copy it and mail it back to him when I was done. He must have known that, I'd done it before. But he pushed it in my face instead.

I...Well, I'd prefer not to go into detail about what he showed me. But it was some level of evil involving stolen children and a sunken ship. I felt acid rise in the back of my throat, and it was everything I could do not to see Hunter and Sophia in the blank children's faces.

"Bill, this wasn't me." I tried to be earnest, I tried to sound sincere. But he wasn't buying it.

"This was sloppy, Frank, even for you. Forensics is combing the area, and when they find the link connecting you to it, I'll be back with a SWAT team and handcuffs."

"What happened to your partner, Bill?"

A smirk rose on the side of his mouth, followed my a deep frown. Something happened to her, and he was neither sad nor forthcoming about the details. "I'm raising cops, not cowards. You mind your own."

We exchanged a few unpleasantries before I bid him goodnight. But the images still swirled in my head. I couldn't eat a bite that night, so I busied myself instead with Boone's investigation. It hadn't hit the news yet, but I had feeds to every dash cam and radio frequency the police department used, so I watched and listened all night, looking for anything that might explain such a horrendous tragedy.