“I leave you with God now.”

The bullet made a low pop, as it lodged into the forehead of its intended victim. Walking away, leaving the body on the edge of the wharf, the tall figure dressed in black from head to toe stole away into the shadows of the night.

There was no small commotion in the morning, when the naked corpse of the superintendent of Maritime Corporation, Inc., was found. His was a thick and rotund figure, great had been his appetite in life. Lying dead on the planks of the pier, the color drained from his face, his eyes staring off blankly into some netherworld, Superintendent Marshall Hawks would no more breathe, bleed, or be.

To his avaricious wife, this would be a tragedy, seeing as she would no longer have an income upon which to feed. To the thousands of workers and employees as well as partners he had shafted in deals and wages, the only tragedy would be of not having gotten the opportunity to have been the one to put the bullet in between his eyes. Maritime Corporation, Inc., too, was in desperate straits, being on the verge of bankruptcy due to Superintendent Hawks’ unwise and illegal budgetary practices.

When the chief of police arrived at the scene, he found a group of disgruntled workers stand around the dead man, arguing about whether to dump his body in the ocean or to cut off a finger or two of his for good riddance and good luck. The chief of police couldn’t blame the workers for their feelings, but laws were laws and they needed to be obeyed, regardless of whether the deceased had ever been concerned with them himself.

The rule of law ended up winning the day that morning with Mr. Hawks being transported by ambulance to the local hospital, whereat he was determined to be dead on arrival, a penetrating brain injury being the cause of death.