The guilt had to be displaced, too.
Norma did what she could, did what she thought right. "You don't have to die," she told him. "You're not responsible."
That was what he heard, and it was enough. He hadn't made the Alberts into slaves. He hadn't made the Alberts into slaves.
But he knew who had. Long before, it had all been carefully explained to him. All of the tricks that had been used....
Of course, Dodd thought. Of course he wasn't responsible.
He felt an enormous peace descend on him, like a cloak, as he turned with the beam in his hand and smiled at Norma. She began, tentatively, to return his smile.
The beam cut her down where she stood and left a swathe of jungle behind her black and smoking.
Dodd, his job completed, dropped the beam. For one instant four words lit up in his mind, and then everything went out into blankness and peace. The body remained, the body moved, the body lived, for a time. But after those four words, blinding and bright and then swallowed up, Johnny Dodd was gone.
He had found what he needed.
This is the end.