Technically speaking, Dalton is not the man who murders Ketcham, in the sense that he does not die instantly from being stabbed and carved in the guts. No, he’s still alive when Pat McGurn accidentally blows a hole in his back when Dalton pivots and uses Ketcham to block Pat’s incoming shot. Dalton then withdraws the knife from his dead foe’s belly and lobs it perfectly at Pat, where it lodges in his solar plexus, causing him to misfire his gun one last time before plummeting to the floor one story below and presumably breaking his neck, killing him. So ends the saga of the Sister-Son, the shiftless ex-lover of Frank Tilghman, the Man with the Weak Constitution, Patrick McGurn. And with him dies the instigating incident for the entire Dalton/Wesley War, the firing of Pat McGurn from his job of stealing from the register at the Double Deuce. He won’t be robbing registers ever again. Never again, the dulcet tones of Pat McGurn calling someone “chicken-dick.” Alas, alas, alas.

Brad Wesley may not seem like much of a details guy, considering how much of his business he delegates to his dubiously competent goon squad. But look at the butt of the knife that our good friend Gary Ketcham used to kill the already wounded and winded Wade Garrett. That’s a quarter, tails up—perhaps the very same quarter Brad Wesley flipped to decide whether to murder Wade or Dr. Elizabeth Clay. (Not that he communicated which person corresponded with heads or tails during the coin toss. See what I mean about how he doesn’t come across as much of a details guy?) Point is, this knife is always going to come up tails if used properly.

And use it properly Dalton does. When he gets the drop on Ketcham, he has just enough time to kick his shotgun and send his shot wild, then drop him to the floor. Ketcham reacts quickly, unsheathing his knife (which he’d recovered from Dalton’s car) and immediately adopting a knife-fighting stance. Showing steely resolve, Dalton dodges a few slashes, then kicks the knife out of Ketcham’s hands and straight up into the air. He grabs Ketcham, catches the knife after it makes its suspiciously leisurely descent, and jams it into his foe’s guts.

“Tails again,” he quips, and god help us, these are the last words Gary Ketcham will ever here. Imagine committing your life to a cause, in this case Brad Wesley’s control of a town full of old farts, and having that commitment lead you to a poetically just death, if by “poetically” you mean “on the level of a bathroom-wall limerick.” One needn’t like Katcham as a person in order to pity him.

After discovering the dead bodies of Morgan and O’Connor, Ketcham makes an even bigger show of stealth than he had before. He’s all silently approaching corners and then turning with his shotgun at the ready, only to find an empty space where he’d thought to find Dalton. Then something—goon-sense?—tells him exactly where Dalton is: He’s right behind him.

The fight that ensues is swift and brutal and ends with two men dead, neither of whom is Dalton. You get the sense that at this point Dalton wants his enemies to see him coming. I mean, look at him back there, just standing and waiting, giving Ketcham a fighting chance. There’s no other explanation for Dalton allowing himself to be intercepted: He wants to look in this man’s eyes as the lights go out. Boo!

Morgan was an important man, in the same sense that Brad Wesley’s grandfather was an important man: “He was an asshole.” Or as Carrie Ann put it, “Morgan was born an asshole and just grew bigger.” Here was a guy who was so temperamentally unsuited to the trade of bouncing that his presence actually made the old, hellhole version of the Double Deuce worse than it would have been had he not been there. Morgan had a great voice, a knack for off-kilter line readings (how can we forget “You’re a dead man“?), a penchant for tossing people through tables, and a thing for little moon boots. He’s gone now, murdered by Dalton, not even afforded the dignity of an onscreen death.

I can’t say he’ll be missed by many, because most of the people who might have missed him either are dead already or will be dead within minutes. One of those unfortunates is O’Connor, aka the Bleeder, the rumble-voiced dink who got his ass kicked by Dalton, then got his ass kicked by Brad Wesley for getting his ass kicked by Dalton, then got his ass kicked by Dalton and Wade Garrett in tandem. Then he, too, got killed by Dalton, offscreen, which—speaking as a general rule here—is not the place most movies want to kill their memorable goons. Road House is the exception that proves that particular rule.

And who is our guide through all this, our combination Charon and Virgil? It is Ketcham, the least memorable major goon, sneaking around Brad Wesley’s mansion looking for Dalton and finding only his handiwork. “Shit,” he says when he finds O’Connor slumped lifeless against the wall. That he was, Ketcham, that he was.

Ketcham—you remember Ketcham, don’t you?—is the one who puts it all together. It is he who investigates the thoroughly shot up and burned out wreck of Dalton’s car and discovers Dalton isn’t in it. (Surprise!) It is he who finds the knife pulled out of Wade Garrett’s chest and driven through the gas pedal to force the empty car to ram Brad Wesley’s compound. It is he who issues the four goons in his charge their marching orders: “Find that prick!” It is he who puts the knife back in his empty hip sheathe, revealing to the audience that it was he who put the knife in Wade Garrett’s chest. These climactic beats of the Road House story are pounded out by one man and one man alone.

Of course, and as this series has detailed, no one knows who the fuck Ketcham is when they first watch this film. Or when they seventh watch this film. Christ, before I wrote 140,000 words about Road House in daily increments I’m not sure even I realized the pivotal role this asshole played in several major events—driving his monster truck, lurking in the background of the Bleeder speech, spying on Dalton and Elizabeth from his monster truck, kicking Dalton with the boot-knife, running over Strodenmire Ford with his monster truck, killing Wade Garrett, and now, at the last, serving as the focal-point character for Brad Wesley’s goons unsuccessful attempt to find and eliminate Dalton. He genuinely is an important goon in this movie.

You just have no reason to believe that unless you’ve picked apart all the minutiae, is the thing. Importance is one thing, but do you remember him the way you remember the other four guys in this scene—Morgan, Pat McGurn, Tinker, and O’Connor, aka Terry Funk, John Doe, the funny overweight one, and the Bleeder? Of course you don’t, and why would you? They’ve looked and acted memorably. Ketcham might as well be a mannequin performing his tasks. You don’t even get to see him drive the knife into Wade, which might cement him as Jimmy Junior, so to speak. He’s just a stuffed shirt with a boring look and no preexisting connections to the Double Deuce by which to remember him.

Yet he will be the central goon in the carnage to come. Find that prick? My friends, we’ve already found him.

You’ve heard me complain about Ketcham, Brad Wesley’s most anonymous goon. How he’s handsome in a generic, Ken-doll way. How he’s a shirt-tucked-into-jeans kind of guy. How he doesn’t get a memorable introduction, just kind of sidling along in the background during the Bleeder scene. How no one ever bothers saying his credited name “Ketcham” out loud. How he pales in comparsion to Morgan, O’Connor, Jimmy, Pat McGurn, even Tinker, but how he’s the final guardian of Brad Wesley and the killer of Wade Garrett. How despite wielding the boot-knife and driving the monster truck you could walk right past him without even realizing who he was. How he’s aggressively, almost confrontationally non-descript.

Imagine how I feel now that I realize his name is “Gary.”

“Well, what are you waitin’ for, Gary? Drive through there!” That’s what Brad Wesley yells just before this tool in his giant red baseball cap runs over Strodenmire Ford with his monster truck. He says it with his back turned and with no eyeline-match cut, which is why I’ve watched this movie several dozen times and never noticed it before, but yeah, that’s Ketcham’s first name, Gary. Gary Ketcham. Gary, that most vanilla of names. If beige were a name rather than a color, it would be Gary. Gary is the “pic of myself wearing Oakleys in the driver’s seat of my car as a twitter avatar” of names. Gary. Wade Garrett gets killed by a guy named Gary. You remember Gary, don’t you? Wait, who are we talking about again?