by Darcia Helle
Ruby rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Oh Lord, get me my boots.”
Michael laughed. “You always make me smile, Ruby.”
“That’s what I’m here for. I know damn well that it ain’t my typing skills keeping me working.”
“Typing skills are irrelevant,” Michael said. “You are irreplaceable when it comes to that personal touch with my clients. And, as for me, I’d be lost without you here every day.”
“You buttering me up for something?” Ruby asked.
He winked at her. “I was hoping you’d bring me back an extra large caffeine boost.”
“And a burger.”
“Just the coffee’s fine.”
Ruby narrowed her eyes. “You want cheese or no cheese?”
Arguing was pointless, so Michael simply gave in. “Cheese,” he said. “And pickles.”
“Good. See you in a bit.”
Michael turned back to his computer screen. He shoved the whole dad dilemma out of his mind and typed a command. The computer whirred to life just as his phone rang. He reached across the desk to grab the receiver, then realized it was his disposable cell phone. He must have forgotten to shut the ringer off. He retrieved the phone from the desk drawer he’d stuck it in and answered before it switched over to voice mail.
“Hey,” Sean said. “You got a minute?”
A familiar prickle ran down Michael’s spine. “Yeah,” he replied. “What’s up?”
“I know you prefer a longer break between jobs. But this one just came up, sounded like your kind of thing. And I’m sort of caught up in something that’s taking me awhile to wrap up, so I thought I’d toss this one your way. If you’re interested.”
They could have been discussing software design. Or some sort of programming contract. But the job Sean was referring to was murder.
Michael had met Sean through a long series of downward spirals soon after Christina had been murdered. Michael hadn’t wanted a trial and the chance of the bastard getting off. He wanted the man’s life. At the time, he hadn’t thought he could do it himself. And so he’d found Sean.
The guy who butchered Christina, Gwen, and her unborn baby turned out to be a steroid junky with a history of violent assaults. Sean had found him. Michael had killed him. And there began the odd sort of partnership they now shared.
“I might be interested,” Michael said.
“Meet me tonight. I’ll give you the details. Seven work for you?”
“Yeah. Seven’s fine.”
The line went dead. Michael flipped his phone shut, glanced back at his computer screen, and sighed. Filling the empty void in his life with murder. Not exactly the pastime he’d planned on.
Chapter 4
“Lots of talk about you circling ‘round,” Sean said quietly.
“Yeah?” Michael absently tapped the side of his beer bottle. They sat in the back corner of a hole-in-the-wall bar near the pier. The bar, called The Rusty Anchor, had been their usual meeting place for the past two years. “What kind of talk?”
“You’ve become somewhat of a cult hero. Doing what everyone wishes they could, whether they admit to it or not. You’ve even been given a nickname.”
“A nickname?”
“The Ghost,” Sean said with a laugh. “Because lots of people believe in you even though they’ve never seen you.”
Michael had worked hard at remaining anonymous. This bit of information was unsettling. He asked, “These people talking are others in your profession?”
“You mean our profession?”
Michael dropped his eyes back to his beer bottle. He swiped a chunk of hair from his forehead and blew out a long breath. Funny how he viewed Sean, a professional hit man, as so far separate from himself. But there it was. Sean had tossed it right on the table. While they might approach it with different intentions, the result remained the same. They were both killers.
That label didn’t settle well with Michael. He took a swig of his beer and chose not to think about it. At the moment, he had bigger concerns. He said, “I thought we agreed that you’d be the only person to know about me.”
Sean flashed a smile. All brilliant white teeth. His dark hair, graying at the temples, was cut short and brushed away from his face. He wore denim shorts and a t-shirt that said Don’t Ask. His brown eyes twinkled as if always on the verge of laughter. He didn’t look the least bit dangerous.
Sean said, “Everyone knows you exist.”
“Everyone?”
“Professionals like us, people on the street, any cop with his ear to the ground. But I’m the only one who knows who you are.”
“I’m not sure that’s very comforting.”
“Ahh, lighten up. Reputations are important.”
“Yeah…”
Sean swallowed a mouthful of beer, then leaned forward. His voice remained low, just above a whisper. “So this job kind of fell in my lap. Sounded like something you’d enjoy.”
Michael looked at him and considered the concept of enjoying what he did. He’d never thought of it that way, wasn’t sure he wanted to. Enjoyment wasn’t what he’d been after. It was about balance. Tipping the scales for the innocent. Preventing someone else from feeling what he had on the day that cop had told him that Christina had been murdered.
“What’s the job?” Michael asked.
“Guy about your age. Gets his rocks off raping women.”
Michael closed his eyes. He fought off the image of Christina’s battered body. Beaten, brutally raped, badly cut up, then strangled. He’d insisted on seeing her body at the morgue. Crazy. Maybe he’d thought she’d rise off the table in some miraculous moment induced by their intense love. Or maybe he’d been clinging to that shred of hope that the cops were mistaken; it wasn’t Christina.
Wrong on both counts. She was dead and would stay that way forever.
He opened his eyes and anger replaced the sadness. He said, “Who wants him dead?”
“Rape victim’s father,” Sean replied.
“They’re sure it’s the right guy?”
“Dude was convicted, spent four years in prison. Got out three weeks ago. Called her, threatened to, quote, fuck the life out of her. Told her if she went to the cops he’d give the mother the wildest fuck she ever had, then cut her body into little pieces.”
Michael lifted the bottle to his lips, wanting to drown in the beer he poured in his mouth. The taste was rancid in his throat. He said, “They call the cops?”
“No. Father shipped the kid off to Indiana with the mother. I guess they’ve got family up there.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, but yesterday a young girl turned up dead in a back alley up in North Tampa. Did you read about it?”
“The one found in the Dumpster?”
“That’s her.” Sean finished off his beer, then said, “Father’s positive it’s the same guy. He’d gotten a call earlier that day. Dude said that since he couldn’t find the daughter, he’d found a replacement. And that no hiding place would be safe forever.”
Michael stared at Sean but saw the dead girl, raped, beaten, and left to rot with the trash. He’d seen pictures of her on the news. Her name was Amy. He said, “Okay.”
“Meaning you’ll do the job?”
“Yeah.”
Sean reached into his back pocket and withdrew a photograph. He handed it to Michael. “Info’s on the back,” he said. “I told the guy you’d call tonight.”
Michael raised his eyebrows at that. Sean laughed and said, “I knew this one would tug at your heartstrings.”
“Yeah,” Michael said. He stuffed the picture in the back pocket of his shorts without looking at it. “Did you tell him how much?” he asked.
“Nope. That’s your call.”
Michael pulled a 20 from his wallet and dropped it on the table. “Thanks,” he said.
“It’s my turn to pay,” Sean said.
As Michael slid out of the booth, he said, “Next time.”
Chapter
5
Michael pushed open his front door and strode into the living room. He tossed the stack of mail he’d retrieved onto the coffee table. The house had that stale smell from being closed up for too long with the air conditioner running. He considered opening the windows to air the place out. The temperature outside had cooled some with the rain. But in the end fresh air seemed more effort than it was worth.
He ignored the blinking message light on his answering machine. The call almost certainly had been from his father, since his father had called the office three times earlier that day. All three times Michael had refused to answer, not wanting to hear any drunken babble. And he’d let all the calls on his cell phone go through to voice mail.
Dusk had settled but Michael didn’t bother with lights. He flipped the deadbolt to lock the front door, slightly amused that he found it necessary to lock people like himself out of his house. Then he went down the hall to his home office. He set both cell phones down and turned on the floor lamp. His computer hummed from the corner of his desk. He was alone again.
He pulled the photograph from his pocket and settled into the leather recliner by the window. For the first time, he allowed himself to look at the man in the picture. Sometimes this was the hard part. To look at a photograph and realize that he was going to kill the person looking back at him. That person often looked innocent. Average. You usually couldn’t see evil in a photograph.
This guy wasn’t much different. Small eyes, narrow, with bushy eyebrows. Maybe that made him look mean. Maybe Michael just knew that he was.
The guy was sitting by a pool, wearing denim cutoffs and holding a Budweiser bottle. A couple sat behind him to his left, each holding a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. A party of some sort. Everyone smiling. The scene unraveled in Michael’s mind. He turned the picture over, not wanting to give life to his imagination.
The guy’s name was Ray Nelson. Thirty-two years old. Suspected of five different rapes. Convicted of only one. Three of the girls, all between the ages of 16 and 18, had refused to testify. The guy had used a condom, nice guy that he was, so there wasn’t much physical evidence. The remaining girl, the one not given a choice as to whether or not she would like to testify, had been beaten into a coma during the rape. And that was how she remained.
Michael grabbed his cell phone from the desk, the disposable one, and punched in the number written on the back of the photograph. A man answered midway through the first ring, like he’d been sitting on the phone. Michael glanced at the name scrawled beneath the number. He said, “Tom Emery?”
“Yes…”
“Is this your home number?”
“No,” Tom replied. “It’s a disposable cell phone.”
“Good,” Michael said. “Are you alone?”
“Yes. Are you the man Sean told me about? Will you be taking over?”
“I believe so.”
A slight hesitation, then Tom said, “How do I know I can trust you? That you won’t just take my money? Or that you’re not a cop trying to trap me?”
“You don’t,” Michael replied. “Any more than I know those things about you.”
“I see…”
“Look, this is how it works,” Michael said. Then he explained the rules. No physical contact. The money would be wired into his offshore account. Half up front, the other half upon completion of the job.
Michael flipped the photo over as he spoke. He stared into the eyes, imagined himself killing the guy. He supposed that he should have felt something then. Remorse maybe? Guilt? He felt nothing.
After having laid out his ground rules, Michael said, “Did you go to the cops after your daughter got that phone call? Or at any time since?”
“No,” Tom replied. “I have nothing against the police. They did their best before. But calling them this time would have been useless. My daughter was put through hell during his trial. Then Nelson gets out with barely a slap on the wrist. And right away he’s calling my baby… saying things…”
Tom’s voice broke. After a brief pause, he continued. “I didn’t involve the police because I knew right then that this monster had to die.”
“How old is your daughter?” Michael asked.
“She just turned 22. She was 17 when the… when it first happened.”
Michael didn’t know why he had asked or what difference the information made. Somehow the young age made the situation seem worse. He said, “And you’re sure we have the right guy?”
“Not a doubt in our minds,” Tom replied. “He rented a room from our neighbor for a few months. He even came to a pool party we had at our house. That was two weeks before…”
Tom’s voice trailed off but Michael didn’t need him to fill in the blanks. He imagined what it would feel like to invite someone to your home, only to later have that same person rape your daughter. “Okay,” he said. “Keep your daughter safe. I’ll get this done as soon as possible.”
“Thank God,” Tom said. “You don’t know… No child should have to go through what my daughter did. The rape… the beating… the testifying... only to have the bastard come back and threaten her again.”
“I agree.”
“I’ve never dealt with offshore accounts before but even a backwoods guy like me should be able to figure it out. How much are we talking? I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary to pay you. I’ll sell my house. Borrow it somewhere. I don’t care what I have to do.”
Up until now, Michael had only dealt with people who had money. Tons of it. Not that he made that a priority. It just happened to work out that way. This guy didn’t sound like he had money. But he did have lots of heart and obviously loved his daughter enough to sacrifice everything to give her peace of mind.
He looked back down at the beady-eyed Ray Nelson. The man needed to be dead. He said, “I don’t want you to sell your home, Mr. Emery.”
“Call me Tom. Please. And the house, it’s just a house. My daughter… Well, you know.”
“I do.” Michael’s eyes roamed the room, taking in the generic paintings on the walls and the collection of software on the shelf. Just a room. Just a house. He’d give it all up in a second to protect someone he loved.
His typical fee ranged between 15 and 30 thousand dollars, depending on the situation and the work involved. He thought about that and about the growing anonymous account he kept in the Bahamas. Then he said, “Can you come up with five grand?”
“Five?” Tom repeated. “That’s the down payment? Or the initial payment? I’m not sure how to word it.”
“That’s the total cost. Can you get that much?”
“Oh. Sean gave me the impression it would be much more.”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “That’s my choice.”
“Thank you,” Tom said softly. “I can get an advance on my credit card and have the money tomorrow morning. The peace of mind you’re giving us. You have no idea, Mr. …”
“My name isn’t important.”
“Of course. I understand.”
Michael leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the picture of Ray Nelson. He said, “I’ll have this done within a few days.” Then he gave Tom the information necessary to transfer the funds into his account, along with the suggestion to take off for Indiana and stay with family. Provide himself with an alibi, as well as a possible excuse for the cash advance if the cops were to look that closely.
“I’ll do that,” Tom said. “You’ll have the five thousand tomorrow.”
“Not necessary,” Michael replied. “Half up front. The other half when I’m done. That way you know I’ll get it finished.”
“I’m not worried about that anymore. Sean told me that you were highly selective and the best at what you do. And, you might think I’m strange, but I get good vibes from you. So, like I said, you’ll have it all tomorrow.”
“I’ll call when the job’s done.”
“Thank you.”
“Rest easy, Tom,” Michael said. “It won’t be long.”
The address in St. Petersburg took Michael just under an hour to get to. The shack posing as a house sat wedged in a row of equally pathetic houses. The one he’d been looking for, number 541, looked as if termites had been feasting on its walls for years.
Michael drove slowly past, taking in the cracked front window and splintered door. No garage. A crumbling car port with no car beneath it. Barely 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning. Odds were that Ray Nelson was sleeping off a good drunk. Though he could be doing that anywhere. Home. Some woman’s house. The gutter.
The tiny yard was mostly dirt, with a few straggly weeds struggling to survive. The shack-like homes lined the street, so close that you could climb out your side window and right into your neighbor’s without touching the ground.
Two houses down, an old black man sat in a decrepit lawn chair in his front yard. He held a whiskey bottle in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He watched Michael pass with suspicious eyes.
At the corner, Michael took a left and headed back toward the highway. Judging by the little he’d seen, it didn’t look like Ray Nelson would be dying in his own home. Getting inside would be simple. Getting inside without being seen would not. And Michael didn’t take those kinds of chances.
At least now he had a distraction for the weekend. Murder as a distraction. He shook his head at that, then let the thought go. He’d rent a car, one less conspicuous in this neighborhood than his Porsche. Then he’d follow Nelson and get a feel for the guy. And figure out how he wanted to do the kill.
Given the circumstances, most people would not believe that Michael didn’t enjoy violence. He never killed with knives. Too much blood and it almost always took too long for death to come. He stuck to guns – tossing them afterward – and on rare occasions small bombs.
Only once had he used his bare hands. That very first time. He’d beaten Roger Dossing to a barely recognizable pulp. Each punch, each crunch of bone, had been about seeking vengeance. Afterward, looking down at Dossing’s still form, he’d realized that vengeance brought little comfort. Christina, Gwen, and Ashley Lynne, Gwen and Isaac’s unborn daughter, remained dead. Nothing had changed that. But at least no one would ever die at Dossing’s hands again.
Michael pressed harder on the gas, letting the Porsche glide along the highway as his thoughts wandered. He wasn’t sure how he’d fallen into this business and didn’t care to examine what it meant that he was good at it. Ridding the world of scum, like some sort of superhero gone astray. Maybe his life should be a comic book series.