Vengeance Is Mine (An Owen Day Thriller)

by Rachel Ford

“Hell with that,” Ted said. “I’m going to kick his ass no matter what.”

  Chapter Ten

  The key unlocked the front door, and he got inside with no trouble at all. The house was dark, but he didn’t turn on a light. The spaces were big and roomy, and he could navigate without much trouble as long as he stuck to the center of the hallways and staircase.

  He knew where he was going. He’d been there before. By invitation, then. A lifetime ago, he thought. And he almost smiled at that.

  It was more than a figure of speech, wasn’t it? A judge’s lifetime ago.

  Richard Wynder’s personal office or study or whatever he called it was on the second story. A more private space than the first-floor area he shared with the wife. Where he could keep all his dirty secrets, out of sight. Hidden.

  But not for long. Not from him.

  He found the office. The door was closed, but not locked. He went inside and headed straight to the desk.

  It was a big, wooden thing, beautiful and hand carved. An antique he’d picked up somewhere. A president’s or a vice-president’s, or something like that. Wynder had mentioned it, but he couldn’t remember.

  Someone old and important. And dead, like Wynder.

  The laptop was sitting on the desk. He’d take that in a minute. But he needed the prints first. He was sure Wynder had held onto them. A digital copy was more practical. You could email it or put it on the cloud. You could print a hundred copies; a thousand copies; a million copies.

  But there was a psychological factor to the hardcopy that digital just couldn’t touch. Seeing things in print made it feel at once more real and more intimate. A secret confined to that rectangle of paper, shared between two people.

  A secret that could be contained. A secret that could go away, or not, depending on the choices you made.

  Well, he’d made his choices, and it was going to go away. For good, this time.

  * * *

  Owen Day glanced around, assessing the situation again. Five guys, all of them middle-aged or older. All of them a little drunk, one or two a lot drunk. All of them convinced he was some kind of killer.

  Not all of them eager for a fight. But all of them bearing down on him no matter what.

  He passed keys behind him to the old guy. “Get inside and lock the doors, William.”

  The old man snorted and declared he was no coward. “Anyway, it’s nothing the pair of us can’t handle.”

  “Don’t think we won’t stomp your ass too, Gramps,” one of the guys said. A big guy, bigger proportionally in the gut than anywhere else. But a guy who looked like he could still throw a solid punch.

  “Try it, porky. See what happens.”

  Owen wasn’t particularly worried about the crew before him. Not for himself. As long as he moved fast and stayed on his feet, these guys would wear themselves out trying to get to him. But he was worried about Tanney. The few beers had given him a wildly misguided sense of bravado.

  As old and slow as these guys were, he was older and slower. More fit, accounting for the disparity in age. But definitely older and slower. And a good punch could kill anyone, no matter how young or fit. But a guy Tanney’s age?

  “Get in the car,” he said.

  Tanney didn’t move. The other guys did.

  “Listen,” Owen said, “you got a problem with me, call the sheriff. I’ll wait for him. We can talk this out. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “He doesn’t want to hurt us?” one of the guys laughed. “You believe this guy?”

  “There’s five of us,” Ted said. “And one of you. But don’t worry. We’ll call the sheriff: to pick up the body.”

  Tanney laughed out loud and declared that he’d like to see the day when five old geezers like them could take out a marine.

  Owen gave up trying to find a peaceful resolution. It was pretty obvious at this point that wasn’t going to happen. They were beyond reason. And Tanney didn’t move fast enough for them to get into the vehicle and escape. Not that the old guy seemed inclined to try either way.

  Which left a fight, or as much of a fight as it would take to knock some sense into these clowns.

  He wasn’t sure how much that was going to be. Ted looked fit to be tied, and the stink of beer – lots and lots of beer – mingled with whiskey on the night air. Which could be a problem. It could mean persuading them to leave would take more force than it should have.

  And Owen wasn’t keen to beat up a bunch of aging alcoholics and crackpots. Of course, he wasn’t going to stand there and let them beat on him or the old guy, either. A delicate balance, then, to find the force proportional to the situation, but sufficient to persuade them to get lost.

  He let them get closer. Three of the guys advanced cautiously, and unwillingly. Ted and the redhead seemed more fired up, and more eager. He waited until they were five, maybe six strides away. Then, quick as a flash, he yelled and darted two steps forward.

  All five of them jumped. One of the guys took to his heels. He didn’t look back, and he didn’t slow down. He ran for his truck and he jumped inside. A moment later, he was squealing away, the righthand wheels sliding on parking lot ice while the left burned rubber.

  Tanney hooted and hollered. The four remaining guys exchanged glances. Two of them fell back but didn’t leave.

  Owen stayed where he was. “Get in the SUV,” he told Tanney again.

  The old man didn’t move.

  “Get him,” Ted snarled. He and the guy with the red hair lunged for Owen. The other two took a cautious step forward each, but came no closer.

  Owen stepped back one pace. “Ted, no one has to get hurt tonight,” he said.

  “You’re a dead man, Day,” Ted said in return. He came in swinging, hard and fast and without any kind of order or sense. They were angry swings, and uncoordinated. Owen stepped aside easily.

  The other guy had better focus, and he aimed for the head, fast and hard.

  Owen had twenty years of youth and fairly recent army training over him. More endurance and maybe more strength, but he wasn’t sure about that. Either way, he was able to get out of the way. But this guy would be a problem.

  “Get him,” Ted said again, his tone higher and angrier than before.

  The other two guys started to close in. Owen had about two paces before his back hit the tavern wall. He had to stop retreating. So he turned toward Ted, like he was going to lay him out flat. Then he pivoted two steps to the right and went for the guy with the red hair.

  He was coming in fast, coming to Ted’s defense. Owen watched the realization that it was a feint cross his face: recognition, then uncertainty, and then anger and fear in equal proportions.

  He did the smart thing. He retreated. Ted cursed and called him a coward.

  The tavern opened and someone yelled, “Damn you, Ted Walters, I warned you before. You get the hell out of here or I’m calling the sheriff.” A woman’s voice, older and gravelly, like a lifelong smoker’s. The bar owner, or his wife, maybe.

  “Butt out, Marcene,” Ted shot back.

  “You been warned,” she said. “No fighting in the parking lot.” Then the door closed.

  Owen saw indecision cross the faces in front of him. “Come on,” he said. “You heard her. Let’s go our separate ways, before anyone gets hurt.”

  One of the guys in the rear, the reluctant guys, said, “Come on, Ted. You know what Halverson said last time: we’d spend the night in lockup next time.”

  “I’m a dead man if the wife finds out I’m in lockup,” another guy said.

  “Then go home,” Ted said. “You damned bunch of cowards. I’m not leaving until they take this guy away in a body bag.”

  * * *

  He pulled and pried at the desk drawer, but it wouldn’t budge. The old lock held fast, and the old wood stayed securely in place. Those old workers knew their business, that was for sure.

  He considered his options. He didn’t want to leave any trace of his time here. He’d b
een careful entering. He’d used a key, and avoided footprints as much as possible. He’d disturbed nothing on the way in.

  Certainly, the missing laptop would be a giveaway. But the office didn’t look like a soul had been there in days. Maybe not since Rick bought it in the gardens the week before.

  It was probably too much for the grieving widow to bear. Which was alright. It meant it might be days or even weeks before she ventured inside. And if she noticed the missing computer right away, theft probably wouldn’t be her first assumption.

  It was a laptop, after all. Portable.

  She’d look around for it. She’d check the downstairs den, in case it had been slipped into a nook. She’d check the desk drawers. Then she’d go looking for his laptop carrying case, or his briefcase. She might even check his car.

  Then, after all that, she might suspect theft. She might call the sheriff. But it could be days or weeks or even months after he’d come and gone.

  Then light sprang through the room. Bright, blinding. His breath froze in his lungs as he spun toward the door.

  A woman stood there: middle-aged, pretty but haggard, her face puffy and red and gray.

  A pistol in her hand, aimed straight for him.

  Chapter Eleven

  He thought quickly. Without the mask, the situation might have been different. He might have been able to explain this away. But not in a ski mask. There’d be no explanations that would satisfy her.

  And even if he managed some kind of miracle, it wouldn’t last. Not once she sat down and thought about it.

  No. She would have to die.

  But first steps first: he needed to get her to set the gun down. So he laughed and said, “Marsha, it’s me.”

  She frowned and blinked. She recognized the voice, of course. But she was trying to figure out what he was doing here, now, in a ski mask.

  He took a step around the desk, toward her. A slow step. Non-threatening.

  She stretched out her arm and raised the gun higher. “Don’t move.”

  “Come on, Marsha. A gun? It’s me.” He pulled off the mask. “You know you don’t need that.”

  She considered, and then lowered the gun toward the floor. Still out, but not pointed at him. “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded. “Why are you here? Are you – are you robbing me?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then…what? What are you doing at Rick’s desk?”

  He sighed. “You want the truth?”

  She nodded. “Of course I want the truth.”

  “Okay. The truth is, Rick was blackmailing me.”

  She took a step backwards. “What?”

  “I made bad choices, a few years ago.”

  “What kind of choices?”

  He shrugged. “Girls, mostly.”

  “You were cheating on Erin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what? Rick was blackmailing you about that? You expect me to believe that?”

  “No. He was blackmailing me, but not about cheating. The girls – they weren’t all eighteen.”

  Her face went pale. “Kids?”

  “No, nothing like that. Sixteen, seventeen.”

  “Kids,” she said again.

  “Bullshit. They knew what they were doing. They were all consenting and being paid well for their time.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. “And Rick found out about this?”

  “Found out about it? He hung it over my head for years.” She took another step backward. She was almost in the hall. He couldn’t allow that. “Don’t look so surprised, Marsha. He was no saint himself. He knew all those years, and he didn’t go running to the cops.”

  She shook her head. “No. No, he would have turned you in.”

  “Bullshit. He needed me exactly where I was. And you know why.”

  She stared in confusion. He wondered if it was genuine. Could she really be that stupid? Rick had protested his innocence at the time, of course. But surely she hadn’t believed him? Surely she hadn’t been that stupid?

  “I’m calling 9-1-1,” she decided. She turned for the dark hallway beyond.

  He drew his own gun and aimed for the back of her skull. Two shots. Two hits. Her head exploded in a cloud of red. A fine mist of brain and blood and bone fragments flew everywhere.

  “Dammit,” he said aloud. He hadn’t wanted to have to do that. He hadn’t wanted to fire. But he was glad he’d brought his insurance policy anyway.

  He listened hard for a long moment. He didn’t want to find out there was anyone else home the hard way. But he heard nothing. So, slipping the mask back over his head, he picked up his shell casings and dropped them into a pocket. Then he headed out to the hall.

  He tried to avoid the blood, but without much luck. It was everywhere. He looked for his bullets. One of them had passed through Marsha Wynder’s head. It was lodged about a quarter of an inch into a trim board beyond.

  The other, presumably the first, hadn’t. It was still inside her skull. The advantage – and disadvantage – of a hollow point. The bullet expanded on impact. Great for demolishing the inside of someone’s head. Great, because once it expanded, it wouldn’t burrow through the walls and disappear rooms away. Not great when it came to recovery in someone’s head. That meant a fishing expedition.

  Not something he wanted to do.

  So he went for the one in the wall first. It was wedged tightly into its hole, but with a little leverage from the key, and a little elbow grease besides, he got it out just fine.

  Then came the ugly part. But it had to be done. He couldn’t leave any trace behind. So he gritted his teeth and got to work.

  The first shot had fragmented her brain and turned it into pulp. The second had split her skull. So he was able to separate and sift through the contents of her head until he found what he was looking for.

  He pulled it out and held it, unsure of what to do. His gloves were covered in blood and tissue. The bullet was covered in blood.

  And his stomach roiled. He felt like he was going to hurl. He retreated from the body and saw that he was tracking blood with him. Son of a bitch.

  He set his mind to the practical problems. The first thing he needed to do was get Marsha’s brain matter off his hands. Then he could worry about next steps.

  He set the bullet on the edge of the desk. He pulled tissue out of a box on Rick’s desk, and wiped what he could off the gloves. He inspected them, wiping with fresh tissues every time he spotted a bit of red.

  Then he pulled out another tissue and wiped the bullet. When he was happy, he dropped it into his pocket, alongside the other. He’d burn his trousers when he was done, just in case there were trace elements. But for now, he’d be alright.

  He looked at the desk and the drawer. He thought about how much time he’d spent here already. He thought about what he’d done in that time.

  No one might have ever seen the pictures before, or realized their import. No one might have gone rooting through Rick’s stuff. But now, with Marsha dead in the hall just outside the office? They’d be over this place like stink on shit.

  No, he needed to get those pictures, and he needed to get out. Fast.

  He looked around for something to open the desk. He didn’t see anything. No letter openers, no prybars. He thought about lighting the whole damned place on fire. That’d take care of the pictures, wouldn’t it?

  Maybe. Maybe not. That old desk was tough, and he didn’t know if Rick had some kind of small fireproof box in there. Just his luck, he’d torch everything but the photos.

  He thought about shooting the lock. That was risky, though. The bullet might get stuck too far into the wood for him to get out.

  Then he remembered Marsha’s gun, and he headed back to the hall. Blood was pooling all over the carpet. Some of it by the gun, some of it everywhere else. Or so it seemed.

  Gingerly, he lifted the gun. A .357 revolver, Smith and Wesson, model 686 with the two-and-a-half-inch barrel. A small gun, good for cl
ose quarters shooting. Good for a woman’s hand. A woman who wanted a hell of a lot of stopping power, anyway.

  Blood dripped from the revolver. He was careful to hold it away from his body, so that none of the drops speckled his clothing.

  He walked like a penguin back to the desk, careful about the blood. He positioned himself against the wall, took aim, and fired. His ears rang as the shot blasted through the desk. Wood splinters flew every which way.

  He’d missed the lock, but he tried the drawer anyway. It didn’t budge. So he backed up again, and took aim again.

  This time, he got the lock, dead center. His ears went on ringing. He set the revolver on the desktop and went for more tissue before anything else. He wiped the blood off his gloves. Then he pulled the drawer out.

  And he smiled as he saw the familiar manila envelope. He pulled it out, and he checked the contents. They were all there: a dozen eight-by-ten photos.

  He recognized the resort: the room, the veranda. All of it. He recognized the girls. He still remembered some of their names, or the names they’d given him at the time, anyway. They varied from shot to shot. But he was in all of them, in all kinds of compromising positions.

  He put them back in the envelope, and took the envelope. Then he rifled through the drawer, just to be sure. There was nothing else of interest. Not to him, anyway. Then he unplugged the laptop and took that too.

  And he breathed a sigh of relief. It was done. The secret had been contained.

  * * *

  Owen had dodged a few more blows, and mostly focused on making the other guys move. They were huffing and puffing with the exertion. He wasn’t.

  Tanney made things difficult, though. He couldn’t allow too much distance to open up between them. Sooner or later, Ted and his posse might tire of chasing him, and they’d turn on the old guy. He needed to be able to respond when and if they did that.

  So he danced one way and then the other, dragging them after him. It worked well. He was feeling none of the effects, and they were wheezing and huffing. They were, quite literally, tiring of the fight without him having to strike a single blow.