by Donald Wells
Jackson Poole was thirty-three years old, still boyishly handsome and had an athletic build. He was a renowned cosmetic surgeon, and more than a few of his clients often appeared on the society pages or in lingerie ads.
As he walked inside the apartment, he attempted to kiss Gabby, but she pushed him away with her good arm and then pointed at the coffee table.
“Who are those women, Jackson?”
Jackson walked over and stared down at a group of photos. The photos showed him in various hotel bedrooms with several different women. In every photo, he and the woman he was with were both naked, and judging by his outstretched arm, he had taken all of the pictures himself.
“How did you get these? These were on my phone.”
Jessica shared a look with her husband, as they once more admired the computer hacking skills of Ms. Carly Zhang.
Gabby ignored Jackson’s question and repeated her own.
“Who are those women?”
“Their names don’t matter; besides, I haven’t seen any of them in over a year. These pictures are all old.”
Gabby shook her head.
“They’re not old. In a few of those photos I can see your watch, the one I gave you for your birthday.”
Jackson spread his arms.
“They meant nothing Gabby, baby, I love you.”
“You don’t love me. You wouldn’t have been with them if you really loved me.”
Gabby began crying as she pointed to a box near the door.
“Those are your things. Leave the key on the table.”
Jackson put his face less than an inch from hers.
“I was with them because you don’t please me. They were all ten times the woman you are; you’re pathetic, you’re just fucking pathetic.”
Gabby began crying so hard that she had trouble breathing. She stumbled over to the sofa and sat, then, she began rocking back and forth to the rhythm of her tears.
He took a step towards Jackson and saw Jessica shake her head. With a sigh, he stepped back and remained simply an observer.
Jackson kept berating Gabby.
“You think that you can make it without me? I’m every woman’s dream, a rich, young doctor. I can replace you tomorrow. I should have dumped you months ago. You know what you should do? You should hang around truck stops, or better yet, seduce the garbage man the next time he comes by, he’s probably a better match for a piece of trash like you.”
Jessica walked over and eased herself between them.
“That’s enough!”
Jackson ignored her and spoke to Gabby again.
“Once I walk out that door I’m gone for good.”
Gabby took a deep breath, before speaking one word.
“Goodbye.”
“You’re going to be sorry you said that bitch.”
Jackson reached into his pocket and brought out a keychain. After finding the right one, he removed the key and threw it at Gabby, who flinched away as if he had thrown a punch. Afterward, Jackson spun around, grabbed the box from the floor, and slammed the door as he left.
Jessica sat beside her sister on the sofa and Gabby cried in her arms until the tears ran dry. Once she composed herself, Gabby reached into her pocket and took out the card that Jessica had given her the day before.
“This doctor, is she nice?”
“Yes baby,”
“Then hand me the phone,”
***
12:43 a.m.
Jackson used his key to gain entrance into the apartment, his second key, the one that Gabby knew nothing about.
The apartment was dark, but he knew it well and navigated his way to the bedroom.
She always slept with the door closed, and so he eased it open slowly, while being careful not to make any sounds that would wake her.
Once the bedroom door was opened, he stood in the threshold and stared within. It was blackness, if not for his intimate knowledge of his surroundings he would not have known where the bed was.
As he put on the thick leather gloves to protect his hands, he thought again about her defiance. She deserved more than a broken arm for humiliating him in front of other people, much more, and the way she dismissed him, telling him to leave.
You don’t control this relationship, Gabby. I do!
After easing the door shut behind him, he slithered towards the bed and stood over her. In the darkness, she was little more than a vague form. He felt the rage build inside, and when it was at its peak, he raised his fist to strike.
***
He awakened with a start, and found himself alone in bed.
He was in Jessica’s old bedroom, as the two of them were staying with her father during their visit.
As he went downstairs in his robe, he saw a light on in the kitchen. He walked into the room and she smiled at him.
“Hi, I hope I didn’t wake you, but I couldn’t sleep and so I thought I'd get a snack.”
“No, it wasn’t you that woke me; it must have been a bad dream.”
“I hate those.”
“Gabby?”
“Yes?”
“Where’s Jessica?”
***
The lights came on just as he raised his fist. It was the brightest light Jackson had ever seen, and after the former darkness, it seared his pupils and rendered him temporarily blind.
That injury was followed by the sharp pain on his left cheek. He let out a shriek, touched his hand to his face, and felt the bloody flap of skin even through his gloves.
As the horror of his wound fully enveloped him, he felt the blade slice across his face again and his bottom lip fell to the floor, along with the tip of his nose.
He turned to run, to flee the butcher before him and ran into the closed door, the door he had shut to lock in Gabby's screams. As he at last flung it open, something crashed against the side of his head, and it brought back the blessed darkness and took away the cursed pain.
***
Jessica placed the knife and the leather sap on the bed and hit a switch, which caused the lights to go out. She reached over to the bedside table and turned on the lamp. Afterward, she removed the welder’s goggles she wore, while keeping on the plastic, hooded coveralls.
Blood was everywhere. By the door, Jackson Poole lay unconscious, his face bleeding and mutilated, Jessica stepped over him and walked to the apartment door. When she placed her eye to the peephole, she saw no movement in the hallway.
She walked back into the bedroom and began disassembling the two, fourteen hundred watt work lights and their metal stands. On her way home, she would dump them in a field along with the bloody coveralls and goggles and set fire to all of it.
Her phone vibrated.
“Hi honey, what are you doing up?”
“Where are you?”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes, but Gabby is in the kitchen.”
“Tell her that I couldn’t sleep and went for a drive.”
“Where are you?”
“I’ll explain when I get home.”
“Do you need me?”
Jessica looked down at Jackson Poole and smiled. Not many people will patronize a plastic surgeon whose face looks like a Picasso, nor will many women fall prey to his charms.
“No, what I did, I needed to do alone.”
There was silence on the line for a moment, but then she heard him ask a question.
“He came back to hurt her, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“It’s dangerous to roam about in the night.”
“Yes it is.”
“When will you be home?”
“Soon, and baby?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, and Jessica, please be careful,”
“I will, see you soon.”
She put her phone away and went back to work.
Twenty minutes later, two police officers responded to an anonymous tip and discovered Jackson Poole. His assailant,
presumably a prowler, was never found.
TAKEN! 9 – THE HIT
He gave Jessica a kiss and then watched as she put on her earphones and climbed aboard the treadmill. He moved up the basement steps as if he were gliding and exited out the back door that sat off the kitchen.
The cold hit him the moment he stepped outside and he could see his breath leave in a mist of white, as a steady fall of snow added to the already blanketed landscape.
He spent two minutes stretching by the porch railing as he limbered up in preparation to run. When he was ready, he headed east, towards the impotent sun, which on this winter’s day did little to warm the earth.
Their property was secluded, their acreage large, and although their house was of modest size, they had designed it together and it suited them to perfection.
He ran along a snow-covered trail that in the summer was bordered by wildflowers, but that now wound its way between layers of dead leaves and fallen branches. His pace was a steady one, and before long, he emerged out onto a little used county road and felt his body adjust to his demands, and if not for the feel of the ground beneath his feet, he would have sworn he was floating.
Two miles later, he rounded a curve and saw a curious sight. A car, an older model, parked onto the narrow shoulder, its engine running, its door unlocked, and, its driver missing.
He halted his run and gazed about, thinking that perhaps the call of nature was great and that the driver was behind a tree or a bush, relieving themselves. He looked along the shoulder and saw the single set of boot prints left in the snow and decided to track them to their source.
When the tracks continued on deep into the woods, he quickened his pace. The prints were headed northwest, headed directly for their home and his instincts were telling him to hurry, yet to also be quiet, lest his new prey turn and become predator.
He saw him just as the house came into view and the intruder was already on their property. The man was dressed much like himself in a running suit and ankle-high boots with a knit cap upon his head.
He told himself that the man was harmless, that he was just some lost motorist looking about for a local to guide him back to the main highway. He told himself this, but he did not believe it.
As he crept ever closer, he watched the man move stealthily about his home’s exterior while checking for an unlocked door or window, and knew that by now the perimeter alarms would be warning Jessica of his presence, but then he remembered the earphones, she was wearing earphones when he left her.
As he moved along, he silently cursed himself for not backing up the alarm with accompanying strobe lights that would blink incessantly in concert with the sound. He made a mental note to fix that hole in their defenses even as he stalked ever closer to their uninvited guest.
The man unzipped his jacket and out came a gun with a short, stout sound suppressor attached. The man was staring downward, and he realized that there was a basement window there, a basement window that offered a view of their home gym.
As the man aimed the gun at the window, he was still forty feet away and knew that he would never reach him in time. Without breaking his stride, he scooped up a snow-covered rock and in one smooth motion hurled it at his target. The rock struck the man in the small of his back and caused him to fire high, and his shot hit the side of the house.
The gunman turned quickly, nearly as quickly as he could, and he realized that if he tried to tackle him that he would be shot dead. As the man fired, he leapt behind a stack of firewood and wished that he had a gun instead of the folding knife secured in the side of his boot.
The man came at him boldly, without speaking a word, and there was nowhere to run. The cord of firewood he hid behind stood six feet high and he had just cut it the previous day.
As he bent his knees and pressed his back against the logs, he listened.
From the right, the man was approaching from the right.
He swung the ax he had used to cut the wood and hit the man in his gun hand. The weapon fell to the ground along with a finger, and he followed through with a backhand swing and smashed the man on the side of the head with the flat of the axe blade. The man tumbled unconscious atop the snowy ground and lay there in a heap.
Even as the man fell, Jessica was sprinting out of the house with a gun in her hand.
“Oh God, are you alright?”
“I’m fine, but as you can see we have a visitor.”
After retrieving the man’s gun, he checked him for ID and additional weapons and found neither.
“Who is he?” Jessica said.
“I don’t know, but I think he was sent here to kill you.”
“What? Why would anyone want me dead?”
He looked down at the injured man as his blood ran as cold as the air about them.
“I don’t know who would want you dead, but he does.”
“I’m calling the police,” Jessica said, as she turned to go back into the house.
“No police, if he doesn’t want to talk, the police can’t make him.”
Jessica stared up at him.
“But you can,”
He looked into her eyes and nodded. “Oh yes,”
***
Jessica kept watch over the man, while he trekked out to the car that was left running on the road. He drove it back to the house and parked it in the garage. The car had been stolen; as evidenced by the broken ignition housing and the screwdriver protruding from it.
He gave the car a quick search and found nothing that looked as if it belonged to their mystery man, and also made certain that the car contained no GPS tracking devices that would lead anyone looking for it to their home.
After removing the riding mower from the shed, he dragged the man inside and secured him to the dirt floor by pinning his wrists and ankles with a set of metal croquet wickets, which he pounded into the hard earth with the help of a two-pound hammer.
Jessica gazed down at the man. He was about their age, with an average build, and dark hair sprouted out from under his cap. His tan was deep and obviously acquired over many years, but his face remained lineless, except for a jagged scar on his chin.
“What will you do once he tells you what you want to know?”
“If I think he can still be useful, I’ll use him; once he’s no longer useful, then, his time is up.”
“Do we really need to kill him?”
“He tried to kill us.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“You should go inside.”
“Why?”
“He may not want to talk. If I have to make him talk... it will be brutal.”
Jessica gazed at him.
“You always amaze me.”
“In what way?”
“You are both the gentlest and the most ruthless person I know.”
He broke eye contact as he hung his head.
“I know my failings; you don’t have to remind me.”
She reached up and raised his head until he was looking at her again.
“The ruthlessness, or rather, the willingness and ability to do whatever needs to be done, those aren’t failings; in a way, those qualities make you the perfect man.”
On the ground, their visitor moaned, as his head lolled from side to side, but his eyes had yet to open.
Jessica stood on her toes and gave him a kiss.
“I’ll be inside.”
After she left the shed, he turned on the light and closed the door. A few moments later, the man awakened and blinked rapidly at the naked bulb hanging from the middle of the slanted, knotty pine ceiling. Then, he let out a cry, as the pain from his damaged hand pulsed.
“My hand, oh hell look at my hand.”
“Who wants my wife dead?”
The man squinted against the light as he gazed up at him.
“You’re the husband?”
“Yes.”
“You did this to me?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were just some
computer geek or something?”
“Who wants my wife dead?”
“Listen, buddy, this was nothing personal. I was just hired to do a job. Now stop fucking around and call the cops.”
He shook his head.
“No police,”
“What?”
“Who wants my wife dead?”
“Fuck you.”
“Who wants my wife dead?”
“I said go fuck yourself.”
He reached over to a shelf and picked up a pair of gardening shears; next, he bent down and began snipping off the thumb on the man’s good hand. The man screamed and thrashed about, which was why he only succeeded in severing half of the digit, and was also why the cut was so ragged.
It took over a minute until the man stopped writhing, and when at last he appeared recovered enough to talk, he asked again.
“Who wants my wife dead?”
“I’m... I’m going to kill you. Do you hear me! I’m going to fucking kill—”
Three and a half fingers later, he had a name.
As the man begged to be let go, he saw no further advantage to be gained, and with a single blow, split his head open with the axe.
He went to the garage, retrieved the stolen car, and backed it up beside the shed. After wrapping the body in plastic sheeting that remained from spring planting, he dumped the corpse, fingers and all, into the trunk along with the gun and placed a red, plastic gas container beside them.
From a hook, he took down a set of old, paint-splattered coveralls and put them on before taking out his phone and making a call.
“Jessica, I need you to follow me in your car.”
“All right, anything else?”
“Bring a pair of my jeans, a sweatshirt, my sneakers, and a wet towel with you, preferably an old one.”
“I’ll be right out.”
They drove for just under an hour before he pulled off the highway and onto a cracked, neglected road that dead-ended into the parking lot of an abandoned factory.
He rammed the stolen car against the locked gate until the rusty padlock broke and the thick chain it was threaded through fell to the ground. After driving to the rear of the building, he parked, and Jessica walked over with his clothes and the towel.
He handed her his phone and keys along with the folding knife from his boot and then stripped naked. After wiping himself down with the towel, he redressed, opened the trunk, and tossed the towel inside along with his blood-splattered clothing and the coveralls.