It had been eight years since he was last in Cardiff, when he had attended a media conference and had only stayed overnight. This time, he would spend a minimum of two weeks there. He wanted to study the Reeds, wanted to get a feel for their daily comings and goings, and he needed to have some idea of the layout of their home.
Thanks to the Internet and its loose tongue, Matt found out from LinkedIn that Ben owned a flower shop, fifteen minutes from their home. Matt found it a bit funny that such a cruel soul could spend his days putting together bouquets and stuffing roses into vases; there was something quite odd about a florist being a monster. He couldn’t find anything about Karen and had no idea what she did. He was sure little Daniel attended one of the area schools, but before he could make his move, he had to tie up all those loose ends.
When it was show time, Matt disguised himself as an older man with gray hair and a beard. To make the disguise more authentic, he used a cane when he walked. He knew no one would question an elderly man walking in their neighborhood, especially since the Reeds lived just a few minutes away from an old cemetery, where an old man’s wife might have been laid to rest.
Matt then booked a hotel room close to their home, and he bought a small car from a used car lot about two hours away. It was certainly not a large or flashy vehicle, but it was perfect for a man who appeared to be in his silver-haired years.
He had all the necessary IDs for each of the characters he played. The car salesman asked for more paperwork, but once he saw how generous the old man was, he had no problem forgoing some of the typical forms. This time, Matt was Mr. Alan Smith, just an old man and nothing more.
Matt had packed the perfect clothes for his character, along with the necessary items: gloves, a wig, and glasses. He chose to leave his Armani shoes behind, as there was no way any old man would wear such shoes, even if he wasn’t in his right mind, which Matt knew he wasn’t. He did put on his beloved golden watch, though, as that accessory was one he could never leave behind.
Matt felt alive again. His new goal had meaning, and he’d grown bored with killing women; they had become too easy. The one thing he would miss was the lye. Since he planned to kill Ben in his own home, he had to just murder the man and get the hell out of there. He would free Karen and Daniel, whether they wanted that freedom or not.
Matt knew firsthand that men like Ben did not deserve a second chance that they didn’t even deserve to breathe. He knew, because in the end, he’d stolen his own father’s undeserved breath.
Matt’s plan for first few days was to stake out the flower shop. He wanted to know Ben’s routine. He filled his car with food and beverages to keep him sustained, and he made sure he had Internet access on his iPad so he wouldn’t get bored. It was handy, for he could also keep up with his work in the car.
Ben was a small fellow, just five-seven. Had red hair and white skin. His belly started just below his chest and jutted out like Santa Clause’s. Also obvious were his broad shoulders. The minute Matt saw him, he wanted him dead.
Ben arrived at work around 9:15 a.m. and left around 1:30, then returned at 4:00 and left for the day at 7:00. The florist averaged about twenty customers a day. Matt couldn’t risk going inside the shop, as he was cautious and didn’t want to take the chance that he might be caught on security cameras.
He cleverly called the Reed residence and feigned that he was employed by a security company and was calling to inquire about a camera malfunction, Karen offered that he must have called the wrong number because they had never installed any cameras in their home. At that point, it became clear that Matt had to kill Ben at home.
Over the next few days, Matt woke up early, around seven thirty, and drove to the cemetery near their home. He parked the car there and walked to the Reed residence, hobbling on the cane to fool any onlookers.
At exactly nine a.m., Daniel climbed aboard school bus. His mother saw him off each morning and left to pick him up later, at four p.m. the two returned home at around five, as she always took him to a nearby park to play for a bit. That gave Matt nearly an hour to poke around the house, and he did so on several occasions, usually disguised as younger guy.
On one of his daily stakeouts, he followed Karen. It was clear that she was a housewife and didn’t have a job outside the home. He could tell how broken she was from the way she walked, and she looked older than her age. Her clothes were neat but simple, and she always wore sunglasses, even when it was cloudy, likely to hide her black, puffy eyes. Matt remembered that well from Daniel’s blog, as well as from his own mother’s battered face.
Whenever Matt watched Karen and Daniel, memories of his own childhood flooded back to him. He recalled his mother’s tears and that swollen, purple and gray puffiness around her eyes. He didn’t know Karen or Daniel personally and really couldn’t have cared less about them, but Ben reminded him of his cruel father, and Ben had to die. The area was truly quiet. Luckily, the Reeds had no dog, and the only one in the area was about six homes away. As for the neighbors, they seemed to be busy, but Matt was very careful; he couldn’t afford any slip-ups, especially since he wouldn’t be disposing of the body this time.
He studied the area during daylight, but he also had to know the night routine. The sixth night, he drove down the street and honked the horn a few times to see what the reaction would be. The dog barked, and his owner turned on the lights and opened the window. The same happened at the house in front of the Reed home. While there was no reaction from the Reeds themselves, that was a sign that a nighttime killing was out of the question, at least in the early evening hours, just after twilight. Matt decided that the best time would be just after dawn, while everyone was fast asleep.
The Reed house had two doors: a front door and a smaller door in the back, which led to the kitchen. There were lots of windows on the front and back of the house. During one of his stakeouts, Matt was convinced he could go in through the back without being noticed. That was the weak spot of the house, and the neighbors on that side were farther away. The window back there was easy to open, and it was large enough for him to creep through. Based on the real estate ads he’d read about the area, it prided itself on quiet safety, but that was all about to change.
The Reeds seemed to all be asleep by two a.m. Ben usually passed out on the sofa, and Daniel and Karen slept upstairs.
Matt discovered all that during the two nights he was inside their home. He’d hidden in their back yard at midnight, and he could slightly hear the curses and insults Ben screamed at his wife. Matt was impressed by the fact that it was hard to discern the yelling from outdoors; he once opened the window, then shut it right away because Ben was screaming his head off in a drunken rage, and the neighbors would have been alerted.
Matt had been there eleven nights, and he would be ready to put his plan into action in two days. He would check out of the hotel around three p.m., then follow Karen and Daniel to be sure they stuck to their daily routine, then stake out the flower shop till Ben left work. He would then stay away from the area till midnight, park the car near the cemetery, and walk to the Reed house. He would hide near the back door, and around three a.m., if not earlier, he would be safely inside.
* * *
On the fateful night, the lights upstairs had been off since eleven thirty p.m., and there had been no sound of life downstairs since one thirty a.m. As soon as the clock struck two, Matt eased his way inside. He had chosen the right footwear, and his footsteps were as light as feather. Once he was inside, he put on a black mask and rubber gloves. In his bag, he had a sock to stuff in Ben’s mouth, tape to cover it, flexi-cuffs, a thick rope, his murder tool, and, just in case, a knife and some tranquilizers.
He stood in front of Ben, staring down at the potbellied, smelly, drunken abuser dressed in saggy pants and a dirty vest. Ben had passed out, but Matt had to make sure everything went smoothly, and he couldn’t risk any noise or resistance. He quietly moved the table and cleared away all the beer bottles so there would be
no accidental clattering or shattering that might wake Karen, Daniel, or the neighbors. Matt took a deep breath, bit his lips hard, and quickly snapped the cuffs around Ben’s wrists within seconds.
Ben began to stir, dizzy and drunk, but Matt stuffed the sock in between his parched lips and quickly taped his mouth shut, all in one perfectly choreographed move that took only seconds and left the drunken monster in wide-eyed shock. Matt stood in front of Ben, wearing a crooked smile, and Ben just looked at him in horror, confused and disoriented. Two minutes later, that particular abusive father and wife-beater was no longer part of the world, and at seven a.m. the next morning, his wife found him dead and speechless. Matt quickly perused the newspaper article, for he already knew all the details and didn’t care to hear what the reporters and police had to say.
He had accomplished his mission to perfection, disposed of all the evidence nicely. No one had seen him, and the neighbor’s dog didn’t even bark. He parked the car in a shopping area an hour from the crime scene, then wiped it free of fingerprints. Anyone who found it would simply think it was abandoned by its elderly owner, and no one in Cardiff would think it was connected to the Reed murder in any way.
* * *
Four more men fell victim to Matt during the next three months, either from suffocation, stabbing, or lethal injection. Matt was on a roll, but in two weeks, he would break one of his own rules. He would return to Amsterdam, a city he’d been to before, simply because he couldn’t resist the joy of getting rid of his next victim.
This victim would be the icing on the very sick cake Matt was baking, and Matt believed Jack might just be his final victim. His troubled mind had had enough, and for the perfect ending, Jack fit the profile. To Matt, Jack was the worst of them all, for he abused his two daughters in all manners, including sexually. It was easy enough for Matt to discover that on an online forum, a place for abuse victims to share their horror stories. The girls’ sad story had only been uploaded three days earlier, and it caught Matt’s attention right away. He couldn’t believe the pain the two girls had to suffer at the hands of their father, including constant verbal abuse, beatings, and rape. They were scared and couldn’t tell a soul in real life, so writing on the forum was their own relief, their only way to vent and cry out for help. He felt their fear as he read those words, and just three hours after he read their story, it was removed from the forum. The fact that they felt too scared to even talk about it, that those girls feared for their very lives, only made Matt more furious at Jack, their heinous father.
This time, he didn’t need convincing, and he didn’t bother to do as much research. He was ready to take Jack’s life based on what little information he had found. He did discover Jack’s LinkedIn profile. He learned that Jack, born in 1962, was a general manager in a leading company within the electrical power supply sector. A bit more research revealed that his younger daughter was eleven and her elder sister was twenty. The IP indicated that they were in Amsterdam, and in just a few more clicks, Matt had their exact address.
Again, Matt planned to kill him at home, though that was a kind explanation. For this one, Matt would do far more than kill. This time, Matt would torture the man to death, slow and steady and full of pain—like the kind of existence he had heaped upon his daughters.
Amsterdam
Matt knew Amsterdam well, as he had been there only fourteen months before. This time, he cared less about the rental flat. He didn’t require big windows or a bathtub. All he needed was a quiet place with Wi-Fi access and no security, a place where he could park his rental car easily any time of the day. This was his finale, and he planned to kill Jack on his thirteenth night; as cliché as it was, it just so happened to be a Friday, the thirteenth of April.
Jack’s house was located in an upscale area, on the outskirts of Amsterdam. It was a three-story villa with a large garden surrounded by short brick wall, a beautifully landscaped yard that could be seen and admired by passersby. The house was built out of solid gray stone, and the main entryway was flanked by four large, marble pillars. It wasn’t the prettiest of the villas in the area, but it was still quite impressive. Matt’s flat was twenty minutes away, so that made it all the more convenient.
Matt, dressed in one of his brilliant disguises, would stake Jack out first and the girls the following week. He assumed five days would be enough to study their premises and daily routines.
Like clockwork, Jack left home at eight in the morning and returned at five in the evening. The girls left together and were back home by four; the same driver picked them up in the mornings, when he dropped off an older woman that Matt presumed was the housekeeper. The lights on the second and third floors dimmed by eleven p.m., giving away the family’s bedtime.
The house was never empty, and that was good and bad for Matt. It meant he could not break in in the morning and study the layout. The good news was that there were likely no security cameras; they had no need for them since someone was always there, and he confirmed that by fooling the older lady on the phone, just as he had fooled Karen in Cardiff. They didn’t have cameras, and they were dependent on the locked doors to keep them safe. Matt really couldn’t blame them, as the crime rate was almost nonexistent. Boy, that’s gonna change in the matter of a few days, he mused. From his observations, he surmised that they lived an easy life. Anyone could have seen that. However, what went on inside those walls was the real mystery.
Every night Matt dropped his car off a mile away. He wore a different disguise each night, and he jogged, walked, or bicycled to their home. The one commonality among all his looks was that he always carried a small toolbox, the size of an iPad. It held all the necessities for him to get inside, and he did so on his fourth stakeout. He went in after midnight, after camping out in their beautiful back yard for two hours.
The first night he had camped out, all had remained quiet, but this time, he heard the old man shouting and glass shattering. He could see nothing, but the noise was apparent. Once everything settled a bit, he entered the home, opening the back door with a few of his tools. He had bought them, rather illegally, off of the Internet, but they guaranteed a 96 percent success rate and boasted, “With this lock-pick kit, you can open anything. Never be locked out again!” Not so naïve as to discount the 4 percent chance that it might not work, Matt was ready to run for his life, but they worked beautifully, and 96 would be his lucky number from that point forward. There didn’t seem to be any alarms, and that only made it easier.
He spent an hour inside. For the first twenty minutes, he just listened and didn’t move. When he was sure that everyone was asleep, he searched the place room by room, floor by floor. The girls were asleep on the second floor, and their father was on the third. He had two more nights to check the home well, and he decided to move in earlier tomorrow, for he was eager to see what Jack was like.
* * *
At ten p.m. the next night, Matt made his way inside. He’d already garnered a good idea about the home layout on his previous trespassing excursion the night before. He walked through the American-style kitchen; it was an impressive room, with custom wooden cabinets and modern stainless steel appliances. The kitchen opened to a dining room, furnished with a table for twelve. Paintings adorned the walls. The place was immaculately clean, and it was clear that the housekeeper earned every cents.
Jack sat down in the living room. Matt from his point was looking around, studying. A 52-inch LED television was surrounded by a seven-seat leather sofa set, two coffee tables, a medium-sized, gold-plated glass table. A stunning dining table was at the far right. The room was filled with statues and portraits, and the floor was decorated with a Persian rug similar to the one Matt had in his own villa; he made a mental note that he simply had to reach down and get a feel of it after he finished Jack off on the thirteenth. Overall, the house was far more impressive on the inside, but Matt was not shocked by that, considering how much money Jack was earning. What he was shocked by was what he saw next.
As Matt stared at the sick man, images of his own father rushed back into his head. Matt was in a rage, and he could have killed him right there, but that would not be enough; he had much more in store for Jack than a quick death. Five minutes later, Matt left. He had seen enough, and he muttered to himself as he exited the back of the house, “That bastard’s gonna die, a great death in his very own bedroom.”
* * *
The night of the thirteenth, Matt entered the home around ten thirty p.m. Just as before, the father was in his underwear, and the girls were at the receiving end of some brutal cursing and berating. Just before eleven, Jack excused his daughters to go upstairs, but he stayed downstairs for an additional ten minutes.
Matt waited for another hour. He carefully took inventory of his tools: a sharp box-cutter, a knife, tranquilizing injection, flexi-cuffs, tape, a box of matches, and cigarettes. His plan was to cut Jack’s fingers, burn his chest with cigarettes, cut off one of his ears, then take his life when the begging for death began, and Matt would enjoy every moment of it.
Matt stealthily climbed the stairs, opened the girls’ door slightly to check on them, and was relieved to find them both in bed, sound asleep. They seemed so peaceful, even though they had been living their daily horror just an hour earlier. He felt sorry for them, and he took a great deal of pride in what he was going to do. From that night onward, the girls would have nothing to fear. Jack was minutes away from living his own horror.
Matt: A Matt Godfrey Short thriller Trilogy Page 4