by JN Lenz
The bullet entered the center back of Faol Dung‘s head, the small red dot lit the scope from the splatter of blood as the ballistics round exploding out the front of Faol Dung’s face. The green spray from the blood and brain momentarily lit up the scope, before the body slumped down over the railing. The body motionless on the rail until Clyde dumped one more shot into the left shoulder. The green images of bursting blood and bones of Faol Dung’s shoulder again filled the scopes view as the force of the shot propelled the entire body off the side of the balcony, plunging down to the ground below.
Lowering the riffle from his shoulder, Clyde rushed to the edge of the balcony railing to look below for any sight of Faol Dung. Just as he began searching the ground below, the sound of a loud male voice pulled Clyde’s head back up to balcony where Faol Dung had been only moments earlier. The exterior lights had now been turned on the balcony; a male figure had run to the edge of the railing where Faol Dung had just plunged over. From a distance the male looked to be older and not one of his son’s.
Pulling the riffle back up into his shoulder, Clyde viewed the green image of the man as he leaned over the railing. The man was turning his head from side to side, searing in vain in the darkness. The face Clyde watched through the night vision scope was not that of a young son of Faol Dung, instead he appeared identical to the pictures Clyde had studied for weeks of Faol Dung.
Momentarily frozen watching who he now believed to be the real Faol Dung, as the man searched the ground for his lost comrade, or brother, or whoever the fuck that guy Clyde had just killed was? Snapping back to reality, another pair muted shots rang out into the night; Clyde slammed both hollow point bullets into the top side of the second Faol Dung’s head. Through the scope Clyde watched as the top of Faol Dung number two’s head exploded into the night sky, spraying into the night before he too plunged off the balcony, half head first.
“Who is the real Faol Dung? Clyde questioned himself, aloud.
Looking once more over the edge, he could see that one of the two men which he believed to be the real Faol Dung, had landed partially on an illuminated section of sidewalk that snaked its way through the small green area of bushes and manicured grass from that side of the building. Pointing the riffle towards the body, taking a look through the scope he examined his work in greater detail. The head and upper chest area of Faol had struck the concrete sidewalk face down; the blood streamed from the missing top of Faol Dung’s head.
The mass of blood was quickly spreading out from the body, casting a brilliant hue of bright green through the scopes lens. The second body of the man Clyde had been tracking for the past six days, was lying face down in the shadows, closer to the buildings edge, only his twisted legs visible on the grass below. Not wanting to spend any more time in the condo, Clyde quickly disassembled the riffle stowing its pieces in the duffle bag alone with the garbage, grabbed his jacket and left the condo.
There was no sound of emergency vehicles as Clyde exited the metal door which led outside, the door situated at the bottom of the condominiums stairs, he had removed the latex gloves on the way down the staircase and had shoved them into the front pocket of his jacket. To avoid the potential of the elevator having cameras, he decided on the stairs which had none, running down twenty five stories go by fast when your heart is racing, arthritis was not about to slow his descent.
Walking briskly through the open area between the building and the road, there appeared to be no sign that the pair had been discovered. Having parked the motor home some six blocks away, as he walked briskly along the sidewalk away from the trio of towers, he would hear no screams of horror coming from the direction of the two lifeless bodies. The walk to the motor home was not met with the sound of sirens, of the passing of emergency vehicles with their lights flashing as they raced to the horrific scene in the gardens of Faol Dung’s condominium.
The walk to the plaza parking lot would take Clyde twenty six minutes from the time he stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the condo; driving away in the motor home he was sure not to exceed the posted maximum speed limit of sixty kilometers per hour. The habit of driving slowly had been forced on Clyde years ago, the product of roadside DNA scanners by Police forces across the country. The prospect of spending life in prison was reason enough for him to slow down permanently when behind the wheel of any vehicle.
The portable Sat Nav in the Motor Home had been programmed to take him to the border of British Columbia and Alberta, pulling out onto the service road leading from the mall parking; he would follow the instructions on the screen straight for the border of British Columbia and Alberta. Just a few days ago, Clyde was still debating a stop at Whistler for a day or two of skiing; now the only thing on Clyde’s mind was getting back to his farm in Ontario.
There would be no news of the dead men on the motor home’s radio during the first two hours of the drive to the Alberta border. The radio was programmed to CBC radio one, knowing they would cover the story before or as quick as the other local stations. The news of the two dead men would make the eleven pm news, the motor home would be well on its way up the steep mountain passes as Clyde listened in the darkness about the discovery of two men at the base of a West Side Condominium complex.
The Vancouver Police had provided few details or identifications on the two dead men, other than to describe how the bodies had been discovered by a resident of the building. Both bodies appear to have fallen from the building, landing in a green area where a lady had been walking her dog and discovered the bodies. The men appeared to have both fallen from close to the top of the building and that foul play was suspected. That would be all the journalists would be provided until the bodies could be picked up and examined by the coroner and the Police had a better look at the crime scene. Clyde would know all too well where the coroner would cut into the bodies of the two men only after they had closely examined the entire body initially, Clyde had retraced the steps of a coroner had taken on several cadavers that had come through the doors of our many Homes.
Clyde had ranked each Coroner, based on the accuracy of their cuts, and on the organization of the organs replaced inside the body cavity before stitching the body closed. Suture neatness and alignment with the bent needle in sewing the cadaver back up after completion of the autopsy was included in his ranking. Clyde had been so appalled at the state of one woman’s insides that had come through the Home that he spent three quarters of a day sewing all her organs back to where they belonged. The woman’s body had arrived directly to the Funeral Home from the coroners table, after Clyde had positioned her on the embalming room table he went to work.
Later he told me she looked like one of those people in Alien, seconds before the monster broke out of their skin. She had lumps and crap sticking out all over her body I remember him telling me some twenty years earlier. That particular Coroner was by far the worst as far as Clyde was concerned, he may have been a brilliant Coroner with a proven investigative track record but he was “sloppy and his sewing was weak” at on the bottom of the rankings for coroners. On the other end of the spectrum a pair of young female Coroners would be rated as the best he had ever seen making smaller incisions and their use of tight small stitches in closing the bodies back up.
The Police would spend the night speaking with the grieving widow of Faol Dung, they would be hoping the shock of the deaths had not sent her into mental shock and unable to be of any use to the investigators. The Police would scour the condo inside and out, on the Patio, searching for signs of a struggle and for bullet entry points. Clyde was sure the first victim was leaning out enough from the building that the bullets went off into the distance after exiting his head.
The second man had not been leaning nearly as far over as number one when he was shot so if any of the bullets had exited the second man’s head on an angle they could have ended up on the balcony. Clyde would drive on through the night and through the interior of British Columbia with no other breaking news on the pair fou
nd dead at the base of the Infinity Tower on the West Side of Vancouver only a repeat on the hourly news of the earlier discovery. Well Past the Crow’s Nest Highway and while Clyde would be driving up and down the mountains of British Columbia Route number one and the Trans-Canada Highway there would be more details on the radio of the two dead bodies that had been discovered on the West Side.
Not until six hours into Clyde’s fourteen hour drive from Vancouver to Calgary would the Police provide more details to the media, of what they announced as a double homicide of two Chinese Nationals. Although the Police did not announce the identity of the two Chinese men, they did note one of the two men held a permanent residence here in Vancouver. The second victim was visiting from China.
Police confirmed the men had been shot to death with a high powered riffle, most likely from a surrounding building. The Police are going door to door on all condos within viewing distance of the victim’s condominium, and had asked for help from any member of the public who may have witnessed something suspicious last night, around the area of these buildings. That would be the sum of the newly released information for the investigators of the double homicide.
The roads through the mountains had remained remarkably bare even through the Crows Pass and Clyde had been lucky enough not to be slowed by a sudden snow storm which was common in January; he had been determined to drive the entire distance from Vancouver to Calgary only stopping for fuel. At the slow speeds the Motor Home was capable of maintaining through the mountains it would be a minimum fourteen hour drive, by the time he pulled into the city of Revelstoke, turning off on Victoria Road Clyde would stop and park the Motor Home at the Revelstoke Railway Museum by then he could barely keep his eyes open and needed to sleep for a few hours, it was roughly eight in the morning.
Clyde passed out the minute he hit the mattress in the Motor Homes rear Master Bedroom the traffic at the Railway Museum was very light in during the winter so the quite allowed Clyde to sleep well beyond his planned three hour sleep turned into closer to five as he would not wake back up until close to one in the afternoon. After having a quick shower where Clyde also changed the colour of his hair back to its original brown colour from the black he had dyed it to before leaving Ontario. After the shower Clyde would made himself something to eat while he watched the satellite feed on the digital four dimension screen (which deployed from the ceiling of the motor home) for the latest on the murders in West Vancouver.
Finding an all-news channel he watched while cooking a lunch of pasta and pesto, the news had now updated the story to include the names of the victims as Dai Chung a member of the Chinese Communist Party in Canada in part to take place in the unveiling of a recent addition to the consulate in Vancouver and Faol Dung the owner of a Chinese manufacturer who has held a residence in Vancouver for the past number of years. The story had developed from a pair of homicides to a full blown International incident with the Medias political pundits speculating on what this would do to the already strained relations between China and the West; they listed the secret services of the Nations having the most to gain poking the world’s largest economy in the eye. Israel in its new role of energy and military powerhouse had been openly condemned China and Russia’s increased supply of uranium for Nuclear reactors in Iran.
America and China had been playing a game of brinkmanship with CED for the past few years so the Americans could not be ruled out the political experts would note. The story around the killings had already become bigger than the story of the two dead men, Clyde watched as he cooked and ate his breakfast but there was still no mention of a suspect in the slayings. It was as if the Media had already determined this was a professional hit from a specially trained Para military expert whose identity would never surface.
Leaving the news channel turned loud enough to hear through the Motor Home Clyde decided he needed to shave his beard now as well, the news channel had moved on to other stories with no more developments in the assassination of the two men. Clyde would pack all his weapons into a black Roots back pack along with a change of clothes and all of his remaining cash and Blackberry, ready to go at a moment’s notice just in case. He also knew he needed to give the Motor Home a complete cleaning and sterilizing but Clyde did not want to waste another moment stopped, he would write that it was the first time in his life that he truly longed to be home on his farm and his hundreds of acres of bush and small lakes.
Returning to the road and driving along side by side with several rows of railway tracks here on the edge of British Columbia, the long drive in the darkness the night before had robbed Clyde of the beautiful views of the Crow’s Nest Pass and the all of the Rockies. There would still be a few hours of daylight left for Clyde to enjoy on his drive towards Calgary, before returning to the Trans-Canada highway on the Townley Street ramp he would stop for fuel in an old small gas station in the heart of town.
The drive that would take Clyde six hours in the slow Motor Home as it crawled up and down the mountain passes and amazing sights of Yoho and Banff National parks, by the time the Motor Home had hit the edge of the town of Banff the views again had disappeared behind the clock of darkness. Stopping for fuel on the far edge of Banff the full tanks on the Motor Home should be enough to make it well into Calgary, the radio news had nothing in the way of breaking news on the murder of the two Chinese men only rehashing on the speculation surrounding the source of the assignation.
The drive down the mountains towards Calgary would be uneventful other than a serious car accident a half hour past Kananaskis that had the highway reduced to one lane, Clyde noted there was a number of Police directing traffic through the wreckage but they were not stopping anyone as they drove through. He would note that the sight of the RCMP cruisers with their lights flashing as he came around that blind corner on the highway scared the shit of him, thinking it was a roadside sobriety check point.
This is the first time I think Clyde was actually truly scared since being beat as a young boy by his father, he had never been afraid of a damm thing after he matured into a man that I had ever seen. The notes in this file would be different you can feel his nervousness or fear in each passing day after the murder of the two Chinese men. The Police simply waved Clyde through when it was his time to pass by the accident stopping each direction for about five minutes to let the opposite flow through, his heart still racing from the initial shock of seeing the flashing red and blue lights of the cruisers.
Continuing along the Trans-Canada highway which cuts through the center of Calgary the traffic traveling East consisted of mostly transport trucks and skiers returning from the mountains. The traffic overall was sparse as Clyde drove past the Olympic Park on Sixteen Avenue just as the latest news report began with the breaking news of “a Police news release of a prime suspect in the slayings of a Chinese government official and a prominent Chinese businessman. Police are asking for the public’s assistance if anyone has information on the where abouts of one John Doe a resident of Ontario, he is an individual we have very little information on at this point other than we have posted his Ontario Driver’s license along with his height, weight, eye and hair colour on both our website and to all Media outlets across the Nation”.
For one of the few times in Clyde’s life he began tp panic just a little, he would write how his heart instantly began to race as the broadcaster announced the name of John Doe as the prime suspect. Clyde knew they would eventually figure out the identity the shooter but not this quick, he had hoped to be back in Ontario and at the farm by the time they discovered his false identification. Without even thinking Clyde veered right on the Tenth Street and began to head south towards the center of the city, everything was tracing through Clyde’s mind now he needed to ditch the Motor Home right away and he would have no time to clean and sterilize it now giving the investigators even more physical evidence against him. How would he make it back to the Ontario farm, where to ditch the Motor Home? Traveling past the sign for the Louise Bridge
he cursed himself for turning down into the city
“What the fuck am I doing down here?”
Clyde yelled as the Motor Home crossed the bridge, following ninth street south Clyde would watch as a Police cruiser turned right off sixth avenue and onto ninth street directly behind Clyde’s Motor Home. With all Clyde’s experience as the hunter he would not be prepared for the fear and anxiety when he was the prey, writing that he almost froze behind the wheel when he saw the Police cruiser pull into view in his right hand mirror. The lights remained off on the top of the cruiser as Clyde tried to focus on driving; the GPS to make sure he did not drive down a dead end road and the Police in his rear view mirror. The fuel gauge was nearing empty with Banff being the last stop Clyde had made for gas.
Placing his left driver side blinker on Clyde turned the large Motor Home onto the Ninth Avenue Southwest to both make the appearance the Police that he was a tourist wanting to drive by the Calgary Tower and the main city street hoping the Police cruiser would not follow him, they would. The Police continued behind Clyde as he passed Western Canada Place and Bankers Hall following closely but keeping the lights off. Clyde new they would be calling for back up the moment they confirmed the Ontario rental plate was a rental made by John Doe. Turning right onto first street southwest the Motor Home was again followed by the Police cruiser, as Clyde drove down the slope as the road would dip below the rail lines that pass above. Pulling the Motor Home to the far right side of the road close to the deepening walls of the tunnel, Clyde slammed the steering wheel as hard to the left as he could and smashed the Motor Home against the wall on the opposing traffic side of the road completely cutting off the road and the Police cruiser.