Innocent Bystander

by Glenn Richards

  “Lots of it.”

  “I don’t have that much. Honestly, I don’t earn a large salary.”

  Her gaze slid across the room, taking in the quality furniture and artwork. “Looks like you’re doing all right.”

  “The furniture was a gift. The artwork, reproductions.”

  “You’re playing games again,” she said. “You think I’m stupid just because I sleep with men for money? I know your wife’s worth a fortune.”

  How the hell could she know that?

  “Audrey told me a lot of things. It seems you’re rather chatty after you’ve—oh, how would you old guys put it—had your fun.”

  “I need you to leave right now.”

  She slid out a pistol from beneath her shirt. “I don’t think your wife would be too thrilled to find out what you really do when you tell her you’re at a university dinner or late staff meeting.”

  “You have no proof of any of this.”

  From her pocket she produced a photograph and passed it to him. The picture, taken through a window, showed him and Audrey, both almost naked, lounging in a motel room bed. He appeared intoxicated, which he knew he probably had been.

  “It’s a fake. I could make this on my computer.”

  “And oh, how I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you try to sell that to your wife. Besides, this is only one. Some of the others are really interesting. I’m sure she’d recognize that cute little mole you have just to the left of your—”

  “How much?” Desmond asked.

  “What?”

  “How much money do you want?” He noted the way she held the pistol: limply, the exact opposite of how Ryder grasped it. She probably had no idea how to accurately fire the weapon.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Whatever the amount, will you give me all the pictures once I pay?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you give me some idea of how much you want?” he asked.

  “How much do you think a young girl’s life is worth?”

  “Why do you keep insisting I killed her? I loved her. I would have left my wife for her.”

  “You used her! You promised her exactly what she wanted. Told her all about your contacts in the big city. You were going to start her on a path to stardom. Commercials, TV, then movies. You knew exactly where she was vulnerable. All she had to do was perform one role, then she’d be on her way.”

  Desmond opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

  “Don’t deny it.” She wiped her eyes before a tear could drop. “For a college professor, you ain’t too smart, are ya?”

  This was not about money; this was about revenge. “For what it’s worth,” he said, making an effort to sound sincere, “I really do have contacts in the city. Ask anyone.”

  “I know.”

  “And I didn’t kill her.”

  “Liar.”

  “Follow me to the living room.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can prove to you I didn’t kill her.”

  She eyed him warily, but followed him into the living room without a word. He stood before a wooden cabinet, reached out, and slid open the center drawer.

  “Stop right there,” she said.

  “No, look,” he said. He removed a bible with his left hand, held it in front of her to examine, as if it were a precious gem, and placed his right hand on the cover. “I swear I did not kill her.”

  “Ha,” she snapped. “You’re a married man who sleeps with underage girls, and I’m supposed to believe you ’cause you swear on a bible?”

  “I did not kill her,” he said and inched closer. He concluded it would be wiser to gradually approach her and continue to proclaim his innocence than try to escape. She could not pull the trigger, he suspected, unless she was certain he had killed Audrey. If anyone could nurture doubt in her mind, it was him.

  “Maybe you didn’t kill her yourself,” she said, “but you arranged it.”

  “Why would you think that? I admit I asked her to play that silly role of the girl from the future. It was kind of a joke on someone. A prank.”

  “A prank that got her killed.”

  He took a full step toward her; she backed away half a step.

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” she said, firming up her grip on the pistol.

  After another measured step, he stopped. He held the bible beneath her chin, his right hand glued to the cover. “I swear to you, I swear with God as my witness, I did not kill her nor did I arrange it.”

  “So it was just a coincidence they pulled her body from the car of one of your students?” she said. “At the university where you work.”

  He cringed. Those tidbits needed to be spun to his advantage. “Somebody wanted to set me up.” The assertion came out a little too fast.

  “You think I’m just a dumb slut.”

  He considered his next words carefully. “Why do you think the police are searching for someone else? Obviously you’ve seen the news. They know the student killed her. He was going to put her body in my car, but they found her before he could.”

  “No.”

  “It is the truth. The cops believe it. And I know it’s true.”

  He unglued his hand from the bible and placed it atop the gun’s barrel. “I know you don’t want to shoot an innocent man.”

  When she did not react, he applied a minute force to the pistol. She offered little resistance. The barrel descended, and soon pointed at the floor.

  A moment later she lost control and sobbed openly. “Why? She was a good kid. She wanted out of this business.”

  I’ll tell you why. Because she screwed up.

  He had given her the simplest of instructions, but she had chosen not to follow them. If she had, everything would have been different.

  “Why?” she repeated over and over again.

  Her repetition of that word chafed his nerves. She was looking for sympathy, but he had none to offer.

  “I’ll tell you why,” he said, his patience depleted. He ripped the pistol from her hand. “I gave her instructions a five year-old could follow, and she did not listen.”

  He aimed the weapon at her. The warm grip felt satisfying against his palm. “I told her not to talk to Henri if there was anyone else in the room. Twelve simple words. Is that so difficult to understand? Had she done what I said she would still be here, and I would not be in this mess.”

  He waved the pistol beneath her nose. “That is why she is not here. And why I am.” He waited for a response, but she simply stood there, silent, still. “Nothing to say?”

  “You’re going to jail for a long time.” She tried to stride past him.

  He side-stepped and blocked her path.

  “What are you going to do, kill me, too?” she asked.

  His mouth had landed him in trouble again.

  Greta tried to bull her way past him. He grasped her shirt collar and shoved her backwards. She tripped over the sofa’s arm, thumped against the coffee table, and collapsed to the floor.

  He needed to get rid of her quietly. A call to Ryder, his first choice, was immediately ruled out. Each subsequent idea generated less enthusiasm.

  Groaning noises escaped her lips as she writhed on the floor. She grabbed the front of the sofa, and heaved herself up. She stumbled several steps toward the front door. Once again he blocked her path.

  Too many people had lined up to stand in his way—Burnett, Emma, De Stefano, and now some damn whore. Doubt over whether he would be able to publish the paper snuck into his mind for the first time. There was no question he would have to delay its publication for months, perhaps years, but this loss of certainty was an unwelcome intruder.

  Doubt, however, only redoubled his determination. He had killed De Stefano with his bare hands. Surely Greta would be easier to eliminate. Unless she was a local schoolgirl, few people, if any, would miss her. If Ryder was successful at eliminating Burnett and Emma, and making it look like a murder-suicide, then he wo
uld be considered merely an innocent bystander in this whole wretched affair.

  Greta’s gaze skipped about the room, clearly in search of another exit. None existed. She lunged at him and reached for the pistol. Both her hands clasped the barrel, but he wrested it from her.

  She swiped at the pistol again. Desmond seized her throat, forced her backwards, and slammed her head against the wooden end table. Following the nauseating crack, she crumpled to the floor.

  Several seconds later she let out a moan. Her right arm twitched. Somehow she reached out for the coffee table, wrapped her fingers around the edge, and struggled to her knees.

  She attempted to lift her body. He gripped her hair and smashed her forehead against the coffee table. Wood splintered as her head rebounded off it.

  He whacked her head against the table a second time. Recalling what he’d done with De Stefano, he bashed it a third time. Over and over he slammed her head against the coffee table.

  Each time her head struck the wooden surface, it further energized him. Most people, he understood, refused to go the extra mile to succeed. They were unwilling to do whatever it took, to make whatever sacrifice needed to be made, to push themselves beyond their past limits to attain their goal. As a result, they remained mired in mediocrity. No longer would he accept anything less than immortality.

  Yes, those motivational programs were finally starting to pay dividends.

  When she offered no further resistance, he offered no further abuse. Her condition left him both shocked and awed. Her skull had nearly split in two. Some of its contents littered his living room floor along with fragments of wood and bone. Perhaps he had gone too far. A major cleanup would be required before morning.

  He released her, and her corpse thumped to the floor. Should Ryder choose not to take on one final job, he would have no choice but to clean up the mess and dispose of the body himself. The challenge excited him.

  Even the idea of eliminating Burnett and Emma himself seemed possible now. He dared hope Ryder would fail to find them or choose not to carry out his assignment. If so, the two of them would surely come to him. The thought of orchestrating their deaths to appear a murder-suicide electrified him. He yearned to do the job himself, and trusted fate would grant him the opportunity.

  * * *

  Ryder climbed the carpeted staircase of the Stone residence. His Beretta, the ceiling its target, lingered beside his left ear. Perched on the top step, he glanced left and right. Five doors awaited him. Lowering the Beretta, he approached the first one on his left, elbowed it open, and silently entered the room.

  A tall, big-boned man, Ryder somehow moved like quicksilver. He virtually glided over to the bed. For several seconds he observed Stone and his wife asleep in their king-sized bed. Unless he failed to find Mr. Burnett, he had no need to disturb their dreams.

  He crossed the hall and peeked into another bedroom. A ten-year-old girl lay sleeping in a canopy bed. In the third bedroom a fourteen-year-old boy snored. All four walls were adorned with posters of baseball and music stars, men destined for halls of fame in Cooperstown and Cleveland.

  The final bedroom turned out to be an office. He flicked on the light. After a cursory peek behind the desk, he opened the closet door. Boxes of clothes and a stack of spare blankets were all he found.

  He had methodically searched downstairs, as well as the basement and garage, and found no one. Now there didn’t appear to be anyone upstairs; at least not anyone he’d been paid to execute.

  He debated whether or not to follow through on his threat to Desmond. For him it had never been about the money. The sport of hunting down another human being, and snuffing out his existence, made it worthwhile. Of course it was a power trip. He’d admitted that to himself on more than one occasion. But each of us enters and exits this world only once, and he had the power to determine the precise time and place of that exit. Few people, aside from incompetent physicians, wielded such power.

  Not that he minded the money, but as a former commodities and financial services agent, who still successfully worked the market—thanks to a strict adherence to the advice of Warren Buffett—cash wasn’t a priority.

  He decided Desmond wouldn’t have sent him unless he’d been damn sure of Burnett’s location. The time had come to ask some questions.

  A second flick of the light switch restored darkness to the room. He took a step and, for the first time in as long as he could remember, hesitated. Never before had he been indecisive about anything. This foreign sensation troubled him, but as he exited the office he had to confess that in recent months he’d lost his appetite for killing. The once orgasmic pleasure of sending a man to a meet-and-greet with his maker had faded. It remained satisfying, yes, but never had he been a man content with mere satisfaction.

  Perhaps the time had come to retire from this particular profession. At fifty-one, nearly half a lifetime of adventure still awaited. No doubt he could find something else that offered a comparable level of fulfillment.

  But first there was a job to do.

  CHAPTER 42

  Burnett leaned against the sodden mound of dirt beneath Dr. Stone’s deck, his mind a log-jam of worry and uncertainty. An image of the mushroom cloud soaring skyward, Henri’s equation conspicuous within its shadows, appeared in his mind’s eye.

  At that instant the truth hit him. He tried to rationalize it away, but it would not leave. He tried to hide from it, but where could he run? The equation was the key. And the cursed thing had to be stamped out of existence. Not only would he have to eliminate the equation, and probably the entire paper, but he would have to eliminate anyone who had knowledge of it who might try to publish it.

  He didn’t know if he could do it. He didn’t know how to do it. Never before had he even considered the possibility of taking another person’s life. The very idea repulsed him.

  The age-old dilemma confronted him: Would you kill one person to save a million? On the surface the answer seemed obvious, a simple question of mathematics, but now that he actually had to make that choice, and follow through on it, the answer became less clear-cut. Whether or not to take the life of another human being, a man he once considered a father figure, was a decision he could not make lightly.

  In addition he would effectively be ending his own life. He would be guilty of first-degree murder. However, he knew it had to be done. No one else must know about the equation; not until mankind is ready for its astounding potential.

  It’s just a nightmare. He made a half-hearted attempt to convince himself it really was nothing more than that. People have them every night.

  He knew he couldn’t fool himself, and quit almost before he’d started. From the very first night he’d known this was anything but an ordinary dream.

  The gloom that now overtook him couldn’t be fended off. His body felt as if it would sink into the soggy earth. He sought solace in the fact that his sacrifice would save countless lives.

  He prayed Mayweather had not found the computer. If he had, it would further complicate the situation. Emma’s revelation that Henri’s paper might be on a memory stick had now become an additional hurdle. He would have to destroy it before anyone found it.

  This attempt at Henri’s computer would prove far riskier than his first. Both Desmond and the police would expect it.

  Or would they?

  No one might anticipate so bold a move.

  However, since Desmond had no doubt hidden the computer, and hidden it well, he acknowledged his job would still be far more difficult. Not only would he have to once again enter Desmond’s home, he’d have to persuade the professor to retrieve the computer from its hiding spot.

  “Detective Mayweather didn’t find it, did he?” Emma whispered in the darkness.

  Her voice, so melodic, so exquisite, edged him closer to despondency. This time he fought off the emotion. A job needed to be done. And what could be more effective at fighting off despondency than a suicide mission?

  He tried
to muster some enthusiasm for the new series of lies he would throw her way. “We’re going to have to get it ourselves.”

  She let out a sarcastic laugh. He felt her body rock side to side, and assumed she was shaking her head.

  “Mayweather was right,” she said. “We had our shot.”

  “We take another.”

  Again she laughed. This one contained less sarcasm.

  Burnett heard her sniffle several times, but couldn’t determine if it was the result of tears or the damp cold. He leaned to his left and embraced her in the blackness. “We’ll get it.”

  After a brief silence Emma said, “Did Henri ever tell you about my dreams of the future?”

  He didn’t know what to make of her confession. “You’ve had dreams of the future, too?”

  “My goals.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Almost everyone at SUNY knows you want to single-handedly save the planet.”

  “For myself, I mean.”

  “He never mentioned them.” His voice sounded wooden and flat. There was little he could do about it.

  “I’m a woman. Can you guess?”

  “A career? A family of your own?”

  “A happy family of my own,” she said. “Not like the one I grew up in.”

  An opportunity to push her away had arisen. The time had come to break his promise. “Turn yourself in. You still have a chance. You said your father knows some of the best lawyers. Use them. Before it’s too late.”

  He sensed her head drop and shake side to side in long, sweeping motions.

  “I need to do this on my own,” he said. “Go.”

  Sarcasm once again laced her soft chuckle. “Don’t you get it?” she said, her voice cracking on the final word. “I don’t want to go. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”

  His mind struggled to grasp the full implication of her words. I had no idea, his brain repeated over and over. No idea.

  That the realization he would have to throw his life away should be followed by Emma’s declaration that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him was more than any man could handle. The numbness he’d experienced the night Audrey’s body had been lifted from his Camry returned.