by Jeff S.
A writer in the heat of creativity finds it easy to shut out everything else in their environment. By 3:30, she was at her keyboard, clacking away on chapter eight, anxious to finish her manuscript before Thanksgiving. She didn't hear Nketia enter the house. She heard the old, wooden floor creak twice as he approached, but thought nothing of a sound that seemed to be perpetually intermittent in her old house.
She did feel the brief sting as the dart jabbed the back of her neck. Nketia caught her before she fell out of her chair. It would not be good to have her die from a concussion with fresh tranquilizer still in her system.
Nketia had selected six of the most revealing photographs and had placed them in a plain brown envelope. He removed the pictures, dropping one to the floor and plopping the remainder on top of the now empty envelope on the desk.
The Sievers' residence was at the end of a cul-de-sac, bordering a forest. No pesky neighbors saw him carrying her on his right shoulder, out the back door and into the woods. In his left, he carried a large case with his equipment.
Up the hill, down the other side and over one more hill, he came to a burbling stream with minor waterfalls and large pools of crisp, clear water.
Gently, he placed Amanda Sievers on the ground covered by dead leaves and twigs. Out of his bag, he pulled a rather odd frame that looked like a neck and shoulder brace with an extension for the right arm and wrist. Carefully, he sat her up, threading her right arm into the brace and locking it into place. Then, he strapped her left wrist to the other side of the brace. Finally, he retrieved the Sievers' handgun from the bag and installed it in the shoulder and arm rig. Then, he waited for the woman to wake up. Her arousal would mean that the tranquilizer had metabolized enough in her body so there would be insufficient traces for most any autopsy to find.
Nketia chose the location for its melancholy beauty. Most of the trees had lost their fire-colored leaves. Most of the foliage was bare and gray.
As he waited, he picked many of the leaves and twigs off of her blouse and skirt. He wanted her to have a natural sampling of these from her final fall to the ground. After another thirty minutes, she started to come around.
He helped her to stand and she seemed willing to cooperate, not yet fully realizing her situation.
"What?" she asked, her mouth slurring the word. She turned her head and saw her right hand suspended in air. Nketia wrapped her fingers around the gun and she jumped backward half a step, almost falling over. He steadied her and reached up to help her pull the trigger.
"No! No, no. Please." She screamed, cut short by a loud popping sound. Nketia lowered her to her knees and dismantled the rig. Then, he allowed her to fall over naturally.
As he packed his bag, he noticed that blood had splattered onto his kid gloves. He retrieved a rag from his kit and wiped his face and the front of his jacket, just in case. Finally, he wrapped her hand again around the gun.
Before leaving the site, he found a long, slender branch and swept the path behind him to erase his steps in as natural a manner as he could manage. At the edge of the forest, he tossed the branch into a nearby jumble of dead branches. Then, he turned up his hood to hide is appearance. With the wind picking up a bit, the cover was consistent with his surroundings.
Casually, he walked through the residential neighborhood to the nearby convenience store where he had parked his car. Taking off his gloves, he tossed them into the passenger seat and pulled out a stick of gum he had purchased from the convenience store over an hour earlier.
Chapter 4: Robbery
For the last several days, Nketia had shared a lunch with Eddie Lambert—a drug addict with a criminal record which included violence.
Each day, the assassin had spent several hours putting on makeup to make his face appear a very dark brown. The air outside was suffering the chill of late autumn, colder than normal for Jacksonville, Florida. He covered his ears and nappy, pale orange hair with a knit cap. Knit gloves and clothes purchased at a local thrift shop completed the illusion of poverty. Even his shoes were scuffed and in need of repair. The hole in one of them let water seep in whenever he stepped on wet pavement.
Today, Lambert was already sitting at their favorite table by the time Nketia got there.
"Malcolm!" said Lambert. He summoned Nketia with a wave of his hand. The young thug was also African-American, four years younger than the assassin and about five shades lighter than Nketia's makeup. Yet, he was several shades darker than the assassin's true color.
"S'up, Eddie?" He sat down and waved to the waitress.
"Been thinking about what you said, yesterday," said Lambert.
"Yeah, what was that?" The waitress approached with a menu. Nketia shook his head and said, "Coffee."
"About your sister and all. Damn shame. Corrupt doctors. Us niggas need to stick together."
Nketia nodded. The waitress arrived with a cup of coffee, to which he added enough cream to reflect his real color. Then, he poured enough sugar into his cup to equal four heaping teaspoons full. He stirred vigorously and gulped down half the cup. He hated the cream and sugar, but felt them a necessary part of his new, needy persona.
"That damn honkie practically ignored me when I went to confront him about my sister. Behind his desk, he has a safe in the wall. He opened it while I was there. Stuffed full of cash and jewels. I wanted to grab a knife right then and there and plunge it into his gut, fishing for his heart. But I know he ain't got none. Bastard."
"Why didn't you?"
"Me?" Nketia shook his head vigorously. "I'm the nigga that usually gets beat up—honkie gangs, pigs. If I pulled a knife on Dr. Bradstreet, I'd likely be the one all cut up. I ain't got no skills, you see? I'm a poor rural nigga lost in the big city. I ain't never had no need to pick a fight, until now. How about you?"
Lambert laughed and easily grinned. "Listen. You want I should carve up the good doctor? I'll do it for friend."
"Really?" Nketia blinked. "Gawd. Sissy can finally rest in peace."
"Yes," Lambert nodded and smiled. "Friends help friends."
"How could I ever repay you?"
"About that. Been days since my last fix. Could you spare some change?"
"Oh," Nketia pursed his lips and nodded in quick, short movements. "Sure, man. I need a little to tide me over till next weekend. I could give you three hundred. But say, what about Doc's safe? If you could catch him there late, after everyone else is gone—well, I'm sure he had thousands."
"Good," replied Lambert, lifting his hand and curling his fingers several times. Nketia reached for his wallet. "So, where do I find this honkie doctor?"
"Nicholas Bradstreet on East Allenby Drive—2819. That's his office." He handed Lambert three hundred dollars mostly in twenties. "You are one righteous nigga."
That evening, Lambert banged his fist on the glass door of Dr. Bradstreet's single occupant building. A few seconds later, he banged again.
In moments, he saw a figure move across the office lobby. "Sorry, closed. Come back tomorrow." In the dim light from the parking lot, he could see the doctor's face. The smile was pleasant enough, but Lambert suspected that the doctor had plenty of fake smiles to dole out.
Sensing potential defeat, Lambert upped the game by kicking the door with all his weight. The heavy glass shattered and he was sure to pull his foot back quickly enough to avoid being sliced by the falling shards. He saw the doctor retreat into his private office.
Lambert ducked underneath the horizontal door handle and chased after the doctor. In the office, Dr. Bradstreet had just dialed 911. Lambert picked up the phone and yanked at the wire with all his might.
"Open your safe," said Lambert.
"Safe? I don't have a safe. Here, take my watch. It's worth two thousand. Cash? I have a few hundred."
Lambert pulled out his knife and aimed it at Bradstreet. Behind the doctor's desk, a picture decorated the wall, but there was no safe behind it. "Damn it. Damn it! Damn it to hell! You twisted honkie doctor." He drove
the knife beyond Bradstreet's defensive arms, plunging it into the solar plexus at an upward angle. Bradstreet's eyes goggled then grew lifeless as he crumpled to the floor.
Eddie Lambert grabbed the doctor's wallet and watch, then left through the front door. The next day, he heard on the news that the doctor had been discovered by his nurse when she had arrived for work. Apparently the 911 call had not gone through, making Lambert's escape less troublesome. Later that week, he was able to offload the watch for four hundred dollars. Not bad for a quick stab and grab. After a week, he wondered if he'd ever see his friend Malcolm again.
Nketia later heard that Dr. Bradstreet had also been writing a book on GcMAF—a book that now would likely never be published.
Chapter 5: Accident
Huntington, West Virginia seemed like an entirely different world. Though Huntington had a population of only fifty thousand, the greater metropolitan area possessed more than a third of a million, spread across seven counties and three states—West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky.
Dr. Jeffrey Fitzpatrick had patients coming to him from all across the three states. By word of mouth from family members, some of his patients also came from Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington and even New York City.
Yesterday, the doctor's office had been raided by the federal Food and Drug Administration. All of his stocks of GcMAF had been confiscated along with patient records and the doctor's current manuscript.
Today, his office was closed and the good doctor was at home recuperating from the humiliation and frustration. Home was nestled in a sparsely populated section of unincorporated Wayne County. Dr. Fitzpatrick's house was surrounded by woods stripped of their leaves. A light sprinkling of snow before sunrise had already melted away.
Nketia felt conspicuous standing in the woods, scanning the doctor's house with binoculars. The wood frame, two-story home was covered with shingles also made of wood. The roof consisted of two gables and simple, intersecting roof pitches decorated at each end by red brick chimneys. One of the chimneys had a television antenna strapped to it.
A small, separate building with a single, sloping roof housed a two-car garage. One side contained the doctor's sixties vintage Mercedes. The other side had been converted to storage. At the moment, the doctor was digging through boxes on the storage side. The assassin could see the doctor smiling and nodding to himself, as he flipped through a stack of papers that could have been a copy of his manuscript. Along the outer wall of the storage section, Nketia could see an extension ladder resting on wall hooks.
As each detail was observed, the assassin would make note of it for medium range memory. One or more of these details might come in handy to develop a strategy for this one target.
The yard surrounding the house was rather large—close to half an acre, consisting of mown grass, now dormant because of the season, plus four large and ancient trees which looked as though they had been around long before the old house had been built, and might well be around long after its demise. Though not precisely a rectangle, the yard was close enough so that mowing it should not have been a problem for someone with the right equipment. A walk-behind, powered mower would likely take hours, if not all day, to complete the job. Perhaps the doctor had someone else do the job for him, since the garage did not seem to have a riding mower inside.
Because the house stood half a mile from the highway and because access was by a single, private road owned solely by the doctor, he was likely not to get a lot of visitors, unless invited. Twice, Nketia had driven past the doctor's turnoff. That stretch of road had a few other turnoffs likely to other homes, each separated by several hundred yards. The closest road-side structure was more than six miles closer to town—a service station.
Perhaps if he pretended to be a stranded driver with a broken down vehicle, he could gain the doctor's trust. The doctor's file said that he lived alone. Currently, there were no significant friends or relations to interrupt Nketia in his work.
Nketia never liked to get close to his victims. If anything ever went wrong, his identity could be compromised. The isolation of the house and the lack of other people in the doctor's life made this an ideal exception.
Sometimes, Joseph Nketia would squint at a scene—literally or figuratively—creating in his mind's eye a generalization of the scene or situation. The blurring effect tended to reveal patterns that frequently were masked by the details. This allowed him to see the forest, despite the distraction of the individual trees.
"There," he said. "The antenna. Strange in these days of cable TV and satellite dishes. But this could work."
Working his way up the hill, away from Fitzpatrick's house, he zigzagged toward the highway, angling toward the access road. He didn't have to go far—just far enough not to be seen walking from the woods onto the road. Nketia intersected the road a hundred yards from a bend and started walking toward the house. He had suspected that he might need his tranquilizer gun. Now, he was certain of it.
Past the bend, he could see the doctor's house. By now, the garage door had been closed and apparently the doctor had returned to the comfort of his home.
As he left the relative closeness of the woods and entered the open spaces of Fitzpatrick's sizeable yard, Nketia looked up. The sky had been drained of all color, like a cold Caucasian corpse that had been bled out. If everything went well, though, spilling blood would not be involved.
A sudden wind whipped at his coat collar and he pulled up his hood in time to avoid a light drizzle. He looked over the house as he approached it. The doctor was not to be seen. While fairly certain the doctor had not taken his car out, he still had to be alert for anything that might force a change to his plan.
At the front door, he knocked and waited. While he waited, he scanned the yard, the woods and the road which led back to the highway. What a waste, he thought to himself. All this yard and nothing in it. Unused. Had the doctor merely been so unimaginative, or was he too lazy to paint on that blank canvas?
The door opened. Nketia turned and pushed back his hood.
"I'm so sorry to bother you, sir," he said, shaking his head and lifting his shoulders in a halfhearted shrug. "My car broke down and I was hoping I could use your phone."
"Oh," replied the doctor and blinked. "Sure. Please. Come in."
Nketia stepped inside and stomped lightly on the floor mat in the foyer.
"I never get visitors."
"I can see why," replied Nketia. "That's quite a walk from the highway. Oh, Bob Thompson." Nketia extended his hand. The doctor shook hands with him, giving the gesture the warmth of someone who cares.
"Jeff Fitzpatrick." He placed his hands on his hips, then nodded, gesturing with one hand toward his nearby study. "So, the phone. Right this way."
As the doctor turned to escort his guest toward the phone, Nketia reached in his coat and pulled out the tranquilizer gun. A moment later, he helped the doctor finish his fall to the floor. He retrieved the dart, placing it in a plastic vial for reuse. His watch said 11:28.
He exited through the front door, turned right and made his way to the garage. Opening the right-hand door, he retrieved the ladder from the wall brackets. Outside, he walked back to the house and extended the ladder so that it reached the roof nearest the antenna. Returning to the house, he took a break, relieving himself in the restroom off of the study.
Based on the doctor's weight, metabolism and the amount of tranquilizer used, Fitzpatrick would likely be waking up about noon. Though it would prove far more comfortable to wait most of that time inside, out of the drizzle, Nketia new that lugging a drugged body up a ladder would be far easier than lugging a waking and disoriented body.
First, he rolled the doctor onto his back, then bent his legs, propping up his knees. Next, he grabbed one of the doctor's wrists, pulling him forward and up, blocking the doctor's feet from sliding with his own. Nketia stooped and let the doctor fall forward onto the assassin's shoulders and used his other hand to grab one of the docto
r's legs.
Nketia left by the front door, holding the doctor's wrist with his left hand, left arm threaded around the doctor's leg. This kept his right hand free to steady his balance on the ladder as he climbed.
He knew it would be difficult. The doctor only weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, but it began to feel like a ton after the first ten rungs. Resting on the ladder took work, so he did as little of that as possible. By the time he reached the top, his leg muscles were burning with pain from the overexertion.
Offloading the doctor onto the sloping roof took more effort than carrying him. Nketia braced himself and, with a burst of effort, threw the doctor forward. The momentum moved the ladder away from the roof for a moment, but gravity brought it back.
The assassin took a few seconds to regain his strength, then carefully stepped onto the roof and dragged the doctor toward the roof peak and the antenna. There, he could rest until the right time. His watch said 11:52.
Now, the objective was to send Fitzpatrick off the roof head first, without much spin so that he hit the ground upside-down. But Fitzpatrick was a little earlier than expected. Perhaps all that healthy living had sped up his metabolism. The doctor moaned and turned his head to the side.
Nketia leaned the doctor over the edge of the roof, next to the gable and held onto his legs until his head was pointing straight toward the ground. Then he let go. A dull, popping sound let him know the job was done. Still, he climbed down the ladder and went around to the end of the house to check for sure. The skull had burst and the neck had snapped, making it appear that the doctor no longer had a neck.
After closing the front door to the house, he stepped back along the driveway to take in the entire scene. The garage door was still open. That was good.