by David Archer
He'd known that divorce would be coming sooner or later, and he'd even thought more than once of just having her killed—but he actually did care for her, at least enough to avoid murdering her until it became necessary. When she started asking questions about his hidden accounts, it had been the last straw, and he'd planned it out carefully. He chose a patient who had already done some minor things for him, a strong and powerful man who could kill her quickly and easily. Carl Morris was a fairly simple man, and he took his programming easily.
Connors was so excited about getting Juliette out of the way that he decided to take a risk and go and watch. He'd gone to Carl's house, planning to follow him and make sure there weren't any complications, but there had been. He'd been parked just in front of the house next door, and he saw the front door start to open—but then it closed, and he'd wondered what was going on. He'd stepped out of his car, and that was when he heard the first scream.
He rushed to the door and found it half open, so he's pushed it a bit further to see if he could tell what was going on. Carl had his son down on the floor, and as Connors watched, he struck the boy in the head with a hatchet or something. A second later, a woman and a girl came running in and grabbed him, trying to stop him, but he struck them both savagely, hitting them over and over until they both were motionless and silent. He started to rise, and Connors knew that, in this condition, Carl would leave a trail a mile wide, even if he managed not to get stopped on the way to Juliette's place, so he decided to abort the plan.
He said, “Carl, stop. I want you to forget what you were supposed to do, and go and lock your doors, then lay down and go back to sleep. Lock your doors, Carl, and then go back to sleep, do you understand?”
Carl had not even looked his way. He nodded and said, “I'll lock the doors, then go to sleep,” and turned to shuffle to the front door. Connors backed away, and when he heard the door latch click shut, and then the deadbolts slide home, he turned and sprinted hurriedly to his car and went straight home.
He was trembling, but it wasn't with fear or remorse; he had just witnessed exactly how powerful he really was, and seeing those people die so violently had left him in a heightened state of excitement that he'd never known before. He got to his apartment and rushed inside, locking the door behind him and then sitting in a chair the rest of the night, reliving the experience over and over.
It was almost like he'd killed those people himself, but that was thrill he'd never known. He'd dreamed about it, but he'd always felt that it would be senseless to take any of the risks upon himself, so he had never allowed himself to act on it.
Then that stupid PI had showed up at his office, and he'd gotten angry. He knew it was the same one that had done the asset search his lawyer had faxed to him that morning, but he pretended to know nothing. When it dawned on him that this young punk actually knew what he was doing, what he was capable of, it had infuriated him. He needed a way to get rid of him, and suddenly it hit him that he could use the PI to his advantage.
When Sam had stood to go, Connors had risen behind him, and driven a hypodermic needle full of ketamine—one he kept prepared at all times—into his lower back. Sam had spun, of course, and tried to put up a fight, but the proximity to the kidneys had meant that the drug was in his bloodstream within seconds. Sam's bad hip had worked against him, and he'd fallen as he spun, and by the time he was able to start getting to his feet, he was so woozy and weak that he couldn't manage it, and a moment later he was out cold.
Connors had called for Gina, his hygienist and Becky, the receptionist, the two women who were his greatest successes. Both of them took daily reinforcements of his programming, and would automatically do anything he told them to do. He told the receptionist to tell anyone who came in that he was indisposed in the bathroom, and then had the hygienist help him carry Sam out to his car.
He spotted Sam's motorcycle, and called a friend who owed him a big favor. The motorcycle would be gone within minutes, and would cease to exist in only a few hours.
They drove straight to Juliette's house, and Connors had taken Sam's gun and gone to ring the doorbell. When Juliette answered the door, her face set in a smirk, it had pissed him off even more, and he'd raised the gun and pointed it into her face. She'd stumbled back, begging him not to do anything stupid, and suddenly he'd just had his fill, of her, of wanting to feel the thrill of a kill, of being almost—but not quite—omnipotent, and he'd pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, firing once, twice, a third time…
The first bullet had caught her just over the right eye, and she was dead instantly, her brain gone and splattered all over the wall behind her. The second bullet had struck her right shoulder, and the third had gone wild, burying itself in a bookcase. He'd stood there staring at what he'd done for a moment, and then the thrill hit him so hard that he had an orgasm.
He'd gone to the car, and he and the hygienist had carried Sam in. They laid him down next to Juliette's body, and Sam told Gina to rub Sam's hand in the blood that was all over the floor and then wrap it around the grips of the gun and use his finger to fire one more shot. That would put powder residue on Sam's hand, Connors knew, and that would be important.
Then they'd gone back to the office, Gina keeping her bloodied hand up so that she wouldn't risk leaving any blood spots in the Jag. When they'd gotten back, the receptionist said no one had come in, so he told her to make sure that no one ever knew he had left that day. Both she and Gina were programmed to believe that they had seen Sam leave angrily. Gina washed up, and then forgot the entire episode as she was told to, and Connors composed himself and got ready for the visit from the police that was sure to come.
A half hour later, it dawned on him that Sam would be waking up soon, and he needed the police to find him there with the body. He called Gina in and told her to go to the convenience store that was only a few blocks from Juliette's place and use the payphone there to call the police and report hearing shots from the house. She was to refuse to give a name, and then get back as soon as possible. She did as she was told, promptly forgot it, and was back almost an hour before the police showed up to tell him his wife had been murdered.
But all of it was falling apart on him. That stupid PI and his wife and her mother had ruined everything! Well, the PI was in jail, and he couldn't get to him; all that remained was to deal with the wife and mother!
11
Indie and Kim had been at the computer for hours. They'd looked at more than three hundred images, and were just about ready to conclude that Connors hadn't been near Carl's house the night of the murder, but commitment and loyalty to Sam made them keep looking. Indie saw that it was almost 2 a.m., and she knew they were both exhausted, but she didn't want to quit. If they could find one image of Connors' Jaguar anywhere in that area that night, it should be enough to make a jury believe he could have been in Carl's house that night. Every little thing they got on Connors would help when it came time for the prosecutor to make his decision on Sam, as well as on Carl. She kept going.
She clicked another link, and they looked at the cars in the picture. “Nope,” Kim said, and she closed that window. She clicked the next, with the same result. Kim yawned beside her as she clicked the next one, and said, “Nope,” as she yawned, but Indie said, “Wait!”
She looked closely at the image on the screen, and then went to another window where she had a picture of a Jag like Connors' saved for comparison. She went back and forth a few times, and then Kim said, “Holy mother, you got him!”
“Yeah, I think so. Now, let's get the tag from that car,” she said, blowing up the image and moving it so they could see the license plate on the front of the car. “AQR 912,” she said, then looked at a note on her desk.
Kim jumped out of her chair when Indie slapped her desk and shouted, “Bingo! We've got him! That's his car, right there, and if you take a good look, I'll bet you can recognize your old friend the dentist, there!”
Kim leaned close to the screen and l
ooked closely at the blown-up image. “That's him. I'd know that shiny bald head anywhere, now!”
“Do you mean this shiny bald head?” said a voice behind them, and both Indie and Kim turned to find Alex Connors standing behind them. He had a chrome-plated automatic in his right hand, and it was waving back and forth between them. “Well, hello, Kimberly. Since you remember me so well, I must have made quite an impression on you. Why didn't you introduce me to your daughter, yesterday? Why, the three of us could have had so much fun together!” He sighed. “But you had to play detective, and try to ruin everything for me, didn’t you? Well, I guess I can understand; it was your move, I suppose, but what you need to understand is that you're playing against a master, and I never lose.”
Indie stared at him and his gun, trying to think of anything she could say or do to save their lives, but she was at a loss. She couldn't understand how he could have gotten in, she was sure she'd locked the door, but that wasn't important; he was there, and he apparently planned to kill them both. The only thing she could think of was to thank God that Kenzie wasn't home, because this sick monster would have killed her, too. She knew that Sam would do his best to raise the child, and that he'd make sure she didn't forget her mother.
“If you hurt us, the police will know who did it,” she said, and then kicked herself mentally. This was a man who thought he was above the law, and beyond the reach of justice. That was obvious, from everything he had done so far. His delusions of grandeur and invincibility blinded him to the mistakes he'd made, and he wouldn't believe anything she said about getting caught.
“Oh, I've already dealt with one of them,” he said, “and I had planned for this contingency a long time ago. I'll be long gone before your bodies are found, with a new name and no way I can be found, so I'm not concerned about any repercussions. But I do want to know one thing, before I do what I came to do, and that's how you did all this. How did you and your husband figure me out?”
Indie thought fast; he was giving her a chance to buy time, as stupid as any movie villain. If she could use it properly, there was a slim chance she could get some kind of advantage, and she prayed she'd know it if she saw it.
“I'm a computer whiz,” she said slowly. “I was looking at your business records, and checked your patient logs, and saw that Carl Morris was one of your patients, and that he'd been there the morning before he killed his family, and then I saw that Annie Corning was there before she started acting strange, and I put two and two together and got four. There were too many coincidences.”
Connors smiled. “Wow, what a smart girl you are,” he said. “Still, there was nothing to connect me to them. How did you get that cop to believe you?”
Indie didn't know what cop he could be talking about, because as far as she knew, none of the police involved would know anything about it until after Carol met with the prosecutor in the morning. She didn't want to lose the advantage, though, so she shrugged as it was no big deal.
“I just showed 'em everything I had, and they came to their own conclusions,” she said.
Kim leaned forward suddenly, smiling. “And that's why they said you might come after us,” she said, “and put officers to watching the house from hiding. Between that and the video cameras we hid all over the place, we've got an audience of about twenty people watching us right now.”
Connors' face went blank, and his eyes began flashing around the room. “What cameras? I don't see any cameras...”
Indie seized on her mom's idea. “We use nanny cams, heard of those? See the clock on the wall? Camera. See the plant over there on the desk? Camera. There are about twenty scattered around here, and I suspect our guard detail will be coming through the doors any second now!”
Connors stared at her, but his eyes kept flicking to the clock and the plant, then back to her face. He stood there for a moment in shock, but then his face contorted in rage.
“No!” he screamed, “no!” He had lowered the gun slightly, letting its aim hang down toward the desk for a second, but he suddenly started to raise it, and then he froze again. Indie stared at him for a second, and then realized that his eyes weren't on her any longer, they were looking to her right, and there was blood on his chest. Indie turned her head to her right, and saw her mother standing there with Sam's other gun, the little thirty-two with the silencer that Harry had given him when he was dealing with the terrorist.
Connors fell to the floor, and Indie immediately jumped up and grabbed his gun from him as he hit. She felt for a pulse and found one, weak but somewhat steady, and then grabbed the phone to dial 911.
“I need police and an ambulance right now,” she said, then looked at her mother's face. “I've just shot an intruder who was trying to kill me and my mother. No, he's down and wounded, but alive. Yes, we'll have the front door open.”
She got off the phone and turned to look at her mother. “Mom? Mom, give me the gun...”
“I shot him,” Kim said slowly. “Beauregard said I would have to do something terrible, but I didn't know I'd have to shoot him...”
Indie reached out and took the gun, slowly and carefully, and her mother turned to look at her. “Mom, it's okay,” she said. “You saved our lives, Mom, it's okay.”
Kim stared at her for a moment. “Beauregard told me the gun was in the desk drawer, and to open the drawer while we were looking at the computer. When he lowered his gun, he told me to get it and shoot him, and I did...”
Indie swallowed. “Okay, and you did, you saved our lives, but I think—I think when the cops get here, it would be better if we say I shot him, okay? And let's—let's just leave Beauregard out of it completely, shall we?”
* * * * *
Karen Parks was called out of a dead sleep to respond when the call came in that Orville Kennedy had been stabbed numerous times at a bar on Eighteenth Street. When she arrived, she found that he was badly injured, but alive, and left her assistant Brenner to get witness statements and handle the perp—a young girl who swore she didn't remember doing it—while she went with Kennedy to the hospital.
He regained consciousness in the ER, and was able to tell Karen how he'd come to be at the bar, and why. She had not yet been briefed on Connors, and was having a hard time believing what she was hearing, but she knew Orville; if he said it, she believed it. When she heard that there was even evidence that Sam Prichard was innocent, she breathed a sigh of relief, because she owed that man.
She was still there, waiting with Jeanie for him to get out of emergency surgery, when the next call came in two hours later, that Sam Prichard's wife had just shot an intruder, so she left and threw her light on the dash as she raced to Sam's place.
The intruder was none other than Alex Connors himself. Karen had let the paramedics work on him, then took Indie and Kim to the station to be interviewed. By the time they had all of the reports and statements—with some strange comment about someone named Beauregard, which Indie insisted was a delusion of her mother’s, brought on by the shock of the whole situation—and knew what had actually happened, it was almost 10 a.m., and Karen was surprised when she got a call from the prosecutor's office. She slipped out of the room to take it.
“Parks,” she answered.
“Karen,” said a tired voice, “this is Will Burton. I've been going over an absolutely humongous pile of science fiction that happens to be highly detailed and uncannily credible evidence that we have a man in this city who has literally been using mind control to make people commit murder and other crimes.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I'm dealing with part of that situation right now. Alex Connors attempted to kill two people early this morning, and got himself shot in the process. It's not a life-threatening wound, and he's in custody at the hospital now. I'm going over it all with the wife of Sam Prichard, the private investigator; it was her and her mother that Connors tried to kill, and the wife who shot him.”
Burton sighed. “And she didn't have the decency to finish the job for us? Te
ll her I hate her. Anyway—I've seen enough to say that Prichard is almost certainly innocent, and I can guarantee we'd never get a conviction against him in any event, so I've just sent a motion to the judge to dismiss, and it's been granted already. He'll be released any second now, so you're off that case.”
Karen smiled. “I'm glad to hear it, and I'll share the news with his wife. Any word on the Carl Morris case? I hear it's right in the middle of this mess.”
“Oh, dear God, Karen, do you know who my boss is? When I told him there is evidence that Morris was manipulated beyond any hope of resistance into doing that deed, he threw a fit at first. It took us an hour to convince him he isn't going to get a conviction, but that wasn't good enough for him. He's decided to offer Morris a deal: no jail time, if he pleads to manslaughter and agrees to testify against Connors. His lawyer called me ten minutes ago to say he accepted, so we're going to court to close the deal this afternoon.”
Karen thanked him and hung up the phone, then went to tell Indie the good news.
* * * * *
Sam and Indie arrived at the Casino an hour before the band was scheduled to play. Because they were playing in the lounge and alcohol would be served, minors weren't allowed, and Kenzie was happily staying with the twins again that night. They went inside and found the seats they'd asked for, reserved for Indie, their mothers and a couple of guests: Harry Winslow and Carl Morris. Carl had been released the day after Sam; he'd accepted the plea agreement, pleading guilty to manslaughter in return for one year of probation and psychological counseling. Sam had invited him to attend the show, and he'd been happy to accept, once he got over the shock of his private investigator being a performing country singer.
Once they were all there and seated—Grace, Sam's mother, had Harry parked right beside her, and Kim was doing her best to provide friendly conversation to Carl—Sam went back to get changed and ready.