by Gary Parker
“Good, how long ago was his by-pass?”
“Just over a year. You ready for your eggs?”
“Sounds great.”
Luisa stepped away, and Rick flipped open the Blackberry and keyed it up. Seconds later, his email page appeared, and he scanned his messages, his mind instantly absorbed with news and notes from all the exotic people he knew, people he’d see again as soon as his retreat ended.
The man in the Nike cap moved like a cat on carpet to the bedroom door and clicked the keypad on the wall beside it. Steel lock bolts slid silently into place at the bottom, middle, and top of the door. Then the man shifted to the bed where Rick’s dad lay sleeping. For a moment he wished Carson would wake up and fight. Not that he’d have any trouble with his victim if he did. The assassin lifted weights at least four times a week, topping out at 400 pounds in a bench press, over 600 in a dead squat. His heart played a steady 48 beats per minute, and he ran a mile in six minutes, far faster than anyone expected from a guy of his girth. Middle-aged guys with marshmallow bellies like Steve Carson had no chance against him. Still . . . a little struggle before the coup de grâce would at least get his blood stirring.
To the big man’s chagrin, Carson failed to rouse, so he tamped down his disappointment and shifted into high gear. He withdrew a penlight from his backpack and held it between his teeth as he took a drug-filled needle from the pack on his waistband, uncapped it, and stuck it directly into Carson’s carotid artery. Carson’s body stiffened and his eyes jerked open, but the big man held him in place. Within a few seconds, the drug took effect, and Carson settled back down, his eyes closed once more.
The intruder put the needle away, counted to thirty, then lifted Carson’s one hundred and eighty pounds and hauled him to a desk chair about twenty feet away. Carson stirred but not enough to warrant another injection, so the intruder propped him in the chair, straightened his pajamas, and keyed up the desktop computer before him. The screen saver disappeared and the blue background of the word processing program flashed up. The assassin typed three words on the computer keyboard, then hit the print command. As the printer started, he backspaced over the three words he’d just printed, then stepped back and stood over Carson—so defenseless yet still alive.
The hit man’s spirits sagged; finishing Carson off felt like shooting a turtle in a bathtub. When the victim had no chance, the sport disappeared. Yet, like his sweet momma used to tell him, “a man starts a job, a man ought to finish it,” and right now he, better than anyone in the world, finished the jobs he accepted. He finished them clean, clear, and without complaint.
2
Rick finished his breakfast quickly and Luisa reappeared.
“More egg?” she asked.
“No, I’m good.” Rick clicked off the Blackberry, stood, and picked up his dishes.
“I’ll take those,” Luisa said.
“I got ’em,” Rick said, headed to the sink. “Mother taught me right before she . . .” He quickly rinsed the plate and glasses and placed them in the dishwasher.
“You a fine man,” Luisa said, falling into the truncated speech she sometimes used in spite of her English fluency. “One of your fancy women will take you home to meet her papa real soon.”
Rick chuckled. “You just want me married and out of your way.”
Luisa smiled, then went back to work, and Rick headed slowly toward the stairs.
“Dad!” he called.
Rick’s voice crackled through a speaker over his father’s bed upstairs.
“Move your keister!” Rick shouted. “We’re hiking Bear Ridge this morning, remember?”
In his dad’s room the stocky man shoved the point of a new needle into a vein in Steve Carson’s left forearm, injected its contents, then dropped the needle to the floor by Carson’s feet. Then he slid a long-bladed knife from his backpack and held it up in the moonlight slithering into the room from the balcony. A beautiful instrument, well-crafted, designed to carry a subtle but deadly message, one that only a few people on earth would know enough to understand.
After leaning Carson forward, forehead on the desk, he grabbed his left hand and turned it palm up. He knew the knife contradicted the notion of suicide, but he didn’t mind because his goal was confusion. Keep ’em guessing for awhile; that’s all he wanted.
Taking a big breath, the beefy man thrust the knife into Carson’s palm, impaling it into the dark wood beneath his hand. Carson groaned softly and his hand momentarily clenched around the knife, but the assassin paid him no mind. Within a few more seconds, the drugs would finish the job he’d started and he’d be long gone.
“Dad!”
The voice sounded from the room’s speaker and the assassin heard Carson’s son again.
“You’re getting ancient!” the son shouted to his father. “Not to mention your faulty ticker.”
The intruder considered waiting for the son, testing himself against the younger man, but his instructions said to avoid him if possible, so he quickly examined his work one more time, then headed to the balcony and slid over the side, then to the ground. There he punched the keypad by the garage, re-engaged the house’s security system, then melted into the darkness toward the motorcycle he’d hidden about half a mile from the retreat’s guardhouse at the gate.
At his desk, Steve Carson felt his body quiver for an instant, then his eyes popped open and he tried to lift himself but failed. His whole body felt sluggish, like a thousand feet of water covered it, and he heard muffled sounds but couldn’t fathom their origin or meaning. He tried to speak, but his tongue refused to cooperate, and his words died on his thick lips. A sense of pain edged into his brain from his left hand, and he tried to move that hand but found it oddly stuck in place. He gave up on that and stretched his right one toward the computer keyboard. One word stabbed into his consciousness, and he tried the fingers on his right hand and found them workable, so he hit one button on the keyboard, then four more, before his fingers faltered and he typed no more.
Rick stood outside the door. “Dad?” He knocked, lightly at first, then harder. “Dad!” Rick tried the door, but it didn’t budge. His concern rose. “Dad!” He banged his shoulder against the door, but it refused to yield. He realized his mistake and stepped back. Reinforced steel filled the inside of the doors and walls of the house, a safety precaution taken when they built the place.
“Codes,” he yelled, rushing to his room three doors down. A suitcase-sized vault triggered by voice-recognition software whirred, then opened on the back wall as Rick entered the room. A single steel drawer slid out and Rick grabbed the electronic key pad that contained the codes for each of the home’s rooms and sprinted back to his dad’s door where he patched in the code. The door opened and Rick barged inside.
“Lights,” he shouted. The room brightened and Rick froze as he saw his dad slumped at his desk with his head on his arm, his computer in front of him, his eyes open but glassy, his left hand impaled on the desk.
“Dad?” Rick rushed to his father and touched his shoulder, felt the clammy skin, not yet cold but not warm either. Rick shook him—no response. He lifted his right wrist to check for a pulse—nothing.
“Luisa!” Rick yelled at the intercom.
“Yes, Mister Rick.”
“Call 911! Get an ambulance!”
He bent to the knife in his dad’s palm and started to inspect it, then saw the needle on the floor and dropped down to pick it up. Finding it empty, he stood by his dad again, needle in hand.
“Dad?” Tears filled Rick’s eyes as he tried to think. Should he move his father or not? Pull out the knife or not?
“Dad?” He bent to his father’s face and looked into his fixed, empty stare. He considered rolling him over to try CPR but knew that required him to remove the knife and he didn’t want to tamper any more with the scene. He lay down the needle and checked for a pulse again but found none.
“Dad?” He shook the body. “Dad!”
Luisa entered as
Rick fell back, his hope fleeting. A fresh breeze from the balcony brushed Rick’s face and his tears dried up as a new emotion replaced his grief. He sprinted to the balcony, wondering why his dad had left it opened. Or had he?
The sun, just beginning to rise, provided little light, but the glow from the house lights brightened the meadow below. Rick scanned the immediate yard but saw nothing suspicious. He lifted his gaze to the airstrip that ran along the edge of the property and saw one of the family jets and a helicopter side by side but nothing else, nothing out of place.
Rick rushed back inside as Luisa checked his dad’s pulse, then stepped back.
“I called 911,” she said softly. “The ambulance is coming.”
Rick shook his head; they lived about forty miles from Wolf Creek, the nearest community hospital. “We need a hearse now, not an ambulance.”
Luisa dabbed her eyes and Rick checked his dad’s pulse once more, willing himself to find a heartbeat, a thump of life still roaming inside his dad’s body. But he found nothing.
“What happened, Dad?” he whispered, laying down the wrist for the final time and sagging onto the bed. No answer.
Rick faced Luisa. “This is crazy,” he muttered.
“Security system didn’t work,” Luisa whispered. “Murderer entered by the balcony.”
“Must have climbed the side of the house,” Rick mused aloud. “But why didn’t the alarm go off? The system cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, the most sophisticated of its kind.”
An engine in the distance broke the quiet; sounded like a motorcycle on the highway. Rick wanted to go after it but then tossed off the notion. If the killer was escaping on a motorcycle, he had too big a head start for anyone to catch him.
Rick’s shoulders slumped. “Who wanted Dad dead?” he mumbled.
Luisa shrugged. Rick studied the matter another moment but found no answer so he took a big breath, leaned over and kissed his dad’s cheek. Then, realizing he’d done all he could, he straightened and looked at Luisa.
“He’s dead,” he said, the words banging emptily in his brain.
“He employed me for twenty-three years,” Luisa sobbed. “A good, good man.”
Rick stood and opened his arms to Luisa. She hesitated and he waved her closer. “You’re family, Luisa.”
She sagged into his grasp and he held her several long seconds. He patted her gently, then stepped back. They had things to do before anyone else arrived.
“I need you to leave now,” he said. “I’ve already messed up the crime scene, touched things. No reason to contaminate the room any further.”
“I bring the emergency personnel when they arrive,” she said.
“Call the police too.”
Luisa left and Rick closed the door. Unable to do anything else for his dad, he stood still for over a minute, his mind clicking. What would the police see when they arrived? A dead man with an empty needle beside him and a knife stuck through his hand, but no sign of an intruder; a state-of-the-art alarm system that failed to go off.
Rick ground his teeth against the next thought that entered his head; although the clues were confusing, the needle seemed to indicate a drug overdose, intentional or otherwise. Would the police—small-town Montana types who sometimes resented wealthy outsiders—call it a suicide? The rich and famous enjoyed a lot of advantages, but not as much this day and age as in times past. Regular folks liked to believe the worst about the rich, make scapegoats out of them. And how competent would the cops be? Maybe it was snobbish of him to think that way, but so what? He didn’t need Barney Fife investigating his dad’s murder.
Rick trudged back to the balcony, his eyes scanning the floor for evidence of a killer, but he saw nothing, so he returned to his dad’s body and examined the desk around it. The computer screen saver flashed images of him and his dad hiking, riding mountain bikes, fishing—all the things they enjoyed together. On impulse, Rick punched the Enter key and the screen saver disappeared.
Four letters appeared on the screen—CONS.
What?
He read the letters again—C-O-N-S—all caps, no punctuation at the end.
Eyes narrowing, Rick inspected the desk and saw blood under his dad’s wounded hand but nothing else out of place. He checked the keyboard for blood but saw none. His eyes landed on the printer; a page sat in the out tray. Although he knew he should wait for the police, Rick yanked out the paper anyway and read three words.
“i could not.” No punctuation of any kind, no caps on any of the letters.
Even more confused, Rick studied the paper and weighed the possibilities.
A suicide note?
“i could not.”
Could not what?
He reread the letters on the screen—“CONS.”
If his dad had printed a suicide note then why add another word and leave it on the computer? And what did “CONS” mean? And why capitalize those four letters but not the others?
Carelessness? Or did it all mean something? A message of some kind?
Remorse maybe? Perhaps his dad wanted to say one more thing after he left the note and injected the drugs into his body. But what and why?
And what about the knife?
A man didn’t pump a drug overdose into his veins, then pin his palm to a desk with a knife. The cops would realize that, wouldn’t they? But what did the knife mean?
Rick scanned the area again but saw nothing more, so he dropped the paper with its cryptic message on the desk and squatted by his dad again.
“What happened, Dad?” he whispered.
Silence filled the room.
Rick stood again and forced himself to inspect the knife still lodged in his dad’s hand. His stomach lurched, but he held back the bile and studied the weapon. A row of bead-sized rubies, partially obscured by blood seepage, lay inside a gold edging on the handle. Unable to stop himself, Rick stepped to the bed, took the slip case off the pillow, then moved back to the knife and gently wiped the handle.
The rubies emerged more clearly and Rick shuddered against what he saw. Although not at all religious, he still recognized the pattern and it sent an icy finger down his spine.
The rubies were arranged in two rows—one vertical, one horizontal; the vertical longer than the horizontal.
Rick buried his head in his hands. An assassin had murdered his dad and left behind a knife decorated with rubies shaped in the form of a cross.
3
Detroit
A light rain fell as Bobby Stiller parked the pickup truck provided by his employer, slid a black vest over his thin chest, covered it with a Dallas Cowboy jacket, and climbed out of his vehicle. Under the jacket, needle marks tracked Bobby’s arms like somebody had walked up and down his forearms in steel-spiked golf shoes. His hair—long, oily, and brown—fell onto his collar, and his eyes showed an oily mix of red, yellow, and brown sloshed in together.
Bobby didn’t particularly want to finish what he’d started out to do this morning, but he didn’t see much way to escape it. A heroin habit that had cost him his job, driven off his wife and three-year-old daughter, and bitten him with a case of terminal AIDS tended to steal most of a man’s options. He turned a corner and saw his destination about a block away, so he stopped, pulled a whiskey bottle from the pocket of his jeans, uncapped it, and took a long swig of liquid courage. Putting the bottle away, he hefted his vest and told himself to breathe easy. Within an hour it would all end.
Thoughts of his wife and daughter filled his head and Bobby almost smiled. Other than catching the winning touch-down pass for the Thompson High Eagles his senior year when they won the 2-A state championship, marrying Tina and fathering Lisa gave him the only other claim to fame he’d ever enjoyed. And they were keepers—Tina, a tiny blonde who worked at the movie theater by his house, and Lisa . . . well, a black-haired, curly-headed baby girl like her made a man glad to climb out of bed every morning.
Bobby shook his head to clear their pictures from his brain, t
hen slowed as he reached his target. Time to stick his nose in it; no more wasted thoughts. He inhaled deeply and shut his eyes to focus. One million dollars, he whispered, one million dollars, one million dollars, one million dollars.
The money had arrived just two days ago, more cash than a man like him ever hoped to see. It waited for Tina in the trunk of the rusty car that sat on concrete blocks out behind her momma’s house. He had hidden it there just last night, money to provide for the only two people who had ever really cared about him.
One million dollars, one million dollars, one million dollars. His one chance to show he loved them, even though he’d screwed up so many times they might still have a hard time believing it. One million dollars.
Just this morning he had mailed Tina a letter that told her where to find the cash. “The cops will probably show up,” he warned Tina in the letter. “Ask a lot of questions. Just tell ’em the truth. You left me over a year ago. My drug use drove you away. You left me to protect Lisa. Say nothing about the money; use it to make a better life for you and Lisa. I do love you two—make sure Lisa knows that when she’s old enough to understand.”
Bobby opened his eyes and looked at the sky where the rain had stopped. Gray clouds scuttled away as if running from the carnage about to unfold below them.
“Why you want this done?” Bobby had asked the man who showed up at his door about a month ago and offered him the job.
“No need for you to know that,” said the man, a shaved-head stocky guy with eyes like steel-gray marbles. “You interested or not?”
“Why me?” Bobby asked.
The man waved his hand over Bobby’s ill-kept trailer. “Look around, Bobby boy. What’s to lose? No wife, daughter taken away. Drugs own you and that AIDS ain’t going nowhere. Your life expectancy makes a fruit-fly look ancient.”
“Where you from?” Bobby asked. “You talk like me, but different too.”
“Swamp country,” the man said. “But that don’t matter for you. I need an answer. You saying yes or no?”