The parking garage was only three blocks from where we had parked, so within several minutes we were already nearing our destination. We had decided to enter the parking structure from one of the exits along the back in order to be less conspicuous to any casual observers along the busy thoroughfare on which it was built. We turned down the side street directly adjacent to the garage. As we continued along the sidewalk, we peered into the underground parking lot through rectangular slats that were built into the concrete foundation of the building. There, periodic openings had been included in the design of the building to allow natural light into the garage and to promote ventilation, which would prevent excessive accumulation of exhaust gases within the space. After all, it’s never a good idea to poison your customers with smoke and carbon monoxide before expecting them to consume large quantities of chicken wings or to invite them to engage in an hour-long kickboxing class. Anyway, through these openings we could see that only a few vehicles were present within the garage, which was brightly lit by sodium vapor lights. We were pleased to see that, among them was the late model ‘bimmer’ driven by my daughter’s soon to be deceased, dick muncher—I mean, husband.
We made our way to the rear of the two-story building, where the architects had placed the entrance and exit ramps for the underground garage. The capacious parking structure ran the length of the entire city block on which the building stood and was nearly as wide. It provided ample parking for the patrons of Buffalo Wild Wings, a Tex-Mex cantina called Glorias, a dental clinic, a salon, a sports medicine clinic, and Title Boxing Gym. The latter, being the only establishment already open at this hour, which explained the limited number of vehicles parked within the garage as we entered it via the exit ramp. There was a single camera fastened to a bracket and attached to the ceiling directly above the middle of the ramp. It was focused on the ramp itself and, clearly, its main purpose was to capture the license plates of the cars exiting the garage. I had previously cased the building and found that the only cameras were this one, an analogous camera positioned on the entrance ramp, and a third, which covered the small lobby outside the elevator. This small lobby provided the only access to the stairwell and elevators from the parking garage. With these three cameras the designers of the security system clearly believed they had the only access points to the garage covered, which should deter unsavory characters from pursuing criminal activities within the facility.
In reality, all it took to prevent identification of a perpetrator of criminal acts within the garage was for the individuals to cover their head with, say a sweatshirt hood and to look downward as they passed by the cameras. Thankfully, air-tight security was not practical in such an expansive space. This was why Mandy and I had lectured Lizzie about leaving BWW’s alone and walking through this potential lair for rapists and murderers on her way to her car after a late-night shift. I actually started to get a little worked up thinking about what could happen to an innocent restaurant server or customer entering the underground garage late at night. This led me to the thought that the management of the establishments upstairs should insist on better security. The hypocrisy of this thought process suddenly occurred to me. I reminded myself that I had become one of the miscreants who’d chosen this particular location to perform my nefarious acts. Quickly realizing that none of these thoughts were helpful at that particular moment, I forced myself to abandon them. When you are about to kill someone, the last thing you need to be thinking about is how to improve security at the venue where you intend to carry out your evil deed.
This murder shit was new to me, and I definitely needed to continuously remind myself to keep my head in the game. What I needed at that moment was to focus on the reason Hank and I were there. Unfortunately, as we left the ramp and entered the garage proper, I was distracted again as I imagined Ryan in the grasp of Brandon as he backhanded her for giving him a look he didn’t like or for arguing with him. In my mind, I saw her upper lip explode from the contact with his knuckles and I saw her head twist violently as her face absorbed the energy from the blow. As this movie played in my head, my imagination suddenly transformed me from the perspective of an observer to that of the recipient of the brutal blow. I saw the scene through Ryan’s eyes and as my head returned to a forward-facing position, I saw Brandon in front of me with a look of anger and revulsion on his face.
Why don’t you just keep your fuckin’ mouth shut, you stupid bitch? This he said in my head as he brought his hand back up and considered dishing out another blow. I’m sick and tired of your shit. You can’t expect me to hold back when you make me so angry. Why do you make me feel this way?
I felt tears welling up at the corners of my eyes and I realized the terror Ryan must have felt as her husband threatened and beat her. I wished I could have somehow been there at one of these moments, so that I could have protected her and counterattacked on her behalf. I knew that, had I ever witnessed such an event, I would have completely given in to rage and I seriously doubted that I could have stopped myself from killing him in the most brutal way possible. I counted myself lucky I’d never been put in this position. It would have been difficult to absolve myself from guilt in the eyes of the authorities if I’d impulsively brained him with whatever suitable implement was within my reach at that moment.
As I pulled my mind out of this scenario and my eyes focused once again on my actual surroundings, I realized I had stopped walking. I could feel my breathing had sped up and I could feel the warmth in my arms from the blood that had been sent surging through my arteries by my body’s fight or flight response to the scenario I’d imagined. I felt like someone had grabbed my adrenal glands and squeezed every drop of adrenaline and cortisol from them. I looked down at my hands and saw the whiteness of the skin overlying my knuckles due to the tightness with which I was curling my fingers and thumbs into fists. I forced myself to open my hands and allow blood to re-enter each of my digits. As I brought my hands up in front of my face to watch the color return to them, I noticed my hands were shaking. Apparently, the motivational trip I had taken in my head had done its job. I was now supercharged with energy and a redoubled hatred for Brandon. I literally could not wait to get my hands on him to make him pay for what he had done to my little girl, and to ensure he would never again be able cause her to suffer.
“Dude,” Hank called out, breaking into my trance of self-awareness.
“Oh yeah, sorry man,” I replied. “I’m alright. Just getting my game face on.”
“Are you trippin’ or what? I can’t have you losing focus. Are we gonna do this? You’ve gotta’ get your shit together, and I mean now!”
I looked at him with an intensity I don’t think he’d ever seen in me and said, “I am rock solid. I just had to get in the right frame of mind. Let’s get into position.”
“Okay, then,” he said. We both resumed our gangsta’ impersonations as we strolled through the garage. As we did so, we casually looked around to see if anyone was in any of the parked cars. We knew the one thing that could fuck up our plan would be someone seeing us as we laid in wait for Brandon to enter the garage or witness the take-down as it occurred. A quick call to 911 would bring the police much faster than we’d be able to exit the crime scene and get back to our vehicle. Fortunately, the cars were all vacant, so the game was on and we were able to advance to the next phase of the plan.
Across the small elevator lobby from the parking area was a stairwell, in which the staircase itself was surrounded by walls of cinder block coated with a thick layer of glossy, white paint. There were heavy, steel doors on each of the three levels providing access to the stairwell. As Hank and I had discussed the details of exactly where in the garage we would attack Brandon, it didn’t take long to realize the only location where we would be able to absolutely prevent exposure would be in the stairwell. So, this is where we headed.
We had carefully kept track of the time and, as I prepared to enter the elevator lobby, I glanced down at my watch. It was 6:20a
m. When I had performed my recon of the garage the previous week, I had witnessed Brandon leaving class at 6:35am, plus or minus a minute or two, so we didn’t have much time to get into position and prepare to pounce on our unsuspecting prey. I stepped into the elevator lobby with my nightstick deployed. I knew that the security camera was aimed at the center of the space and that it would not be able to ‘see’ the space along the wall to which it was attached. For this reason, I hugged the wall and shimmied along it until I was close enough to the camera. Then, with a snap of my wrist, I crashed the rounded tip of the weapon into the lens, sending glass fragments flying from its disabled ‘eye.’
“Nicely done,” Hank said, as he approached me within the lobby. He pressed the elevator call button and waited for the ‘ding’ which announced the arrival of the elevator car at the garage level. The door opened and he stepped into the car. In his left hand was a hard rubber wedge measuring approximately one by three inches. He placed the wedge in the space between the retracted elevator door and the steel frame which surrounded the entrance to the car itself. He used the mallet in his right hand to hammer the wedge into the space, which prevented the door from sliding shut, effectively disabling the elevator until the goal of executing Brandon was complete and it was time to make our getaway.
“Radio on,” he said, as he pushed the power button on the Motorola Talkabout two-way radio attached to his belt. I immediately responded by turning on my own radio. Each of us had previously placed the earpieces into our left ears after running the cords up through our shirts in order to conceal them as we had gotten dressed. A casual observer would have to struggle to see the cords, with their attached microphones, as they exited our collars and were immediately camouflaged by our wigs and further concealed by our hoods, which were to remain up throughout the mission.
“I’m heading up,” I said.
“Roger,” he replied. I wasn’t sure if that was an automatic response programmed into his brain from his military days, or if he was just trying to seem like a badass. It didn’t really matter, and I appreciated that he was approaching our endeavor with military precision.
We stepped into the stairwell together and exchanged a final glance into each other’s eyes, sharing a confirmatory nod of the head before I proceeded up the stairs. I heard him using his second wedge, about half the size of the previous one, and his mallet to prevent the stairwell door from being opened before we were ready to exit from it. I knew, according to our plan, that Hank would next be placing a piece of reflective glass tinting material over the six by eighteen-inch rectangular window which provided visual access into and out of the stairwell. He would secure it in place with Scotch tape, which he would place along its borders. This would allow us to make sure that the elevator lobby was uninhabited before exiting the stairwell upon completion of our tasks within it. If somebody were to show up in the lobby before we were ready to leave, we knew we’d have to go back up one floor and exit at street level.
“Tinting in place,” he dutifully reported.
“Gotcha,” I replied, unable to bring myself to reply with a ‘Roger’ as it made me feel like a bit of a poser. I was no military man and I was certainly no cop. I felt that using their lingo was a bit hypocritical, so I preferred to keep my reply a bit more casual.
I took the stairs slowly and methodically, making sure not to catch the toes of my oversized court shoes on the steps of the staircase. I was aware that our efforts to minimize the chances of leaving forensic evidence at the crime scene could be foiled by a careless trip or stumble resulting in an abraded knee or elbow. Upon reaching the ground floor level, I placed my own wedge into the half inch space between the bottom of the stairwell door and the concrete floor and gave it a couple of good whacks with my own mallet, disabling this door as well.
“First floor door wedged,” I reported through the radio.
“Roger,” he replied again.
I continued up the stairs to the second level, which was home to Title Boxing Gym. Mimicking Hank, I hung my piece of mirrored window tinting over the door window and taped it in place. I stepped through the door onto a concrete walkway, which ran the length of the building and provided access to the tenant businesses. Instead of turning to the right, towards the boxing gym, I turned left and wandered about twenty feet down the walkway. I lit a Camel menthol cigarette and leaned on the concrete half wall which ran along the walkway and allowed visualization of the busy streets and commercial district surrounding the building. I tried my best to look casual as I leaned on the metal railing atop the half wall, periodically taking drags on my cigarette.
“I’m in position,” I reported.
“Gotcha,” Hank said, with purposeful change in his voice which made him sound like a prototypical surfer or some other type of dimwit.
“Smartass,” I said.
I was counting on the fact that I’d seen Brandon leaving the gym earlier than his exercise classmates during the previous departures I had witnessed. He had given the impression of being in a hurry as he made his way to the garage and rapidly jumped into his car, before speeding away. My assumption, each time, was that he was in a hurry to get home and clean up so he’d have plenty of time to put together his impeccable ‘look’ before heading in to the office. Fortunately, this day was no different. Instead of wandering slowly out of the gym while shooting the shit with his classmates, like I’d observed his boxing class colleagues doing after class, he came blasting out of the door and striding down the walkway with his sweaty hair combed back and his muscles bulging. I noticed that, true to form, he had taken the time to place his prized Rolex on his left wrist before exiting the gym.
“Here we go,” I said into the mic, taking care to keep my face in shadow as he walked toward me.
“Ready to go here,” Hank reported back. Thankfully, he gave the impression he was done screwing around and he had reacquired his initial, more serious demeanor.
Just before turning and opening the door to the stairwell, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Brandon give me a look of disgust and shake his head to convey how pitiful he thought I was and how I had no business being there. Honestly, I had to admit that I’d probably have a similar reaction to a vagrant hanging around, presumably looking for someone to ask for money or otherwise rip off. Internally, I congratulated myself on my disguise.
I quickly moved to the stairwell entrance and opened the door. After entering, I did my best to push the door closed quickly but silently. I didn’t want Brandon knowing I’d followed him in. I shoved my remaining wedge under the door as tightly as possible without using the mallet. Kicking off my oversized shoes, the laces of which I’d untied and loosened as I waited for Brandon on the walkway. I immediately began descending the stairway.
I had barely begun my descent when I heard a commotion at the bottom of the stairwell, the sounds of which echoed off the concrete walls.
“I’s just askin’ if you can spare any change is all,’ I heard Hank saying. And the People’s Choice Award goes to—
“Listen, man, I don’t have anything on me, otherwise I’d be happy to give you a couple bucks,” I heard Brandon reply.
“I gotchu, I gotchu. Dude can’t help it dat he got no money—das cool,” Hank went on. “Well, lemme aks you dis den—”
As I came around the final turn, I could see that, just as we had planned, Hank was standing face-to-face with Brandon, who was on the bottom step. I continued my silent descent with my nightstick gripped tightly in my right hand.
“Come on, man,” Brandon interrupted. “I just told you—”
These were the last words I ever had to hear coming out of the bastard’s mouth. I had brought the night stick down with as much force as I could muster, and it struck him on the right occipital area approximately three inches behind and level with his right ear. There was a satisfying ‘whump’ as the blunted end of the heavy steel rod crashed into his skull. I thought I could feel the bone give way as the momentum of the blow was absorbe
d by ossified tissues less than a centimeter deep to the skin of his scalp. His head was knocked to the left and his body immediately began falling forward and to that side. Hank merely stepped aside and then back peddled as the wounded body fell against the concrete wall and ricocheted off before striking the floor of the stairwell. The sound of his head bouncing off of the concrete floor was unmistakable and it was clear that he would never again regain consciousness. Too bad, I thought, he will never know who took him out and the reason why.
Without delay, we grabbed the unconscious body and dragged it around under the bottom flight of stairs, where some janitorial supplies were stored on a wheeled, plastic cart adorned with a Rubbermaid badge. There was a good amount of space below the bottom flight of stairs and we knew the body would most likely remain undiscovered until someone, maybe the building maintenance staff, intentionally entered this otherwise unused space to retrieve their supplies. Hank removed the Rolex and pulled the wallet out of Brandon’s gym bag. As I collapsed the night stick and returned it to my laundry bag, I removed a switchblade knife from within it and deployed the razor-sharp four-and-a-half inch blade. Hank rifled through Brandon’s bag, making sure that nothing of value remained, in order to convince the police that he had truly fallen victim to a murderous thief. As he did so, I straddled Brandon’s back. Hank knew this was the moment of truth and he gently placed his hands on the sides of my head and forced me to look directly back at him, into his eyes. His gaze, like his demeanor, was as cold as glacial ice.
Fatal Flaws Page 24