“I’d say it’s a fixer-upper.”
“That’s an understatement. But the rear of this place is just to the left of the back of Claire Newport’s house. Maybe there will be a vantage point we can use to look inside Claire’s home.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” Tanner said.
On the other side of the block, Claire Newport sighed as Maurice Scallato ended their kiss. She then saw that their embrace left a smudge of dirt on her white nurse’s uniform.
“How do you get so filthy just staying in the house?”
“I was in the basement straightening up,” Scallato said. His voice carried a smooth Italian accent although he could speak English without one. However, Claire found the accent to be sexy, and for now he needed to keep her happy.
“Thank you for cleaning up down there, that basement was a mess, but I don’t want you to overdo it.”
Scallato took Claire in his arms again.
“I’m nearly at a hundred percent thanks to your care, speaking of which, did you buy the shaving cream?”
“I did, and I can’t wait to see what you look like without that scruffy beard.”
Scallato smiled. As soon as Claire saw his face he would have to kill her. He pushed that necessity from his mind and turned it to more pleasant things, as he began unzipping Claire’s uniform.
She took a step backwards.
“I need a shower first; I’m grubby from work.”
“We’ll shower together while I ask you about your day.”
Claire sighed.
“I know the routine by heart. No, no one asked me any odd questions, and no, no strange cars are parked outside the house. I also saw no one looking at me in an odd way, and I saw no police cars parked nearby.”
Scallato had unzipped the dress and it fell to the floor.
“Good girl, now get naked.”
Claire did as he said, then unzipped his jeans.
The real estate agent turned out to be a young Hispanic woman who took Tanner and Sara to be a married couple. They were using the surname of Myers, as Tanner carried ID in the name of Thomas Myers.
As they had planned beforehand, Sara kept the realtor occupied with questions about the home while Tanner roamed about. The attic proved to offer a great view of the side of Claire Newport’s home and her driveway, and Tanner knew they had found a good observation post.
He finished replacing the fold-down stairs that he used to access the attic, just as Sara and the real estate agent started up the stairway from the first floor. When they arrived on the second floor, Tanner was leaning over and pretending to check out a damaged spindle on the banister.
The young real estate agent smiled at Tanner and asked a question.
“As you can see, the home would need a bit of work. Are you handy with tools, Mr. Myers?”
“Yes I am.”
“Like a carpenter?”
“I’d be better classified as a mechanic,” Tanner said.
As they left the house, Sara told the agent that they would think about the home and get back to her. When they drove away, Tanner headed for the nearest store where he could get the supplies he would need.
Returning to the home after midnight, Tanner entered through the ground floor window he’d left unlocked earlier and walked around to the back door to let Sara in. It took two trips up the rickety fold-down attic steps, but by one a.m. Tanner had the observation post set up.
A telephoto lens was pointed at Claire’s house and a scoped rifle was loaded and ready to use. There was a cooler full of drinks and ice and, fortunately, the home had running water and the bathrooms could be used. Tanner had also purchased a pair of sleeping bags since Sara insisted on helping to keep watch.
By two a.m. she was asleep in her sleeping bag with a request to be awakened at seven. When seven a.m. came, Tanner let her sleep on, but shook her gently as Claire Newport left her house at eight-thirty.
Sara blinked at the morning light, then checked her watch.
“Oh, why didn’t you wake me? You must be tired.”
“I’ll catch a few hours later.”
Sara yawned, then combed through her hair with her hands.
“I could use some coffee.”
“So could I.”
“I’ll go get some from that coffee shop on the corner.”
“No, drive a few blocks away. It’s possible that Scallato is paying someone at the local store to keep an eye out for us.”
“Really? How would he know about me?”
“He probably doesn’t know about you, but if he did have a photo of you and passed around copies, he’d be on to us as soon as a call came in.”
“It sounds unlikely that he would have a spy at a coffee shop.”
“I once tracked down a target that way, and all it cost me was a hundred dollars paid to the clerk. Most people like coffee.”
Sara stood and made a face.
“I need to brush my teeth, and a shower would be great.”
Tanner pointed at a large duffel bag.
“There are towels and soap in that bag over there. You shower first while I keep an eye out for the real estate agent. Once we’re done, we’ll need to wipe the shower stall dry with a towel, just in case the house gets shown.”
“All right, but how long are you planning to keep watch here?”
“I’ll be going in there tonight if I can confirm Scallato’s presence.”
“You have a plan?”
“I do, but I’ll need your help.”
“You’ll have it.”
“Good, we’ll put it in place after the nurse comes home. Scallato will be on the lookout for anything in his environment that’s a departure from the norm. You’re going to be that departure, but I’ll need you to buy a few props too.”
“What do you want me to do, knock on the door and pretend to be selling something?”
“No, disguise or not, Scallato might make you. If he did, he’d shoot you without hesitation.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
Later that afternoon, Sara stepped out onto the balcony of the home they were staying in. Her face was obscured by a large plant she was carrying, and she was wearing a blonde wig and a floppy straw hat. She had her phone blasting music as she moved in and out of the house with more house plants, and soon the railing of the balcony was covered in greenery.
Her project took nearly ten minutes and she did her best to keep her face turned away from Claire Newport’s house. When she came back inside and shut the patio door behind her, she sent Tanner a questioning look.
“It worked,” Tanner said. “I saw a curtain move in an upstairs window, although I couldn’t make out a face.”
“That means someone else besides Claire Newport is staying in her home, and that just might be Scallato.”
“Right, now we have to get ready for Scallato’s reaction.”
“Do you think he’ll come here himself?”
“No, at this point he’s still unsure if there’s a threat. He’ll send the nurse.”
Twenty minutes later, Tanner was proven right as Claire Newport deviated from her regular route home to drive down the block behind her house. Sara had removed the For-Sale sign and scattered toys on the lawn, including a tricycle.
As Tanner watched Claire’s approach from an upstairs window, he called out to Sara.
“You’re on.”
Sara donned the blonde wig, pulled the shirttails of her blouse from where they were tucked, and put an angry expression on her face. As she stepped out onto the home’s front porch, she tried not to look at Claire’s car, which had slowed to study the house.
Sara leaned back in the doorway and spoke as if she were chastising a child.
“We’ll see how much talking back you do when your father gets home from work, young man, and—No! You stay right in that corner until I tell you differently.”
Sara shut the door and muttered under her breath as she began picking up toys from the law
n. After hearing Claire’s car drive off, she looked up to confirm it, then headed inside.
Tanner was waiting for her in the living room with a smile on his face.
“You should have been an actress.”
“I was, if you count high school plays, but do you think Scallato will check on us again?”
“No, and anyway, I’m going in after him tonight. If I wait much longer he may leave and it could take months to track him down again.”
“Let me come with you; two guns are better than one.”
“No, I’ll need you to be my eyes as I approach the house. I plan to enter through a basement window, and while I’m down on my stomach climbing in, it will be good to know that you’ll have my back.”
“Does that mean you want me to use the rifle?”
“Are you confident enough with it?”
Sara grinned.
“I am; I’ve been practicing back at our lake and I’m getting good if I say so myself. A two-hundred-yard shot will be easy for me.”
“Good, now I’d better get some sleep; I’ve a busy night ahead of me.”
“How do you plan to kill Scallato?”
Tanner smiled.
“Any way I can.”
4
What’s In A Name?
After Claire came home from checking out the house where he’d seen Sara, Scallato asked her about what she observed.
“It looked normal enough. There’s a woman and a little boy there now, but I overheard her say that the father should be home soon.”
“You saw the boy?”
Claire looked surprised by her own answer.
“No… I didn’t, but there were toys on the lawn and I saw her hollering back into the house at someone; it sounded as if she were talking to a child.”
“What did the woman look like?”
“She was blonde.”
“What about her face. I couldn’t get a good look at her earlier while she was out on the balcony.”
“I only caught a glimpse of her, but she was pretty.”
“I thought she’d be. I didn’t see her face, but she had a very good figure.”
Claire frowned.
“Were you checking her out with those binoculars of yours?”
“You sound jealous, don’t be. I’m only worried that she might be a cop of some kind.”
Scallato gave the situation some thought. All of it sounded normal, but it could also have been staged. He concluded he was being paranoid but decided to move up his departure by one day. Smiling at Claire, he cupped her face in his hands.
“I feel like my old self again, thanks to you.”
“You’re welcome, but now you need to clear your name so that we can lead a normal life.”
“I will, but I want to celebrate. Do you still have wine here?”
“Yes, I have nearly a bottle left, do you want some with dinner?”
“I do,” Scallato said.
He had crushed sleeping pills into a fine powder while Claire was at work and planned to slip it into her wine to drug her. He had no feelings for her, but also saw no reason that she should die while fearful. Once she was soundly drugged, and in a stupor, he would kill her painlessly.
He had acquired the pills from the house next door, which he had broken into on a day when he knew no one was at home. Scallato had recently broken into the homes on either side of Claire’s house while looking for weapons or other valuables.
For his efforts, he had found the sleeping pills, an excellent knife, two gold coins, and five-hundred dollars in an envelope that was marked with the words, Emergency Cash Stash. The gold coins and the money might not be missed by their former owner for months, or even years, they had been hidden at the bottom of an old dusty box marked, Tax Returns, 1990 – 1995.
Scallato smiled.
“Let’s eat soon.”
Claire gave him a shy look.
“Could we shower first… like yesterday?”
“Ah, I see you have another appetite you’d like to appease, fine, first we’ll make love, then we’ll eat.”
Claire hugged him as if she’d never let him go and Scallato realized she had fallen in love with him. He smiled. She was even dumber than he’d believed her to be.
Tanner lowered the attic stairs and listened intently.
All was quiet, but that had not been the case just minutes earlier when the real estate agent had returned with more prospective home buyers. The woman and the young couple with her had noticed nothing out of place. Fortunately, no one had been interested in checking out the second floor or the attic. The wife had taken one look at the outdated kitchen and asked to move on to the next house.
“Are they gone?” Sara whispered.
“Yeah, and I doubt she’ll be back tonight; it’s late now.”
They left the attic and moved into the master bedroom. Tanner was dressed all in black and wore a long-sleeved pullover that had a modified hood. The hood covered not only his head, but his face. It had eye-holes and a strap that could be tucked under his chin to keep it in place. One eye-hole was larger than the other to accommodate a night-vision monocle.
They had just finished wiping down the house when the real estate agent had arrived. Sara’s long hair was tucked under a cap and she was wearing latex gloves. As unlikely that it was that anyone would ever dust the home for her prints, it paid to take precautions.
Tanner’s hope was to go in unseen, kill swiftly, and exit silently. To accomplish those goals, he carried a gun with a sound suppressor. There was also a knife and the few items he thought he might need to break-in through the basement window.
Sara would keep watch from the darkened balcony with a rifle and a pair of night-vision goggles. However, once Tanner entered the home, he was on his own.
Before leaving, Tanner went over the plan with Sara once more, but this time he added new instructions.
“One hour; if I don’t return in an hour, take off and don’t look back. It will mean that Scallato has killed me and he may wonder if I was staying at this house.”
“But what if you get delayed or injured?”
“If I’m only delayed you’ll hear from me again, if I’m injured, Scallato will probably finish me off. But don’t think what if, once that hour is up you get out of here.”
Sara nodded, but Tanner could see in her eyes that she wasn’t happy about following his instructions.
“Sara, if he’s good enough to kill me he’s good enough to kill you. I don’t want you to die.”
Sara reached up and touched him on the cheek while silently cursing the latex gloves she wore. They made the emotion behind the touch seem somehow sterile.
“I don’t want you to die either. Go kill that bastard for having the audacity to believe he was ever in your league.”
Tanner returned her touch as he laid a gloved hand gently on her cheek.
“Let’s take some down time after this… together.”
Sara arched an eyebrow.
“Together in what way?”
“I think that’s up to you, Miss Blake.”
Sara grinned.
“I may surprise you, Mr. Tanner.”
They lowered their hands at the same time and Tanner ran a quick check of his weapons before picking up the night-vision monocle. As he opened the door of the master bedroom to leave the house, he hesitated. Sara saw a look in his eye that she’d never seen before and wondered what was going through his mind.
“Tanner, is something wrong?”
Another moment passed before he answered her.
“Cody Parker, my name is Cody Parker. I figure after all we’ve been through together that you should at least know my real name.”
Surprise filled Sara’s face and she mouthed the name quietly as if wanting to see how it fit her mouth. Afterward, she grinned at Tanner.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you Mr. Parker.”
Tanner met her gaze, grunted, and left the house to go and kill a man who was,
from all accounts, every bit as deadly as he was.
Maurice Scallato stared at the rear of the home Tanner was exiting from, while sitting beside a window in Claire Newport’s bedroom. Scallato was dressed in black as Tanner was, but he lacked night-vision capability or even a proper gun.
The only weapon Claire had in the home was an old .357 magnum that had belonged to her father. It held only six rounds and was cumbersome. Fortunately, he did have a decent knife, and he had honed it to razor sharpness.
Behind him, Claire snored softly. The sleeping pill laced wine had done its job and she should be out for hours. Scallato had already decided to use the knife on her. If he made several delicate cuts in the right places she might sleep through it and bleed out by morning. If Claire had the misfortune to stir awake, he’d simply slit her throat open.
The woman with the plants had bothered Scallato even though he felt assured that it was nothing. Still, the woman was a change in the routine of the neighborhood, and he wasn’t happy that her balcony overlooked his hideout.
He’d been watching the home, and, in particular, the balcony. If he was over there and studying Claire’s house, he’d wait until nightfall and slip out onto that balcony for a better view.
He had just decided to end his observation of the home and kill Claire when he saw movement on the balcony. It was subtle, so very subtle, but someone had slipped out of the house and was pointing something through the spindles of the left railing.
A rifle barrel? Scallato thought, although he couldn’t be certain. In any event, everything had just changed.
Tanner? Is it possible the man has tracked me down?
Scallato left Claire alive as he headed for the basement. He would have to return later to torture her and find out if she had betrayed him, and if so, if he had others to watch out for. In any event, the person on the balcony had to die first, and oh, how he hoped it was Tanner up there. Tanner’s name had been mentioned recently whenever anyone in the know spoke of the world’s greatest assassins. Scallato couldn’t abide that. He was the best, always had been and always would be. Once he killed Tanner, that fact would be plain to see.
[Tanner 16.0] To Kill a Killer Page 3