False Witness

by Worthington, T. S.

  “Easy, killer. We will get him, eventually. You just gotta have faith.”

  “I can’t believe the nerve of him trying to make it look like it’s our fault that his client went crazy and began to beat up a police officer.”

  “It isn’t the first time that a lawyer tried to push our buttons. That is their job, after all. They are paid a ridiculous amount of money to make sure that we mess up so their client goes free.”

  “Yeah, I’ve always hated lawyers,” Rachel said.

  “Hey, that is another thing we have in common,” Declan said. “By the way, how is your stomach?”

  “Well, it was better until I had to listen to the disgusting shit that came out of that man’s mouth. Now I feel nauseous again.”

  “Don’t worry about it; he makes everyone nauseous.”

  Rachel laughed and punched Declan in the arm. He pretended not to notice. Was that a playful punch or was their some flirtation behind it? Declan shrugged the thought away. That was a bad thought to have. Not that he would ever do anything to act on that if it was a flirtation.

  He was just getting everything together with himself and Maria. He would not even allow himself to entertain a thought like that. He never had in all of his years on the force and there had been plenty of times when he could have cheated on his wife, but he chose not to. What kind of a hypocrite would he be if he were to do something like that?

  He sat down behind his desk and grabbed a drink of water from the large cup he kept on his desk. He closed his eyes feeling the beginning of an afternoon nap coming on. This day needed to be done. He’d been through enough crap the past week to last ten lifetimes.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about Ted Bennet and the fact that he was expected to kill the guy in just two days. He was still trying to work out a definitive plan. How was he going to do it? There had to be an easy way that would not leave any traces behind. He had seen so many murderers come through those doors over the years, and even though he did not work in homicide, he heard everything that went on in that department as well as his own. The water coolers and the lounge were pretty much rife with nonstop talk about this case or that case.

  He mulled around in his office for a few hours, thankful that Rachel had decided to knock off early since she was not feeling well at all. He wished her luck and told her he would see her Monday. Declan left the office about four-thirty. It was Friday and if he was not called out to the field on some random thing he usually hit the pavement just a bit early on Fridays.

  But he wasn’t done for the day yet. He had to start getting everything set up for Monday night’s special job. That was how he liked to refer to it, as a special job.

  Declan swung by the karate dojo where Bennet was supposed to be leaving Monday night. He could plainly see now what the ghost man was talking about. The corner parking space was right on the edge of the building. And beside that was a slight hill with a line of pine trees running alongside it. And there was a high fence behind the trees to separate it from the apartment complex right next door. No one there would be able to see anything. It really was a perfect setup, as long as he could do it quickly enough that no cars driving by would see anything.

  He didn’t want to use anything as messy as a gun. The ballistics was always a pain in the ass to cover up, besides it was loud so someone in the apartment building would probably hear it. Not to mention the blood that would fly everywhere, especially shooting someone from such close range. And he’d have to get a gun that was not traceable to him.

  So shooting was really out.

  He would have to knock him out. Maybe he would just sneak up behind Ted, tell him to freeze at gunpoint, order him around and knock him over the head. Then put him in the trunk and drive away. That could work pretty smoothly, and he could then take him to the woods and kill him, and dispose of the body.

  But how? How would he kill him?

  It would be better if he was already dead and didn’t feel a thing. That would work perfectly. He wouldn’t make any noise, or even talk at all. There would be no chance to scream and besides the longer he waited to do it the less likely he might go through with it.

  It was then that Declan made up his mind to poison Ted Bennet. He would just walk up behind the man when he was getting in his car and put the syringe into his neck. There would be no mess, no screaming, and no violence. He wouldn’t even know what hit him or have a chance at fighting back. The last thing Declan really wanted to do during that situation was get involved in a street fight with a karate instructor.

  But what to poison him with?

  How about some heroin? He did work in the narcotics division of a police station. There were a lot of drugs in evidence. Surely he could find a way to sneak some out without anyone ever suspecting anything. That was going to be tricky, but it was the best way he could obtain it. It was far too dangerous to try to score some on the streets. If he was caught then he would lose everything, which was the whole reason he was doing this to begin with.

  Or he could just use some bleach. Yeah… he was killing the man after all. Why not just use something that he knew would be lethal. The bleach would probably be insanely painful, but it would work. He just needed to get ahold of a syringe, which wouldn’t be too hard.

  He would find a way. But watching the dojo right then in the daylight he could definitely picture what an easy setup it was going to be at night to pull this thing off.

  Declan drove home feeling pretty confident about everything. He’d researched his target and he had a pretty good plan in place to get this thing done. He did feel bad about killing Ted Benet. The man did not seem like he deserved to die. He definitely deserved to be punished though. After all, it was his cheapness and his lack of concern that caused the faulty wiring to not be fixed and resulted in the electrocution of that kid.

  It was mind boggling how it was just swept under the rug and ignored.

  Oh, well. It wasn’t really his concern anymore.

  Come Monday, Ted Benet was a dead man.

  Chapter 12

  “Ready for Anything”

  Rachel Sinclair woke up feeling better than she had in days. Whatever nasty stomach bug or food poisoning she had picked up last week had finally left her system, after a long and shitty weekend. But it was Monday and she was feeling much better at last. She still felt like she’d been hit by a truck and then backed over and hit again, but at least her digestive system was no longer liquefying things and pushing them out both ends in a violent manner. So she now had that going for her.

  But she was now staring down a long week looking at her. The first week on the job had been pretty interesting. There were parts of it that were like she expected and other parts of the whole thing was totally different.

  Her partner for instance. Declan was a tough, against the grain type of cop. He knew the system inside and out and he was the perfect partner to teach her exactly what to throw out from the classroom and what to keep, which so far had been very little. She’d graduated the academy some years ago, but as a beat cop she had mostly experienced things by the book. Even when something bizarre came her way, which it did a lot of the time, she was still told by her superiors that if she wasn’t sure on something then to do it by the book. That was their way of saying that she should do it the way she was taught until she was one of them and then never do it that way again because it just didn’t work.

  But Declan was a wild card. He was tough, cynical, but still had a good sense of humor, and there was something very sexy about him. It was in the way he moved, the gruffness of his voice, and the way he commanded things around him to be done without sounding bossy.

  She couldn’t help but be attracted to that type of man. It had often been her downfall. She’d dated far too many “bad boy” types in her life. And she vowed she would never get involved with a married one at that.

  But with all the attraction aside, he was a great partner and a great mentor. She expected to l
earn a lot from him.

  Rachel glanced over at the picture she kept at her bedside. It was a picture of herself at a young age. She was riding a horse during the first contest she had ever won. Horse riding was something she’d always loved and as soon as she was given the opportunity to do so she jumped at the chance. There was nothing like having the power of that beautiful animal beneath you, and you were controlling it, telling it where to lead you. The wind in her hair, the galloping rhythm beneath her—it was her truest passion she believed.

  But like all real passions she did not want to make a career out of it. She always felt that if she were to dedicate herself to riding the way one must if they were going to be successful then it would cease being a passion and become much more of a job. She vowed never to let something like that ruin her passion. So she still did riding on the weekends, going out to her parent’s stable and riding some of her favorite horses. Although recently she didn’t get out as much as she wanted to.

  But that was ok. She had been much too focused on her job.

  She thought about her father right then and how he didn’t approve of her becoming a cop. Coming up as a wealthy business owner’s daughter it was generally expected, especially by her father, that she would go into the family business and maybe operate one of his many branches, but she had other ideas.

  She enjoyed being privileged growing up, but she remembered where she’d come from. She had been adopted at the age of five by her family. She could hardly remember her biological family, but she remembered the poverty. She’d been born into a family rife with alcohol and drug abuse, and excessive violence. She could remember late nights with her drunken biological father pounding on the door of their crappy little house and trying to get in. Rachel had tried and tried her whole life to find a way to forget those memories, but some were permanently entrenched in her mind. She could never erase the past completely.

  But her family had done everything they could to give her a great life. And she loved them dearly, appreciated everything. She knew that her father felt it was a bit of a slap in the face that she had chosen to be a criminology major as an undergrad and then gone straight to the police academy.

  There was something about being a cop that she’d always felt drawn to. She wanted to do something with her life that made a real difference. She wanted to help people. She wanted to go out there and serve her community. It was the noblest thing that she could think of to do with her life and she felt she had some real talent for the job and she knew her heart and passion was in the right place.

  Her father had gradually come to accept it, but she knew that he worried about her and almost every time they were together she could expect him to nudge her about the low pay and the bad working conditions when she could be making six figures working in his business or really go for the gold and open her own business using him as a successful role model.

  The money really was not that important to her. She was scraping together a living and she knew that cops were not paid near what they were worth, but she was proud to stick her neck out on the line every day to serve her community, whether they appreciated it or not.

  Rachel ate a quick breakfast, took a shower, and got dressed. She checked herself out in the mirror before taking off out the door. It was a bit odd that she was not wearing a uniform anymore and she was still getting used to it. But somehow dressing in business casual made her feel like she was supposed to be behind a desk all day. Of course there was a good bit of that, but she hated the desk work. Pushing papers all day was not her idea of real police work; she wanted to be out there in the dirt and grime of it all. That was where the action was, but she knew that she could still accomplish a lot more in the position she was in now.

  Rachel smiled at herself and stepped out the door.

  Today was going to be a good day. She could feel it.

  Chapter 13

  “A Job Well Done”

  This was it.

  Declan was waiting in his hiding space around the side of the building, syringe in hand, ready to do the job. His heart was pounding, echoing vibrations up to his temples, giving him a slight headache that was radiating shockwaves of pain up through the back of his skull.

  He’d never been this nervous before. He’d been thinking about this nonstop the whole weekend, wishing that somehow it was all a messed up dream that he was eventually going to wake from, but the closer the time came the more he realized there was no escaping it.

  He had not heard a word from the mysterious voice on the phone. He was relieved and he was also a bit alarmed. This was the longest absence he’d had from contact with him since the first time. It was a relief, but it made him nervous. What if this was all a game and this man was being killed for absolutely no reason. Declan could just envision this madman thumbing through the yellow pages and picking some random name out or maybe seeing an article about something Bennet had done and then just deciding it would be fun to have Declan kill this random person.

  He tried to push the thoughts out of his head, but they were ever present. Through the weekend he tried to do things with Maria to keep his mind occupied. He even suggested they take advantage of the last bits of summer that were left and take a scenic drive upstate. She had some family up there they hadn’t seen in a while and even though Declan hated them with a blind passion (and he felt the feeling was somewhat mutual) it was his idea to go pay them a visit.

  So off they went to visit Maria’s favorite cousin and her husband. Somehow once he was there and he was listening to Walt go on and on about the newest building he was designing just outside of Buffalo the anxiety and the thoughts amplified inside of him. It was like his mind couldn’t decide what to tune out so it brought everything in and there were a few times when he felt light headed enough he thought he might actually pass out. The body and mind would only deal with so much stress consciously before it just decided to force a shutdown. That was fine with him. Just let the world disappear around him and he could go back to living his little fantasy dream world where he was not about to be a two time murderer.

  But that was all over now. The time had arrived. He checked his watch. Ted should be leaving the dojo any minute. He gripped the syringe in his hand again, feeling its lethal contents shifting, ready to pounce into a vein of his choosing. He just had to hit the jugular dead on; that was the quickest way. Ted would drop like a ton of bricks within a few seconds so he had to be ready to grab him when he did and drag him around the side of the building. Then he would hoist him up on top of his shoulders and carry him over to his car and throw the bastard in the trunk. It all seemed so easy. From what he could see Ted was a slender fellow who couldn’t have been over a buck seventy. Declan hoped the workouts he’d been adopting lately had increased his strength and stamina enough to carry the man. Otherwise he’d have to drag him and leave more evidence at the scene.

  The door opened just then. Declan peered around the side of the building and watched Ted Bennet closing the door behind him. He then reached into his pocket for the keys to lock up.

  Now!

  Declan jumped around the corner, his eye laser targeted on Bennet’s jugular and before the man knew what was happening or had time to react to the dark movement in the reflection from the dojo’s door window Declan had already injected the syringe filled with liquid death into his vein.

  Ted started to move as if to strike with an elbow into Declan’s nose, but his arm suddenly went limp and his body began to collapse. Declan was prepared; he held his hands up catching Ted right beneath the arms and quickly dragging him into the darkness around the side of the building.

  Declan made sure Bennet was out of the light. He readjusted him and stood him up halfway, bent over top of his back. Declan stood up as if doing a squat and shifted Ted onto his back more firmly, laying him as much as possible over the shoulder blades. The man was one hundred and sixty pounds of dead weight on his shoulders and he staggered the first step he took, almost slip
ping and falling on the ground. Luckily it had not rained for a bit and the ground was dry and dusty, otherwise he would have slipped and lost his footing possibly twisting or breaking his ankle. That would have made this job so much harder.

  Declan reached his car and sat Ted down in the darkness. He quickly opened the trunk, dragged Ted to the car and arduously hoisted his body into the trunk, again putting him over his shoulders and letting him roll off him.

  He stood there for a few seconds, feeling the blood rushing back to his head and his lungs burning with a desperate need for air. Apparently his new workouts hadn’t really had a chance to take as much effect on his body as he thought. Or maybe he was just getting old.

  Declan got in his car, ripped off his ski mask, put the car in drive and drove off casually so as not to alert any attention. The last thing he needed when he’d just killed someone and put them in his trunk was to get pulled over.

  He’d just killed someone. The idea did not hit him as hard as he thought it might. He guessed it was true that the more you did awful things the easier it got. He imagined if he killed someone else it wouldn’t be anything at all to him; hell he might even start to enjoy it.

  What the hell was he saying? Was he getting addicted to murder the way some people did? He hated to even entertain the notion. It was vile and disgusting. He was becoming the type of person he hated, the type of person he’d spent a career hunting down. People who killed others because of their possessions or because of money involved in dope deals gone sour.

  The park was only a few minutes away and he was already feeling easier about it all. His heart was starting to return to normal and he was feeling a relief washing over him that was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. All of the stress and worry he’d been dealing with and feeling was over now. He just had to bury this body and go home to his sweet wife. His life was about to start over and he could not have been happier.