The Park Murders (Kindle Books Mystery and Suspense Crime Thrillers Series Book 1)

by Tad S. Torm

  Mark did not enjoy the prospect. But having grown under the protective wing of Caro his mind had acquired a philosophical bent.

  It took him less than five minutes to get in. He proceeded to open the door and looped a “Do Not Disturb” on the door handle.

  And what a charming room it is, Mark whistled. Roomy and comfortable. I wonder what occupies our dear Shamus in his spare time.

  He noticed on the desk by the window a family portrait, with wife, kids and shaggy-haired dog. Only the Shamus himself was nowhere to be seen.

  He saw a book on the table. He read the title aloud: “Victor's Victory.” He lifted the book and flipped mechanically through the pages. Maybe he will read it one day, he thought. But today nothing could be further from his mind.

  “We are dealing with a real or pretended family man.” This was not totally unexpected.

  Nothing caught his attention in the living room, so he moved on to the bathroom, where he chanced upon the theatrical make-up kit, which Roger had carelessly abandoned on the sink counter.

  Could it be that I was right all along after all? Mark reflected. No, it could not.

  He might indeed be dealing with an actor. Still, this was not telling him much. He was right, of course, since everybody's an actor after all, but right in exactly what way.

  There are many kinds of actors. Everybody is playing a part. Don’t we all have a role to interpret in the great scheme of things?

  It was time to ask the big question,

  But what is the reason behind the mise-en-scène? What could be the purpose of the Shamus' impersonation game?

  He acknowledged he had not been far from the mark the first time he had laid eyes upon him.

  He's an actor playing a part.” Mark mused. But what is the play and what part does he play in it?

  He returned to the living room area, which was practically empty.

  He opened the clothes locker and looked inside. It was not hard to see a briefcase, clumsily and maybe hurriedly hidden behind a pair of pink pajamas and a nightcap.

  The lock had a three number combination.

  9 * 9 * 9.

  With 999 possible combinations.

  There was no time to try out all the combinations.

  Mark already regretted letting the Shamus out of his sight.

  He inserted the tip of a twelve-inch switchblade inside the hinges of the attaché case and twisted. The lock broke on the third attempt.

  He opened the case.

  He found inside a 9mm Walter pistol, a thick wad of twenty-dollar bills and a folder.

  Absent-mindedly, he transferred the money and the pistol inside his pocket.

  He then changed his mind, replaced everything back into the attaché case, grabbed the case and left the room in a hurry without forgetting to lock it.

  Chapter 9: The reluctant athlete

  “Mega insanity,” Caro grumbled. “To wake up at the crack of dawn.”

  Caro understood that honor required sacrifices. No matter how childish the challenge might be. Perhaps even more so for that very reason.

  And when honor steps in comfort must take the back seat.

  Marie had issued a challenge.

  Well, in point of fact what Marie had actually done was to ask Caro if she’d like to join her for a run in the park.

  But Caro knew Marie inside out. This is not exactly right either. Caro didn’t really know Marie that well. What she knew about Marie was that she was competitive, underhanded, cunning and complicated.

  She suspected the invitation was a trap. Marie will easily outrun her in the race and Caro will be humiliated.

  But Marie’s invitation presented two contradictory problems commingled into an unsolvable puzzle. Caro never refused a dare and at the same time, Caro did not run.

  True enough, she had run from her orphanage. She had run from school. She had run from her country as well as from an innumerable number of lovers.

  As far as briskly swinging one foot ahead of the other, with both feet staying up in the air for a set period of time – in order to satisfy the requirements of the Athletic Federation– until the second foot hit the ground, she had a very vague recollection of occasionally having practiced a similar type of activity in grammar school, in the rare days when she didn’t miss her PE class.

  However, from the little she remembered, she could state that on the occasions when she had done it, she had not liked it and what’s more, she had never found a good reason to do it again unless forced by circumstances and certainly not when the only reason to do it was to waste time.

  As a result of this impromptu challenge, she now woke every morning at six o'clock and went running for approximately forty-five minutes in the park while trying at the same time to avoid meeting Marie.

  Marie, who opened her pretty blue eyes and crinkled her rosy cheeks every morning at seven, and went running in the same park for a full hour as soon as she got out of bed.

  Caro had been religiously training every morning, rain or shine, in the River Park for a couple of weeks now. Marie was a great athlete, so she did not brook the challenge lightly.

  Caro clambered out of bed morosely and headed for the kitchen.

  She warmed up a cup of coffee

  It was way too early for breakfast, but the coffee will help her wake up and be able to function.

  She hated waking up early in the morning. If you were familiar with her daily routines, you must be aware of the fact that she was a night person.

  She figured that jogging was a fad and normally, that is in the natural course of events Caro would not go out of her way for fads.

  But challenges she will meet.

  So she’d decided to swallow this bitter pill, and once the clamor was over, she would go on with the rest of her life.

  She lived at a few blocks from the River Park. As soon as she hit the tracks, she started running under a light rain. Slowly her body adjusted itself to the effort and the inclement weather.

  There is life in movement; some would argue that life is movement.

  Caro tried to push all thoughts out of her mind. She visualized her right foot hitting the ground and lifting up in the air while the other foot was taking up the relay. The still images in her brain, moving frame by frame: the entrance of the park, running steadily on the paved lane snaking around a forest of trees, twigs twisted by the wind almost touching her head.

  She would catch, from time to time, a quick view of the river, interrupted by the tall, stout trees. This reminded her of another old river, where she had swum and angled for fish a long time ago.

  The park was so quiet this early in the morning that she could almost hear life passing through time. The birds in the trees were waking up and warbling

  Suddenly a big, dark silence covered her as she ran down the slope, speeding down hard from the top of the hill. She saw the brushy thicket to the left of the tracks coming quickly toward her. She thought of a diffuse, dangerous beast lying in wait for her,

  Did she see movement inside the thicket or did she only imagine it?

  She slowed down.

  Chapter 10: In the park

  Cities were dangerous places. Roger knew it better than anybody else did, or at least as well. What made it even worse was that cities were known to possess a thorough and annoyingly long memory.

  So keeping in mind the presence of all the cameras and other recording devices, visible and invisible, with nothing better to do than record the license plates of honest citizens, authentic or fake, Roger decided to travel on foot.

  He parked his car on a side street and walked the rest of the way to the park.

  It was a short fifteen minutes’ walk. He had come prepared for stormy weather.

  It was amazing, he reflected, how much a short fifteen minutes’ walk may add to your mental and physical acuity. It was now getting close to a quarter past six. The van der Brook babe must be warming up, ready to start her first lap.

  He started to walk fa
ster. His dexterous fingers brushed lightly the right pocket of his raincoat and felt the reassuring metal touch of the silencer. He had brought the gun with him, in case things would not go exactly as planned. He knew that in the heat of the action sometimes plans were the first victims. He had left his other gun, the heavy duty 9mm Walther, together with the case file in his hotel room in a securely locked attaché case.

  These were rather disagreeable details that could not be avoided.

  He remembered his favorite quote: In the end, it’s that extra redundant layer of preparation that will kill you. He remembered it well. Sometimes he pondered on the wisdom of it.

  He was now almost running. The streets were dark. He crossed a party of travelers arrived overnight at the train station. Otherwise, not a soul in sight. Even the burglars and the muggers were asleep by now. The beggars had just woken up, ready to be sent back onto the streets in the next half hour. And among the unhappy ones sleeping in the street, he did not meet any.

  He was now at the park gate.

  Chapter 11: Dangerous tracks

  “At six o'clock in the morning everybody dies alone,” Mark mumbled grouchily to himself.

  The revelers have already left. A few stragglers stayed over. They fell asleep and lie sprawled in their chairs.

  At no other time in the day does life seem more agreeable, more comfortable and, at the same time more precarious.

  The steel fence lifted and let his car out the garage.

  He had barely a few minutes to go through the contents of the briefcase, but in those few minutes, he had reached a blood-curdling conclusion after a brief, summary examination.

  The man he had nicknamed the Shamus was a very dangerous individual, a paid assassin, a cleaner.

  On the other, more reassuring hand, the object of the Shamus' attention did not seem to be Caro, but rather her roommate, Marie van der Brook.

  The first time he’d met Marie, Mark had been struck by the resemblance between the two young women. They were both of about the same height. They had the same hair color and bone structure. They had small, oval faces, thin lips, and pouty mouths, large deep-set blue eyes, insolent and symmetrical. What's more, their hair was identically styled: long straight bangs getting into the eyes, the hair cut shorter on the sides and longer on the top. Marie, for some obscure reason, had decided to imitate Caro’s coiffure. And Caro, stubborn and possessive, had refused to adopt another style, only to differentiate herself from Marie.

  As he was passing by the entrance to the park on his way to Caro's apartment, Mark suddenly remembered the map he had seen in the Shamus' room. He had not paid too much attention to it the first time he'd seen it. At the time, more pressing things were vying for his attention: pistols and daggers and pictures and money.

  But now he puckers his forehead. He just remembers a thing, and maybe it’s nothing and maybe it’s everything.

  Caro runs every day in the park from six to seven. Marie runs there as well, between seven and eight.

  The girls are training for some kind of a race. He hadn't paid any attention the first time he’d heard. It was so typical of Caro to exaggerate the importance of the most insignificant details. Of course, by constantly bringing it up, with every telling the banal item of information would assume more importance. And with the passing of time and the deadline approaching, the girls seemed more and more absorbed by the coming event.

  This had the unavoidable effect that, day by day, this insignificant trifle was gathering more weight, growing out of all proportion to its real importance: the way a helium balloon, gradually inflates until it reaches burst pressure.

  All pretensions are eventually brought back to size. But first, there is a big BOOOOM.

  As a result of this bet, this provocation that had started by not being a provocation at all, but rather a friendly invite although he’d never known the two girls to show any sign of affection toward each other. Marie with her grating superiority complex; Caro with the earthly quality of her whimsical wisdom. Marie, with the amused condescension of the tamer and protector of lesser and more savage cultures and beasts, Caro with the millennial pride of having inherited from a civilization that had once ruled the world and had precariously lingered on for another two thousand years.

  As far as Mark was concerned, this was just a stupid idea, in any case, a bunch of rubbish and nonsense not worthy of any consideration.

  Hence, he had ignored it.

  It was only as he drew close to the park when he realized that the stupid competition, by bringing Caro here every morning from six to seven, had potentially disastrous consequences.

  The former shamus now metamorphosed into profession killer seemed to show a worrisome and acute interest in this wooded area.

  Mark was not too familiar with the park. He had passed its gates a few times and had wandered reticently on its walkways. He had rested a few times on a bench and he had even unwrapped and consumed a ham-and-cheese sandwich with mustard, no mayo, lettuce, tomato, no onions once or twice.

  The public library was closed by and there was an artificial pond there where ducks and swans glided and preened themselves while a multitude of squirrels sprinted on the grass and jumped up and down tree branches, searching for food and entertaining the public.

  On an impulse, he opened the case file and looked again at the map of the park.

  It was only now that he realized it was far larger than he had imagined.

  Most of the land –he now found out– ran along the river bed, which the park bordered on one side and occasionally crossed to reach one of its islands.

  “That’s why it’s called River Park, dummy!”

  The killer seemed to have been particularly interested in that very area because a yellow line had been drawn on the map, starting at the park gate and stopping at the river shore.

  It was a quarter past six.

  He was in the park.

  His legs started moving while the eyes were following the yellow line on the map. The length of his stride was increasing with each step while the feet moved faster and faster as the river was coming into sight.

  He craned his head straining to peer ahead and broke into running.

  Chapter 12: In the brush

  Give me a bathroom anytime!

  Roger missed the bathroom. He was getting to the point where he was about to admit that he was not really a child of the forest.

  Nature could be so inconvenient at times.

  The bathroom, on the other hand, was orderly, antiseptic and definitely more intimate.

  And what could be more intimate in a bathroom than a killer crouching over his prey?

  He knew other guys who … what could he say … would take advantage.

  But not him. No, no, no! Not good old Roger.

  He was not that kind of a guy. He liked to think that he was guided by a moral principle, by a compass. At times, he reflected on his morality.

  There were things you did; there were other things you might contemplate doing, but you never stooped so low. This is where the moral compass came in.

  “This is not a job, it's a vocation,” his teacher had said.

  The execution in the park was a great idea.

  “You are an artist, not a butcher,” his teacher had reminded him.

  He glanced around at his little house in the woods. He didn't have much room in either direction, but was well hidden and close to the running tracks.

  He had quieted down. Calm and unmoving like the forest before the storm: a predator lying in wait.

  All the earlier confusion, the myriad of distracting signals: voices, colors, smells, bodies in movement, which his early morning sluggish mind was straining to interpret, all the chaotic array of confusing stimuli, pulling him in different directions, had suddenly stopped.

  As if the universe itself had paused for a second, and in this new world he could hear with added acuity the birds warbling in the neighboring trees, the leaves swishing on the trellis, and
even his own heart, quietly pounding: tick, tock, tock, tick.

  His quietly beating heart.

  The tiger was ready to pounce.

  From his lookout, he could see the bend in the river, now almost dry in the late season: the recently weakened balustrade separating civilization from the abyss, the hillock to his left and the tracks descending softly toward the river.

  He heard the rhythmic splash of tennis shoes as the runner zipped up the slippery tracks.

  Suddenly things started to happen in slow motion.

  Her head appeared first on the top of the hill, then slowly more of the figure came into view being completed from high on down as the runner was approaching the summit: the shoulders, the thorax, the hands swinging rhythmically, back and forth close to her chest. With each new step, the figure increased in size becoming clearer as she was approaching.

  Roger stood up and inched closer to the lane. At the same time, the runner slowed down. She seemed hesitant now.

  Roger froze. Did he give himself away? Why didn’t he wait a few minutes longer? He should have waited.

  The runner was still coming down the slope, but she was more cautious now, her strides became shorter and slower.

  He gnashed his teeth. This was terribly annoying. He had counted on inertia to facilitate his task. If the girl had sped downhill as had all the runners before her, his interposed shoulder would have stopped her advance while his hands turned her shoulders away and twisted her toward the river, and this minimalistic approach would have been enough.

  What is more, the momentary confusion, the dizzying speed at which the action was taking place according to his script, would have ensured the lack of any resistance.

  The girl would not have even realized what was happening to her, except eventually during that fatal final second of clarity when her body, already plunging, would splash against the ground, twenty-five feet below.

  What a job that would have been, a job worthy of a master.