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

by Tad S. Torm

  At ten o’clock, he was ready for bed.

  He said good night to Marie and plopped down into the big plush King size bed in the middle of the room.

  That had been the arrangement from the beginning. The theory was that when the gunner comes, he will go for the big bed, all but neglecting to check the uncomfortable small couch by the wall.

  Marie went to the couch.

  Except that tonight she had other plans. And she was not about to wait any longer. She had been sleeping on the uncomfortable couch by the wall ever since she had started sharing a room with her bodyguard.

  As it was usual with Mark, he fell asleep and started to snore fitfully as soon as he got into his bed.

  Marie, who was not happy with this state of affairs, crept closer to the main bed. A thin band of light was filtering from the corridor through the bottom of the door, letting her see enough to orient herself.

  She peered at Mark sleeping on his back. She inched silently toward the bed and then climbed in it.

  Mark let up an angry snore, grumbled confusedly about a woman in the sunset by the sea with a beach umbrella–you couldn’t really understand whether she desired the woman, or if the woman had stolen his umbrella. The dream was either giving him a lot of pleasure or making him terribly mad because he immediately turned on his belly and ceased snoring at the same time.

  This was an unexpected boon for Marie, who hadn’t neglected to take off all her clothes. She took advantage of Mark’s positional change to slide under him, only to suddenly feel a steel hand grabbing her by the throat.

  So close but no cigars. She had hoped to take her new hero to bed, only to die gurgling her last breath in his arms.

  As luck would have it, Mark’s dream was interrupted by her muffled cries and he woke up. He released the pressure and let his hand hover around her face and touch her cheeks.

  “Marie, what are you doing in my bed? Go back your couch,” he grumbled sleepily.

  Marie thought this was awfully grand of him, especially since from her position on the bed she could feel his erection. So when Mark removed his hand, Marie took advantage and moved even closer under him, waiting for the next move to slide completely under him.

  Now the reality of the situation—because of the dark and because of the confusion—is that we will never know.

  Mark was still half-asleep and incredibly horny after a whole week sharing a room with a fantastically hot babe and no sex whatsoever.

  His dreams, as it was only natural under the circumstances, were mostly erotic.

  So it was by no fault of his own or at least we’ll pretend so, for the cursory needs of this novel anyway, that when he started to move on top of Marie, who had positioned herself to perfection, he was asleep, or, at least, dreamy, or half-asleep and barely a quarter awake.

  This feels so remarkably pleasant, Mark thought, falling back to sleep.

  Then his hand went roaming around the bed and snagged on one of Marie’s breasts, which were, who would now dare contradict the author, fantastically magnificent.

  Luckily, for them—or else they’d both be dead by now—Marie had started to kiss him, so Mark was soon altogether awake, and still making love to her.

  These are things that just happen, and cannot be altogether controlled. Neither should you try to control them, he pondered with the wonderful logical relativism of the Mediterranean.

  “Boy, but you smell good, Marie. After six days without sex, you are a godsend. What got into you?” he said.

  “The same six days, are you crazy? Plus I saw you today, how magnificent you dealt with that shoe situation. How could I resist?”

  “I’m a killer all right, Mark strutted. A killer who doesn’t usually kill. But I advise you to be very careful now and keep this very quiet around Caro, don’t let anything transpire. She is a killer herself.”

  “A killer you say,” she said dreamily, just at the very instant when Mark heard the door faintly creaking open.”

  “Marie, quickly … go under the bed!”

  “Why, what did I do now?”

  “Go hide under the bed, Marie!” Mark whispered in her ear. “Somebody is in the room.”

  “That’s why I always say, you should make love with the lights on.”

  But then she got really scared fast and she slid quietly under the bed.

  Mark picked up the gun from the nightstand and shot without aiming in the general direction of the door.

  “He heard a yelping sound and hurried steps shuffling away.”

  He had been lucky with the gun, but the clothes were another matter altogether.

  Luckily, most of them lay thrown around willy-nilly on the carpet by the bed.

  It took him barely a couple of minutes to get dressed.

  He went on to the corridor, which was empty by now, then came back into the room and locked the door.

  “Marie,” he whispered. “Marie, you can come out from under the bed now. The killer has run away. I have to go after him. It’s the only way. We have to put an end to this.”

  He took the second gun, the .22mm, which he had kept hidden under the bed.

  “Take this gun!”

  She came out so drop-dead gorgeous now that Mark had switched on the lights, that he had to avert his eyes.

  It was hard to keep his mind on giving chase when he had Marie all to himself on his bed.

  “Don’t leave the room for anything in the world until I come back,” Mark said. “Anybody tries to force the door you shoot. You don’t have to aim. Shooting will be enough to scare them away.”

  He gave her a peck on the cheek and ran out with the gun in his fist.

  “Don’t forget to lock the door,” he shouted.

  His footsteps resonated further away on the wooden floor of the corridor.

  Chapter 16: The River Deep

  Stephanie listens in front of the door. She wants to make sure everybody is fast asleep. She waits a little bit, but not too long. After all, time is of the essence.

  She inserts the key in the lock. She turns the key, not even a click. They keep their locks well-oiled in this household. This is a very good sign.

  The door is unlocked now. She turns the knob then pushes the door silently. She raises the gun. She looks into the room.

  Marie is making out with a guy on the bed. It doesn’t get any better than this.

  The beauty of these kinds of situations—Stephanie had read it in a book—is that you can always find a jealous boyfriend or wife ready to be assigned the blame.

  She doesn’t wait. She raises the gun through the opened door and squeezes the trigger.

  Instantly somebody shoots back at her.

  She sees a huge gun pointed in her direction and the noise that sounds in her ears like an artillery barrage.

  She has no time to point her gun again. She knows instinctively that the next time the bastard will shoot her dead.

  She is not ready for that. She closes the door. She moves away. She runs down the corridor. Looks back. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that nobody is following.

  She stops at the head of the stairs. From there she sees the door to Marie’s room, which is slowly opening. Her gun in hand she waits. But her opponent is strong. The shot goes close to her head. The gun was fired from inside the room; only now does he get out.

  He is crouching low, but the barrel of his gun is pointing more and more menacingly toward her head.

  She flees down the stairs like an avalanche. It was a matter of seconds to cross the ground level corridor and get out into the street.

  Once outside she doesn’t stop to look back but starts running. She is a strong runner. She doesn’t imagine the stocky guy can follow her for long.

  Then she reconsiders. Once the guy starts running toward her, she will reprise the advantage. She has enough time to aim and maybe bring him down. That’s all she needs. Once he’s incapacitated she will go back to finish off Marie.

  But nobody is coming o
ut of the house and she starts getting concerned.

  Then suddenly a man shows up in the street out of nowhere. He’s at about twenty-five yards from her. Where did this one come from?

  He probably used the back entrance, Stephanie thinks.

  She shoots, but the man is too far away and the bullet goes wild. But when he shoots back with his huge gun, the slug grazes the wall to her left, a few inches from her head.

  She is frightened.

  So she goes back to plan number one.

  Stephanie is a good runner. She will easily outdistance him.

  She starts running and keeps running as hard as she can.

  Two, three, four blocks she looks back. The man didn’t gain any distance, but he’s still in sight.

  Suddenly, what a relief, she sees the park at her right.

  The man can still follow her because of the lights in the street, but once in the park, she regains the advantage.

  She goes to the fence and jumps over it, then once inside the park she takes a few more steps and stops. She looks back.

  This is a great opportunity and she will not let it go to waste.

  She has one more good chance to get rid of her pursuer, probably the last.

  She will lay in wait with the gun at the ready. As soon as he jumps over the fence, he is as good as dead. For a good few seconds, he will be defenseless, lying on the ground with no time to pick up his gun. She’ll discharge a full magazine in him, and after she has disposed of her bodyguard, she will go back to finish off Marie.

  She waits and waits until she’s green in the face.

  Nobody seems to follow her.

  She hears a thump and the sound of broken twigs some twenty-five feet to her left. Somebody shoots at her from that direction.

  The man is a professional, instead of following in her steps, which would have opened him up and probably gotten him killed, he had turned left, put some distance from Stephanie, and only then did he jump the fence.

  He’s now closing in for the kill.

  She remembers the beggar telling about the full moon and it’s true, she looks up at the sky and sees the yellow circle of the moon.

  She can throw her night goggles away, they are useless now, but the man is left with his big gun and he’s thinking strategically.

  Ironically, she thinks about how she had hired all these flawed assassins, all the people she sent to Marie over the years.

  And now when she’s probably about to die, she finally finds a good one.

  And he is not working for her.

  This is the man she should have hired for the job in the first place.

  Then she suddenly understands. She has an insight. She’s looking at the reason why all the killers she had sent so far had disappeared.

  Now she had come herself to this place, where the best professionals that money can buy had failed.

  She has put herself into the same trap.

  It was not a good idea to come to Metroville, her pops had been right.

  But she still has her running skills; she can survive. She will outrun him and return safely to the hotel.

  She’s running on the tracks and she’s no longer interested in hitting Marie’s bodyguard, that’s probably not going to happen now, not tonight.

  He’s probably too smart for her.

  But could she evade him and somehow return to Marie’s house to finish her off?

  No. Not today. She has done all she could do for today.

  There will be other days. Other days and nights.

  And finally, she’ll succeed if she keeps at it.

  She looks back. Things have quieted down.

  The man is still following on the tracks, but he does not gain any distance, and strangely enough, he doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.

  For no reason at all she feels goose bumps.

  It’s obvious to her now that the guy is not a long-distance runner. At least, she has been right about one thing.

  She’s been running for about twenty minutes now when she sees the hillock coming into sight. She climbs slowly steadily and the exertion does her good. She’s close to the hilltop, looking down, down into the valley. She gets over the top and suddenly she runs down with all the speed she can muster. She feels light-headed and wonderful.

  She throws a glance now and then back at the tracks. Nobody is following. The bodyguard must have gotten lost on the way.

  To her right, she sees a parapet with railing. She hears the deep sound of the river below. To her left she sees a wooden area of shrubs surrounding a thicket of young saplings.

  She goes straight on, reaching fantastic speeds; she’s so happy all of a sudden. So happy that she starts to laugh and laugh and laugh.

  And then she looks left and from inside the thicket, she can see a figure coming out. The man doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. Still, he’s approaching her steadily.

  She veers sharp to the right, trying to avoid him.

  The man starts yelling.

  What did he say?

  “Stop! Stop!”

  He’s telling her to stop.

  She goes right, runs toward the parapet. She wants to avoid him. A light drizzle fell a few hours ago. The tracks down here by the river are awfully slippery. She turns her head and looks at the man. He’s very close, dangerously close to her now. She doesn’t like that.

  The man talks. What did the man say?

  “Danger.”

  Yes, she tends to agree with him.

  “You’re right. You’re a very dangerous man,” she says.

  She didn’t look where she was going and now her left running shoe stumbles on a wet puddle and Stephanie glides toward the parapet.

  She touches the rail. Her running shoes are slipping. She grabs the rail to avoid falling.

  She has no idea that a few days ago her employee, Roger, had loosened the screws under the balustrade.

  She hangs onto the rails for dear life.

  And then slowly, very slowly like in one of those early movie pictures, the rails give way and the whole structure plunges forward.

  Mark is very close to her now. He tries to catch her, but he’s too late.

  There is a short instant of happiness in the beginning when you think you can fly.

  But they say that it does not last too long.

  Because you cannot.

  Stephanie hears an awful din as the whole wall is tumbling down into the old bed of the river below.

  She feels happy at first.

  And then she’s not.

  Chapter 17: The Sideway Cafe

  People smiled. Life at the Sideway Cafe was very pleasant.

  “Life is a stream,” Mark quipped.

  “Don't be like that! You have the tendency to minimize everything.” His alter ego reproached him. “Life is not a stream, but a river, a large and majestic river.”

  “Be as it may. But the fact remains that we are both talking about the same concept. We've both identified a streaming water source. Let's, at least, agree on that!”

  “Hi, Gina,” he greeted the girl at the checkout. I've finally made my decision. I declare today to be a cappuccino day.

  “So you still can't make up your mind, every day something different. Café latte, café au lait, espresso, black with milk, soy latte, mocha. What will you think about next? I bet you're doing it just to annoy me.” She smiled very pleasantly indeed.

  “Life is a river,” Mark replied.

  “Does this mean that if you forgot to take your leather jacket, let's say the day before yesterday, there is no chance you will ever find it again?”

  “So this is where I've left it. Darn! I'm so glad you found it for me.”

  “Yes, I believe it was caught in a vortex of some kind, or was it a wormhole?”

  “After each simplification, you must expect a new complication,” He was just about to say.

  But he did not have time to continue his divagation. People were coming from behind. The line had to a
dvance.

  “What more is there to say? People do it on a regular basis - they talk a lot without saying anything.”

  “But don’t you look at it like at some kind of static? I mean, you know, you have to keep the lines of communication open. It's like a 'keep in touch' kind of situation, like between servers in a network. They have to greet each other every few seconds.”

  ”Blah, blah enough already. We play at being very smart, but we give ourselves too much credit. It's such an agreeable day. Nobody can take this from us.”

  He found a table by the window and, for a few minutes, he was content to contemplate the groups of youth walking by in the street. Then he picked up with a lazy hand the local paper and checked the headlines.

  One of them stirred his curiosity enough to forego the crossword puzzles, the advice of the gentle Pambey and the cartoons, to go directly to the local news.

  The headline declared in large bold letters, “Tragic accident kills the kid sister of a prominent student.”

  Further, buried inside the local news section, his discerning eye gleaned an obscure paragraph:

  “... at a distance of about ten feet from the site of the accident another body was discovered, the victim of an apparent heart attack. He read, his brow suddenly lined by a recalcitrant wrinkle. 48 years-old Antonio Sebastian Smith Borges, a passionate philatelist and the recipient of the Velvet Cross, the Blue Cross of Finland and the Médaille Militaire de France - for his indefatigable work in the domain of philanthropy.

  “Philatelist and philanthropist at the same time, wow!”

  Mr. Borges was a great traveler, who crisscrossed the world from top to bottom, sideways and back, in search of rare stamps, bringing his kind of philanthropy to six out of the seven continents.

  “Six out of seven ain't too bad,” he almost quipped, but that was too low even for him, so he just decided to shut up.

  The next headline read, “City is reviewing current incidents at the River Parkway.”

  Within the span of four days, two people have lost their lives in River Park, at the bend of the Metroville River. These accidents could have been easily avoided.