Final Target

by Jack Young

  “No. I got the fuck out of there.” Paden couldn’t tell if the guy believed him or not. He put the steaks he was grilling onto the table. They looked and smelled amazing. Paden wasn’t really hungry when he arrived, but the smell had his mouth salivating.

  Lanny reached into the cooler next to him. “Wanna beer?”

  Paden nodded. “Sure.”

  Lanny handed him a can of Bud Light which he cracked open and took a long drink. He burped and gave a small look around the backyard. From what he could tell, it was only the three of them at the house. He couldn’t sense anyone lurking around either. That didn’t mean there might not be others around. He still needed to play it cool and find out what Lanny and this other guy really wanted. Was it the money or something else? Lanny could’ve just phoned if it was about the bag and money.

  The other guy slapped a steak onto a plate in front of Paden while Lanny passed a large salad bowl to him. Lanny didn’t take any food for himself. Paden put some salad on his plate and poured some Thousand Island dressing on it. He then cut into his steak and after seeing the pink juices knew it was going to taste amazing. After taking the first bite, he was correct. “Good steak.” He paused hoping the guy would give his name.

  The guy nodded. “Thanks. I’m Marcus. Marcus Randolph. I’m an old friend of Lanny’s.”

  Paden chewed and nodded back to Marcus. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise. Listen, I’m sorry if all this sounds like an interrogation. I just need to know if that bag got to where it was supposed to go is all.”

  “Lanny just said to take the bag to a guy named Gordon in a red Silverado parked in a handicapped spot in the Target parking lot in the Heights.”

  “And you did this?”

  Paden had answered that already and wondered why Marcus was asking again. “Yeah. I told you that already.”

  “And you didn’t run back after the shooting was done or after the grenade was thrown?”

  This puzzled Paden because he’d heard several news reports that afternoon about the incident at Target and none mentioned the grenade. “I dropped off the bag of money before the shooting started.” The words barely left his mouth when he saw both Marcus and Lanny react about what he said was in the bag.

  Paden and Marcus locked eyes and he knew it was about to go down. He was sure this Marcus guy had a gun somewhere on him and Paden had zero trust in Lanny at the moment to help him. If Paden didn’t react accordingly then the steak he was chewing would be his last.

  Marcus began to move his right hand off the table and Paden didn’t like the feeling that overcame him as he saw this. He grabbed his steak knife and jammed it into Marcus’ chest where he thought the heart was. Marcus reached for the knife with both hands, but Paden kept grinding it in. He kicked Marcus out of his chair and turned to Lanny. Not trusting Lanny one bit, Paden took the grilling fork sitting next to the tray with extra steaks and rammed the fork into Lanny’s throat. He pulled it out and did it again.

  Paden stood not knowing what to do next. Neither man was yet dead and Paden knew his luck would be that a decent paramedic crew would save them both. If they were saved, a hit would definitely be put out on him. He grabbed the steak knife sticking out of Marcus’ chest and pulled it out. To make sure Marcus wouldn’t survive, Paden pulled the knife across Marcus’ neck. Blood began to spurt from the neck. Paden then pulled the grilling fork from Lanny’s neck and slit his throat also.

  Paden watched as both men bled out and died. He checked their pulses to make sure and found none. He was about to leave, but stayed a bit longer to wipe down anything he may have touched. He wasn’t too worried about inside the house because he’d been to Lanny’s house numerous times over the months and years. He knew he’d be able to explain those.

  When he believed he’d wiped things down good enough, Paden left the deck and the house the same way he came, in making sure he didn’t accidentally leave anything behind. He got into his truck, started it up, and drove away at a normal speed. He drove a few blocks and stopped at the Kwik Stop and puked in the toilet of the men’s room. “Oh shit.” Now, he knew things were going to get worse.

  After getting sick at the gas station, Paden sat in his truck thinking over his situation. He just killed two men, one a complete stranger and one he halfway considered a friend for several years. His head was throbbing and he began to rub it, wishing he had something to fix it. I had to he thought. Marcus was going to kill me. He knew someone was going to come after him for this now. They would come kill him for the money or for killing these two men. Or it could be for both things. He had to figure out his next move.

  He drove away from the gas station knowing he needed to get ahead of this. He needed to leave, but he didn’t know what to do about Joanne. One part of him was telling him to forget about her and leave, and another part wanted to make sure she was going to be okay if he did. She had the money at her place and was unaware of it. That money was for her and the baby, but others wouldn’t see it that way. He needed to get the money back, but knew somehow, she would get brought into this even if it was just to get him to come out from hiding.

  The first place he ended up driving to was his place. It may be the first place people would look for him, but Paden needed to go there because he kept another stash of cash and more importantly, it was where he kept a couple of pistols. He knew he was going to be need both in the near future. He hoped he wouldn’t, but he also knew that realistically this was far from over and it would get bloodier.

  Paden’s house was nowhere near as big as Joanne’s. It wasn’t meant to have more than two people living in it. It had one bedroom just off to the side of the living room and one past the small dining area. That one was the master bedroom, but it was barely bigger than the other one. The kitchen was small, but had what he needed to cook and it at least had a dishwasher. He hated to wash dishes by hand. There was a spot for a wash machine and dryer in the hall leading to the master bedroom which was another thing Paden was glad to have. He often didn’t have time to lug clothes to a laundromat and the convenience of having his own washer and dryer saved him time when he could be doing something else.

  Paden felt like a loser everytime he walked into his house. He felt this way because he’d worked hard his whole life in hopes for a nice home and a family. His home and the things he had to do at times for work weren’t fit to have a family around. Joanne’s house and career were, though. If he could get past the things he was involved with, he figured he would move in with Joanne and find safer work. He wasn’t sure what that was because for twenty years or more all he ever did was the same work he did now. He would have to figure all that out later. For the time being, he needed to come up with a plan to leave town and hopefully take Joanne with him.

  Paden was still thinking all of this over when he located his two pistols. One was a 9mm Beretta he bought when he was in the Army and the other a Glock 21 .45 ACP. It was recommended years ago by a common associate of his and Lanny’s. He put the Beretta in a duffel bag with a couple extra magazines and boxes of rounds for it and the Glock. The Glock stayed out on the nightstand nearby in case he needed it while packing. He hadn’t fired either one in a couple of weeks and that was at the firing range on the outskirts of town. He was trained in the Army on the M-16, M-4, M-60, and the Beretta and was a decent shot with all of them. He hit center mass of his targets more than he missed, but in his line of work he’d never had to kill anyone except those two guys in self-defense nearly twenty years before. Now, he’d just killed two more. In cold blood no less.

  When his duffel was packed with three days’ worth of clothes, Paden also threw in a few things to take care of his hygiene needs. When he was satisfied with everything he’d packed, he went into his closet and dug out his small, fireproof safe. It was probably two feet by two feet. The combination was easy to remember. It was four digits, 1022. It was the day his mother died four years before. Inside were some fake IDs, fake passports, twenty prepaid debit ca
rds each maxed out with five hundred dollars, and two bundles of cash totaling twenty thousand dollars. The cash and cards were something he built up over the years in case he needed to split as he was doing at the moment.

  Paden shoved all the contents of the safe into the duffel and was about to leave when his home phone began ringing. He wasn’t sure if he should answer it and stood still as a chill swept over his body. On the third ring, he picked up the phone next to his bed. The caller ID said it was Joanne’s cell phone. He still wasn’t sure if he should answer it. It wasn’t like she’d never called him at home before, but with the recent events he was hesitant to answer. It could have been someone else besides Joanne calling. He took a deep breath and answered on the fourth ring before the machine would pick up the call. “Hello.”

  There was a pause. “Paden?” It was Joanne.

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Still coming over to eat?”

  When he didn’t respond right away, Joanne continued, “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You sound off.”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be over in a few.”

  Paden clicked off the phone and let out a deep breath before leaving his house with a duffel full of clothes, cash, and guns.

  8.

  At the station, Joe was going through witness statements. He’d read them all already, and nothing changed. He was trying to figure out who the two men seen approaching the Silverado were. So far, he had nothing. He was hoping the CCTV cameras caught something…anything. A positive ID on the victims was due to him in the next hour. Jacobs insisted they had the ID of the driver based on the plates, but Joe had to remind his veteran partner that anyone could’ve been driving that truck. Plus, they needed to know who the passenger was. The plates said the truck belonged to a man named Curtis Gordon. Joe wondered why his partner was so apt to wrap it up based on just a license plate verification. He’d been like that more and more as of late. Maybe the job really was wearing on him. To appease Joe, Jacobs volunteered to check on the identifications.

  “Joe.” He looked up and saw the desk sergeant, Pat Hendricks, waving a folder at him. “This was just dropped off for you.”

  Joe walked over to Hendricks. “Thanks, Pat.” He took the folder and sat back at his desk and began looking it over. This folder was what Jacobs was supposed to have gotten with the identifications of the bodies in the truck. Things didn’t usually move this quick and Joe wondered who was paying back a favor they owed him. The report, though, wasn’t the full ME report. That would be coming at a later date. What he wanted to know was who the bodies were. He also wanted to know where Jacobs was and why it wasn’t him bringing the folder.

  Joe’s desk phone began to ring and he answered it on the second ring. He was hoping it was his partner. “Thompson.”

  “Yeah, it’s Jacobs.”

  “Nelson. Where are you? I thought you went to get the paperwork ID-ing the victims.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I’ll get to that.”

  “Well, where are you?”

  “Holy shit. You my mother or what? Fuck.”

  “Sorry. I just don’t want to lose any momentum on this case.”

  “Same. I had to make a quick stop. My kid called and needed me to pick up her daughter at daycare. She got hung up at work and her husband’s still out of town. So, Grandpa was called in to pinch hit.”

  “Could’ve texted.”

  “Yeah. I know, but listen to this.”

  “Ok.”

  “My daughter lives two blocks from Gordon, so I went over to his place after she got home.”

  “And?”

  “There was a bunch of people there and none of them had any idea where he was.”

  “Ok.” Joe was writing this down in his notebook.

  “The driver’s gotta be him.”

  “Ok. Maybe. I have the folder you were supposed to be getting.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet. Hang on.” Joe needed both hands, so he tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder while he opened the folder. Inside was a fingerprint chart and a report stating there were enough fingers not damaged from which an identification was made on both victims. As he read the report identifying the bodies, he wasn’t surprised what he read. Joe knew the answer to his question before he asked it. He only asked to get on his partner’s nerves. “You still there, Papa Bear?”

  “Th’fuck would I be going?”

  “Just checking.” He couldn’t help but laugh a little to himself. “Relax, okay? You’re getting all wound up again.”

  “I know. I know. I need to try those relaxation techniques Kelly’s always on me about. Breathing stuff and meditation.”

  “That shit really work?”

  “When I have the time to do them.”

  “Why don’t you try it for a minute?”

  The phone went silent for a moment and Joe heard heavy breathing into the phone. He almost laughed out loud after the first two breaths. “Okay. That’s enough.” He was now past trying to hold in his laughs. He was straight up laughing.

  “What?”

  “Just stop. You sound like a perv making a crank call or someone humping the phone.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Joe laughed some more. “That’s what you do to relax?”

  “Sometimes. Fuck this. What’s the folder say?”

  Joe scanned the paperwork again with his finger. “It’s not him.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not him. Neither victim is Gordon.”

  “They’re not? Who the fuck are they then?”

  “Hang on. I got the names right here. They’re probably guys who got sent in because Gordon had some idea of what he’d be walking into.”

  “Smart move really.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then who are the vics?”

  “The driver is some guy named Roberts. Timothy Roberts. 819 Bluebird Street on the West end. He was thirty-three.”

  “And the other guy?”

  “He’s a guy named Vaughn. Daryl Vaughn whose address is 237 Garfield Avenue. Two blocks from Roberts. He was twenty-six.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, but now we can look into these two?”

  “Yeah and then figure out where the fuck this Gordon guy is.”

  Joe knocked on the door as he stood on the front steps with Jacobs behind and to the left of him. They waited a moment for someone to answer the knock and when no one did, Joe knocked on the door again, this time harder. They heard a rapid pounding of feet grow louder as they approached the door. The floor flung open and a child with the curliest and reddest hair Joe had ever seen stood in front of him. The child was a boy and Joe figured he was about nine years old. “Hello. Are your parents home?”

  The boy nodded and stood still. This wasn’t the first time this happened to Joe as he went to someone’s house while on the job. “Could I speak to one of them?”

  The boy nodded again. Joe could see that this wasn’t going anywhere. “Could you go get them?” The boy ran off leaving the door wide opened with Joe and Jacobs standing on the front step still looking confused.

  The boy was gone no longer than a minute when a woman came walking down the hall with a baby in a towel. The woman herself was wearing a white Def Leppard t-shirt from their Hysteria Tour and a pair of grey sweats. Her black hair was in a messy bun and she looked a couple of years shy of thirty. Seeing Joe and Jacobs wearing suits with the bulge of their sidearms on each of their right hips produced a hesitant smile. “Can I help you?”

  Joe held up his badge. “Ma’am. I’m Detective Joe Thompson and this is my partner Detective Jacobs.”

  As expected, Joe saw the little glimmer of youth from her eyes fade as the panic began to sit in. She adjusted the baby in her arms. “Detectives? Police?”
She gulped. “Why are you at my house?”

  Joe put his badge away. “Are you Mrs. Roberts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Timothy your husband?”

  “Yeah. What’s this about?”

  Joe pointed to the inside of the house. “May we come in?”

  She shook her head. “Not until you tell me what this is about.”

  “Have you seen or spoken to your husband today?”

  She nodded. “Yes. He left for work around seven thirty this morning and came home around noon for lunch.”

  Joe had his notebook out now and was scribbling in it. Where does your husband work?”

  She pointed to her right. “He works at the college over there. He’s the IT guy.”

  “Does he normally come home for lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s now after seven. Does he normally work this late?”

  “Not usually. There’s a U.S. senator holding a rally at the college tonight and Tim’s needed to make sure everything is set up. You know, the speakers or monitors or screens he may need. This senator is doing a presentation. So, the big screen they use to show old movies sometimes was needed to be set up as well.” She paused a moment. “You know the phone rang a few moments before you guys got here. I let the machine pick up because I had Brandee in the tub. I could hear some of it. The dean or someone looking for him.”

  “So, you haven’t seen or heard from your husband since he was home for lunch? What time did he leave?”

  “A little after twelve thirty. Please tell me what’s going on. I’m getting worried.”

  Jacobs moved up closer to Joe. “Ma’am. Do you know a Daryl Vaughn?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. That’s Tim’s cousin. He works for Tim. Why?”

  Joe looked at his partner who nodded. “Mrs. Roberts. There was a shooting this afternoon in the Heights.”

  “I know. I heard about it on the news. What does this have to do with Tim?”

  “We believe he and his cousin were the victims in the truck that was attacked.”

  She shook her head. Slow at first and then with great speed. “No. That can’t be. He doesn’t drive a truck and he was at the college all afternoon.”