Intended Target
by
Cyrus Holt
Smashwords Edition
Intended Target
Copyright 2011 by Christopher Cihlar
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Prologue
For more than two weeks, Richard Defur had made no mistakes, but still the man followed. As Richard sat down for lunch with his business partner, he had no idea the gentleman seated four tables to the left, wearing sunglasses, leather gloves and a three piece Armani suit, was there because of him. In fact because he had been staring at his waitress’s breasts, asking her to list the types of whiskey the restaurant carried, Richard had not noticed when the man, while being led to his seat by the hostess, seemingly stumbled and swooped up from the floor the ticket the valet had given Richard moments before. It was this misplaced valet ticket that ultimately damned Richard.
At lunch, after three or four drinks, Simon Baxter, Richard’s partner in a financial consulting firm, broke the news that one of their most important clients, Leonard Harris, would be taking his business elsewhere. Leonard was a thirty-something dot-com entrepreneur, valuable not only because of his wealth, but because he was young and offered the potential of many decades of high-cost consulting hours. On his way to drunk, Richard slammed his whiskey onto the table, cracking the glass and evoking stares from those seated around him. He cursed and shouted for the bill, and it appeared he and Simon had been arguing. That they hadn’t been mattered little, and Michael Bloomington, the man who had been following, knew his time had come.
When the shouting started, and Michael heard the glass crack on the table, he pulled out two twenties and asked a passing busboy to tell his waitress he needed the bill. He waited until Richard and his lunch date had left the restaurant and trailed them outside. Michael had parked his Mercedes on the street and was forced to choke down a chuckle as he walked past Simon and Richard. Richard was shouting at the valet, “I don’t have my fucking ticket, but you damn well know which car is mine!”
Ten minutes later Richard finally secured his red BMW 650i convertible. As he screeched his tires and drove away from the valet stand, Michael pulled in behind him.
Richard drove straight to Simon’s house, a beautiful Victorian set back from the road and hidden among giant oak trees in Kenilworth, one of Chicago’s wealthiest suburbs. Michael had followed the pair to the home on two other occasions and come back once on his own to scout it out. Since first finding Richard, he’d had an inclination that Simon’s house might be the place.
He passed Simon’s driveway and continued a quarter mile down the road, where he pulled into a parking lot which sat at the entrance of a local wildlife preserve. A dozen other cars dotted the expansive lot, and Michael went to the trunk, removed a half-dozen ziplock bags, and stuffed them into his front coat pockets. Now on foot, he hurried back down the road toward the house.
Rounding the corner, he was just in time to see Richard’s BMW pulling out of the driveway. Michael stood quietly for a second, listening for approaching cars, and then casually strode onto Simon’s property, walked up the driveway and rang the front door. When Simon answered, Michael smiled and asked, “Is the lady of the house available?”
“She’s not home,” Simon answered tersely, but before he could close the door, Michael had pushed his way into the foyer. He pulled from his coat pocket one of the bags, which contained a silver Hammerli SP20 pistol stolen earlier in the week from the night stand next to Richard’s bed. He pointed it at Simon.
“Up the stairs,” Michael demanded without bothering to remove the gun from its container.
Simon tried to speak, but his words came out in a mumble.
Michael asked, “Is there anyone else here?”
It was all Simon could do to shake his head no. He backed up the stairs, never removing his eyes from the gun. He probably did not see it flash when, as they reached the second floor, Michael pulled the trigger and, from three feet away, put a bullet squarely between Simon’s eyes.
Michael didn’t even bother to make sure Simon was dead as he busied himself organizing the contents of his remaining ziplock bags. From one he pulled a few strands of hair he had plucked from Richard’s comb during the same visit that yielded the gun. He dropped them near Simon’s body. From another he pulled two small shags of carpet he had taken from Richard’s bedroom. Michael placed these carefully on the third stair from the top. Last, he removed the red valet ticket he had plucked from the restaurant floor not two hours ago and let it drop over the edge of the staircase, where it fluttered off a small bureau and came to rest on the marble floor.
That was supposed to be it, but turning to leave, he noticed the door swinging open as Richard’s partner’s wife and child returned home. From the seventh stair he shot the woman in the front entranceway as she turned to put her coat in the closet. She crumpled against the wall and was staring at Michael with an expression of disbelief when he reached the bottom of the stairs. The child began bawling and Michael did not even hesitate as he turned and shot the young boy where his blond shaggy hair parted just above his nose. The kid went over backwards and was almost certainly dead even before the mother had drug herself across the floor to reach him. Michael shot her again and quickly began reviewing his dilemma.
He had already planted all his evidence upstairs. Immediately he decided that the two additional bodies would look exactly like what they were—unfortunate victims who had come home at precisely the wrong time.
Comfortable with his analysis, Michael stepped over a rapidly growing pool of blood coming from one of the victims and walked out the door. In the cold afternoon sun, he strode calmly down the driveway and turned toward the lot where he had left the Mercedes.
Michael felt a small wave of regret for killing the kid, but it passed before he had even retrieved the car. After all it really was Richard who had gotten them all killed. He had led Michael to this place, and the victims were, by any reasonable judge’s standards, Richards’s. They were unfortunate but unavoidable casualties in Michael’s greater plan.
He disposed of the gun in a picnic area just a few hundred feet from where he had parked. The area was upscale, and he had no doubt that whoever found it would call the police. That was the key; not just having whatever it was you wanted found discovered, but hiding it in a place where people would find it in a way that looked like it was hidden on purpose.
Indeed, three days later, after Richard had already been arrested, a child throwing a football with his father went to retrieve an errant pass and stumbled across the loaded gun. He brought it out to show his dad, and eventually the gun made its way to the police. It was even registered, and, although the kid and his father had muddied any clear prints that might have existed, the police had no problem proving it was the murder weapon and then tracing the gun back to Richard. Before leaving it in the woods, Michael had taken a single bullet from that gun and hidden it in a place no one would ever find. Not, at least, without his help.
Chapter 1
The horizon was a brilliant contrast between white and blue as they fled east toward the ski peaks of central Vermont. Sarah was snoring gently, and Brice guided the salt-streaked Jeep Cherokee through the frozen landscape, down the winding two-lane road that cut through the unbroken blanket of snow like a discarded Christmas ribbon. They had left the interstate an hour ago and were flying across the rural countryside on some numbered back road that connected Rutland, Vermont, to the northern fringes of Albany.
Nothing moved much in the frozen morning, and the reflection of the sun and sky off the winter white seemed delicately beautiful in a way that Brice, living in a city, had forgotten. Beautiful in a way the urban landscape of Washington, with its angles and granite and harshness, never could be. Sarah shifted under the winter coat she was using for a blanket. Her head dropped from the window against which she had been resting. She stretched and yawned and, coming awake, asked, “How long have I been sleeping?” Then before Brice could respond, she observed, “Oh, it’s light out already.”
“Not so long” Brice answered.
“Sorry I didn’t help keep you awake.”
“No problem.” He glanced over and watched as she rubbed her eyes, not yet accustomed to the bright morning glare, and thought back to how it was when they first met. How he was still just as captivated now as he had been then at her process of coming awake.
The trip north was the spontaneous result of a call from one of their friends from college. Jeff suggested they head up for an impromptu get-together at his winter ski chalet near Killington. It was to be a reunion of sorts, and they were looking forward to catching up with friends from Georgetown and the significant others some of them had acquired in the two and a half years since graduation.
Brice had been dating Sarah since their freshmen year, and as all their friends liked to point out, they were the couple that everyone knew from college who had been dating the longest. More recently they had begun to be pestered with the question, “When are you two going to officially tie the knot?” They shared an apartment only six blocks from where they had lived as undergrads, and both were now enrolled in law school at Georgetown. On winter break, the call for a reunion had presented none of the scheduling pitfalls that many of those with real jobs had to contend with.
They planned to stay four or five days, depending on their moods and that of their host, Jeff Liken, who did not work, and thanks to his family’s trust fund, would never have to. Classes would not start again for another week and a half; there was time as they drove into the morning light.
Sarah shifted and snuggled up closer to Brice, and he moved to put his arm around her. They spoke of the coming ski trip and how, maybe after they left, they could head to Boston and then down the coast to make a real vacation of it. Sarah hoped she could remember how to ski, since it had been so long. Brice told her it was like a bicycle and once you learned you never forgot. They crossed into Vermont sometime after seven. Sarah wanted to stop for breakfast and coffee before they went on to Jeff’s house, and Brice agreed that a break before having to deal with Jeff would be about perfect.
Behind them, more than a mile back now, but visible when the landscape crested just right, a black Mercedes glided along the asphalt. It had been following them since the Cherokee had pulled out of its parking space in Georgetown, but neither of them had noticed.
Chapter 2
Michael followed in silence. No music on the radio, no distractions from a cell phone, no air from the car’s heater; just the low hum of the engine as it powered down the path Brice chose. He did not wear sunglasses to protect his light blue eyes from the harsh morning glare, yet he did not squint. He could see his breath in the Vermont winter cold. He did not notice the stillness of the morning that had so intrigued Brice. He gave no thought to the woman with whom Brice shared the car, and he did not know where the path was leading. He only followed, keeping his speed constant, far enough behind to remain just a spot in the Jeep’s rearview mirror.
Michael did not work, was not romantically involved, and had no place to be or be missed from. The Mercedes sported license plates from Massachusetts, although they were stolen. The car was his, though, and the real plates were tucked safely in a deposit box in an anonymous branch location of Fleet Bank off the Garden State Parkway somewhere in New Jersey. He was not sure of the actual town, only the exit number. The account there was registered to Stephen Brokard who was formerly a Marine but had died an entirely unheroic death in an Army mishap in 1979 that involved an obstacle course on a base in Arizona.
If anyone asked, he would claim not to be aware of the plates, not to know how they had changed from New York to Massachusetts. Must have been kids playing a joke or the mob planning a hit, he would say to the officer in a light tone he had practiced hundreds of times. At the end of the sentence, he would pretend a soft, casual sort of laugh, and everyone would believe him.
Michael had a law degree from Harvard, but did not practice. He had focused on criminal justice while in law school and only gone so that he might better understand the intricacies of the American judicial system. His father had called himself a real estate developer, but really his wealth had just been the result of inheritance. The property he owned an accident of birth. Michael’s mother fashioned herself a philanthropist, and they married mostly because they each trusted the other not to be marrying for their families’ money. Michael did not claim to be a lawyer and never pretended he had earned the money off of which he lived.
His law school advisor, professor Martin Henry, a wrinkled old man who smelled of Old Spice and was probably dead by now, had called Michael brilliant but erratic and refused to write a letter of recommendation for a position with the U.S. District Attorney’s Office, the one job Michael thought about applying for after he had finished law school. He could no longer remember what about the position had intrigued him.
Michael was an attractive man. He stood just shy of six feet, with dark, curly hair and pale silver-blue eyes. He had kept a large distance between himself and the female law students at Harvard who, among themselves, decided he was probably gay. Michael knew what they thought and did not care; he had kept the same distance from his male colleagues.
Law school had been more than a decade ago, but it was the last time he had kept a regular schedule. In New York he could afford to simply be. He did not isolate himself in his apartment. He visited museums, walked through Central Park, took coffee at innumerable shops around town, and frequented a bar where he was considered a regular. He simply did these things alone. He did not know his neighbors, had no job and therefore no work acquaintances. At O’Malley’s, the pub he frequented, he spoke pleasantly, but briefly, with the bartenders and other patrons and always paid in cash. None of them knew him by his given name.
Michael almost never used a credit card, although he carried one in case of emergencies. Beside it, his New York state driver’s license, and cash, there was nothing else in his wallet. The license was, of course, valid. He marveled at the idiots who went to jail after first attracting attention simply because they drove recklessly and without a license.
He agreed with part of what his former law school professor said. He was brilliant. It was what drove him, although anyone who knew anything about his career trajectory would remark that he seemed most unambitious. As far as being erratic, well, that was wrong. It was simply that his focus differed from those of the other students who flirted around Harvard’s halls. Life was a game, but it was his game and no one else’s. There was no room for a second player. He had figured out the law, and in the absence of God, that left him as the ultimate authority. Into the rising winter sun he followed; although he knew not where, he knew what would come.
Chapter 3
Ted Jamey slowly drifted awake. The sounds of his wife running the shower wafted in from the bathroom, and outside the bedroom window their two-year-old golden retriever, Orion, was yipping to be let back in from the cold. Ted stretched and gave thanks that he no longer lived in a city, where he would have had to jump from bed to let the dog back in before an unforgiving neighbor placed a call to the police. He relished the calm country lifestyle and waking to a view from his window looking out upon the unbroken expanse of winter, the rolling hills and peaks of the Green Mountain National Forest all cloaked in white.
Five minutes from the town of Middlebury, Ted’s home pushed back into the woods off Route 125. In the summer, when the leaves filled the trees, he could not see another home. Now, through the exposed winter trees, he could glimpse his neighbor Fred Slate’s chimney and was momentarily mesmerized by the wisp of white smoke arching skyward toward the dazzling blue sky like an artist’s half-finished brush stroke.
In the bathroom, he heard the shower turn off and watched through the open door as Jennifer stepped out. Standing naked, she whipped her long, dark hair into a towel and wrapped it around her head.
Beautiful, so beautiful, he thought, despite fifteen years of marriage and the graceful slide from young to nearing forty and middle age.
“Morning, honey,” he called from bed.
“There’s coffee downstairs,” she answered, and he stretched again, ripped himself out from under the covers, pulled on a pair of sweat pants, and went down to let the dog in.
Orion gratefully flew through the front door, her entire backside wagging, and jumped up onto Ted’s chest, a bad habit they could not seem to break her of. “Good girl,” he muttered, and pushed her back to the floor. He pulled on a pair of ancient boots that lived in a box beside the door. Wearing only them and his pajama bottoms, he walked out into the day to retrieve the morning paper.
Casually, slowly, Ted strolled down the long driveway, bare-chested as his sort of defiance against Vermont’s oftentimes unforgiving winters. Jennifer used coffee to rouse herself in the morning, and he used the cold. At least that is what he always told her when she saw him retrieving the paper in such a ridiculous state of undress.
A car passed just as he reached the mailbox, and he smiled slightly as the green Volvo with out-of-state license plates swerved after passing him. No doubt looking in the rear view mirror to get a glimpse of the half-naked crazy Vermonter. “City folk,” he said out loud. Although the long-time locals still did not consider him a true native, he saw the differences between him and them narrowing as the similarities linking him with those from city places gradually disappeared.
Jennifer was from Middlebury, and he had moved there for her. They had met six months after she had taken a job and moved to Boston following her graduation from college. She had never been out of the northeast and lived her first twenty-one years in a house very similar to the one they now occupied, only fifteen minutes away. Both of her parents worked at Middlebury, her mother as an administrative assistant in the history department and her father as a landscaper. While neither of them had been paid particularly well, one of their benefits was free tuition for any of their children accepted into the prestigious college. For Jennifer this meant the opportunity to attend the ridiculously expensive private school for free, where she socialized with children from a world she had never known.
Four years and then graduation, and Jennifer swore she would leave with her newfound friends forever. She took a job with an insurance agency in Boston, rented a flat in Cambridge, tried the city’s social scene, and missed the quiet of the country, the hikes in the woods, the snow in winter that was not shoveled, did not melt, and covered everything from Thanksgiving until Easter. Ted met her at the restaurant where he worked as a bartender in Cambridge.
Cornwall’s was located three blocks from Harvard’s campus and served mostly young professionals and grad students. Undergraduates were discouraged, and Ted ran a profitable side racket taking their IDs and selling them to other underage would-be drinkers on the sly. She came in one night with a male colleague from work after having been in the city for about six months, and she was stunning. From the corner of his eye he watched them and noticed, or hoped he was noticing, how she kept moving away from the guy. A first date, he had thought at the time and would later learn it was not supposed to be even that. When she came to the bar to order a round of drinks, he tried to think of something clever to say and came out only with, “That will be six bucks.”
She left first, and Ted watched in delight as her companion’s eyes drifted sadly away from her as she walked out the door. The companion stayed, tipped poorly, and later was joined by another guy to whom he undoubtedly recounted and glorified the two drinks he’d had with Jennifer. When she came back a week or so later with a girlfriend, Ted inquired as to where her date was, introduced himself, called her Jen when she told him her name, and was promptly corrected. “It is Jennifer,” she chided as she walked out.
The third time she came, she came alone and sat at the bar. She had noticed him also and asked if he remembered her name, to which he replied, “Jennifer”. They had been together ever since. In a matter of a year, she grew to hate the city, and he only cared to be there if she was, so they left. Back to Vermont, back to her Middlebury, where she got a master’s degree in teaching and now worked as a social studies teacher at the same high school she had attended when young. Ted had answered an ad by Vermont’s state police force and become a cop.
Slowly he walked back inside, thumbing through his daily paper, the Burlington Free Press. Those days of Boston were distant, and with their memory were no regrets.
Chapter 4
Jeff’s chalet was located in a community of almost exclusively second homes used as winter retreats for wealthy skiing enthusiasts from the coast. Less than five hours from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, the area provided easy access to a number of major resorts, including Killington and Stowe. The neighborhood was called Mountain Top and was nestled around a small lake about eight miles from Rutland. It consisted of one four-mile road, which ran in a loop around the water and connected to Route 7. The road was privately maintained by the community and the homeowners. If they wished to receive mail in Vermont, they needed to have a post office box in town. The community did its best to discourage visits from those who could not afford to purchase a home there themselves.
Brice drove by the turnoff to Mountain Top, and it wasn’t until the stoplight in Brandon, five miles beyond, that he realized he had gone too far. Sarah drained the rest of the coffee she had gotten from the Frost Diner in Rutland and frowned. “I only saw a couple of roads between here and Rutland.”
“No worries,” answered Brice, “I’m sure we’ll find it.” They drove back, slower this time, and the difficulty turned out to be a branch weighted with snow covering the sign for Mountain Top’s entrance. The road looked more like a driveway to a country club, and if either of them had noticed it on their first pass, they did not remember.
The street was really little more than a snow-packed trail, and Brice put the SUV into four-wheel drive. He still felt the car slip a couple of times as he made his way into the community, looking for Jeff’s house. Huge old trees piled with snow and ice loomed over the narrow road, blocking the sun; the only breaks in the woods were the driveways leading away, further back into the forest. From the road, neither Brice nor Sarah could clearly see the homes visible more as impressions in the landscape than as actual houses, like shadows at night when one knows something is lurking, but it remains just beyond the perceptible field of vision.
Most of the driveways were covered in clean, unbroken snow, unmarked by the comings and goings of an owner or caretaker. Brice and Sarah strained to catch a glimpse of the addresses, which were not numbers, but names, and, when visible, took the form of black letters hammered into whichever large tree stood in closest proximity to the driveway.
Often the names of the homes were covered in snow and unreadable. “How freaking pretentious,” Sarah snorted.
Brice, who kind of thought the names made the neighborhood seem quaint, could respond only, “And it sure doesn’t make it easy to find the one you’re looking for.”
Jeff had told them the house was about a mile and a half down the road on the left, but as it turned out, all of the homes fronted the lake, and the road ran a circle around a large, unspoiled forest, which meant they were all on the left. Wonderland, as in Winter Wonderland, was the name of Jeff’s place. He had assured Brice on the phone when giving directions that he had nothing to do with the home’s christening, that it was the name his parents had chosen for the place before growing tired of its inaccessibility and leaving it for Jeff to do with as he pleased.
About two miles down the road, Brice and Sarah realized that the careful scrutiny they had been giving to each and every house they passed had been a waste of time. In front of a driveway well worn by the tracks of visitors sat two trashcans, both overflowing with beer and liquor bottles. “This must be it,” Brice said, and, indeed, just beyond the garbage cans, which were the only ones they had passed since entering the community, a sign reading “Wonderland” hung crookedly from a massive tree trunk.
They pulled into the driveway behind three other cars parked about a hundred yards from the road. The only one they recognized was Jeff’s convertible Audi. “Only that idiot would bring a convertible to Vermont for the winter,” said Sarah, smiling.
Jeff’s house stood gigantic in the forest clearing on top of a hill that sloped down into the frozen lake. It rose to a point of three stories and, on both sides, angled down, giving it the appearance of a giant triangle. Built to resemble the ski lodges of Europe, a wooden porch circled its base, on the far side of which was a Jacuzzi.
Smoke billowed from one of the two giant chimneys that appeared to run away from the house after the second floor like a castle’s watchtowers. Mostly the house was made of brick, although portions of the base were covered in gray stone. A separate garage stood off to the side, its front buried to the top in a drift. Whatever car it may have housed was trapped there for the winter. Next to it on one side was a giant pile of snow-covered logs, rising at least five feet and running the entire length of the structure. A truly odd design for a house, Brice thought.
They had just turned off the car when Jeff stumbled out of the house wearing a pair of red running pants, a gray and blue Georgetown sweatshirt, and a pair of soft leather bedroom shoes. His rusty blond hair had grown out some since they had seen him last and sat atop his head spiking in all directions like a Christmas wreath. He had not shaved in at least a few days, and he carried a six pack of beer.
“Here, hold this,” he said to Brice when he reached the car and handed him the beer.
“Busch, I see. Some things never change,” commented Brice as Jeff pulled Sarah toward him, sweeping her off her feet in a giant circle and depositing her roughly where she had previously stood.
“Jesus, Jeff, you smell like a brewery,” she said, and pulled a beer from the six pack Brice held.
“Some things never change,” he agreed cheerfully as he slung his arms around their shoulders and guided them toward the house.
Chapter 5
Michael followed Brice past his missed exit to Mountain Top, and they turned around together in Middleton. When Brice pulled into the community on his return pass, Michael decided to let him continue on his own. He did not know where they were, but based on the snow-packed road that looked almost impassable, he figured they must be close to the end of their trip.
He drove past as slowly as possible, making sure Brice had actually found what he was looking for this time. As he was about to pass out of sight, he saw Brice disappear into the gap between the trees. There were no places to pull over where he would not be noticed as out of the ordinary and risk some do-good stranger stopping to ask if he had car trouble. It was a mile from the turnoff before he found a gas station where he could wait and watch for Brice’s car to pass.
It did not, and after filling his car up, slowly washing his windows and paying for a cup of coffee, Michael was fairly confident Brice would not be coming back this way for at least a little while. Whether that meant he had reached his destination, or had once again turned around and gone the other way, he could not be entirely sure, but it was necessary for him to proceed with caution, always. If he had lost Brice somewhere in the mountains of Vermont, well, he would catch up with him again soon enough.
Michael got into his car and drove back down Route 7, pulling off in front of Mountain Top. He assessed the risk of sliding into the ditch, realizing that if he did and had to call to get his car out, Brice would need to be put on hold for at least a few months. On the other hand, he could feel that this was the place, and he was ready. The process with Brice had been a long one, on and off since last summer, and Michael was growing restless.
In Washington DC he had added five names to his list. He first saw Brice stumbling out of a bar on M street in the heart of Georgetown late one Friday night. He could see the arrogance. There was a group of them, most wearing Georgetown law sweaters. They all thought they had the world cornered, and Brice, Brice had been the loudest, surest one of them all, maybe because he had drunk more than the others. But any of them would have done, and none of them, he was sure, gave much thought to how it could all go so horribly wrong.
He followed the group home that evening, less cautious then than now because he was unlikely to stand out among the Friday-night drunks of M street. There was little chance he would be remembered by Brice or a member of his herd. Along the stone and brick sidewalks of Georgetown, he stalked them until the group began to break up. Two got into a cab, another one turned up Prospect, a side street off of M. Brice and three others continued past pubs and boutiques to Bank Street, where they staggered into a late-night restaurant called The Philadelphia Cheesesteak Factory.
Beneath a streetlight, Michael lit first one cigarette then another and then a third while watching them through the front glass as they waited for their orders. Unsure who watched through the darkened apartment windows surrounding him, he was prepared to abandon the group if they decided to eat their late-night snacks in the restaurant.
Fortune, though, was not with Brice. When they came out carrying bags of God knew what, Michael sharpened his focus, stared down at the pavement and started walking. He nearly lost them immediately, and in the span of seconds, Brice almost got away twice. Expecting that their stop had been an out of the way detour and that they would come back down to the main strip, Michael had gotten himself far ahead. When the group, instead of going the way he had anticipated, continued up Bank Street into the less-traveled side streets of Georgetown near the university’s campus, he was a block away before realizing they were not following.
He scanned the crowds and saw them disappear onto Prospect, and he struggled to look normal as he jogged up Bank, just making it to the top where it ended in time to see them turn off Prospect and onto Thirty-fifth Street. By the time he got to the intersection, they were gone. It was only because he guessed to turn left instead of right that he found the group, far off in the shadows of residential N street.
Passing stately mansions of senators and run-down row houses occupied by spoiled students, it was only another block until Brice broke from the group and turned into one of the homes. Waiting for the final pair to fade from sight, Michael made his way to the place where Brice turned off, recorded the address, and disappeared.
Brice was the last to be recorded on that day, and although it was close to three in the morning by the time he finally made it back to the Four Seasons Hotel on the opposite edge of Georgetown, Michael immediately set to work on his day’s research. He had tracked four others in addition to Brice that day, and now was the time to use the Internet and what he had learned to mark his final targets.
For Brice, he began with a simple address search. Using the online white pages and Google directory, Michael found that three individuals shared the row house on Thirty-fifth. One was a female named Maria, who lived in 3512 A. The other two, one male and one female living in 3512 B, were listed as Sarah Goodanthall and Brice McCallahan. With that, he performed a Google search and in seconds found a picture of Brice posted by Georgetown’s student paper, The Hoya. Taken three years ago, a deeply tanned Brice was smiling broadly, throwing a football on the University’s front lawn. The caption beneath the photograph read, “Brice McCallahan takes advantage of a senior schedule that does not include classes on Friday.”
It was definitely him. Michael continued his search, learning that Brice was enrolled in law school, that he came from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and that he had played baseball and graduated as valedictorian from Churchill High School. He also discovered that Brice was an only child, and the roommate with whom he shared the apartment was most likely a girlfriend. He was sure now of Brice and moved on to the next of his day’s finds.
Of the four he developed sketches on that day nine months ago, only one, a retired schoolteacher, was excused. Michael prided himself on the just application of his craft, willing to admit he was wrong when his selection process yielded a potential victim who did not deserve what Michael planned. Brice did not fit this description, so he would be the second of that class of three. After him, it would be on to Laura Flanning, who lived in South Carolina and had been visiting D.C. on business. Brad Woltin of College Park, Maryland had already tasted Michael’s justice.
Full of anticipation, Michael truly hoped he would be able to avoid the snow piles and ditches as he made the decision to pull into Mountain Top. His Mercedes skidded a bit as it tried to gain traction on the snow-covered road, but it recovered, and he pushed into the woods. Michael saw no people. The only cars he noticed sat parked and silent, far from the looping road he followed. When he reached Jeff’s house and saw the packed trails and overflowing trash bins, he knew immediately this was it. He paused only long enough to pick out Brice’s Jeep Cherokee in the driveway. It figures, he thought contemptuously and moved on. This was where Brice would be found; it would do no good to linger.
From Mountain Top, Michael drove into Rutland, paid cash for a pair of used skis and boots, then went up to Killington where, for $350 a night, he was able to rent a room in the main lodge of the Killington Resort at the base of the slope. He used his real name and ID. There was no reason to go overboard, and no reason for anyone to suspect he was at the resort for any reason other than having decided to spend some time skiing in Vermont.
“How long are you going to be staying?” the chirpy front desk manager asked when Michael inquired about a room.
“Don’t know. Depends on the weather, I suppose,” Michael answered with a smile.
“Very good, Sir. You will be on the sixth floor. Enjoy your stay.”
Michael nodded to a bellboy and had him carry his skis, boots and bag to the room. It was Brice’s time.
Chapter 6
The house was a wreck. “It looks just like your old college house,” Sarah said as she slipped past Jeff into the foyer. Beer cans and pizza boxes covered the floor like confetti. Brice’s eyes traveled from the entrance, to the front room, to a sofa where someone was still sleeping last night away, to a coffee table crowded with dirty dishes, to the circular staircase where a large hole had been left in the wooden paneling.
Wonderland, in its size and design, was like a museum. When walking through the front door, one saw immediately ahead an open parlor with a bathroom, staircase, closet and two small rooms branching off the side. About fifteen feet into the home, the walls and pillars gave way, opening up into one huge room, cathedral-like with its sharp angles and emphasis on light. The full living room, kitchen, and dining room all ran together. Two fireplaces stood like bookends on each side.
The floor was made of stone tiling covered by beer-stained Afghan rugs. The back wall was all glass and looked out over the community’s shared lake. A deck extended fifteen feet from the house to where a second hot tub was visible, more elaborate than the one on the side of the home. Almost the size of a swimming pool, the tub was uncovered, steam rising like morning fog. Balconies looked down from the second and third floors and out onto the winter landscape. The entire impression was one of opulence. More than a house, it screamed money and was, Brice thought, designed more as a status symbol than a place to live. It was cold and sterile; the mess Jeff had made gave the house more, rather than less, of a homey feeling.
Jeff said to them, “You guys are back up the staircase on the right.” He pointed past the kitchen to a set of stairs that so far had avoided the damage Brice noticed on the first set. “Second floor, first door on the left. You guys have your own hot tub in the bathroom,” he explained with a wink. God, how entirely spoiled he is, thought Brice.
“Thanks man,” Brice responded, and then said to Sarah, “How about we go put these bags away and take a quick nap?”
“Aww, you just got here. Come on, have a beer!” Jeff interjected. “Danny is passed out,” he said pointing to the lump on the sofa, “and everybody else won’t be here until this afternoon.”
“I just drove all night. If I’m gonna rally for later, I need sleep,” Brice reasoned.
“All right,” Jeff whined, “but you two better be ready to go hard tonight.”
Sarah beamed back that they would be, and with that, they left Jeff to the huge television, a beer, and lukewarm pizza.
The bedroom was huge. “This isn’t even a master bedroom,” commented Sarah.
“He is completely too spoiled,” Brice responded as he dove onto the bed and kicked his shoes off. Sarah came at him. “I know what I want to do before we take a nap,” she said, pulling her sweater over her head.
Brice looked at her as he sat on top of the ruffled blankets. Her blue eyes were like crystal, his reflection in them, her long blond hair pulled back, her lips and the thin peak of exposed flesh between her jeans and the teal undershirt that pinched her body soft, and he remembered when he had first seen her seven years ago. It seemed like a flash, two eighteen-year-olds assigned by the housing gods to the same freshmen dorm floor at Georgetown. Their mothers had met each other standing in the hallway as they moved in. Watching their babies be gone, the moms had formed an instant bond, and to the embarrassment of both Brice and Sarah, introduced them.
They hung out together that first night, traveling with a pack of freshmen in search of parties and free beer. Sarah had been far more successful than Brice, upperclassmen bringing her and the other freshmen girls drinks while he and a group of guys slunk around, patiently waiting in line, moving slowly as person after person cut in front without so much as a word. She always came back, though, even that first night. She would bring him drinks and say, “I think all these guys are trying to get me drunk.” Brice still was not sure if she had been serious in her naiveté.
Late into the third party, the police came, and the group, its numbers diminishing slowly as they went from crowd to crowd, panicked like a herd of cattle and scattered. He was drunk then, and Sarah grabbed him by his hand and pulled him along over a fence and across the back alley, running with other freshmen like they had in high school for fear of the cops. They thought all the upper classmen, who slowly milled away, first finishing their drinks, were lunatics, not yet realizing only those who were throwing the party might get in trouble, and trouble was merely a ticket from campus security officers, who were not really cops at all.
They stopped at Cappachuino’s Pizza on Wisconsin Avenue on the way back to Darnell and sat and talked about their families, high school, what they thought they were going to be majoring in, where else they had debated going to college; all the meaningless things that make up a conversation between virtual strangers that sometimes, given the right circumstances, can flicker between two people as easy and natural as breathing to become everything.
After that night they had begun classes and made friends, Jeff and many others, some of whom would be coming later. But first, before everyone else, it was just them. Now, in Jeff’s house, at that one moment, sitting on the bed tired and sweaty, remembering how they were in the beginning and knowing they still felt the same, watching Sarah and the way she walked and spoke and breathed, Brice knew he was forever in love.
Chapter 7
The voices got louder the closer the time came, and now they were all Michael could hear. Not hearing voices, not like the crazy whose neighbor’s dog told him to do it, not God, not little green men, not his parents nor his conscience. These were the voices of planning, of calculation, the ones that noted all the little fine points others less than he was might miss. They kept track and noted the things Michael would need to do, the details, how to make it work. Really it was only the details that mattered; the act was just another of the many details that needed to be done just so. Now, as he paced his guest suite at Killington, his attention and the voices were focused on logistics and how to overcome the challenge of isolation the house on Mountain Top offered.
No matter how well his Mercedes might fit into the general ambiance of Mountain Top when he was driving, it would be conspicuously out of place anywhere in the neighborhood once parked. He could not trust finding a home that would remain vacant for the weekend from where he could set up base, could not predict the comings and goings of groundskeepers or the nosy neighbors who might want to spread the latest neighborhood gossip when they saw a car in the driveway. Worst of all were the tracks his car would leave, a record of his presence that would be noticeable until the next snow, and he knew far better than to trust the weather.
Michael saw clearly that he could not just drive into Mountain Top and count on emerging unscathed. Every time he acted there was risk. While he always strived to limit this risk, he knew there would eventually be a day of reckoning. No matter how well-prepared and planned he was, something would eventually go badly, some detail would give him away. He was not worried about that eventuality. Ultimately, that was what he was counting on; it was only when he was caught that the true nature of his work could be unveiled. Until then, though, he was careful and in control and entirely aware. The more times he did not get caught, the better his arrangement for when he did.
He always enjoyed the planning and the consideration, concentration, and intelligence it took. Like chess, it was strategy and thinking ahead, not just reacting. Watching out over the resort balcony, he saw a woman clad in a tight-fitting snow suit, her dark hair pinned back by bright yellow ski glasses. She was using snowshoes, walking like a duck, and it clicked. Snowshoes. Still, where to park? How to get there?
He would leave the car as close as he could. There was the bar in the neighborhood, where he could conceivably leave the Mercedes without being too conspicuous, but he did not know how crowded the parking lot got, or how much attention people paid to whose vehicles were in the lot. The Shell station he had stopped at that morning to wait and see if Brice had found his destination stood by a mall that housed a movie theater and was a definite possibility. It was, though, more than a mile from the front entrance of Mountain Top, and while not a horribly long walk, marching at night through the woods in the dead of Vermont’s winter would be a major issue.
Leaving the car by the road was no good, nor was a cab, or paying someone to drop him off; the fewer people he came into contact with the better, especially when he was on these trips. Despite the obstacles, he knew he would figure out something. He was too smart not to. In cities he worried about too many people; here it was too few. Just another piece on the board on the way to another success.
He was nearly forty but in perfect shape. Moderate drinking was his only vice. No smoking, absolutely no drugs. A diet high in protein, and hours and hours working out at the gym he kept in his penthouse, or using what was provided by the hotels at which he stayed when his activities required he leave New York. Mind over matter, yes, but mind and matter over all.
Pacing the room, thinking, planning, he caught his reflection in the mirror. “So we meet as strangers,” he said to the face gazing back, pausing and looking at his reflection curiously. “So, my friend, where is it that I have gone? Certainly I’m not this graying, aging, middle-aged man; alas time is a demon,” he said, practicing his preaching, entranced by his words as he pretended to address an audience in a courtroom watching dead quiet in rapt attention.
He lapsed into silent thought, thinking himself profound. Time was the one thing beyond his control. If his efforts had accelerated over the past years, it was only because time seemed to be moving without him. His would be a monumental life even if no one ever knew how important, over how many other lives and future lives he dominated.
He was driven by remembered words from a novel, or movie or play, somewhere from when he was young, and they still haunted him. “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?”
And the reply, “No.”
Then there was a pause, so it must have been a play or movie. “The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.”
He tried, how hard he tried, to realize it all, better than the poets or saints who were martyred. He was above them all, not an observer but the molder, the shaper of actions. Not God, no he was not insane, had no illusions about that, but it was something to strive for, and while he would fall short, he would be closer than everyone else.
Chapter 8
Ted pulled into the Vermont State Police Headquarters in Rutland a half hour before his shift was supposed to begin at five. Normally he worked only in the daytime, but he was picking up night shifts now and again to build time so he and Jennifer could take a three-week vacation tour of Italy. Nights were a little less safe, and while he had finally moved up in the ranks to an investigator and was no longer involved in the more dangerous work of pulling over drivers or responding to distress calls, there was always the possibility of being dragged in as back up if something really got out of control. From his experience, the crazy stuff almost always occurred at night.
He had found his way onto the force by accident. Unlike most of his colleagues, he did not grow up in a family where a close relative was also a police officer, and he had never really thought about joining the force until after he had moved with Jenny to Vermont. There were far fewer year-round bartending opportunities in Vermont, and he found himself unable to find work that first summer after the ski season had ended. The Rusty Nail offered him a position starting up as soon as the ski lifts reopened, but there was nothing to be found for the months between.
At home reading the paper while the last snow melted and Jenny worked, he had come across the ad placed by the Vermont State Police Department recruiting people for their academy. He filled out an application more to take up half a day than anything else, but when he went to the interview he found himself hoping to get the position, and despite Jenny’s very reasonable concerns for his safety, when the call came offering him a slot in the next class at the academy, he took it.
He was a good cop. A fair cop. Just like he did not let the balding middle-aged bankers go after a traffic stop, he didn’t let the pretty, blond twenty-one-year-old flirt her way out of a ticket. He tried to be helpful to those he saw in need and at least equitable to those he had to arrest. During his nine years on the job, he had never fired a shot and had drawn his gun and pointed it only a handful of times. He was fairly certain he could pull the trigger if he had to and was respected by his fellow officers, the public and, for the most part, even those he arrested.
Over the years he had been promoted from traffic, to response, to the felony investigative unit, and just over a year and a half ago, to the serious crime investigative unit. In that time he had taken part in five murder investigations, all of which were promptly closed with the arrest of either a husband, boyfriend, or a drunk, all of whom had acted without thinking and therefore were easy to collar. He had investigated several rapes, a kidnapping (which turned out to be a runaway), a string of arsons, a couple of carjackings, and several other offenses that met the criteria for “serious” set by someone, somewhere in the state of Vermont.
He found that the higher up in the force he went, the less actual work he had to do, and he spent most of his shifts drinking coffee and playing cards with the three or four other officers of similar rank assigned to whatever shift he was filling. It was a job, not a passion, and deep down, Ted figured that was what made him better at it than others. He could remove himself and think rationally.
It was a good job, though, and the only things he really could not bear were the bodies and the dying. As a traffic cop he had been the first on the scene at several fatal wrecks. A couple of times, the dying were conscious. Each time he realized how bad it was. That was the hardest. It caused him to worry irrationally about everything, most often Jennifer. She certainly was concerned about him when he worked, but it was nothing compared to how he worried every time she got into her car to drive to the supermarket.
Pulling into the station, the sky burning as the sun set behind the hills, he parked his cruiser, pulled on his cap (which he always thought made him look just a bit ridiculous) and walked into the station. At five it shut for regular business, and a couple of people there to retrieve a relative or register a dog scampered ahead of him and through the glass doors, hoping to make it to the desk sergeant before he or she closed for the day. There was nothing unusual about the beginning of the shift, and he walked into the back room, shouted hello to his best friend on the force, Alan Gardner, and lumbered off across the station to grab a cup of coffee. It was early evening, not quite dark everywhere in the mountains. Shadows played strangely at this time, and Ted wished he were home. He really hated nightshifts.
Chapter 9
Sarah woke Brice as she came back into the room to change into a bathing suit.
“Hey, hon,” he said softly, “How long have I been out?”
“A few hours. Everybody’s here. We’re going to go sit in the hot tub.” By everybody, she was referring to three friends from college, John, Colin, and Sean, and the girlfriend Sean had brought along, whom they had yet to meet.
“When did those guys get here?” Brice asked.
“About two, I guess. I just woke up about an hour ago. You coming down?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Sarah closed the door, and he began to rise. He walked over to his pile of clothes and found his watch. Four thirty. He had been asleep almost five hours, but considering he had not slept the night before, it wasn’t a lot. He missed everybody from college. Sean was now in New York trying to be a bond trader, which required him to work seventy-hour work-weeks. Colin had moved home to San Francisco and was living with his parents while working as a paralegal to see if he really wanted to become a lawyer, and John was working on some political campaign or another somewhere in the country for whatever side offered the best possibility of advancement. It had only been two years, and they were already moving away from each other.
He remembered graduation and then packing up the house. Mark and Dave left the day after the ceremonies. They drove away with their parents and U-hauls, Mark to Texas and Dave to Pittsburgh. There were five of them left when their landlord stopped by a couple of days later. Drinking beer on the porch, Sarah was there also. “What the hell are you guys doing?” the landlord roared. “Your lease expired yesterday, and I have to get this place ready for the new tenants!”
They had looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Somehow I didn’t think they would really make us leave,” Colin said later as they lobbed their stuff into boxes. He and Jeff ended up just getting into a car the next day and driving west. Three months later, Colin ran out of money and got a job. Jeff, who could never run out of money, went to Europe.
Brice had piled his stuff into Sarah’s car and moved in with her. They at least knew they would be going to law school in the fall, but had not given much thought to finding a place yet. He was not sure about living together and not having his own place. She was not sure how her parents would react. In the end, when Elizabeth and Jan, Sarah’s roommates, moved out, they just renewed the lease. It was funny how quickly everything changed, he mused. He ran, bounded, down the stairs to join his friends.
Brice met Simone in the kitchen. She was at the refrigerator trying to balance six beers and a bag of chips. Black hair halfway down her back, a towel wrapped around her waist, she turned and flinched when she almost ran into him. “Hi, you must be Brice, I’m, uh, here with Sean? I’m Simone.” Her hazel eyes danced.
“Oh right,” said Brice, “I’ve heard a lot about you. Let me help with that.” Together they walked out onto the porch.
The snow was falling lightly in the twilight. To the west, the sun set in dazzling color and to the east over the mountains, gray clouds swirled toward the approaching darkness like rising ghosts. In-between was Jeff’s house, and the light snow blew in under the mostly cloudless sky.