by Greg Ballan
"Different circumstances, but yes, I do feel, in a way, responsible." Nelson replied. "Henderson was on my team and he died on my watch. I feel terrible about that, but I won't let it eat me alive. He was a good man, but he's gone, there was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened to him. We've both lost people this past week, son. It's a part of what we do. We may not face it as often as cops, but it is fairly commonplace in our particular line of work. We grieve, then we move on. It may sound cold and callous, but if we tore our hearts out every time an associate met an untimely end, we'd spend all of our time mourning and none of our time living. If you want to remember your friend, and honor his memory, be there for his wife, and kids. They're feeling the hurt a hell of a lot more than you or I ever will, and they're the ones who need the sympathy, not us." Nelson stood up and extended his hand toward Erik. "It's been a pleasure working with you, Erik. I sincerely hope we can meet again under better circumstances."
Erik clasped Nelson's hand. "Thanks, Nelson, have a safe trip home. I'll keep you in the loop as to how this thing finally plays out."
"Do that," Nelson answered as he turned and headed into the hallway.
Erik watched Nelson as he walked out into the parking lot and stepped into the large Sedan. He watched the car leave the parking lot and speed away.
Erik walked over to his computer and did a quick check on the database searches he had run earlier. As he had expected, every source of data he tapped came up with nothing. He walked back to his window and looked out at Hopedale Mountain that loomed like a lone sentinel against the gray, stormy skies.
"You've got a secret," he whispered, "and two unwelcome guests."
He turned away from the window and sat down on his long couch. He was exhausted. He lay down, intending to only rest his eyes momentarily, but quickly fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
Bill Wentworth, known to his customers only as Mr. Smith, swore as the night rain continued to fall on him as he perched on the rooftop of the Worcester office building. Breaking into the building had been relatively easy. The hardest part of the job he was doing now: The seemingly endless waiting game.
He had tailed his targets from the moment they left the Pendelton hangar late in the afternoon up to now. There was no feasible perch near the expensive restaurant where they dined, nor could he eliminate them while they were in their car. Bombs were too messy, and the mark of an amateur, he thought. Killing, to him, was an art form. There was a right way and a wrong way to proceed about the business of ending a life. Ideally, he preferred the knife. It was an intimate weapon that brought him into direct contact with his victim. It was a rush seeing the look of fear, shock, and panic as they felt the icy cold touch of steel against their heart. He relished the last look on his victim's face, their last breath, last words gurgled as their lungs filled with blood. The knife allowed him all these wonderful moments.
But tonight, it had to be quick and lethal, before his marks could say something potentially wrong to a potentially wrong person. Tonight belonged to the rifle, the high, out of the way spot, the kill from a distance, death by airmail.
Wentworth didn't consider himself an evil man, just a businessman like any other, except he dealt in death the way others dealt with stocks, bonds, goods or services. He figured the government had spent millions on training him and using his talents during the Cold War, and it would be a shame to let these expensive skills go to waste since he was no longer employed by the Federal Government. It was far more lucrative to set up his own business and provide a service to a public willing to use him.
His client had given him the go ahead to carry out the contract, and that was all the motivation required for him to terminate the marks. The pair he was hunting had wound up at a rundown bar just outside of North Avenue, not the most affluent part of the city, he absently noted.
Wentworth spotted several men he knew were part of several narcotics organizations, a few police narks, and several other shady-looking men of questionable character. He glanced down at his Rolex briefly. It was almost 11:00 p.m. They had been in there for nearly three hours now, probably celebrating the completion of their work.
Wentworth had a curvy blonde waiting back at his apartment for him, which was his form of celebration after each job. He wanted to close this deal as soon as possible before she got tired of waiting. He adjusted the position of his Kimber .243, and ran another quick check on the Night Site scope. He peered through the scope's amber lens and refocused the scope's reticle on the tavern door.
"Just step outside, boys, that's all I ask."
Almost as if responding to his request, his two targets stumbled out of the bar. He could tell they were completely intoxicated. Wentworth placed the reticle on the man with the funny hat, took a shallow breath, exhaled partially, then slowly, in a fluid motion, caressed the trigger. A muffled pop sounded as the Marenko Silencer dampened the concussion. He didn't wait to see the target fall. He smoothly worked the rifle's bolt action and chambered another round.
The other mark had turned, facing away from him, completely oblivious to his companion's fate. Wentworth locked on to the specific area of the man's back where he knew an impact would shatter the spine and rupture the heart. He tapped the trigger again, this time watching the second man stumble forward as the jacketed hollow point impacted with his body. He looked through the scope quickly. The first target's head was shattered, hemorrhaging blood and brain matter on the dirty sidewalk. Wentworth picked up the spent brass, broke down his weapon, and disappeared within two minutes of his work's completion.
He drove by the bar to admire his work. A crowd was already gathering around the bodies. He congratulated himself, two clean kills. He also smiled as the rain continued to pour down, washing away any residual gunpowder and ballistic residue from his perch. He didn't worry about the police running any ballistics on the bullets they would extract from the corpses. The rifle barrel was double grooved, one of his own inventions. Ballistics specialists would never be able to trace the noncommercial rifling on the rifle slugs back to any source.
* * *
It was nearly three in the morning when Wentworth finished his own private celebration for a job well done. The blonde he had appropriated for the evening dressed herself and prepared to depart. He watched her carefully as she applied a fresh coat of lipstick and makeup. He wondered why the woman was wasting her time with all the cosmetics. It was still pouring outside, and the rain would only make her painstaking efforts futile.
When she had finished, she looked over towards his direction. He gestured toward a small nightstand where he had placed four fresh, crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. She walked over, scooped up the money, and tucked the cash inside her shirt.
"Will you be calling again soon, Mr. Smith?" she asked.
"That depends, my dear, not that I don't enjoy your company, because I do greatly, but it all depends on business." He paused. "I'm sure you understand."
The young woman nodded. "I think I do."
Wentworth walked over to her and pressed his lips against her forehead, and allowed himself one last inhalation of her expensive perfume. "I'm glad." He pulled another hundred from his wallet. "This is strictly for you, not to be shared with the house. Buy yourself something special." He tucked the bill inside her shirt.
She smiled up at him, grabbed her coat, and left quickly. Wentworth watched her from his window as she disappeared around the corner and into the darkness of the early morning. He stared for several extra minutes into the darkness, watching the rain spill from a noisy gutter across the street.
Wentworth snapped back to attention. He looked over the contract for the two marks, entered their termination in his database, and smiled to himself. The payment for these two would allow him to retire early, much earlier than he had planned. Once he informed his client of the completion of his work, the remaining balance of the half million dollars would be deposited in his Fiji account, and he would be off to the Caribbean forever.
The young blonde walked two more blocks, the pelting rain ruined her hair and makeup. She spotted the large black limousine and approached the car. The rear door was opened for her, and she quickly entered the vehicle. The man inside gave her a rich warm towel to dry herself and poured her a warm cup of delicious-smelling hot coffee.
"I didn't realize it would be raining this hard," the man apologized as he handed her the warm mug.
"I've been through worse," she added as she studied her face in a compact mirror. "Shit, I look terrible."
"Do you know if he completed the job?" the man asked intently.
"He did, he always uses me after a successful contract, it's the same routine every time." She casually combed her long, wet hair. She took a long swig of the warm beverage, allowing herself to heat her hands on the mug. "Mmm, this is really good, thank you."
"Excellent, and you're most welcome, enjoy," the man answered as he tapped the tinted Plexiglas partition that separated the passenger compartment from the driver's area.
"How did you know about our relationship, anyway?" she asked, suddenly curious.
"It's my job to know everything about all our subcontractors. It was a small matter to trace the cellular electronics our friend uses and track their specific signals back to its source. Then," he continued after another sip of his drink, "a simple matter to place a tap on his lines, pull phone records, research numbers, bribe phone company employees, match calls to your employer, and cross reference them with work he has done for us in the past. This is the electronic age, there are no secrets, and no one can hide who uses computers or gadgetry. Information is power. The ability to utilize information is the ability to wield that power. Anyone who thinks they can hide in this age is a fool." The man poured himself another scotch on the rocks. "Did you place the device like we discussed?"
"Yeah, I kept him too preoccupied to notice what I was doing." She took another long drink from her cup.
He nodded and handed her an envelope. She quickly opened it and counted out the ten hundred dollar bills. Her eyes were shining with delight as she folded the bills and tucked them inside her shirt.
"It's getting crowded in there." She giggled as she adjusted herself to accommodate the extra cash. Her face began to look flush. She gasped for air, struggling for each breath. She felt a sharp pang in her stomach, like she swallowed acid.
"I … I don't feel so good," she curled up in pain.
"Really?" The man took another swig of his scotch.
"What's happening to me?" she asked as she began choking and convulsing.
The man reached toward her and took the cup from her shaking hands. "Haven't you guessed, my dear? You've just been poisoned. You're dying," Conrad placed the cup on the nearby tray.
The blonde gathered the last of her strength and swung at him as hard as she could. She felt satisfaction as her knuckles connected with the front of his face with a loud resounding crack. "You bastard." She winced as the poison finally shut down her central nervous system and involuntary synapses. Her final word was: "Why?" She stopped breathing, her heart stopped beating, and she silently fell over, dead, into his lap.
The man carefully unbuttoned her blouse, reached inside her bra, and removed the money she had carefully placed there. "Sorry about this, Miss," he whispered as he carefully buttoned her blouse back up and used his gloved hands to push her against the other side of the passenger compartment.
He stared at her dead body. The full weight of what he had done came crashing down upon him. He had just committed a homicide. Murder, cold, premeditated murder. He was used to discussing the termination of people, numbers or names on a sheet of paper, but this was the first time he actually sullied his hands.
Her dead eyes kept staring back at him, looking through the coarse exterior of the man, into his vulnerable side, the small remaining piece of his soul that hadn't been totally tarnished by the greed and corruption of his occupation.
"I'm sorry, Miss, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, an unwitting pawn in a grander game of chess. Please don't hold it against me. It's just that I'm in too deep now, we all are. It wasn't supposed to play out like this. We were supposed to make easy millions on this operation," he whispered as her dead eyes continued to bore through him. He tapped twice against the tinted glass, and it slid down into the wall partition separating the passenger and driver compartments. "Dispose of that, quickly." He pointed to the body.
The driver pulled the car over into the abandoned area he was informed of earlier. The single tap on the glass was his cue to begin moving the car toward its destination. The driver got out of the car and opened the rear passenger door, and let the corpse fall out into a deep, large puddle of rainwater.
"Move her to that dry corner of the alley, please," he instructed the driver. He would not give her the indignity of being found in a mud puddle. He felt he at least owed her that much.
The man walked over to inspect the body. He adjusted her arms, gently folding them across her chest with his gloved hands. He pulled a small black booklet from his coat pocket and mumbled something. The driver looked at him oddly as he made a sign of the cross over their victim. The driver escorted the man back into the car and they proceeded toward Mr. Smith's townhouse.
The large car parked a block away, while the man studied the control nestled inside his palm. He flipped a switch, and a red button activated and began blinking. He looked out the window and stared at the distant townhouse.
"No loose ends." He pressed the glowing button and the explosive that had been placed under the assassin's mattress went off with a satisfying pyrotechnic display.
Mr. Conrad smirked at the irony of the whole situation that just unfolded. The explosive and detonator were prepared earlier that day by the two men the assassin had murdered earlier. Conrad had personally paid them a cash bonus for the extra work once they had completed modifying their army helicopter.
Pendelton Corporation had an understanding with the organization that controlled the blue light district in Worcester. This organization provided 'companionship' for visiting executives and important clients that did business with the large corporation. Once it was discovered their hitman had a fondness for a particular female inside that organization, it was easy to utilize that business relationship to tie up that loose end. The organization was paid a hefty price for the loss of their call girl. All tidy, with no loose ends, everybody was happy.
Conrad poured himself another scotch on the rocks as the limousine headed back toward Boston. Deep down, he had to admit, he wasn't really happy. "More blood on my hands," he whispered.
The game was getting too severe, the stakes too deep. He wasn't sure that he had the stomach for it any longer. He had just committed two murders. His company had illegally tunneled in a wildlife preserve area, and unleashed some unspeakable horrors upon innocent people. He had literally participated in dozens of other unethical, bordering on illegal, business actions earlier in his career with little to no effect on his conscience. But what he had done in the past two weeks had been more than he ever bargained for.
He thought about Erik Knight momentarily, how seven years ago he had participated in the literal destruction and character assassination of what he judged to be a fairly likeable fellow. Fortunately, Erik Knight was resilient. Despite all odds, the detective bounced back from the edge of oblivion. Conrad remembered the dozens of other poor souls who weren't so lucky. And lately, they numbered in the many – too many for his tastes.
He knew if he tried to walk away, he too would become a loose end and most likely share in the fates of the two people he just had a hand in eliminating. He took a long drink from his glass, and settled into the heated leather seat. He could only escape this in sleep, and right now, he was extremely tired.
* * *
Friday morning 8:00 a.m.
Erik was sitting at his booth, staring down at his breakfast. Normally he enjoyed a hearty meal first thing
in the morning, but today all he could stomach was a blueberry muffin and some coffee. There was still a big knot in his stomach from the events of the past few days.
Erik did admit to himself, after much soul searching, he couldn’t have prevented his friend's death. Nelson's words got through. It didn't lessen the loss, but it alleviated the guilt, some of it anyway. There would always be that small piece of self-doubt, the never-ending 'what if' that plagued men of good conscience and character.
Erik was deep in thought, when the sound of a newspaper landing on his table snapped him from his stupor.
"I figured you'd want to see this," Jeff remarked as he sat across from him.
Erik picked up the paper and studied the headline: "Monsters on Murderous Rampage in Sleepy Suburb."
"Oh, just marvelous," he whispered as he scanned the story quickly.
Erik noted his name in several paragraphs, as well as the officers who died on the mountain. The story of the Reynolds saga, his involvement, the involvement of Halls and the police were all described in remarkable detail. Somebody on the Hopedale police force couldn't keep his or her mouth shut. What particularly caught his interest was the reporting that another team of heavily armed men and equipment was being organized to hunt down and kill these creatures.
Erik looked up at his friend. "It seems our little township will become very busy over the next week or two." He folded up the paper and placed it on the corner of the table.
"The Town Fathers wanted to be on the 'Map,'" Jeff remarked ironically. "But I assume this isn't what they had in mind."
"I'm sure it's not." Erik nodded in agreement as he took a sip of his coffee.
"They're going to come looking for you, you know that," Jeff said suddenly. "'The only man to successfully defeat the creatures in two consecutive conflicts is a private investigator named Erik Knight, who runs a small informal operation out of a local dining establishment,'" Jeff recited, quoting the Globe verbatim. "You think they could have at least mentioned the name of the place," he added lightly.
