Horrigan did brighten. Tanner paid a ten percent finder’s fee if someone brought him new business, and if Horrigan’s clients were willing to pay, Horrigan would profit to the tune of a hundred K himself.
The call went through, but Tanner couldn’t hear much of it because Horrigan had dropped his voice. It was a short call. When it ended, Horrigan looked defeated.
“They said that they could hire a dozen like you for that kind of money.”
“They’re mistaken; now let me see that envelope.”
“What?”
“The envelope, Jim, I want it. I want to see who the target is.”
“But you’re not taking the contract and they told me to keep it sealed unless we came to terms.”
Tanner put on a pair of latex gloves and held out his hand for the envelope Horrigan carried. He had no idea why it was important to learn who the target was, but his gut was telling him to find out, and so he would follow his instincts.
“Let me see who they want dead.”
Horrigan hesitated, but he handed over the envelope and Tanner opened it and stared at the target’s picture. Along with the picture was a sheet of paper with the target’s details, including name, age, and address.
The photo showed a beautiful blonde with blue eyes that broadcast her high intelligence. Tanner had seen her from time to time on the news and knew the name before he read it from the sheet.
Her name was Dr. Jessica White.
CHAPTER 3 – The refusal
“Did they say why they wanted the target dead?” Tanner asked Horrigan.
“Not really, but I got the impression that it was the sort of thing where if they didn’t kill the target, sooner or later the target would come after them. You know like um, what’s the phrase I’m thinking of?”
“Self-preservation,” Tanner said.
“Yeah, that’s it, self-preservation, but as usual Tanner, I don’t know who the target is and I don’t need to know, so please, just stuff the info back in that envelope.”
“Right,” Tanner said, and placed the target information back inside the brown envelope, before handing it over to Horrigan.
Horrigan held up his phone.
“Should I call and say that you’re willing to drop your price? I think they’ll go as high as a hundred K.”
“No, my price is my price, Jim.”
“What? Tanner no, ah c’mon man. A hundred K is good money, and I don’t know about you, but I can use the dough.”
Tanner said nothing more and Horrigan gave him a look of disgust.
“If they were willing to pay would you have taken the contract?”
“No; the subject has strong ties with law enforcement, and that includes the FBI. If I killed the subject, their death would most likely be treated as if they had lost one of their own, and then I might find myself on the FBI’s most wanted list.”
“You mean that you’re not on it already?” Horrigan asked.
“I’m not even close. Half of the people in law enforcement think I’m a myth, while some believe I’m dead. I also suspect that a few of them like my work, since I’ve killed what they would consider ‘bad guys.’, but if I hit the subject in that file, they would come after me in force.”
“Still, Tanner, a guy like you could kill the target and never leave a trace.”
“If you’re smart, Jim, you’ll walk away from it too.”
“I can’t Tanner; I need the money for my daughter.”
“Since when do you have a daughter?”
“Her name is Beth and she’s six. I met her mom, Susan, in rehab, my first rehab.”
“Susan has stayed clean, but she’s not making much money and I wanted to give her some so she could move out of the crappy trailer park she’s living in now.”
“You have my vote for Father of the Year, but I’m still not taking the contract. Goodbye, Jim.”
Horrigan opened his mouth to say something, but Tanner ignored him, got back in his jeep, and drove away.
***
Horrigan watched Tanner take off, and saw his chance to make a big score leave along with him. Whoever took the contract wouldn’t pay as well as Tanner did.
He took out his phone again and heard the voice of Randall Mason answer his call, at least he thought it was Randall, but it could have just as easily been his brother Carter, since the two of them sounded so much alike.
“Tanner opened the envelope,” Horrigan said with a sigh in his voice.
“Why? Is he willing to take less money?”
“No, I think he was just curious.”
“You should have never let him have it.”
Horrigan laughed.
“I’m not man enough to stop Tanner from doing something he wants to do, and neither are you or your brother.”
“Tanner is not the only hired killer in the world, and when you return, you’ll recruit someone else for us.”
“You have someone in mind?”
“Yes, a man named Styles.”
Horrigan grinned.
“Good, I’m glad to hear it. At least I’ll make some money; I’ll be back there tomorrow.”
“Drive non-stop if you have to, but get to the bar by closing time tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because I told you to, and we don’t want to waste time. Anyway, there’s a snowstorm headed this way from the north.”
“I’ll be back tonight,” Horrigan said, and then he heard Randall Mason end the call.
Horrigan soon drove off and made it to the roadway, where he turned right and headed towards Colorado.
Not once along the way did he realize that Tanner was following him.
CHAPTER 4 – Accidents will happen
Jessica White and her husband were in the town of Jamesburg, Ohio, where they hoped to lend assistance to the friend of a friend.
Chief of Police, Carol Rodgers, had suspicions that there was a serial killer at work in her small community, and when she mentioned it to Blue Steele, who was an old classmate from Texas, Blue had asked Jessica to give Carol a call and offer advice.
Jessica had gone one better and traveled to the town with her husband. They met Chief Rodgers as she came out of her small police station to greet them.
“Dr. White, Mr. White, thank you for coming.”
Jessica’s husband wasn’t named White, because his wife had kept her maiden name. However, he didn’t bother to correct the Chief, as it made little difference to him what he was called. He actually preferred being addressed as White. It made things less complicated.
Carol Rodgers was twenty-nine, blond, and had a stout, but shapely figure. When she shook hands with Jessica’s husband, she grinned.
“Blue said you were handsome, but look at those eyes, those eyes could stare down a statue.”
Jessica laughed.
“I always found his eyes to be sexy.”
Carol sent her a wink.
“Blue said the same thing, so you should be glad that the girl is married now.”
They entered the station where they met two of Rodger’s deputies and the dispatcher, and then they followed Carol Rodgers into her office and sat across from her as she settled behind an old scarred wooden desk.
“Dr. White, I want to thank you and your husband again for coming here; it’s more than I hoped for, but I can certainly use your help.”
“Call me Jessica, and you said on the phone that what you thought were accidents might be murders. Have you gathered any proof to back up that belief?”
“No, but my gut just tells me that something is wrong. This is a very small town and we’ve had four fatal accidents in just the last few months. That’s more than this town has had in the last twenty years.”
As the chief spoke, she picked up a file folder from her desk and handed it across to Jessica.
Jessica and her husband looked over the sheets within.
Victim #1 was a father of three, named Mike Simms. During the winter, Simms was found lying atop
the ice outside a fishing shack on a frozen lake. It appeared as if he had somehow fallen into a hole he had cut in the ice, made it out, but then died from hypothermia after stumbling from the shack in wet clothes.
Victim #2, a young man named Keith Washington, died a few weeks after Simms’s mishap when he lost control of his car during icy weather and tumbled down a steep incline. He was miraculously still alive when rescuers reached him, but died before the ambulance arrived at the hospital, having never regained consciousness.
Victim #3 was a boy of ten, Sean Green. Sean was found at the bottom of one of the town’s lakes. It appeared that his leg had become tangled in an old section of barbed wire fencing and he was unable to free himself. Who was responsible for the fencing being dumped in the lake was unknown, and divers reported that the rest of the lake bed was clean of major debris.
Victim #4 was an old woman named Myrtle Greyson. Myrtle died from heatstroke just a week earlier, when she became locked in her car, in her driveway. Myrtle suffered from blackouts due to her high blood pressure and shouldn’t have been driving. It appeared as if she passed out before starting the car engine, and then died from the heat. The temperature on the day she died was near a hundred degrees.
Jessica closed the file and sat it atop the desk.
“What’s your medical examiner say?”
“He’s one of the town’s doctors, Dr. Temple, and Dr. Temple says that they all died in a way that is in line with the facts.”
“That may be, but I see your concern; I also think that you have a suspect in mind. Who is it?”
Chief Rodgers smiled.
“You’re right; I do have my eye on someone. It’s Brad Greyson, the grandson of the last victim, Myrtle Greyson. He’s always been the town’s bad boy and he’s the sort who thinks he’s smarter than anyone else.”
Jessica’s husband spoke up.
“Brad Greyson, does he stand to inherit anything of value?”
“Oh, Yeah,” Rodgers said. “Myrtle Greyson was worth damn near a million, when you add in the grocery store she owned and her house and the land it sits on. Brad will get all of it, along with his younger sister that is.”
“And what about the other victims, is he connected to them as well?” Jessica asked.
Chief Rodgers held up a hand and counted off on her fingers.
“Victim #1, Mike Simms, his daughter is named Joyce and he didn’t want her to have anything to do with Brad. With Mike gone, Brad made his move and is now dating Joyce. Victim #2, Keith Washington, he began dating Brad’s younger sister, Holly. Keith was black, and besides being an all-around asshole, Brad is also a racist, and you can imagine how he felt about Keith dating his little sister.”
“Did Brad ever confront Keith?” Jessica asked.
“No, just a lot of racist talk and putdowns,”
“I see, and what about Victim #3, the boy, Sean?”
“Sean Green was a juvenile delinquent, the kind that liked to commit vandalism. He lived near Brad’s grandmother and he and Brad had words on occasion. Myrtle Greyson kept a wheelchair ramp in front of her home that had been in use by her late husband, who was bound to a wheelchair in his final years. Sean liked to use it as a skateboard launch.”
“Most ten-year-old boys would,” Jessica said.
“I agree. And I could see where it would be annoying, but Brad actually flagged down one of my deputies to arrest the boy for trespassing. My deputy calmed things down, or so we thought, but the next time Brad came to visit his grandmother, someone spray painted the word ASSHOLE on the side of his pickup truck. Sean drowned in that freak accident just five days later.”
Jessica looked over at her husband, and he sent her a slight nod. She turned back to the chief.
“When can we meet Brad Greyson?”
CHAPTER 5 – Look, but don’t touch
BOULDER, COLORADO
Inside his bar, Randall Mason stood in the doorway of his office and watched a young blonde dance to a country song that played on the jukebox.
The girl was sexy, her clothes, revealing, and Randall could feel twin desires rise within. One of those desires was natural, the other, perverted, and if Randall acted on them, the girl would soon be dead.
“What are you staring at?” Carter Mason asked. He was forty-three and Randall’s older brother. He was sitting behind the desk and going over food and beverage invoices.
“That hot blonde is back again,” Randall said, and there was a huskiness to his voice.
Randall had dark hair while Carter’s hair was dark, but lined with streaks of gray, but both had hazel eyes and average builds.
Although Randall was eight years younger and they were easy to tell apart, they each sounded like the other when they spoke. It was not simply the timbre of the voices, but also the slow, deliberate way they had of speaking.
They had inherited the trait from their late father, who was a taciturn man by nature, but who, when drunk, would rage about the failures of modern society, often while beating on his wife and sons.
Carter looked up from his paperwork.
“You know the rules, no hunting on our home turf.”
“Yeah, but there’s no harm in looking, and damn but this girl is hot.”
Carter left his seat and went to stand by his brother.
“Randall, we said that we wouldn’t take another until Jessica White was dead, remember?”
“I remember, and I’m not stupid enough to bring the cops back to our bar, but you’ve got to admit that girl there would make some sweet prey.”
Carter placed a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder.
“Stop staring at her and come into the office.”
Randall tore his eyes away from the girl and followed his brother into the small office at the end of a short corridor.
“What’s up?” Randall asked.
“I spoke to that kid, Styles, a few minutes ago. I told him that we might have a job for him and he gave me a price of twenty grand.”
“Twenty grand? Does he know who we want dead?”
“He said that it didn’t matter.”
“If he wasn’t such a good shot I would suggest that we find someone else; the kid seems flaky, and he’s never killed outside of a war zone.”
“True, but I think he’ll get the job done as well as Tanner would have.”
Carter looked worried and Randall stared at his brother.
“There’s something else on your mind, what is it?”
Carter pointed towards the bar.
“That blonde, I would love to take her as much as you would, but don’t do anything stupid.”
“Hey, we already had this conversation, remember?”
“I do, but I also know you, little brother, and I know that you really want to take that girl.”
“You’re right, but I can control myself, so relax.”
“I’ll relax when Jessica White is dead.”
***
JAMESBURG, OHIO
Jessica and her husband walked into Brad Greyson’s grocery store and pretended that they were merely there to shop.
The store had been in Greyson’s family for five generations and had managed to survive even after a supermarket opened its doors in town thirty years ago.
The grocery store was wide and went back quite a ways. Its shelves seemed well stocked and they held a good variety of items.
Still, the store was quiet, and likely made scant profit for its newest owner, Brad Greyson, who inherited it from his grandmother, a woman he may have killed.
If Chief Carol Rodgers was right about Brad Greyson, then Jessica wouldn’t classify him as a true serial killer. If the chief was correct in her belief, then Greyson was simply a murderous opportunist. But that didn’t make him any less dangerous, and he had to be stopped.
As long as they were at the store, there was no harm in grabbing a few items. Jessica left her husband’s side at the magazine rack, and walked into the next aisle where they kept the toys.
After squatting and picking out a toy from a bottom shelf for each of her twins, Liam and Emma, Jessica looked up to find Brad Greyson staring down at her.
“Don’t tell me that a woman as young as you has children,” Greyson said to Jessica, as his eyes peered down her blouse.
Jessica stood and smiled back at him. Brad Greyson was twenty-six and good looking, with dark hair and dark eyes. He was wearing a smug expression that appeared to be habitual, and he wore a tight T-shirt that showed off his muscular physique.
“I thank you for the compliment, even though we both know that it’s a lie,” Jessica said.
“Kids or not, you still look good, honey. What are you doing in this neck of the woods? Do you have relatives here?”
As he spoke, Greyson reached over and touched Jessica’s hair, moving it away from her face. The intimacy of the act shocked Jessica, as it came from a stranger. Greyson noticed her expression and smiled. The smile died when he heard the voice at his shoulder.
“We came here to see Chief Rodgers,” Mr. White said from behind Brad Greyson, and Greyson jumped.
He had no idea that the man was there. After regaining his composure, he looked back at Jessica.
“I take it that this is your husband?”
“That’s right, and as he said, we’re here to see Chief Rodgers. It seems that there have been a number of strange deaths in the area over the last few months.”
“Strange deaths? Like what?”
“Your grandmother for one, it’s not very often that someone who hasn’t driven for years gets behind the wheel of her car, and stranger still that she would choose to do so on one of the hottest days of the year.”
Greyson swiveled his head as he took in the two of them.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Dr. Jessica White and this is my husband. We’re here to help find a killer, and we will.”
Greyson said nothing for a moment, and then he pointed towards the checkout counters at the front of the store.
“If you’ve gotten what you came for, why don’t you pay for it and leave the store.”
“We’ll do that,” Jessica said. “But we won’t leave town until we have everything we want.”
The Contract: Kill Jessica White Page 2
