The Last Man To Murder

by Dan Ames

  “Tell me the story one more time,” he said, even though Tallon had already gone over it twice. Another officer, a woman named Patton, stood next to Tallon. He figured she had been told to keep an eye on him by Shepard.

  Tallon ran through the story, repeating himself practically word for word, with not a single deviation in the narrative.

  A third officer, a young man Tallon didn’t know, stood out at the end of the driveway, keeping away any interested passersby.

  “And you have no idea who he is?” Shepard asked. Despite the fact that he looked tired and out of shape, his eyes carried some intelligence in them. Tallon was reminded of a bloodhound – an animal whose somewhat comical appearance belied the heart of a hunter.

  “No, sir,” Tallon said. Which was true. Though the dead guy looked familiar, Tallon couldn’t place him.

  At least, not yet.

  Which made his denial of knowing him truthful.

  “And no idea why he might have turned off the road and tried to get to your house?”

  “If I don’t know who he is, I certainly can’t speak to his motivation,” Tallon answered evenly. “Maybe he turned into the first house that might have a phone and a way to call 911.”

  Shepard nodded, but his face didn’t seem impressed with the answer.

  “He did a lot of bleeding,” Patton offered. “That means he was driving that truck for some time. He would have passed several houses before yours. Even a gas station, up the street.”

  She let the observation hang in the air.

  Tallon didn’t respond.

  “Well, the crime scene techies should be here in a half hour or so,” Shepard said, checking his watch.

  “Any idea who he is?” Tallon asked. He’d already taken a quick look inside the man’s pockets, without disturbing the body, and knew there was no identification on him. The glove compartment also didn’t have any identifying paperwork.

  Shepard glanced up at him. He clearly didn’t like the idea of the conversation being a two-way street.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Did you run the plates on the truck?” Tallon persisted.

  Patton shifted uncomfortably next to him and he could tell she was bracing herself for kickback from the boss.

  “What do you do for a living, Mr. Tallon?” Shepard asked.

  “I was in the military. Retired now.”

  Shepard studied him, made some kind of decision on the appraisal.

  “Truck was stolen,” he finally offered. “And that’s the last question of yours I’ll answer. Unless your next one had to do with me wanting a cup of coffee, in which case the answer is yes.”

  Tallon chuckled, went into the house, brought out a pot of coffee and three cups. He filled them for the three cops and when the crime scene officers arrived, he watched them do their thing.

  Eventually, the body was hauled away and everyone left, except for Patton.

  She was a willowy blonde, very thin, with long arms, pale skin, and light blue eyes. “How come I’ve never seen you around town?”

  “Even though I’m retired, I travel a lot,” he said.

  Patton handed him her business card. “Call me if you think of anything you forgot to mention about your visitor.”

  Tallon said he would and watched her leave.

  Back inside, he finally showered, grabbed a beer and sat down on his back patio, looking out over the mountains in the distance.

  He was sure he knew the dead man.

  But how?

  7

  The Asian man’s real name was Charles June. After he and the other men in the wine cellar discussed Michael Tallon, the meeting adjourned. June had left the Falls Church mansion and driven back to his brownstone in Georgetown. It was a three-story structure and his office occupied the entire third floor.

  Now, he sat back in his desk chair and studied the computer monitors in front of him. A demitasse cup of expresso sat on a tiny saucer made of bone china. Steam rose and passed between June and his computer screens.

  It had been a little bit touchy, the meeting. They weren’t the kind of men you presented with problems, unless you had the solution in hand.

  Still, he wasn't worried.

  June had run many, many missions of much higher magnitude than this one. Was this particular project a bit sensitive?

  Of course it was.

  It was also highly personal, but for now, June set that notion aside. It wasn’t relevant at the moment, and certainly not to the men back in the wine cellar.

  Especially as they weren’t in possession of that particular bit of information.

  However, working with the men who met regularly in the wine cellar was already a dangerous proposition. To keep secrets from them took the risk of severe consequences to a whole new level.

  In comparison to other projects June had run for this group, this mission was actually a fairly small-scale operation. Yes, the stakes were incredibly high.

  Any time outright murder was involved, the issues could spiral out of control quickly.

  Thus, June was faced with some crucial decisions, the kind that he had made unerringly during his lengthy, checkered past.

  It was his excellent batting average that had propelled his rise within the group of which he was now a key player.

  The important thing as always when it came to this type of project management was momentum. It can work with you and against you.

  During challenging times momentum is what carries you forward. At the same time, problems develop as they always do – it’s the unstoppable force of momentum that can work against you.

  In other words, when mistakes and their negative consequences aren't ironed out, you are still moving forward regardless of compounding problems.

  Or outright disasters.

  On the other hand, a complication resolved prevents future issues. For instance, the current problem.

  June knew that when he began Operation Reacher, internal security would always be the biggest challenge. An operation with this many moving parts was bound to experience a few loose elements.

  People talk.

  Some people, most unlike June himself, have an intrinsic need to communicate. To talk. To relate to other human beings. It’s the way much of the human race was built. To June, that quality was most often found in weak people.

  The subject in question, for instance.

  Apparently, a team member had a change of heart. A recently emerging conscience.

  It happened.

  Charles June had come to grips with his complete lack of conscience years ago. In fact, during his youth when he’d become indoctrinated, that void had served him well. Violence not only propelled him, but it drew him closer to like-minded individuals.

  Despite having any warm feelings toward the human race, June understood people and their need to contemplate, to change direction, to behave like the quirky little creatures who represented the mass of humanity.

  Now, as he surveyed the vast array of communication equipment in front of him he was able to piece together the current status of the situation. The original leak was now stopped.

  Permanently.

  Carl Fackrell, the traitor, was dead. June only wished he’d been able to kill the man himself.

  Clearly, the police in Independence Springs, California, had discovered the dead body of the leaker. Yes, it was another homicide fostered by his team, but it was unavoidable.

  The question for June was if there had been any disbursement of information prior to said leakage being eliminated.

  Namely, Michael Tallon.

  As always, there were a variety of options. He could simply wait and continue to monitor the situation or he could be preemptive.

  In the old days, when he was subject to bureaucracy and extreme oversight along with the heavy burden of procedure, a wait-and-see approach would have been the proper direction.

  He was no longer bound by that monolithic overlord.

  He had freedom
to maneuver.

  Operational oversight.

  He pulled the keyboard closer to him. It was connected to highly secure encrypted smart phones not traceable in the hands of two of his best agents. A man and a woman. The man was the more skilled of the two, the woman was the most feared.

  He knew they were waiting just outside of Independence Springs for further orders.

  June tapped out a simple set of instructions:

  Eliminate any traces with extreme prejudice.

  8

  If the mountains in the distance had any answers, they weren’t sharing.

  A log in the fire pit crackled, sending a flare of sparks and a puff of smoke upward as the fire groaned and shifted. A tiny spark launched into the air and flamed out before it could reach a suitable landing space.

  Michael Tallon breathed in the scent of the burning wood and thought more about the dead man.

  Now that the body had been taken away and the cops were gone, Tallon had eventually retired to his beloved back patio and outdoor fire pit to think things through.

  The first thing that had been obvious to Tallon was the dead man’s size. A well-built man, that was for certain. Stocky, with a powerful upper body. Tallon figured he probably weighed over two hundred pounds. Two-twenty, maybe. Even two-thirty because a lot of it was muscle.

  Not too tall. Probably a shade under six feet.

  The face was angular, with a jaw that maybe held a bit of an underbite.

  The blood streaks, caused by the severe laceration of the forehead, had run down the man’s face and acted like a mask. A bloody camouflage of sorts that had made Tallon’s recognition of the man even more difficult.

  Tallon closed his eyes and tried to picture the man’s face without the blood.

  Something tugged at the corner of his mind. A memory. Maybe a firefight from years ago. In a distant country, either Africa or maybe South America.

  Just like that, it was gone.

  Tallon finished off his beer and spread out the remnants of the logs in the fire pit. They would smolder and die out.

  He went inside the house, and locked the place up for the night. He armed the perimeter security, but held off on triggering the internal motion detector as he planned to spend some time in his office.

  Tallon placed the empty beer bottle in the kitchen sink, then grabbed a new one from the fridge. In his office, he fired up the computer and launched his photo app.

  He didn’t place much hope in this direction. For one thing, in his line of work, photography was almost nonexistent. Much of what he took part in was forbidden to document. No phones. No photos. No written materials, most of the time.

  Plausible deniability.

  Still, when the mission was over, sometimes the participants would gather at a bar, or a safe place to do a post-mortem on the operation, and celebrate or seek accountability, depending on the outcome.

  So, Tallon had photographs. Not many. Not necessarily perfectly organized, but at least they were in a rough timeframe.

  He went back no more than five years. Some instinct had told him that if he knew the man, had seen him before, it was from relatively recent operations. Tallon doubted the man had been some kind of long-lost high school buddy. If that had been the case, he would have been able to recognize him, despite the blood.

  The first images were from a security gig in Africa. That one had been uneventful and only a small team had been assembled. Tallon smiled at the image: himself, a Canadian commando, and two brothers from Australia. The four of them had gone in and rescued the daughter of a general. She’d been kidnapped by a sorry gang of thieves, who didn’t realize the true identity of their victim.

  It had gone smoothly, and the four of them drank heavily in the airport bar in Cape Town before going their separate ways.

  The photos, and the missions, continued. More than a few of his former comrades-in-arms were dead now. The number was a bit too high for Tallon’s taste.

  By the time he got to the job in South America, Tallon had started to lose hope. Too many places, too many faces, not enough information. But then, the trip to Colombia. To find an ex-CIA agent who’d supposedly gone rogue and was orchestrating intelligence and operations for narcotraffickers.

  That had been a much larger team. A dozen good men. Ultimately, the ex-spook had been killed after it was determined that he had gone batshit crazy and wasn’t so much helping the drug trade as being supported by it. What he was selling his bosses had been complete bullshit. As soon as they found out, he would have been dead anyway.

  There was only one image from that job. A group shot at the home of the dead man, in front of a vintage Rolls-Royce. It had been so incongruous in the setting that it felt like a trophy of sorts, but one they weren’t allowed to keep. Hence, the photo.

  Tallon was in the back, his boonie hat pulled low, his face not visible. But he recognized himself. On the other side of the group, one face rang a bell.

  Tallon double-clicked on the image, and continued to enlarge it until the man’s face filled his screen.

  In his mind, Tallon eliminated the blood streaks and superimposed the face of the dead man on the image before him.

  It was a match.

  The man’s name came to Tallon, unbidden.

  Fackrell.

  Carl Fackrell.

  9

  Pauling moved quickly ahead of the other pedestrians on West 4th Street. She’d just seen Logan Brody, a man who claimed to be someone he may very well not turn out to be, following her.

  She knew that just ahead there was a gap between two buildings. A very narrow one that frequently housed a salesman hawking fake Rolex watches. She maneuvered herself in front of a tightly formed group, and then slid past them and ducked into the alley.

  Pauling waited, estimating that Brody was no more than a half block behind her. She waited, studying each individual hurrying past.

  After a full two minutes with no sign of her surprise visitor, Pauling peeked around the corner, back toward where she’d seen Brody.

  He was gone.

  Pauling looked across the street, figuring he’d moved to the other side when he’d lost sight of her in order to get a better vantage point. But he wasn’t on that side of the street, either.

  The other option was that he’d seen her move forward a bit more quickly than before, and gotten spooked. Maybe he’d turned on a dime and hurried back the other way.

  Or, he’d turned into one of the shops or restaurants that lined the street.

  Pauling let out a long, slow breath. And waited.

  Brody never showed.

  She briefly debated going back and seeing if he was still lurking, but decided against it. If she couldn’t see him at this point, Pauling had enough confidence in her surveillance skills to figure that he couldn’t see her, either.

  A good five minutes passed and she saw no sign of Brody, so she turned and walked to her home, feeling unsettled. A surprise visitor, carrying a gun, claiming someone was trying to kill him, and then following her wasn’t the norm.

  Pauling paid attention to her surroundings as she entered her co-op on Barrow Street. She went inside the building, made sure the front door locked behind her, and then took the stairs to her loft.

  She unlocked the front door, closed it behind her, slid home the locks, and set her keys on the kitchen counter.

  After kicking off her shoes, Pauling went to her bedroom, changed into jeans and a cashmere sweater, and poured herself a glass of wine. She’d already worked out in the morning, and planned to make a salad later with some leftover salmon she’d had the night before.

  For now, her plan was to watch the evening news.

  That plan changed when saw the blinds.

  Pauling’s condo was on the third floor of an historic building. Made of brick, the original construction had taken place in the early 20th century. It had been a quality construction, as so many of them were back then. Prime lumber, skilled plasterers, heavy-duty plumbing
and wiring.

  And windows.

  Big banks of classic, double-paned glass.

  Pauling’s view was ordinary, nothing special. One could see across the street to a similar building, and from an angle, down the street to a small neighborhood park favored by dog walkers.

  The best part was the sunrise. Thanks to its eastern exposure, morning sun tended to fill the main room, which is why Pauling always lowered the Roman shades in the evening. Because the windows were large, the shades had extra-long cord pulls that Pauling always coiled neatly on the ledge. And because she paid attention to detail, she always coiled them the same way.

  Counter-clockwise.

  Every time.

  Now, she stared at the ledge.

  All three window banks had their cord pulls coiled clockwise.

  Pauling set down her glass of wine, went into her bedroom, and pulled her gun from its concealed holster inside her purse.

  Carefully, she re-entered the living room, went to the window and looked down at the cord pulls.

  They were wrong. She briefly considered the possibility that for some reason she had coiled them a different way, but instantly discarded the notion.

  She knew herself too well to suggest otherwise.

  Pauling had a cleaning service, but they came on Fridays. Plus, she could tell the condo hadn’t been cleaned.

  Which meant that someone else had been inside her home.

  There was no other logical explanation.

  Working from the front door, through the kitchen, to the bedroom, bathroom and guest suite, she went slowly, looking for any signs of someone else’s presence.

  She found nothing.

  An anger rose within her.

  Pauling felt violated, and her mind immediately turned to Logan Brody.

  A strange visitor at the office. That same strange visitor following her on the street. And now, someone had entered her home.

  A coincidence?

  Pauling didn’t believe that.

  She also instantly thought of surveillance. As in, she was under surveillance, via hidden cameras and microphones. The intruders clearly hadn’t taken anything. So if thievery wasn’t their goal, what was it? Maybe they hadn’t intended to take anything, but instead, their objective was to leave something behind.