The Other Mrs Hayes

by Ross Richdale

  "You are."

  Stacey smiled at Jessica. "Well partner, shall we let this little finance company keep going in the meantime?"

  "Why not?" Jessica grinned. "It sounds a good deal."

  REYNA ENJOYED HER STAY in Wellington. Both Stacey and Jessica were so generous in allowing her to gain freehold of her home. Jessica's children responded to her and were a delight. She also enjoyed helping with Stacey's baby, Grace. As well, Laurie was friendly and really a complete contrast to Brendon. The more she learned about Brendon though, the more she realised that he had always been a selfish manipulator who thought about nobody except himself.

  His death was a tragedy but in hindsight she realised that the person who had arranged for him to be attacked obviously bore a genuine grudge against him. In many ways she had had a lucky escape when he was exposed before their marriage took place.

  With her home now her own, there was still the problem of having her father withdraw her allowance that she had relied on for almost a decade but she knew she would solve the financial problem herself. Stacey and Jessica were kind but she was determined that she would not call on their generosity any more.

  There were part-time junior lecturer's positions available at both Auckland universities. She would apply for these otherwise, with her work permit in New Zealand current she could apply for any other job she wished.

  No way, though, would she return home to be dominated to by her father. She had made the break and never regretted it.

  CHAPTER 14

  In the District Court case, Doug kept a low profile in the spectators gallery when Eraesto Paulino who, as expected, employed a high profile barrister who tried to persuade the judge that his client was innocent of any charges relating to Brendon's death. The police prosecutor stated that it was a serious charge of manslaughter that could be upgraded to murder depending to the outcome of their investigations and The Crown opposed any bail.

  The judge dismissed the defendant's case and committed Paulino to the High Court for trial. It would take several months before the case was heard and the opposing lawyers each argued on whether the prisoner should be held in custody or allowed bail. The judge studied his computer before stating that manslaughter was a serious charge but due to the length of time before a High Court trial, he would grant bail but under several conditions. Paulino was to surrender his passport, was restricted in having any contact with the victim's family, had to report weekly to a police station in Auckland and was banned from leaving the city without the courts permission.

  Everything had been prearranged for Doug sat at the end of the spectators' gallery above the area where the prisoner would exit. He held a small needle shaped object and squeezed a small tube of superglue over it. As Paulino walked by beneath him, Doug dropped the object onto the man's hair. It stuck onto the hair so with a little luck would not be discovered for several days. Even if he washed of combed his hair frequently, the chances would be that the minute transmitter, for that was what it was, would not be found.

  He could now trace the man anywhere in the country when he was outdoors and even inside buildings if he was close to any of the mobile phone towers that dotted the country. It was really a more sophisticated GPS tracking device that most modern vehicles had installed for it could also transmit audio that a receiving computer recorded. Everything Paulino said as well as those within his listening range would be time dated and recorded. The almost microscopic battery was recharged by sunlight.

  The main limitations were that there was no visual and when the person under surveillance spoke on a mobile or landline, only his end of the conversation could be heard. Doug doubted if the police had such sophisticated equipment that he had purchased through a colleague in Hong Kong. Probably anything heard wouldn't be allowed as evidence in court but at the moment that was the least of his worries.

  He was sure that Paulino would contact the person he had been contracted by to attack Brendon sometime and that was all he needed. Gathering proof could follow later. He had no doubt that Paulino would be going down and if this other person could also be charged with murder, it would be a bonus.

  When Doug reached his car he grinned. The screen was already tracking the man on a map but the voices of those around him sounded like he was walking in a crowded room. This would not be a problem for his more powerful computer back at his office could filter out unwanted voices or background sounds. Later these filters could be added to his iPhone and Apple Watch.

  "So, Eraesto," he said. "Let's see what you're now going to do with your miserable life."

  "SO LONG SUCKERS," ERAESTO Paulino muttered to himself as he walked out of the police station after reporting in to comply with his bail conditions. For several weeks now he had been a model person on bail but it was about to end. The New Zealand police were naïve to such an extent he could hardly stop grinning. Even if he told them what he was about to do, they'd see it as some silly joke and send him on his way.

  LEONA SMITHERS WAS frustrated and resented returning back to Pete and their marriage. He had not improved and if anything was more moody and possessive than ever. It was completely hypocritical for she knew he was having an affair with Daphne Barrett from his office. This was unusual in that it had been going on for so long, three months now. Usually he would get sick of the tart after a couple of weeks of sex. She always knew when his affair was over for he'd have almost violent sex with her rather than a weekly begrudging episode that she endured rather than becoming excited about.

  She arrived home close to midnight after a night at a performance of a classical pianist from Germany with a group of women friends who had similar tastes to herself. Afterwards, the three had a quiet drink at an upmarket bar in Queen Street before she drove home. She enjoyed these evenings with the girls without leering men around.

  She frowned when she approached her home and noticed several lights on. From the garage she went though the interconnecting door to the house itself. Angry voices came from the lounge.

  "I owe you nothing." Doug was angry. "I asked you to rough him up, not kill the bastard."

  "There was always that chance and the cost of permanently disposing of the victim is double. You owe me another ten grand, Smithers," said a quieter accented voice that she didn't recognise.

  "I'll make it eight," her husband muttered.

  Should she walk in the room or just slip upstairs and let Pete deal with his own problems? However, she was curious about the man so opened the door and walked in.

  "Got a visitor, Honey?" she said to Doug.

  Her husband glanced up and away from the visitor, a quite well dressed but shifty looking character, more like a security guard at a motel than the proprietor.

  "Just go up to bed, Leona. We were just discussing business that doesn't concern you."

  Leona switched her eyes to the man and stepped towards him with her hand extended. "Hello I am Pete's wife, Leona and you are?"

  "Eraesto Paulino is from the Philippines," Pete muttered as the man squeezed her hand far too tightly and eyes bore into her.

  "It's nice to meet you Ma'am," the visitor said in an almost cultural voice.

  "So just leave us," Pete said.

  "No," the man's voice hardened. "She stays." he nodded at the spare armchair. "Sit there, Leona. " He gazed at her. "I like your dress."

  She shivered at the seemingly innocent comment and muttered about where she had been before sitting down where he asked.

  'Tell her," Paulino said to Pete. "After all she was the reason you employed me in the first place."

  Pete actually looked scared but nodded. "I employed Eraesto to rough Brendon Hayes up."

  "You're the murderer?" grasped Leona and immediately regretted making that statement.

  "No, Mrs Smithers, your husband is. I was employed to help him out and did so."

  "To attack but not kill him," Pete managed to say but his hands were shaking.

  Paulino turned to Pete. "We may be able to come to
an arrangement with services instead of cash." He turned to Leona. "You could help your husband out."

  "How?" she gasped.

  "I like attractive women and in that low cut dress you are looking quite a package, Leona," Paulino said and almost discretely pulled a small 9mm pistol from his pocket and aimed it at her.

  Suddenly terrified, she screamed and stood up with her arm so shaky that she could hardly hold the arm of the chair.

  "Shut up, Lady. Just do what I ask." The voice did not sound cultural at all now.

  "Leave her out of this," Pete cried out. "I'll pay your twenty grand."

  "Oh you will Mate but your wife will be a bonus won't she?"

  The man smiled and stepped towards her. He grabbed her arm and, without even pretence gazed down the front of her dress at her heaving breasts. She shrank back but he just laughed and turned the pistol towards Pete who was stepping forward.

  "Don't!" he snarled.

  Pete shrank back. "I'll make it twenty-five," he stuttered.

  "Tempting." Paulino turned to face her. "You will take any mobile phone from your pocket and place it on that table." He nodded at a nearby coffee table.

  "No," she screamed! "You can leave my husband and myself alone and get out, you slimy little bastard..."

  Her scream turned to a high pitched screech of terror when there was a loud report and Pete staggered back with terrified eyes as his right hand held a bleeding left arm. He sank whimpering to the floor.

  "You shot him!" Leona tried to keep the tremor out of her voice.

  "A mere graze," the gunman said. "He'll recover. Meanwhile, you cooperate and you'll both survive this day. Don't..." He cracked his knuckles.

  "Go!" she screamed and looked up terrified as he stepped towards her. Oh hell, he was going to attack her. "No," she cried. "Please don't"

  He shrugged and turned his pistol slightly. She heard the pistol fire again then deadly silence before she erupted into terrorized howls. Pete lay motionless on the floor. There was a round hole in his forehead and sightless eyes stared at the ceiling.

  Even without going closer she knew that he was dead!

  "Pity about this," Paulino said from across the room. "But I can't have a witness, can I?"

  "I won't..." she screamed.

  The pistol rose a little but she never even heard the report as she was propelled back across the room. For a second she realised what had happened before a cloud passed over her eyes and her life slipped away.

  PAULINO GRUNTED, TURNED and ignoring the two corpses in the room, picked up the wad of notes on the table and counted them. There was ten thousand in hundred dollar notes. Oh well, he guessed he got his money's worth.

  He strolled through to the garage found a can of petrol and sloshed it through the lounge, over the two bodies and walked out. One tossed match landed on the line of petrol on the driveway. Blue flames shot along and up the steps. Within seconds the wooden-clad house was a wall of fire but Paulino had already left down a side alley to the next road where his car was parked. He glanced back at the flames already above house height and drove away.

  DOUG MCCANN WAS AWOKEN with his iPhone and Apple Watch both issuing high-pitched wails. He was immediately on alert for he knew that this indicated that the tracer in Paulino's hair had picked up something wrong. Normally there was a low beep if certain words that the man spoke activated it or his tone indicated anger. The beeping became louder for exterior sounds such as a door slamming or a third person shouting or sobbing. There were two more settings with the one he just heard caused by a gunshot or an explosion happening. It was also activated like a smoke alarm by smoke.

  The instruments registered both gunfire and smoke within the last few minutes. He scrolled down his iPhone screen and listened intently to conversation between Paulino and two victims. At first he couldn't work out who they were but something was definitely wrong. As the terrified voices of the victims cried out, he rushed downstairs to his computer that provided access to several screens at once, one was a map of where the attack took place and another was voice recognition device. Damn, it was somebody he had recorded. The woman was Leona Smithers who had been on that Canadian holiday with Jessica and Brendon.

  The green dot on the map was confirmed to be the Smithers' house.

  He pressed an emergency number to contact the Auckland police. He doubted if the pair could be saved but with luck, the fire could be put out before all the evidence was destroyed. After playing everything his transmitter had picked up to Detective Sergeant Kevin Woodley who was now online, he switched one screen on the computer across to trace where Paulino was now.

  "Damn," he swore for there was no signal.

  Either Paulino had found the device or, more likely, something had caused it to stop transmitting. Heat from the fire may have caused this. If this was the case he could possibly get the transmitter working again. Meanwhile though, he had no idea where the man had gone.

  KEVIN WOODLEY GLANCED at the two bodies on the morgue slabs.

  "They were badly burned but I can confirm that they were both dead before the fire started," the police forensic doctor said. "Both had gunshot wounds to the forehead, executioner's style. The male also had a wound in the left arm that happened a few minutes before the fatal wound to the forehead."

  "How can you tell that?"

  "Blood everywhere. If he had been killed straight afterwards there would have been little blood."

  "And the woman?"

  "At a guess. I'd say she was shot after the man."

  Kevin had seen numerous murders before but this one was particularly sadistic and savage. "Yes, the fire brigade managed to get the bodies out before they were completely incinerated. Is there any other significant evidence?"

  The doctor looked up. "It was definitely Eraesto Paulino. The fingerprints on the woman's arm were his and DNA samples should confirm that he killed them both."

  "A dangerous man. Two lives have been lost because that foolish judge let him out on bail.

  "So what now?" the doctor asked.

  "There will be a nationwide search out for him. He won't get far I assure you." Woodley turned and strutted out of the room.

  CHAPTER 15

  Everything was planned down to the smallest detail. Friends in Wellington had kept an eye on the bitches, the areas had all been studied in detail on his first trip down there and now it was time. He guessed that police would be keeping an eye out for him if he went near to the airport, train or bus terminals. So he took the easy way and stole an upmarket BMW from an inner city carpark, drove to Hamilton 130 kilometres to the south and took a bus north back towards Auckland to a small town of Huntly. There he stole another car, this time a Mercedes and headed south by bypassing Hamilton. Nine hours later after changing cars twice and now driving a run-of-the mill Toyota he reached Wellington, ditched the car and booked into an upmarket hotel in the city centre. It would be all go the following day.

  THE LEXINGTON AVENUE School was built on a hillside with the playing field built across what was once a metal pit. This had cut out a hillside so now there were cliffs on two sides of the flat field. At the back, a walking track zigzagged up through native bush to a suburban road flanked by houses. The school itself was built on two levels with classrooms skirting the field and the original school building up a series of stairs with the administration block, more classrooms, school hall and swimming pool beside it. Behind the hall was a staff carpark that led off Lexington Avenue.

  The carpark was above the field and across from the first section of the zigzag. Where the steps turned there was a seat and a small track that wound around through the bush. Locals called it The Rabbit's Trail and for safety reasons, pupils at the school were banned from using it.

  About two hundred metres along this track Eraesto had found a spot hidden by fern and behind a rocky knob. This was out of sight if anybody happened to walk along The Rabbit's Trail and rocks hid him from anybody who glanced up from the school or grounds.<
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  It was after four, the pupils had all gone home and informants had told him that the staff usually came out in a group after a staff meeting at this time.

  He clutched a high-powered semi-automatic military rifle with telescopic sights and steadied the tripod legs on a gap between two rocks. He peered through the sights and grinned. The cars below were lined up perfectly at an angle facing the kerb. When the staff walked towards them across a small quadrangle they would be like bottles on a fence.

  He wanted the two Hayes bitches but if others got in the way, so be it. Nobody was going to get the better of him and in his eyes family members were responsible for the faults of their spouses. He had no regrets about the Smithers or Brendon Hayes' deaths but the bitterness at being caught filled him with hate not felt since his days as a freedom fighter.

  Afterwards, his escape from the country was arranged. He had a yacht waiting at the Mana Marina a few kilometres to the north. From there he would travel across Cook Strait to the Marlborough Sounds with its numerous islands and inlets. After a few days they would head out into the Tasman Sea towards Australia. However, his friends, the North Koreans would be waiting in a trawler to take him home, an island in southern Philippines. The couple in the yacht would have to be disposed of and the vessel sunk but again, this was just part of the war against western society.

  Eraesto munched on a meat pie, waited and watched.

  Four women walked out from beside the hall and headed towards the parked vehicles. He recognised both Jessica and Stacey Hayes. She was the one carrying the baby. Sadistic pride within him made him aim at the boss first. Let the others see her shot dead before they suffered the same fate. It was a pity about the baby but what the hell.

  He moved the barrel ever so slightly to bring the principal into range, set the rifle to manual and grinned. He could, of course set his weapon to automatic and wipe them out on one sweep but where was the fun in that?