by John Locke
I do contract killing for two people: the aforementioned Sal Bonadello and an angry, quadriplegic midget bent on global conquest named Victor. Victor is diabolical, incredibly brilliant, and quite possibly a billionaire.
Victor is also a client of Sam’s. When I first heard of Sam’s idea, I contacted Victor and had his people check it out. We both ended up placing a quarter billion with Sam, and that got us thinking about Sam’s sixteen other clients. More than once, we speculated about stealing their assets, but we never put a plan to it.
Until fate stepped in.
More about that later …
With less than four minutes till showtime, I send Jimmy Squint to his post, and I remain in my seat by the diner window to watch the scene unfold.
The limo appears right on schedule. The door opens, and Sam goes tearing across the grass. Mary and her co-worker, Chuck, the guy dressed up like a policeman, are on Reece, right where they’re supposed to be, which tells me that Callie Carpenter has done her job perfectly. Callie, a gorgeous killing machine and longtime associate of mine, is currently playing the role of Sam Case’s girlfriend. Callie had also befriended Chuck (just friends), and it was Callie who made sure Mary found out about Rachel’s affair with Kevin Vaughn. Callie was the go-between for the meeting at Seneca Park.
Jimmy Squint shoots twice. One shot hits Mary’s heart dead center; the other finds a home in Chuck’s head. I’m not as casual about these killings as I might sound. In fact, I’m completely against them, which is why I refused the contract and passed it off to Jimmy instead. From the gutter grate on Reece Street, one of my marksmen shoots Chuck in the head with a paintball, in case someone happens to be watching from the wrong angle and thinks they’ve witnessed an actual shooting. Jimmy jumps into Sam’s car and my assistant, Lou Kelly, drives the Audi back to the hotel and places the keys and the famous Rachel photograph in an envelope under the driver’s seat. The photo is real, but it’s been doctored. She’s not actually tied to the floor, nor was the photo taken this morning at 8:46 am as the time and date stamp shows. The photo was taken by Kevin Vaughn several months ago. I found it, along with the bra, in the black plastic bag in Rachel’s closet where she keeps the rest of her nasty outfits and sex toys. Want to know where she hides the plastic bag? In the giant hatbox on the top shelf of her closet—not the sort of place Sam would ever think to look.
Meanwhile, the crowd of actors in the park converges on Sam, but not too quickly, making sure he gets away. The two runners pretend to cut off his escape. Now Herbert—Bald Eagle—gets out of the car and fi res two blanks in the general direction of the runners. They fall on cue, and Sam jumps over them as if he’d rehearsed the part. Sal Bonadello fucks with Sam about Rachel’s bra size for awhile—which causes the extras in the park to have to adjust their chase—and finally lets him back in the car. They drive away leaving all this in their wake: two dead bodies, two guys pretending to be dead … and eighty extras who witnessed a double homicide but are convinced the whole thing is a movie shoot.
Meanwhile, the director tells the extras to hold their positions while the film crew sets up on the far corner. The “cops” converge on the bodies from one side of Reece, the ambulance from the other, and the EMS guys load the bodies in the vehicle and drive away while the cameras roll. A cleaning crew hops out of a van and starts power washing the blood and paint off the street. When that’s done, as the movie extras mill about, waiting for the scene to be shot with a new batch of actors, the paintball guy climbs out of the gutter and tells the rubes how he makes the “killing” look so realistic.
As I think about all this from your perspective, I can see I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I should probably back up and fill in some of the gaps for you, starting with Rachel and Kevin and how this whole idea came into being.
You’ve heard quite a bit about Rachel, and maybe you’ve formed an opinion of her, and that’s fine; it’s your decision to make. But like every story, there are two sides …
Chapter 34
Two years ago, when Sam Case explained his money-moving scheme to me, I decided to stay close and make certain he wasn’t planning to scam me.
So I moved into his attic.
I’ve traveled all over the country the past two years, doing jobs for Homeland Security and various contract killings, but for the most part, I’ve been based in Sam and Rachel’s attic. During that time, I spent many hours getting to know the Cases from behind the scenes. I learned their schedules, their routines—in fact, I learned more about them than they could possibly know about each other.
When Sam and Rachel were at work, I’d climb out of the attic and make myself at home. I’m not a snoop by nature, but rather a tireless investigator. In the early days, I started with the computers, spending weeks opening up files and sending them to my headquarters in Virginia so Lou Kelly’s geek squad could decipher them. When I’d gotten what I could electronically, I went through all the medicine cabinets and e-mailed the prescriptions to Lou so he could make the proper adjustments on Sam’s and Rachel’s medical records. I looked at every piece of paper in their house, from appliance manuals to address books to business and personal files to checkbooks. Why would I care about appliance manuals?
I don’t.
But sometimes people will hide a phone number somewhere, like inside a book cover or within the pages of an appliance manual, and that phone number might lead to something important. So I opened every page of every book, searched every cabinet inch by inch, making certain there were no hidden cubbies. I scanned every photograph in the house, sent them to Lou to be indexed, and checked the frames they’d been in. I checked behind every print and painting on the walls. Over time, I sprayed every square inch of carpeting with a mixture of Luminol powder and hydrogen peroxide to check for blood. I pressed every inch of carpet checking for bulges. I moved furniture around to check those areas as well. I checked every square inch of molding and checked the baseboards and the air vents and returns. I took the filters out of the air conditioners to see if anything had been hidden behind them. I checked every square inch of every article of clothing, especially the pockets. I checked every piece of luggage, and all of Rachel’s purses. In other words, I performed an exhaustive search, one that took me six months to complete. By comparison, you put a team of cops in a house this big and give them a search warrant, and they’re done in six hours, tops. But they’re going to miss a lot.
In the early days at Sam and Rachel’s home, when I grew tired of reading, I drilled small openings and filled them with wireless pinhole cameras. There are more than sixty of them installed throughout the house. It takes me three hours every two weeks just to change the battery packs on those cameras! I also made minor repairs so they wouldn’t have to call in repairmen. I took the time to make my attic area as comfortable as possible. I installed access doors in several areas of the house, siphoned some heat and air from the rooms they didn’t use very often, and wired the attic for computer access. I linked to their land phones and their computers and even programmed a scanner to listen in on their cell phone calls.
Of course, it wasn’t all work. Sam and Rachel are gone all day, five days a week, so I took the time to really enjoy their gorgeous home. Mondays and Fridays, they had a half-day cleaning service I had to watch out for. The other three mornings, I’d work out in their state-of-the-art gym for a couple of hours and then relax in the steam shower in their master bedroom. Afternoons were reserved for my investigating.
Usually, when I become an unseen part of my hosts’ lives, I grow to hate them. Familiarity really does breed contempt. In this case, the more I learned about her, the more I found myself becoming intrigued with Rachel. This phenomenon started the day I learned she volunteered her time on Sunday afternoons at a horse farm that takes care of broken-down racehorses. I visited the place one day—not a Sunday—and took the full tour. I was so impressed by the work they did, I let a couple of months go by and then made a substantial anonymous contribution
.
While monitoring Sam’s and Rachel’s lives by camera, computer, and phone, I saw how hard she tried to make their marriage work. Sam’s a decent enough guy, but not the most romantic person in the world. He’s a workaholic; he’s forgetful and often insensitive. He’s bad about following through on prior commitments he’s made, such as meeting his wife after work or attending receptions for her clients. He’s always up for his work but holds the opinion that her work is meaningless, since it contributes in such a small way to their income.
Rachel was showing all the classic signals of a bored, ignored wife, but Sam wasn’t picking up on them. She felt unneeded and taken for granted. He craved sexual attention, she craved relationship attention, and neither got what they wanted.
Over time, I saw them slip further and further away from each other. By the time they were sleeping in separate bedrooms, I knew things were beyond repair. She’d climb into her bed, and I’d sit on the floor joists in the attic, a scant ten feet above her, and listen to her cry herself to sleep. And every night, I wondered what it would be like to have a relationship with a woman of such passion. Yes, she cussed like a sailor! Yes, she was often cold and unfeeling and could turn into the world’s biggest bitch in the blink of an eye. And yes, she was everything I look for in a woman. Taming a woman like Rachel, capturing her heart, making her crave me would be like reaching the summit of Kilimanjaro. I pictured winning her over, making her want to do things to me she’d never done to a man, things she’d never dreamed of doing.
I knew exactly what to do, which buttons to push, which words to say.
But I waited too long.
And Kevin Vaughn beat me to it.
I could have had her; there’s not an ounce of doubt in my mind.
But Kevin Vaughn got her. He caught her at the exact moment in her life, and he won her over and got her to do all the sick, twisted, sexy, passionate, loving things I’d dreamed of her doing to me.
I’m bullshitting you. I’m Kevin Vaughn.
Chapter 35
To be precise, Rachel knows me as Kevin Vaughn. My idea was to take the remaining fifty million dollars I had and put it into a corporation. This is a sum of money the government would feel good about confiscating someday, so I figured I may as well make it easy for them to find. I had our geek squad do a patent search for anything related to health or healthy lifestyles, Rachel’s specialty. It took a couple of months, but they located a home fitness product that had a chance to sell enough units to actually turn a profit. I also put a few hundred thousand into a webzine that had a small but powerful subscriber base. Then I brought these products to Rachel’s company and asked to see examples of work produced by the various account reps.
Naturally, I loved Rachel’s work and surprised everyone by insisting she lead the team to overhaul my webzine and promote my fitness product. This appreciation of her skill was like catnip to a kitten for an underappreciated wife in the death throes of her marriage.
Big-budget advertising requires a lot of initial face time between the ad coordinator and the company rep. It thoroughly impressed Rachel, as well as her company, that I involved myself personally in the meetings.
And there were lots of meetings, lots of late-nighters.
I should mention I’m extremely good-looking.
I say this sincerely, as a matter of fact, with no conceit. You can ask anyone—or if you want, just look at me.
Before you judge me for these comments, you should be aware I take no pride in my looks. They’re not mine, after all. They’re the result of a total facial reconstruction by the top plastic surgeons in the world, a procedure that left me with movie-star looks. I didn’t ask for these looks, and I don’t like them. They were forced on me by the Agency while I was in a coma. Everything from the tip of my head to the base of my neck began as a fantasy in the minds of the world’s greatest plastic surgeons. The coma lasted three years, during which time, I had the opportunity to heal in an antiseptic, controlled environment. I’ve been told there has never been a more successful plastic surgery performed and probably such a surgery will never be performed again.
I took my time with Rachel. My flirting, was subtle, just enough to pique her interest, not enough to cause alarm. There was no sexual pressure. I knew I couldn’t push her and didn’t need to. I’d seen her naked hundreds of times over the previous fifteen months, so I was in no hurry to get her clothes off—which made me that much more appealing to her.
She’d never met anyone as understanding as me, as wealthy, or as good-looking. (I know, I know. But these were her words, not mine.) I never spoke ill of her husband, and in the early days, when she brought his name up, I changed the subject.
This was not about sex or lust or power or control or any of those things—not completely any of those things. It was more about Rachel being the kind of woman that fits my biological imperative. Millions of years of gene programming led me to be attracted to a certain type of woman.
Actually, that’s a crock, since I’m attracted to most types of women. But women like Rachel give me reason to care.
My job precludes normal, healthy relationships. I’ve been married once (Janet) and have a wonderful daughter (Kimberly). I fell in love about five years ago, just before the coma (Kathleen), but the Agency told everyone I’d died and had a mock funeral for me. Kathleen, thinking I was dead, fell in love with the next guy who came along and got married. Most of the years before and after Kathleen were spent in the company of hookers, several of whom have become close friends.
Janet was far too bitchy, Kathleen far too sweet. Rachel’s a happy medium.
Our first time?
Well, our first time was tentative. She wanted me to make the first move. I did. Then I pulled back, and she pushed things further. Then she pulled back, and I advanced. We continued this push-me-pull-you dance until we had expended ourselves completely.
Then she looked into my eyes and said, “This can never happen again.”
“It won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
Thirty minutes later, we were all over each other, and this time, nothing was tentative. It was as if the floodgates had burst and all her pent-up passion could finally be released.
Chapter 36
That was six months ago. And we’ve grown closer ever since. I’m not kidding. I’m crazy about her.
A couple of months into the relationship, she told me she planned to divorce Sam. I strongly discouraged it, for two reasons. First, from day one, I’d told Rachel I have no interest in living with or marrying anyone ever again (Of course, she feels she’ll be able to change my mind). Second, I told her she couldn’t afford a divorce because virtually all of Sam’s income is off the books.
As for not wanting to live with or marry her, that has nothing to do with Rachel and everything to do with my job. I kill people for a living. If my enemies found out about Rachel, her life would be in constant danger. As for Sam’s income being off the books, I have an obvious conflict of interest: if the authorities dig into Sam’s activities, they might eventually find my money and seize it.
This topic consumed many hours of our conversation, and I began wondering if there might be another way to solve Rachel’s dilemma. If I could find a way to rob Sam’s clients, I could siphon off enough money to make Rachel financially independent. Then she could afford to leave Sam without making any demands on his income. I got with Victor, and he surprised me by insisting we hire a team of former FBI profilers to do a psychological evaluation on Sam in order to decide how best to deal with him.
Between Lou Kelly and me, we had reams of information on Sam, enough to get a definitive conclusion by the profilers.
Their conclusion was you don’t torture a left-brain genius guy like Sam. His personality is fragile, and he could go into a meltdown and become completely unresponsive.
“This kind of guy is very unique,” the head profiler told me. “He’s one in a hundred million, which is how he was able to develop this type
of computer program in the first place.”
“So how do we get him to reveal sensitive information?” I said.
“The best way is to short-circuit his brain.”
“Come again?”
“Sam Case is an extreme detail guy. You’re going to want to throw as much at him as you can. Hit him with circular references and things that make no sense. Put him on sensory overload. Confuse him. Put him in unfamiliar situations.”
“Give him a complete mind fuck?” I said.
“Precisely.”
I lined up Callie Carpenter to be his girlfriend, which took a hell of a lot longer than we intended. Sam being a workaholic, we couldn’t find a plausible way for them to “meet.” In the meantime, Callie established her identity as Karen Vogel. With our Agency connections, she managed to get a Kentucky driver’s license, Social Security card, and several credit cards. Then she got a job and a checking account and bought a condo in Karen’s name. She made the connection with Mary’s friend and co-worker, Chuck.
While all this was going on, Victor and I assembled the team and equipment we would need to put Sam’s brain into overload.
Finally, five weeks ago, we managed to get Karen and Sam in the same place at the same time in a plausible scenario that allowed Callie to manipulate him into making his move. The rest, as they say, is history.
Then we had Karen break the news about Rachel’s affair to Chuck, who told Mary. At first, Mary didn’t believe it, so she followed us to a hotel one night. Mary, protective big sister that she was, gave Rachel an ultimatum: confess the affair to Sam, or she would. Mary and Rachel argued back and forth for several days, and as the anger escalated, the fights became heated. And one day, without any input from me, my friend Salvatore Bonadello, crime boss of the Midwestern United States, got a call from a woman named Rachel Case of Louisville, Kentucky.
