Delicate Chaos

by Jeff Buick

  “I’ve got to go,” he said into the phone. He snapped it shut and slipped it in his pocket. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Killing you,” Darvin said, shoving Swanson back into the house. A gun appeared in his hand, and he flipped the safety off and pushed the end of the barrel against Swanson’s head. “But not quite yet.”

  They were inches apart and Darvin could smell the fear. He loved the odor—thrived on it. He had yet to kill a person up close who didn’t reek of fear just before they died.

  “Move.” He pushed the gun against Swanson’s head so hard it left a red circle when the other man broke away and walked backward into the house. Darvin spun Swanson around and lowered the gun to his back. “The kitchen.”

  They walked through the formal dining room to the kitchen; an open expanse with a central island and walls of cabinetry. Stainless-steel appliances were tucked into the maple cabinets and the granite countertops reflected the midday sun pouring in the windows.

  “I’m thirsty,” Darvin said, leaning against the island. “Get me something to drink.” He waited a second, then added, “Please.”

  Derek Swanson’s hands were shaking as he opened the fridge and took out a pitcher of lemonade. He set it on the counter, removed a glass from one of the upper cabinets and poured. He held it out but Darvin shook his head.

  “Set it on the counter and back off. And get another glass down while you’re there. I don’t like to drink alone.”

  “It’s lemonade, not alcohol.”

  “I don’t care. Pour a glass for yourself.”

  Swanson complied, then backed off a few feet. Darvin kept the gun leveled and pointing at the other man as he walked over to the counter. He stared down at the two glasses of lemonade for a few seconds, then opened the cabinet and took out another glass. He set it on the counter and pushed. It slid along the smooth surface to Swanson.

  “Put some ice in the glass and slide it back,” Darvin said.

  Swanson turned and filled the glass from the ice dispenser on the front of the fridge, then pushed it along the counter to the killer. Darvin tipped the glass and added ice to both glasses. He took a sip from his and backed off to the island, glass in one hand, gun in the other.

  “Drink your lemonade,” he said.

  “What do you want with me?” Swanson took a couple of steps and picked up the glass. “Why don’t you go away?”

  “What do I want with you?” Darvin repeated. “That’s a good question. I don’t think I’m quite ready to answer it yet. But I can tell you why I won’t go away.” He sipped the lemonade and puckered his lips. “Not enough sugar, Derek.”

  “You don’t have to drink it.” Swanson downed a third of his glass in one draught. His throat was suddenly dry.

  “You irritate me. That’s part of the reason why I’m not leaving. You think that because you have money, you can do whatever the hell you want. Things aren’t going well with the trust conversion—I think I’ll have someone murdered. That kind of thinking pisses people off. Maybe not everyone, but it pisses me off, and right now, that’s what counts.”

  “I never asked you to kill Senator Buxton or Leona Hewitt. You undertook that all on your own.”

  “Are you saying that independent thinking is bad? You were poised to make a quick fifty million dollars. I saw an opportunity to help make that happen and I went for it. In your business they call that entrepreneurship. People are rewarded for that sort of thinking.”

  “I produce electricity. You murder people. There’s a difference.” Swanson took another drink, then said, “Stop killing people. There’s nothing to gain from it.”

  Darvin wagged the gun at Swanson. “Why don’t you stop thinking like an executive? Not everything is based on the bottom line. Money isn’t always the motivator.”

  “Why else would you kill someone, Darvin?” Swanson asked. “Rage, jealousy, hate might work, but Leona Hewitt is none of those to you. There’s no upside financially and there is no other reason to want her dead. Leave her alone.”

  Darvin shook his head. “Pride. You forgot pride.”

  “What’s pride got to do with this?” He finished the lemonade and set the empty glass on the counter.

  “I have never taken on an assignment and not completed it.”

  Swanson’s mouth dropped open. “What? You’re going to kill an innocent person to keep your record of consecutive kills intact? Are you insane?”

  Darvin’s eyes clouded over and his voice changed pitch—deeper, and the words were clipped, his mouth contorting into a sneer as he spoke. “You can’t save it. No one can save it.”

  Swanson instinctively backed away from his unwelcome visitor. “It? You called her it. What the fuck is that all about? Serial killers talk like that.” Swanson grabbed the counter and ran his free hand across his forehead. “Holy shit, what’s going on?” His knees buckled and he fell to the floor. He tried to get his hand out in time to protect his face. He failed and smashed headfirst onto the tiles.

  Darvin hooked his foot under Swanson’s chest and rolled him over on his back. “Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid. GHB as it’s often called,” he said. “Date-rape drug. Totally incapacitates you by depressing your cerebral metabolism. Wondering how I did it? When you got the ice. Only took a second to drop it in your drink. Shaking the ice into your lemonade helped mix it. Christ, you really are dumb. Dumb and helpless.” His voice had returned to normal, but his eyes burned with madness.

  Darvin pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, gathered Swanson’s arms behind his back and snapped the cuffs over the prone man’s wrists. Then he hoisted the dead weight over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and trudged out to his car. He dumped Swanson in the front seat and stretched the seat belt across his chest and snapped the buckle shut. The last thing he needed was an overzealous state trooper stopping him because his passenger didn’t have his seat belt on. He returned to the house, spent five minutes wiping down any surfaces he had touched, then locked the front door and slid behind the wheel.

  “Anyone need to use the facilities before we leave?” he asked, looking over at Swanson. He laughed at the blank expression. “No? Okay, but it’s a long drive and I’m not stopping.”

  He started the car and pulled out of Swanson’s private drive, humming an Eagles tune.

  59

  There was a soft knock on the door, then the sound of a key in the lock. A moment later Mike Anderson appeared in the open doorway. He closed the door behind him and grinned at the sight of Leona Hewitt sitting on the couch with a gun in her lap.

  “Nice touch,” he said, nodding toward the gun.

  “My newest best friend,” she said, rising and walking over to meet him. She wrapped her arms around her friend and they hugged. When they finally broke apart, she said, “What happened to your face?”

  “A guy named Bawata Rackisha happened to me.” He took ten minutes to recount the story of kidnap and neglect in the dank cell, sparing her a lot of the more horrific details.

  “You ate bugs?” Leona asked.

  He laughed. “Lots. They’re tasty. Kind of crunchy, too. Filled with protein.”

  “That’s awful.”

  His face turned serious. “It kept me alive, Leona.”

  She nodded. “You’re probably going to want some sort of a bonus for this. Danger pay.”

  The light returned to his eyes and he smiled. “Whatever you’re offering, I’m taking.” He leaned back on the couch. “What about you? Give me the whole story.”

  Leona continued the story from the last time they had spoken face-to-face, in Kinkeads, in mid-July. She wrapped it up with the attempt on her life the previous evening.

  “The police think this guy is tied in with Derek Swanson, the president of the company that was doing this conversion thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’ve already given your boss the thumbs-down.

  It’s a done deal. There’s no way this thing is moving ahead.”
>
  “No, it’s over.”

  “This makes no sense at all.” He shook his head.

  The phone rang and Mike walked over and picked up. He said hello, listened for a minute, then held the phone out. “It’s for you. George Harvey.”

  “Is that your friend?” Harvey asked when she answered.

  “Yes, he’s back from Africa.”

  “Good. Listen, I need to speak with you. Are you going to be there for a while?”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Are you coming over now?”

  “Soon. I have one other thing to take care of on another case. Give me about forty minutes plus the drive. Less than an hour and a half.”

  “What’s this about?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  “Okay.” She hung up and turned to Mike. “This keeps getting weirder. The detective handling the case is coming over.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm, that’s not good.”

  “Why not?”

  “We cops are a secretive breed. Mundane things, we use the telephone. The zingers get a house call.”

  “What now?” Leona asked. “What the hell else could go wrong?”

  “Don’t tempt the fates,” Mike said seriously. “You’re still alive. Worst-case scenario is that changes.”

  60

  Darvin stayed on the main highway from Morgantown to Hancock, a small border town sandwiched between Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia. Then he turned south on a secondary road that sliced through the heavily wooded foothills encircling the northern fringe of the Appalachian Mountains. He was close to the boundary of Shenandoah National Park when his cell phone rang. It was Greg Stiles, his connection at the phone company.

  “I have names and addresses for the numbers you gave me,” he said.

  “Well done. What are they?”

  Greg repeated the four numbers, then a name and address for each one. Darvin scratched the information down on a piece of paper while he drove. He thanked his friend, promised to call soon and killed the connection. He glanced at the passenger’s seat where Derek Swanson was sitting, watching him.

  “You seem more coherent now, awake almost. But you don’t have any control over your muscles, do you? Neat drug. One of my favorites.” He looked back to the road. “We’re almost there. Forty-five minutes, an hour tops.”

  Darvin alternated his attention between the road and the list of names. One of them, Mike Anderson, rang a bell, but he couldn’t remember why. He had an entire file on Leona Hewitt at his house. Maybe when he got home something would click. It usually did. Patience and organization were two important keys to doing well in the assassination business. He respected both, and gave them due diligence. As a result, not much got by him. If he was having a feeling about Mike Anderson, it was for a good reason. He needed to pull the information in his file and look for the connection. It was there. He knew it.

  Traffic was light and he made good time on the secondary roads through Fauquier and Culpepper Counties. At Jeffersonton he cut south for eight miles, then turned east onto Oak Shade Road. The fourth drive on the south side of the road was mostly obscured by thick hickory and black oak, and he slowed and turned in.

  “Almost home,” he said as the car bounced up the gravel access road. The house came into view, a white clapboard structure with dark shutters. The grounds were landscaped, but poorly kept, with weeds growing in the flower beds and patches of brown on the grassy areas. Paint was peeling and the edges of the shingles were beginning to curl. A porch ran across the entire front of the house, a handful of the railing slats cracked or broken. Darvin pulled up and stopped a few feet from the wooden stairs leading to the main entrance. He turned off the ignition and an instant silence settled over the scene.

  “Let’s get you comfy, shall we?” He walked around to the passenger’s door and dragged Swanson out by his shirt. Swanson cleared the seat and crashed to the ground on his back. Darvin let him hit the gravel hard. “Whoops,” he said, smiling.

  “You fucking psychopath.” Swanson labored with every syllable.

  “Ahh, you’re waking up,” Darvin said. “That could be dangerous.” He picked up a rock the size of his fist and smashed it into the side of Swanson’s head. Swanson’s body went limp.

  Darvin dragged him up the stairs, across the porch and over the threshold. He closed the door, shrouding the foyer in darkness despite the clear skies and sun almost directly overhead. A trickle of blood ran from a cut on Swanson’s head and pooled on the hardwood as Darvin rummaged about in the kitchen for something to drink. He returned to the foyer and hoisted the inert body up the staircase and down the hall to one of the bedrooms. Inside, he dumped Swanson into a solid wood chair that was bolted to the floor and lashed him securely to the seat and arms. Then he sat in a recliner facing the unconscious man and waited.

  When Swanson first woke he was groggy and rocked his head back and forth, obviously in agony from the pain shooting through his brain. Darvin watched him, a wry smile on his face. After ten minutes of watching Swanson drift in and out of consciousness, Darvin took a plastic bottle of water and shot a spray directly in the man’s face. He sputtered and gasped a few times, his eyes wide open and filled with loathing.

  “Where am I?” he asked, his voice like acid.

  “Always the CEO,” Darvin said, leaning back in the recliner and dropping the empty water bottle to the floor. “Always the one in charge.”

  “You have no idea how far over the line you are,” Swanson said. “You can’t kidnap people and get away with it.”

  “Oh, this is much worse than kidnapping. I think you know that,” Darvin said. He leaned close to Swanson and whispered, “It would be murder if I were to kill you.”

  Swanson shook his head, water flying from his hair. His voice was still strong but his eyes had lost their defiance. “If you want money, I’ll get it for you.”

  Darvin smiled. “I don’t need money. It’s the one thing I have plenty of. What I need is a little respect.”

  Swanson stared at him for a few seconds, speechless, then looked away. The room was large for a bedroom, twenty feet square. The floors were hardwood and the walls covered with embossed wallpaper. Aside from the perfunctory bed, night table and armoire, one other piece of furniture, oddly shaped and covered with a white drop cloth, sat about six feet from his chair. There was a closet set into one wall and a window seat in the gable that protruded into the roofline. The blinds were drawn and the view was of green fields, treetops and a gravel road bordered by a line of trees. They were in a farmhouse, and the scenery reminded him of North Virginia.

  “All right. Respect. Let’s work on that.”

  Darvin shook his head. “You can’t just work on it, Derek. It’s something you have or you don’t. Like class. Some people have class. They may not have a lot of money, but they have class. It’s in the way they move—how they walk and their body language. Others have a real problem with it. They may have money, but they don’t have class. Never will. You know the old adage—you can take the girl out of the trailer, but you can’t take the trailer out of the girl. It’s so true.”

  “What’s your point?” Swanson asked.

  “Do you think class is hereditary?” Darvin asked.

  “I really wouldn’t know.”

  “See, you think you have class. I don’t. You also have arrogance and a host of other rotten traits, but that’s a whole different program on Dr. Phil. We need to stay focused.”

  “I’m flattered,” Swanson said facetiously. “But I still don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

  Darvin’s eyes flashed with anger. “It has everything to do with why I kill people. With why I have no friends. With why I’m borderline psychotic.”

  “At least you can admit you have mental problems.”

  “Influenced entirely by environment,” Darvin said, regaining his composure.

  “Not gene
tics,” Swanson said.

  “No.”

  “You sound very sure of yourself.”

  “I am. You see,” he leaned close to his captive, only a couple of inches separating their faces, “you’re my brother.”

  Absolute silence descended on the room. Neither man moved nor spoke. Tiny specks of dust floated between them, highlighted by the sun pouring in through the window.

  Darvin slowly pulled away, his eyes still locked on Swanson’s.

  “Bullshit,” Swanson finally said. “Absolute bullshit. I don’t have a brother.”

  “Yes, you do. A younger brother. Ever notice how similar our names are? Derek—Darvin. Mom and Dad having a little fun.” Darvin pulled a rickety wood chair close to Swanson and sat so they were facing each other. “Would you like to know the story?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  “Your mother and father were human garbage. Mom was the most dominant bitch with a vagina on the planet. Dad was a feeble excuse for a man. He couldn’t stand up to her. She beat him with yardsticks, electrical appliance cords, even a sock filled with three or four baseballs. I remember once he tried to tell her no, and she beat him so bad they had to hospitalize him for almost two weeks. She finally killed him. Hit him too hard.”

  “She murdered him?”

  Darvin nodded. “While I watched. Whacked him with a bowling pin. Then she dumped his body in the bathtub and told the police he fell. They believed her. The dumb bastards actually believed her. They’re useless. The police are completely useless.”

  Swanson couldn’t help smiling. “A bowling pin. This just keeps getting better.”

  Darvin’s face turned dark. “Don’t mock me, Derek. Or I’ll kill you before you hear the whole story.”

  Swanson shook his head vigorously. “But you never found me. I found you when I went looking for someone to kill the union rep.”