The Artisan: An Artistic Assassin Thriller

by Dyal Bailey

  Taking a deep breath, he paused and took a moment before returning his attention to the phone. “Put your men in place. I want video surveillance of everything, but no one makes a move until I call,” he barked, before hanging up.

  “That’s it!” he fumed as he crumpled up his origami paper and tossed it into the trash.

  When he found a way to get Rafaela back to Georgia, he would have to get Günter to keep an eye on her whenever he felt she might be vulnerable. Only Günter could keep up with the little minx, and only Günter would be discerning enough to know when to step in and when to leave things alone.

  He dreaded the phone call he would have to make to the assassin and how much money it would cost to get Günter to do what the assassin would feel was well beneath him, but Antonio could not risk trusting anyone else.

  Hmm. Maybe if he told Günter the surveillance was merely the prelude to the kill, he would agree more readily. And it was not as if he was planning to keep Rafaela alive forever. He knew how dangerous she could be, especially after she discovered Antonio’s true purpose for Dr. Jacobs’ project.

  Yes, Günter was his man. Even half asleep with both hands tied he would do a better job than those imbeciles at the CIA. Just as soon as Rafaela came to Augusta, he would put him on the job. But the least of his worries was luring her back to Augusta and protecting her. Now he needed to find a way to keep her alive.

  Chapter 10

  Seventeen miles outside of New Orleans, Rafaela stood next to Madame Madeline’s Bed & Breakfast. She wanted to take a moment to gaze at the moss covered oaks and weeping willows in the background, but she was still emotional and exhausted after her confrontation with Micah. With a sigh, she headed inside with her luggage.

  Putting her bags down, she fondled her bracelet and thought of the sweet look on Micah’s face when he’d given it to her. She wondered what he was doing right now. Certainly he was asleep, she thought. Then she grimaced. If he wasn’t, she knew he was lying in bed thinking of her, hating her for leaving him again. She shrugged and decided to stop kicking herself. She needed to move on.

  As she entered the lobby, she immediately regretted insisting to Dickinson that his CIA men merely cover the perimeter of the inn and not do a preliminary walk-through. Now she could feel the tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristle. Yes, there was definitely something in the air. But why worry? Rafaela shrugged; she was used to being on her guard. She moved slowly through the silence of the foyer and checked the parlor for signs of life.

  No one.

  Hearing a sound coming from the kitchen in back, she headed in that direction. She eased the kitchen door open.

  “Madame? Ms. Madeline?” She pulled a bio-chemical cylinder from her pocket and started to twist the top, when she heard a metallic whisper in the air. Rafaela’s arm was grazed, and she dropped the semi-toxic tube. She squeezed her arm and the deep wetness of her own blood spread across her sleeve.

  She looked up and saw Fritz Mittler in an haute-macabre black-on-black suit. All his golden blond hair with its thick black bangs fell loose and flowing across his face and neck. His eyes were wild.

  “Don't be so surprised, Dr. Ramos. Did you think you were too precious to be shot?” Fritz swaggered around, until he was in full view. He was smug and terrifying.

  “You are spoiled. But I am glad to be the one to offer you discipline.” Moving like a trained dancer, he released another silencer shot and she was deeply grazed by a bullet along her other arm. She fell to the floor. Her astonishment turned to aching agony.

  “Now, you are wondering if I'm going to kill you or not.” He laid his gun across his shoulder.

  “To be quite honest, I've been wondering the same thing myself.” He shrugged and tilted his head so that she glanced in the direction of the corpse of Madame Madeline. He had neatly inserted her in an upright position on a shelf, still holding her spoon and mixing bowl in her blood-covered hands. Anger flashed in Rafaela’s eyes. He saw her expression, reveled in her response for a moment, and shifted his gun. “The price for delivering you alive to my employers is a king's ransom, to be sure. But the joy of revenge? Ah, that will last me a lifetime.”

  She looked him in the eye.

  “What? Don't you want to beg me for mercy? Perhaps, if you promise to be a good little girl and make lots of viruses for my bosses, maybe I’ll change my mind and forgo the enjoyment of watching you die. ”

  She gave him a ‘screw you’ stare.

  “Hah! You’ve grown arrogant, but I am just the one to offer you correction. And the way to rectify a woman like you must come from the shedding of blood. ” He lifted his gun.

  She turned as if wincing, and swung her legs under the assassin. She tripped him to the floor and staggered up. His shot went wild as he crashed onto the tile. She struggled while her assailant found his feet. He aimed again.

  A phone rang in the other room. Her head turned toward it and the assassin smiled. “I see the hope in your eyes. Do you imagine I would leave anyone in this inn alive?”

  The phone stopped after two and a half rings. Surprised, he turned and regarded the inner door. As soon as she saw his eyes move away, she dove behind a pot-covered shelf and kicked a stack of lids in the direction of her attacker. His shots pinged around the room.

  Pushing across the floor, grimacing with pain, she made her way to the exit. She pulled herself up only to find Fritz leaning against the wooden kitchen door, smiling and pointing his gun. She recoiled and turned away.

  “Yes, I’m going to kill you. But first, I want to hear you beg.” There were three sharp knocks at the door. She glanced up to see him still smiling, but touching the front of his shirt. With blurry eyes, she saw Fritz staring at his own blood on his hand then sliding to the floor.

  The door surged open and there was a rush of movement. Dickinson burst inside with a team of men. He hurried over and checked Rafaela’s pulse.

  She mumbled incoherently, “Thanks.”

  He nodded and turned to his men. “Okay, make sure you do a complete sweep. This never happened and none of these people were ever here.” He grabbed one of his men by the sleeve as he passed by. “Walk with the stretcher. Alert Mr. Bailey as soon as Dr. Ramos is on the plane.”

  Dickinson looked at Madame Madeline’s corpse shoved into the shelf and paled. What a way to die, he thought. Something like a premonition chilled him, giving him goose pimples. He shivered and headed for the lobby.

  …

  As soon as Antonio received the news of Rafaela’s rescue and Fritz’s death, he went over to his bar, inside the inner office of his houseboat, and fixed himself a double.

  Pacing back and forth inside the boat’s salon, he knew he should call Günter right away and get it over with. But he also knew how delicate and temperamental the man was during the weeks preceding one of his intricately organized social soirées. Maybe he should surprise him with ten cases of 1996 Dom Perignon Rose from his private cellar today to soften the blow.

  He sighed. There was no use putting this off. Still, he vacillated. He glanced at the phone, picked it up, and flipped the small device back and forth inside his palm, then started pacing again. Finally, he took deeper and deeper breaths for courage and dialed his cell.

  “Listen, I have some bad news.” He paused and swallowed hard. “I’m afraid Fritz will never play the flugel horn again.” He cleared his throat. “Dead.”

  He pulled the phone away from his ears, but still cringed as he heard the blood curdling scream coming from the other end. He massaged the fuzz coming out of his ear.

  “Now, now, try not to take it too hard. Do you still have that case of perfume and cologne samples I sent you?—Good. Why not take another Prada Candy bath? It really seemed to aid in your recuperation last time.” He listened with effort as Günter continued to wail and smash glass. “Of course, this is much more traumatic than James Levine retiring from the Met. But surely your feelings of loss and betrayal are similar.” Pulling on one of his ey
ebrows, he muffled a sigh. “Perhaps that masseuse woman has improved.” Antonio smiled at the sudden silence; he moved the phone closer to his ear. “And with a name like Helga, she's bound to look amazingly appropriate in her witch's costume.” He continued to calm and soothe Günter for several more minutes. “After I hang up, I’ll make you a reservation at Estela.— Obviously at the tapas bar, what do you take me for?—Be sure to try the trout with yuzu and horseradish, it’s exquisite. —Yes. You absolutely should not be expected to cook at a time like this.”

  Antonio began to ease himself off the phone. When he was able to end the conversation, he exhaled loudly and collapsed in a chair.

  Thank goodness that’s done. He had enough to contend with, without Günter freaking out and going off task. If Fritz wasn’t already dead, he swore, he’d have strangled him himself.

  This little incident was certainly disturbing to Werther. Unwanted detours were pure torture to his highly sensitive algorithm. Antonio shuddered with regret for causing Werther such pain. He flushed with shame as he contemplated having let the algorithm down with his own shoddy analysis of the information.

  Antonio stood up and reached into his shirt to pluck one of his chest hairs as penance. Accepting the slight discomfort as the punishment he deserved, he gritted his teeth and decided right then that he would spend the entire evening, if necessary, doing his recalculations so that Werther could again consider Antonio his friend.

  Hopefully, Puja was keeping things moving at Gen-Bio-Lab. He still had high hopes that Dr. Jacobs’ latest ploy to get Rafaela back to Augusta would be successful. His CIA man on the inside said her injuries were painful, but superficial. How would she respond? How would Bailey? He must mind-map these intricately for Werther’s sake.

  An incident like this could force her into total lockdown. The United States government was so obsessive about protecting its assets. And Dr. Rafaela Ramos was irreplaceable. Surely they wouldn’t try to make her a prisoner? He pondered. Even if they did, she wouldn’t allow it for long.

  Antonio pulled out a fresh yellow pad before turning on his laptop to scan his data bank full of the successful memo-ized equations he had written on Rafaela, as well as the reoccurring formulas he had created for Mr. Bailey. Sitting back down with confidence, he popped open his colored pencil case. With great flair, he drew a big red box in the center of the page and started creating rivers and streams. Before he knew it, he was already typing in inputs and their variable outputs.

  Smiling, he knew after the first hour passed that it wouldn’t take him long to give his faithful, long-suffering Werther the highly specialized information the algorithm needed to figure everything out.

  …

  Inside the CIA’s secret high-tech hospital, Rafaela’s eyes fluttered. The grazes from the bullets had caused her to lose a great deal of blood. They had rushed her into surgery and now, hours later, she began drifting in and out of consciousness. The room was silent, other than the monotonous beeping of her heart monitor. A slight moan escaped her lips. At the sound, Dickinson stood up and looked her over. He returned to his seat by her bedside. A moment later, Bailey burst in.

  Dickinson sat up straight. “I think she’s starting to come around, sir.”

  Bailey huffed, “I’d like to throw some salt in her wounds for this one.”

  He sighed. “I think she’s in a great deal of pain already.”

  “It serves her right for getting distracted and diddling around in Georgia for so long.” Bailey stalked back and forth, grinding his fist into his hand.

  “Is the bio and tracking device still functioning behind her ear?”

  Dickinson nodded. “Yes, but she’s taught herself so thoroughly to keep calm, that her heart beat didn’t even increase until after she’d been shot. Then she somehow slowed it down after only a few minutes.”

  Bailey paused before he spoke, “What’s the deal with her getting a report on that Micah Carteret fellow?”

  Dickinson shrugged and pulled out a roll of mints, popping one in his mouth.

  “Who the hell is this DNA sequencing guy anyway?” His voice boomed, but he didn’t miss a step.

  Dickinson swallowed and looked at him. “Just a fling.”

  Bailey stopped. “Rafaela has encounters, not flings.”

  Dickinson turned toward him. “I guess—now she has flings.”

  He started pacing again. “And the Serbian?”

  Dickinson shook his head.

  Bailey exploded. “I need that Serbian dead now!”

  “Do you want our guys to handle it?” Dickinson offered quickly.

  “No! I want her to handle it.”

  Pulling out his iPhone, Dickinson typed and read, “He’ll be back in New Orleans in a week.”

  “Then you the hell better make sure she is there when he is.” He pivoted on his heel and exited.

  Dickinson sighed, realizing he’d been holding his breath. He took out another mint and chewed it without thinking. This job would be the death of him. To think, the position of playing watchdog to the beautiful Rafaela had been a promotion! He had been so excited when he got the call. Now he doubted he’d last any longer than the last guy.

  Studying her, he tried to decide how he felt about what happened to her. Not sympathy? He shook his head. She brought this on herself. Refusing to let his men go in ahead of her to check out the bed and breakfast was an arrogant and rebellious move. Did he feel pity? He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them with the palms of his hands. No way. From what he heard, she made ten times his salary, barely broke a sweat, and did pretty much as she pleased. And he did not feel any camaraderie. Dr. Rafaela Ramos was friends with no one.

  He guessed the only thing he felt was numb. Numb to her, numb to Bailey, and numb to whatever consequences were ahead of him for not being perfect. To Bailey, perfection was someone very close, very visible. Perfection, to her, was just the opposite. He was already practically invisible to her, and she wished he were nonexistent. He had seen the disdain she felt for him in her eyes. What a freaking job! All he wanted to do now was survive.

  …

  At five a.m., Mimi Watkins sat alone at the local coffee house and police hang out, going over her case files. She turned on her iPad and opened the document titled Dress-Up Murders.

  Her restless eyes perused the evidence list. She had already looked over this same list again and again, and yet was still unable to figure out what didn’t fit. Everything about these victims seemed to point to a serial killer. She sniffed. Sexual homicides. That’s what they called these cases back at the FBI. She scrunched her nose in disgust. For some reason, these Dress-Up Murders didn’t have the same feeling or aroma as a sexual homicide.

  But they should.

  Certainly, the fact that there were no possible connections between the victims meant that the killer must be a psychopath. But the methodology was all wrong. She had studied the modus operandi of psychos who’d fattened up their victims before the kill, but none that did their hair and gave them pedicures.

  She thought of her own pedicured toes. Her face softened. The manicure, pedicure, and spa day had been a gift from the District Attorney. She wondered for a moment what the woman’s motives were. Probably re-election. She figured that Mimi was the one person capable of cracking this case. And she’s right.

  Her eyes narrowed. When she’d called Mallory Fairfax the day before to thank her, the woman hadn’t even had the decency to accept her call. She was in a meeting, her secretary said. Typical. For all the DA’s reputation as tough and hard-nosed, deep down, she was just another snooty, mega rich Southern belle. She was perfectly willing to throw Mimi a bone, as long as she didn’t have to lower herself by actually speaking to her.

  Making a point of not telling her partner, Mimi had decided to stay away from her desk this morning to avoid Cotton Blanchard’s possible questions about the District Attorney’s recent gift. Early on, Mimi had figured she’d better not make him jealous. He practically wor
shipped the female DA. Every time the woman’s name came up, he would go on and on, as if she hung the moon. She shook her head and went back to the puzzle.

  She pondered the facts around the death of Hank Tanker, the forest ranger. Forensics told her that the extravagant hair weave and braid could only have been the work of someone trained in the best salons of New York or Paris. What would someone like that be doing in Augusta, Georgia? And what qualities could a lab assistant, a forest ranger, and all the other victims have that would be of interest to someone such as that?

  The victims seemed to have nothing in common—from their physical appearance, to their habits, backgrounds, and lifestyles. What was the common thread?

  She scratched her head with the end of her stylus and took a sip of her newly refilled black coffee. Scrunching her nose again, she scratched the tip of it. There was a stench about this entire case, especially the random hair found at the old Foley warehouse that may-or-may-not belong to a member of the Peloso Crime Family. Her eyes narrowed. This particular clue reeked. Why would one of the Pelosi fly all the way from Chicago just to kill someone here?

  Unless… Unless a member of the family was in Augusta. Unless he was terribly clever and he, or even he and an accomplice, were dressing up the victims just to throw the police off their trail.

  She shook her head, typed something into her iPad, and laid her stylus over the top of her coffee cup. Another idea occurred to her. Maybe the killer planted the hair as a way to send her off track. But why?

  She changed screens on her iPad, hopped onto Google, and typed in: Sequins, knives, costumes, compliant victims, and corpses dressed like women. She clicked search and started reading through page-after-page of strange and bizarre options.