by Ray Garton
He traveled eight miles from the resort along a narrow, seldom-used road. At the eight mile mark, he pulled off the road and drove along a narrow path that cut through a dense patch of willows, eucalyptus trees, and low greenery. In a small clearing, he pulled the rental up next to the black Escalade he’d parked there that morning. Before getting out, he did a quick check of the car to make sure he’d left nothing.
It was a still, balmy afternoon. The only sound was the singing of birds in the trees overhead. Rubinek went to the rear of the SUV, opened it, and put his bag beside the leather satchel that awaited him. He opened the satchel, then carefully peeled off his toupee, uncovering his bald head and the narrow, close-cropped strip of dark hair that went around the back of his skull from ear to ear. He removed his sport coat and shirt, took a simple blue pullover from the satchel and put it on. He put his sport coat and shirt into the satchel, zipped it up, and put it back in the SUV. After closing up the rear of the Escalade, he got in, took off his gloves, started the engine, and headed out.
Rubinek had no idea why Shipp had to die, but he had his suspicions. Shipp himself had done nothing, he was certain. The press secretary’s death was a message to someone else, most likely Senator Veltman, for whom he’d worked. The sex scandal in which the senator was currently embroiled was entertaining the burger-bloated, tabloid-sucking public, but Rubinek suspected it was just a diversion from what was really going on, whatever that was. It seemed the senator had pissed off the faceless people in the dimly lighted nether regions of government; people to whom elections and opinion polls were as insignificant as the insect remains that speckled the grills of their cars, the people for whom Rubinek used to work and who still hired him now that he was an independent contractor.
It would have been much easier and cheaper to have had Shipp dispatched in a safer, more sterile way—he could have been shot from a distance, for example. But that would not have delivered much of a message. When Senator Veltman—if he was indeed the target of the message—heard that his press secretary had been found decapitated in his resort cottage, his head upright on the floor in the middle of a train set, he would know without question that someone was giving him a message, and he would understand that message. The color would probably leave his face, his scrotum would shrivel tightly, and if he wasn’t already sitting, he would drop heavily into the nearest chair. The message—whatever it was—would be clear. The story would make the news but only briefly. It wouldn’t get a lot of attention. Normally a beheading like this would be covered exhaustively—if it bleeds, it leads—but Rubinek suspected those in charge wouldn’t want this story to get that big. Word would move down through connecting channels—from the halls of power to the halls of the press—to report this but not dwell on it. The public’s focus would be shifted to some actress’s drug binge or the latest rape accusations against some grossly overpaid sports star. Arnold Shipp wasn’t sexy enough to hold their attention, anyway.
Rubinek did not know why he had been specifically instructed to remove Shipp’s head and place in the center of the electric train set, nor did he care. Well... that was not entirely true. Most likely it had something to do with the message being sent, and he wondered about that, too. So he supposed he cared a little. But he didn’t want to know—at least, he shouldn’t want to know. It annoyed him that he was even wondering. He never used to think about things like that.
It had been said that knowledge was power, but in Rubinek’s line of work, it could be a dangerous stumbling block. Knowing the reasons behind his assignment could lead to questioning those reasons and the people behind them. That had happened before and had nearly gotten him killed once. The questions had been coming more frequently in recent years. Along with the wit-dulling boredom that was creeping into his work like an encroaching fog, those questions were a bad sign. Maybe eighteen years on the job was long enough. But the possibility of walking away from the work brought up more questions. Would they let him pursue a civilian life? And if they did, what would he do with himself?
He’d almost quit once before. Back then, he’d had a solid reason and a future to walk into when he left the job. As he drove, he reached up and pulled down the visor. Clipped to the back of it was a small photograph of the solid reason for which he’d almost left the job, a photograph of the future that had opened up before him for a brief time. Her name was Olivia. The picture was oddly tilted because she’d snapped it herself, holding the camera at arm’s length above her as she lay back on the bed, her hair spread out on the pillow in a pool of shimmering red. Her face was so open and alive—eyebrows raised high, eyes wide, lips parted and smiling. He kept the picture there on the visor and looked at it often, even now, after the years that had passed. It kept her face vivid in his memory, the way it had looked before the happiness was drained out of it by sickness, before she had died on him. That was how he always thought of it, what he always told himself had happened—that she’d gotten sick and died. That wasn’t exactly true, it wasn’t really what had happened. But telling himself that made life a little easier to live and kept him from eating himself alive from the inside out.
Once she was gone, he’d tried to make those responsible for her death pay. He’d stayed in the background, but had supplied her family with all the money they’d needed to hire the best lawyers available. But the best weren’t enough, because they were only the best available—the real best, the lawyers who seemed incapable of smiling, who seemed to have mercury flowing in their veins, and who looked as if they’d never even vaguely considered the possibility of losing a case, were already on the payroll of the company responsible for Olivia’s death.
Rubinek remembered their lead counsel, a big barrel-chested man with a black patch over his right eye who hadn’t looked nearly old enough to have a full head of hair so purely, completely silver. Ronald Shelldrake.
“While Olivia Bello’s death was unfortunate,” Shelldrake had said, “there were many factors involved, including a long history of renal problems, and it would be the height of injustice to single out Braxton-Carville for punishment. As tragic as it is, I’m afraid it’s just... one of those things. One of those things that happens.”
When it was all over and Olivia’s family had lost in spite of Rubinek’s financial support, he’d come very close to killing that silver-haired man. He’d found out where the attorney lived, learned his schedule, and even planned the hit in detail. But he hadn’t carried it out. Too risky. It would’ve made Rubinek too vulnerable to discovery. It wouldn’t be like a job in which he had no personal or emotional involvement. It would be too dangerous. So he’d swallowed his bile and walked away.
After that, he’d thrown himself into his work, gotten lost in it. It had become his life... because after losing Olivia, he’d had no other life.
He flipped the visor back up and his thoughts returned to the job, to the possibility of walking away from it. He wondered again what he would do with himself afterward.
I could start collecting and assembling train sets, he thought, and then he chuckled without smiling.
He turned off the thoughts with customary ease and turned on the radio instead. It was a beautiful day, he’d just finished a job and fattened his bank account. He decided to enjoy the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that typically followed the completion of a job. Those feelings used to come automatically.
One of the things that had made Rubinek so good at his work was that he did not worry. He was not without a conscience, but he’d always had the ability to let go of problems quickly and easily. He did not ignore problems and was quite good at solving them when they cropped up, but he didn’t let them bother him. Nothing bothered him. That had begun to change in recent years.
And that bothered him.
Rubinek hit the brake pedal hard and came to an abrupt, jerking stop when a squirrel darted into the road. He checked the rearview and was relieved to see no one behind him. He sat at the wheel and watched the squirrel. It was larg
e for a gray squirrel, one of the biggest he’d ever seen. It sat up on its hind legs, front paws dangling loose at the wrists before it, and turned to Rubinek. Its little jaws rapidly chomped on something as it turned its head toward the Escalade. The small, glistening black eyes seemed to look through the windshield and directly at him. It stopped chewing, froze. For a long moment, it became perfectly still as it looked at him, almost as if it recognized him and were about to wave or, even more absurdly, shout a greeting. Then it shot across the road and disappeared into the brush.
Rubinek smiled as drove on, everything else forgotten for the time being. He loved animals.
2.
Edward Smurl noisily ate lunch at his desk with his executive assistant, Myrna McDowell. Smurl was 50 years old, a slender man with dark transplanted hair and a very narrow, beak-like nose that used to be even more beak-like before cosmetic surgery. The surgeon had done what he could with Smurl’s severe acne scars, but his cheeks were still mildly pitted.
At 39, Myrna had been working for him for almost a decade. Early in her employment, she had made herself invaluable to Smurl. But as indispensable as she had become to him, he was quite particular about who sat at the right hand of his throne. She’d once had a squarish figure that was rounded in all the wrong places, eyebrows that were too thick, a broad nose, and a pronounced overbite. Smurl had paid to remedy all that. In the space of two years, she’d been remade into a shapely and attractive woman appropriate to her position in Smurl’s professional life. She was still just as efficient, resourceful, and quick-minded as ever, but she looked much better doing it, made a better impression on others, and received better pay. And on occasion, they engaged in some of the angry, rough sex that Smurl enjoyed. His wife Delia did not like it and refused to participate, and since she’d had the kids, Smurl wasn’t that interested in her sexually, anyway. She had her place, her function, and she ably filled both, but they no longer included fucking. That position was now filled by Myrna, and various others.
The office was starkly but expensively decorated with a lot of white and grey and silver. An enormous window behind Smurl provided a view of the corporate complex and the green, hilly northern Virginia landscape beyond. Directly across from him, a Jackson Pollock nearly as large as the window gave the room its only explosion of color. As they talked, Smurl methodically emptied the decorative tray of sushi before him, chewing fast with loud, wet smacking sounds. Myrna took notes as he spoke rapidly.
“We have to do this fast,” Smurl said. “They want it now, and they want it quiet. But for our sake and theirs, it will have to be more than quiet, it’ll have to be silent and invisible, because this is so last-minute, we’re going to have to divert some of the product.” He stopped eating for a moment and touched the tips of his long fingers to his temple, frowning. “I’m getting a headache,” he muttered. “Why am I getting a damned headache?”
“Divert some of the product?” Myrna said, raising a brow.
Smurl nodded as he popped another piece of sushi into his large mouth and smacked away. “Some market somewhere will have to do without for a little while. Not long. At this short notice, it’s unavoidable. We have no choice.”
“But is it wise?”
“It will be very profitable in the long run because our relationship with them will be permanent, therefore it’s wise. Profitable is always wise. They’re synonymous. I believe Merriam-Webster would back me up on that. If not, then Merriam-Webster is wrong.”
There were very few people who would press the issue—any issue—further with Smurl, but Myrna was paid to think and she was in familiar territory. “Won’t that create... possible contraindications?” she said, frowning across the desk.
“Possibly, yes, but it can’t be helped. That’s why we need to bring legal in on this right away. Well, not legal. Just Shelldrake. Nobody else, just Shelldrake. That’s very important.”
Ronald Shelldrake was Senior Legal Counsel in Corporate Compliance.
“I already called him,” Myrna said. “He should be here soon.”
His brow creased as he stopped chewing, pressed fingertips to his temple again and moved them in a small circle. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” he muttered. “I was up half the night thinking about this.”
“I’m not sure Shelldrake is going to like the sound of this.”
“He’s not paid to like things. He’s paid to cover our ass, and that’s what he’ll do here. We’ll have to pull somebody from PR in on this, too, because there will have to be an official explanation. Whoever it is will need to know only enough to get the explanation out, nothing more. I want this completely compartmentalized. I don’t want too many heads pulled together over this.”
Looking apprehensive, Myrna chewed on her lower lip a moment as Smurl noisily gobbled more sushi. “Have you really thought about this? About the possible problems that could arise from pulling this product out of a market, even temporarily? I’m not talking about monetary problems, I’m talking about—”
”Yes, yes, I know what you’re talking about. And yes, there are possible problems. But no problem is insurmountable. And it won’t be for long. A week, maybe a little more. Besides, this is the right thing to do. We’ll be saving lives.” He grinned. “That’s good, right? And more importantly, it’s big. For us, I mean.”
Myrna’s look of apprehension did not diminish.
“Mr. Shelldrake is here,” Smurl’s receptionist said over the intercom.
“Send him in.”
A moment later, the door opened and Ronald Shelldrake entered. He was a tall bear of a man a few years younger than Smurl, with a deep, broad chest and full silver hair. His right eye was covered by a black patch held in place by a thin black elastic band that went around his head.
“Come sit down, Ronald,” Smurl said. “Something’s come up and we need to talk.”
Shelldrake went to the chair next to Myrna and sat down.
Smurl popped another piece of sushi into his mouth with one hand while massaging his temple again with the other.
Myrna noticed the move and said, “Before that headache gets any worse, maybe you should take a couple aspirin.”
“Don’t be silly, Myrna,” Smurl muttered, “You know I never take drugs.”
When Smurl realized what he’d just said, he smirked and turned to Shelldrake. The two men laughed.
Chapter 1
Then and Now
1.
Bars of dim illumination cut through the treetops and through the smoky haze. They fell on the ground in vague puddles of halfhearted light as the water of Butter Creek burbled quietly by.
“I ate too much,” Chloe said.
“Me, too,” Eli said. They were stretched out on their backs together and his hand touched hers between them. They touched only very lightly, and Eli found the sensation very erotic.
“That’s what we get for not having breakfast,” she said with a sigh. “We eat too much for a late lunch.”
“Does sex count as breakfast?”
“Only if food is involved. Like in Nine ½ Weeks.”
They stared up at the trees and the smoky light that beamed weakly between the branches. An open picnic basket and the remains of their meal took up the rest of the space on the blanket.
It was punishingly hot, made worse by the smoke in the air, but the sound of Butter Creek took Eli’s mind off the heat. He used to come to this spot when he was a boy—to be alone, to think, to let his imagination run wild. It was within walking distance of the house in which he’d grown up. He’d always thought of it as his spot and until now, he’d never shared it with anyone else. But Chloe wasn’t just anyone. He’d bought a ring for her last week and planned to propose that evening. He’d had an impulse to bring her to Butter Creek and share with her something he’d shared with no one else.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever brought here,” Eli said, almost whispering. “Until now, I’ve always come here alone.”
“N
o old girlfriends?” Chloe asked.
“Nope.”
“Not even Roger?”
“Not even Roger.”
She rolled toward him, put a hand on his stomach, and touched her lips to his cheek in a long, tender kiss. “I’m honored. How long has it been since you came here last?”
“A long time. Years. Too many years. The last time I came here, the house was still standing and Mom and Dad were alive and well in it. My brother was alive. Everybody was alive, it seems. It’s like a lifetime ago. Or another lifetime altogether.”
They said nothing for a long time after that, just listened to the creek, the birds. Finally, Chloe said, “We should get back so we can shower and change before the movie.”
They packed up the basket, folded the blanket, and walked back to the car, which was parked near the empty lot where Eli’s childhood home had stood. Eli drove them back to the house they shared across town. They undressed, showered together, and that led to more sex. Afterward, they dressed and drove to the Northstar Cineplex.
It was like a first date, and even stirred a few butterflies in Eli’s stomach in spite of the fact that he and Chloe were celebrating the eight-month anniversary of the day they’d moved in together. He was a little nervous about the proposal. An old-fashioned ice cream parlor didn’t exactly meet the conventional definition of romantic, and he was limited by his current financial situation, neither of which would have gone over well with his first wife. But Chloe was different.
The years before he’d met Chloe had been dark and oppressive. Everything that had come since that darkness—happiness, health, contentment—was indelibly connected to her, as if all the goodness that had come into his life radiated from her. Eli wanted that to continue for as long as possible. He reached into his pocket of his sport coat and fingered the small velvet-covered box. It made him feel a little giddy.
