Claudia Must Die

by Markinson, T. B.

  Dennis turned his attention to Boyd. At least he looked like a killer: rippling lean muscles, deeply tanned skin, and tall. Few would want to pick a fight with Boyd. However, standing beside his younger brother, diminished Boyd’s looks and made him seem less intimidating.

  Dennis’s yelling didn’t scare the assassins. Only the man’s eyes scared them. The black eyes betrayed the man’s evil. Although the diminutive man was dressed immaculately and pretended to be polite, when Boyd and Otis glanced in his direction, those eyes made the hair on their big toes curl. Otis almost pissed his ratty jeans.

  An associate, standing by Dennis, leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I’ve been told they’re the best. Sixty-four hits and no suspicion whatsoever. Look at them, no one would ever think they were assassins.”

  The duo stood awkwardly, not saying anything. They disliked the term assassin. The Woolf brothers “took care of things.” It was business. They were professionals who took their work seriously. With pride even. They received their directions.

  The black-eyed man had been tracking down a woman, named Claudia. She had finally fucked up—sending her mom a letter with a return address. The order was the same: “Take care of it.”

  “Listen boys, if this isn’t resolved within ten days, I’ll not only kill you, I’ll take care of everyone you know. Even that half-wit cousin of yours. And your mother and your sister…‌well, we’ll take care of them before we take care of them. You got me?” His evil stare spoke volumes.

  Chapter Three

  The student returned home each night by 5:00 p.m. At 5:15 p.m. Parker went for a run. Claudia hadn’t been much of a runner. However, dedicated to keeping tabs on Parker, she started running every time Parker did. The first evening, Claudia was winded, although still in much better shape than Parker, who resembled a wounded goose running on two broken legs. Why the student insisted on running each night baffled Claudia.

  By 6:30 p.m., Parker would be on her back deck, listening to music. She had stuck to this routine for forty-eight days. Claudia never missed a day.

  On June sixth, day forty-nine after Claudia’s spying began, the Woolf brothers waited in an apartment across the way. Few assassins worked as a team, but the brothers hadn’t spent a day apart since Otis was born. When a job came up, they would flip a coin on the morning of the hit to see who would pull the trigger; both were excellent marksmen. On day forty-nine, Otis won.

  Six thirty p.m. came and went, with no student. Claudia had waited for Parker to go for a run, but the student never showed. Claudia returned to her apartment to spy with binoculars.

  What was going on? Was Parker injured? Sick? Where in the fuck was the bitch? Dead?

  Claudia hadn’t a clue that this was the appointed day. But she had known that, once she contacted her mother, someone would come.

  What she hadn’t known was that, for the past two months, Parker’s girlfriend, Ida, had been traveling for business. Parker had not been expecting her for several more days, but when one of the business trips fell through, Ida came home early.

  Ida used her key to access the apartment, waiting for Parker’s return at 5:00 p.m. The girlfriend had entered via the front door while everyone else was watching the back deck. Ida found her girlfriend’s commitment to routine funny, and relished interfering with Parker’s schedule whenever she got the chance.

  They had not seen each other for so long that it didn’t take them long to tumble into bed. While everyone watched the deck, Parker and Ida made love behind closed doors.

  Finally, ravished, the lovers ordered Chinese. Once it arrived, they took the cartons out onto the deck, to escape the stifling heat in the apartment.

  Even from a distance, Claudia could tell that they were in love. “Oh, my God, who is this person?” she shouted, shocked. She wanted to puke. What had she done? If Claudia had known, she would never have planned…

  But there had been no signs. No evidence. No photos.

  She had watched Parker for weeks. For forty-eight days, there had been no sign of this. None whatsoever. Claudia had searched the apartment repeatedly—nothing. Nothing at all! But Parker was in love, and that was a game changer.

  It would be much easier to stomach if Parker were alone in this world. The student’s death would hardly be noticed. No parents. No friends. No lover. That’s how it had appeared.

  But now, there was this woman. Parker was in love, and both of them looked happy. The student actually enjoyed life. More than likely, she wanted to live. Fuck!

  “Oh no, this isn’t happening. No…‌this isn’t happening,” rambled Claudia, pacing in her tiny apartment that overlooked the student’s back deck. My plan was working—what the fuck!

  Then Claudia saw the other woman fall.

  Parker didn’t look terrified.

  Devastated—she looked devastated. The sole reason for Parker’s happiness was gone. Stripped away in an instant.

  ***

  When two women first appeared on the deck, the brothers had looked at each other quizzically. Every day, for five days, they had observed Parker. Now, all of a sudden, there was another woman. Should they take out both?

  Otis sighted Parker, thinking her Claudia, with his rifle.

  Make this fast and pretty, he thought.

  His finger squeezed on the trigger. A horn honked from the street below, followed by the squeal of a crash. Metal scraped metal. People started to scream. The two women on the deck turned around, the unknown woman stepping closer to the half-stucco wall and peering over the barrier just as Otis’s bullet loosed.

  The projectile slammed into the woman’s head. The target attempted to grab the woman’s limp body as it thudded to the deck like a sack of potatoes.

  ***

  “Fuck! How in the fuck did he miss?” screamed Claudia, staring at the blood that had started to seep over the deck. What was going on? For forty-eight days everything had gone according to plan, and now this!

  ***

  The assassins stared at each other, dumbfounded. Sixty-four hits, and never before had they messed up. Sixty-five—and they were in serious shit. The thought of taking out Parker crossed Boyd’s mind. But then when he saw the body of the wrong woman, her blood oozing out, he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Otis was too distraught to shoot. Panicking, they packed up and left. They had to disappear. Their orders were not to screw this up, and they had. They had to get the fuck out of Dodge, even leave the country if they could. And they would have to get their family out.

  ***

  Claudia heaved everything she could lay her hands on. It took less than two minutes to trash her Spartan apartment.

  ***

  Parker cradled Ida’s body while pulling her cell phone from her jeans pocket. She dialed the number. One night, not so long ago, Ida had come over completely freaked out, rambling about things Parker couldn’t comprehend. Ida had not gone into details, but she had programmed a phone number into Parker’s phone and told her to call it immediately if anything happened to her.

  “Hello.”

  Parker explained the situation in three sentences.

  “Don’t move, I’ll be right there,” the man said, before hanging up.

  Parker took his words literally; she didn’t move a muscle.

  ***

  Cousin Francis stormed out of his coffee shop in the South End. Francis—no one ever called him Frank or Fran—was in his mid-forties, but had kept his ginger hair cut short ever since he joined the army as a young man. His mother had pleaded with him to enlist, so he wouldn’t be sucked into the business. However, once she died, he left the army and returned home. Seven years in the army taught him discipline, a discipline that made him better at the business, since it kept his quick Irish temper in check. It also helped that he was, in fact, a trained killer—the army had taught him that above everything else. Francis demanded respect from everyone, and his superiors recognized the Irishman’s special skills.
They nurtured his talent, to their advantage. But it was only an advantage to them while Francis still wore a uniform; once he took off the uniform, it was a detriment to society. Cousin Francis was careful to use his ability for business, and business only. He never killed for personal reasons.

  Until now.

  The man arrived much faster than Parker was expecting, barging out onto the deck and staring down at Ida. A bullet hole sat smack dab in the middle of her forehead. The only solace for Cousin Francis was that Ida probably didn’t know what hit her.

  Francis looked across the yard and started to scan the apartment building, to see if he could pinpoint the exact spot. The shooter would have been several floors higher up, to get the best shot.

  Parker ignored the burly man who resembled a drill sergeant in crisp khakis and a starched polo. His olive eyes burned with fire, yet Parker didn’t care.

  “When did it happen?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  “I don’t know. I called you right away. She told me to call you if anything happened. I’m…”

  “I know who you are. You did the right thing. Cops are useless to me in this town.” He said, staccato after years of never really speaking to people. Normally, he only nodded or shook his head. He placed a hand on the student’s shoulder. Neither felt relief from the touch as they stared at the dead woman.

  Chapter Four

  Parker returned from her run and went into the bathroom to take some Advil for her sore knee. She lathered her left knee with white muscle cream and hobbled to her fridge for a gin and tonic. After grabbing an ice pack, she headed toward the back deck.

  When she opened the door to the deck, she nearly had a heart attack. Ida’s cousin sat in one of the deck chairs, a gun on the table to his right.

  “Jesus! You scared the crap out of me.”

  He shrugged.

  It had been two days since…‌the incident. Parker still could not comprehend or accept what had happened. She disappeared into the safety of her routine. When she thought about Ida, Parker felt herself on the brink of insanity. She wanted to keep her emotions under control—if she didn’t, Parker feared she’d end up like her mother. Routine was her only saving grace.

  Gathering her composure, she sat down on the other chair and placed a towel and an ice pack on her knee.

  “What happened to you?” Francis gestured to her knee.

  “Oh, nothing. Running makes my knee sore, that’s all.”

  “Ida said that about you.”

  “That I have a bad knee?” His comment puzzled Parker. She didn’t know that Ida had ever talked about her, let alone about something so trivial.

  The burly Irishman chuckled at her naivety. “No. She said that once you started something, you didn’t give up.”

  “Oh.” The student thought for a moment and glanced at the gun on the table. “I have to be honest, she didn’t mention you at all.” Parker waved to the gun.

  He laughed again, a mirthless chuckle. “No, I imagine she didn’t talk about me much.” Francis stared off in the distance, and then he leaned forward and looked Parker in the eyes. “You see, I came over here to kill you.”

  The student didn’t blink. “What changed your mind?”

  “How do you know I changed it?”

  “I guess I don’t. But it seems odd that you haven’t shot me yet.” Parker adjusted the ice pack and grimaced slightly.

  “I now know what Ida meant about you.”

  “Really.” Not a trace of curiosity flickered through Parker’s empty eyes.

  “She said you were the only person in a long time who impressed her. Once you put your mind to something, you wouldn’t back down. Fearless. There were other aspects Ida appreciated, but that you were fearless mattered the most to her.”

  “Is that why you changed your mind?”

  Francis shook his head. The waning sunlight danced on his close-cropped orange-tinted hair. “She changed my mind.” The cousin pulled a picture out of his back pocket and handed it over.

  Parker stared at the woman, only then noticing how alike they looked. “I’ve seen her before. I think she lives in this neighborhood.” Parker closed her eyes to think. “Yes, she runs the same time I do, every evening.”

  “I found her in your apartment.”

  “What?” Parker was starting to lose her composure. She pretended that her ice pack needed adjusting once again, to occupy her mind. She wanted to stay lost in details, not people.

  “When I picked the lock to the front door, I saw her in the kitchen. She bolted before I could stop her. Up close, I can tell you two apart.” He paused. “It’s a good thing, or you’d be dead.”

  Parker considered his words. Would being dead be such a bad thing? Everyone was gone. Now, she was sitting on her deck with a man she barely knew, talking about how he wanted to kill her. Really, what was there to live for? Without Ida, life seemed pointless. Torture, really.

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s the one they are after. I think your doppelgänger set you up to get killed, but they shot the wrong person.” He tapped Claudia’s picture, lost in thought. “There’s a man, a real bad man, in Colorado who wants her dead. I don’t know too much about it yet, but I think this woman wants you dead so she can take over your life. And it wouldn’t have been too hard for her to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know that you’re an orphan. The only person you cared about was my cousin. And now she’s gone. Ida told me you keep to yourself all of the time. Plus, you aren’t trying to run away from me or anyone. You seem resigned to your fate, no matter what.” He stated the facts bluntly.

  “How bad is this man?”

  “The worst of the worst.”

  Parker wanted to kill him, and the woman, to feel her fingers squeeze the life out of them. She swallowed some gin to bury the passion. Focus on the routine. “Who is this woman to him?” she asked.

  “She’s his wife. She took off with a lot of his money. He’s been trying to track her down for over a year.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  Francis glanced at his feet, and then at his gun. “I have my connections. I sniffed around to find out who hired them. When I found out about the wife, I thought she was you, and that my cousin was dead because of you.”

  “Well, she is dead because of me.”

  “So it seems. But you can’t go on thinking that. Those thoughts will drive you crazy. You can’t help how you look. Did you ever have any family in Colorado?”

  “Not that I know of. I was born in California. I never knew my father. In fact, I only knew my mother and her parents.” Parker paused, and then added as an afterthought, “They’re all dead now.”

  Francis nodded, not knowing what to say. There was no emotion in Parker’s voice, but the words cut to the quick. He sighed. “I don’t know how this woman found you, but she is trying to get you killed.” He leveled his gaze on the student, trying to get a feel for how the news affected her. There was an air of sadness about the girl that bothered him.

  Parker raised her arms above her head, massaging the back of her neck, and sighed. “Do you have any suggestions? I don’t think I can find this guy and explain that it was a big misunderstanding.”

  “I would love to see you try, though.” He smiled ruefully. “Don’t worry about it. My cousin loved you, which means you have me now. I’ll track these people down. Besides, the killers are probably hiding from this guy since they screwed up big time. He isn’t the type of guy most people want to mess with, let alone fuck up a job for.” Francis knew he would relish taking out the assassins and the man. Any man who sent two killers after a woman deserved to be executed.

  “They fucked up the job?” Parker had a hard time grasping this statement. She worked with numbers, not people. And killing people—a job?

  “They screwed up by killing my cousin. Let’s just say that, in this part of the world, I’m known and
respected.”

  The student stared at the apartment buildings across the way. Did the woman live there? Was she watching them right now? “Hey, I’m going to order some pizza. Do you want any?” Parker said out of the blue.

  “Thanks, kid. Next time. I have a business meeting.” He got up to leave, but then paused. “You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

  After he left, Parker ordered a pizza.

  She looked down at the table and saw that the gun was still there. Parker stared at it until the pizza arrived.

  ***

  A couple of nights later, when Parker returned from her run and wandered out on her deck, gin and tonic in hand, she found Francis sitting there with a German Shepherd.

  “Hello,” she said.

  The dog sat to attention. The cousin patted his head. “Easy, Fritz, it’s okay.”

  The dog, Fritz, relaxed and settled back down, resting his head on his front paws.

  Parker took a seat, her eyes on another gun placed on the table. How many guns did she need? She had hidden the first gun in her underwear drawer, next to her grandfather’s antique watch.

  “Don’t worry, I’m keeping this one.” The cousin motioned to the gun. “I always keep it next to me whenever I can. Obviously, I can’t in public, but I don’t think you’ll turn me in.” He winked. It wasn’t a natural gesture for him; Parker wondered whether he had something in his eye.

  “How long have you had the dog?” She couldn’t think of anything else to say, but felt compelled to speak to him.

  “You mean how long have you had your dog? Fritz was Ida’s dog. I watched him occasionally, when she was with you or on business trips. A couple of years ago, I got her this dog for protection.” Francis patted the dog’s head affectionately. “Fritz is a sweetheart to those he’s supposed to be nice to, but he can be a killer if need be. You’ll love him. Now you won’t have to run alone, and you won’t have to deal with any more unexpected visitors.” Francis folded his hands in his lap methodically, waiting for a reaction.