She parked her butt on the edge of the bed and stroked his temple with the knife blade.
“You know, Senator, you’ve caused a lot of problems for me. You had my passport cancelled. I could lose my job. But you knew that when you cancelled it, didn’t you?”
He nodded his head vigorously. “Yes, but I didn’t mean to harm you. I just wanted to get your attention. I can have it unpulled with one phone call.”
“Oh, you can, can you? Who would you call?”
He hesitated. He looked her in the eyes, then turned away. “I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you.”
“Sure you can, Senator. And you will. It’s just a question of when.”
She got up and walked to the foot of the bed. She leaned over, placing her left elbow on the bed. The senator couldn’t see what she was doing because he was bound too tight, but he could feel her weight on the bed as it sank slightly. Then he felt something sharp poking against his scrotum, just below his testicles.
“Senator, I’ve heard that a lot of men your age have prostate problems. Perhaps I should give you a biopsy and send it to the lab.”
“No. Don’t do that. Can’t we work something out?”
She continued, as though she hadn’t heard a word he said. “Or maybe I should just cut off your dick and send it to your wife. Does she know you wanted to stick it in me?”
“No. Please be reasonable. There’s so much I can do for you. You want those branches in Florida and Georgia? You’ve got them. You want that merger in Europe? You’ve got it. Just let me go.”
“Ah, Senator, you don’t really expect me to believe you’d help me now, do you?”
“But I will! I will!”
“Senator, let’s get something straight. No amount of promises is going to get me to change my mind. I know that if I let you go, you’ll either have me arrested or killed. I don’t like either of those options. So I’ve decided to kill you. In self-defense.”
“But what about your passport? What about your job?”
“I’ll worry about them later, Senator. For now, you should just be worried about yourself, and all the pain you’re going to experience in the next few seconds.”
She got up from the bed and walked toward the head board. “You know, Senator, I hadn’t decided whether to kill you or give you the money until this morning. I was actually thinking about giving you the million dollars.”
“You don’t have to give me the million dollars. Keep it. Just let me go.”
“Ah, if only it were that easy, Senator. You’ve forced me to commit a felony. Stealing a million dollars is a felony, you know. And then there’s Ken.”
“What about Ken? What have you done to him?”
Annie looked into his eyes. “I had to kill him. Just to be on the safe side. I figured he probably knew about my Hong Kong days, too, since you good ol’ boys like to share that kind of story. In fact, it was probably Ken who told you about me instead of the other way around, since you have your assistants do all that kind of research. Am I right, Senator?”
“Yes, Ken is the one who told me about your past.”
“Does anyone else in the office know about my past?”
“Why? Are you going to kill them, too?”
“Oh, Senator, you’re thinking too many steps ahead. The only thing you need to worry about is what I’m going to do to you.”
“Let’s get back to the other question I asked. Do you remember what it was? I asked you something just before I offered to do a biopsy of your prostate.”
“Yes. My contact at the IRS.”
“Well, Senator, what’s his name? Or is it a she?”
“It’s a he. His name’s Mike Richards.”
“And what does this Mike Richards do? What’s his title?”
“He’s an assistant commissioner.”
“Oh, that’s pretty high up the chain of command, Senator. How did you get him to pull my passport? Do you have something on him?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then like what?”
“Sometimes he does things for me and sometimes I do things for him.”
“What kind of things do you do for him?”
“Sometimes I give him information.”
“What kind of information?”
“As you know, I’m Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. I’m on a few other important committees as well, including a subcommittee on antitrust. Sometimes I get information about pending mergers. Information that’s not generally available.”
“Do you mean insider information?”
“Yes. Sometimes I trade on that information. I give it to people and they give me things in return.”
“Like revoking a passport here and there to convince people to give you million dollar bribes?”
“Yes.”
“And do you do this kind of thing often, Senator?”
“Not too often.”
“How often is not too often?”
“Well, in the case of Mike, it’s just a couple of times a year.”
“And what does Mike do with the information you give him?”
“He buys stock in whatever company’s about to get acquired in a hostile takeover. Or in a friendly takeover. No matter what kind of takeover it is, the stock price is going to shoot up as soon as the merger information becomes public.”
“So you and Mike are engaging in the same kind of insider trading that other people get arrested for.”
The Senator didn’t say anything, but glanced at the knife Annie was holding.
She let out a sigh. “Well, Senator, it’s time to move on to the next question. Where does Mike live?”
“What? What are you going to do to him? He’s untouchable.”
She smirked. “Like you’re untouchable, Senator?”
She walked around the room, looking at the furniture and works of art on the walls.
“These paintings look expensive, Senator. How did you acquire them?”
“They were gifts.”
“Gifts? From satisfied constituents, or from people you shook down for bribes?”
“A little bit of both.”
“Oh, Senator, I’m disappointed in you. You’re abusing your position. Isn’t one of your tasks as a government official to protect property rights?”
He just looked at her as she walked back and forth, continuing to look at his collection.
“Instead of protecting rights, you use your office to violate them.”
“Well, Senator, are you going to tell me where Mike lives, or am I going to have to give you a biopsy?”
“I don’t know exactly where he lives. It’s somewhere in Falls Church.”
She turned and looked at him. “Well, I suppose that’s good enough for now.”
“What are you going to do with that information? Are you going to kill him? You’ll never get your passport back if you kill him.”
She smiled. “Maybe. We’ll see.” She continued to pace back and forth. “What else does Mike do for you? Besides pulling people’s passports?”
“The last two times I went up for re-election he had his people audit my opponent.”
“Hmmm. Interesting. And what did they find?”
“Not much. But my last opponent underreported some income. Once that information hit the six o’clock news it probably cost him a few points, which is all I needed to win re-election.”
“You must be very proud of yourself, Senator.”
He remained silent. Annie looked at her watch. “It’s getting late, Senator. It’s time to do what I came here to do.”
“No. Wait. Can’t we come to an …”
She placed the duct tape across his mouth before he could finish his sentence.
She remembered what the guy at the knife store had told her. Go for the soft parts. But she didn’t want to stab into the carotid artery. That would cause a gush of blood, and she wanted to minimize the messiness. She didn’t want blood to squirt all over her face and hair.
>
She recalled seeing medics on television puncture the skin just below the Adam’s apple to insert a breathing tube, and people who otherwise had breathing problems would sometimes have a tube inserted there without a problem. She didn’t know much about anatomy, but she figured there would be less bleeding if she thrust the pointy blade in the same spot the medics did on that TV show.
***
The Senator looked at her face. Something had changed. Her eyes were open, but it looked like her mind was in another place. Scary. Determined.
He watched as she mounted him. He could feel the bed sag as she leaned forward and gazed into his eyes.
He felt something cold against his throat, something sharp. It was penetrating his throat, slowly, with surgical precision, just below the Adam’s apple. Annie was staring at him, a look of hate and fear in her eyes. He could feel a sharp object slicing through his windpipe. He couldn’t breathe. He was gasping uncontrollably. He could feel liquid flowing into his throat. It felt like some water had gone down the wrong pipe. Except it wasn’t water. It was his own blood.
He could see Annie getting off of him. She was putting the sheet over his naked body, up to his shoulders. He could see the blade in her hand as she thrust it, full force, into his solar plexus. It was sharp. It went deep, but he couldn’t scream. The air had stopped coming out of his lungs.
He could feel a dull pain as she ripped it out of his solar plexus. Then a sharp pain as she thrust it into his abdomen. She was shouting something at him but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. His full attention was on his breathing and his abdomen. She ripped it out again, then thrust it in at an angle, just below his balls and into his prostate. It was the sharpest pain he had ever felt. He could feel her twist it, and the pain became unbearable. His whole body stiffened. But he couldn’t scream. He had no air to expel. Then everything faded to black and the pain stopped.
***
Annie was shaking all over. Her lips were quivering. Her plan had worked. Although she had caused him to bleed profusely, the only blood she had on herself was on the hand that held the knife. Covering his body with the sheet had prevented most of the blood from splattering onto her.
She got off the bed and walked calmly into the bathroom. She made sure not to leave any DNA. The first time she went into the bathroom, shortly after her arrival, all she did was stand there, making sure to touch nothing. She flushed the toilet holding a wash cloth to push down on the lever. She just wanted Senator Garrett to hear the toilet flush so he would think she was getting prepared.
Now she had to wash off the blood, so she grabbed the same wash cloth and used it to turn on the water. She rinsed the knife and the latex gloves. Then she walked over to her backpack, peeled off the gloves, placed them in a plastic bag and exchanged them for a new pair. She grabbed the bottle of peroxide and poured some of it onto the wash cloth. She went over to the bed, removed the duct tape and wiped the senator’s lips thoroughly. Some of her lipstick was on them, and probably some of her DNA, too. She pinched his nose with her left thumb and forefinger, tilted back his head, and poured some of the peroxide into his mouth, and especially on his tongue, which probably also had some of her DNA on it.
She lifted his head and poured peroxide on the parts she might have caressed, then poured a generous batch of it all over his face and neck. She lifted the sheets and fully covered his chest and arms with it. She made sure to pour it all over his hands, and especially under his nails. Any part of his body that might have touched her got a healthy dose of peroxide.
She slipped on her street clothes, put the red dress and heels into the backpack, then poured some more peroxide onto the wash cloth. She swabbed the floor any place where she might have stepped with her bare feet. Then she tossed the wash cloth and knife into a plastic bag she had brought along for the occasion. She walked toward the door and grabbed the million dollar suitcase on her way out. She would return it to the bank on Monday. She was a whore, not a thief. She placed great value on property rights. The money wasn’t hers. It belonged to her bank’s customers. She would find a way to solve her IRS problem later.
She walked up to the twenty-second floor, got on the elevator and took it to the parking garage in the basement. She waited in a dark corner until the garage door opened, then slipped out after the car that had opened it was out of sight.
As she walked back toward her hotel room, the thoughts of what had transpired over the last few hours flowed through her mind. She reflected on her actions. During her undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania she took a class in political philosophy. It was the course that introduced her to western ideas. She really loved some of the things America’s Founding Fathers had to say about the relationship between the individual and the state. Such concepts were almost foreign in Asia. American political philosophy was particularly unique, better even than the other western variations.
One of the questions in the course was “When does the killing of political leaders become morally justifiable?” Killing the Hitlers, Stalins and Pol Pots of the world is easy to justify. Murderous tyrants need to be killed. But what if our leaders are merely idiots, or perhaps corrupt, petty tyrants who aren’t in the same league as Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot? How much damage can we allow them to do? How many of our rights can we allow them to take away, before killing them becomes justifiable homicide?
Annie went over in her mind the conversations she had with Senator Garrett. The things he did. The threats he made. She concluded that she had done the right thing. The legal system had failed. Killing him was not murder. It was justifiable homicide. She had done all Americans a favor by killing him.
As she turned the corner she recalled something someone had said in a movie. “There are three kinds of people in the world – sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs.” She reflected on what she had just done and decided that she was a sheep dog, someone who protects the weak from the predators. Maybe that was her purpose in this life. To protect people who couldn’t protect themselves.
THE END
(or maybe it’s just the beginning)
NOTE TO THE READER: If you believe that corrupt politicians such as Senator Garrett deserve to be killed more than once, you can experience him getting killed a second time in Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OJMWLK2 in a different way and by a different person.
NOTE 2: If you liked this story, please consider writing a review on Amazon and Goodreads.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Tammy Barley, Yaz Hernandez, Véronique Rabus and Joelle Maximilien-Miller for the valuable comments they made to an earlier draft of this manuscript.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Before becoming a novelist, Robert W. McGee was a professor, attorney, CPA and consultant. He has published 58 nonfiction books and has lectured or worked in more than 30 countries. Former clients include The United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the Central Intelligence Agency. He holds 13 earned doctorates from universities in the United States and four European countries and has won 18 gold and 9 silver medals in Taekwondo National Championship tournaments. He has been ranked in the Top-10 in the world in the Songahm Taekwondo style. He spends most of his time in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Southeast Asia and Europe.
Information about the author’s other works can be found at
http://RobertWMcGee.com
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Annie and the Senator: A Story of Vigilante Justice (Annie Chan Thrillers Book 1) Page 4
