Agon (10 page)

He’d learned long ago, while in prison
of all places, that cleaning up after yourself saved you a nice,
long term behind bars or strapped to a chair while they filled you
with lethal drugs to kill you. Two of his roomies had gone up
because they’d trusted too easily. Hell, one of them even had their
own brother turn them in when he’d buried a body for him. And Jerry
had just the way to clean up after himself in the sublevels of his
home.

He’d had the oversized kiln installed
about a week after he’d gotten out of prison. Another mate had told
him that he was going to burn the bodies and anything related to
their deaths after he killed them. He’d told Jerry that even a
fucking gun could be disposed of, just remember to take out the
bullets before it was fired up. It was the reason he was sitting
behind bars now. His fucking gun had gone off when the cops had
come to ask him about a totally unrelated crime concerning his car.
And an ex-con wasn’t supposed to have any sort of firearm, and
there he was with an entire kiln of them.

It was a little on the smelly side,
his bunk mate had told him, much like a burning roast was. But it
was a permanent way to dispose of all the evidence that would
otherwise come back to haunt him. He moved to the lower levels of
his house to get the necessary items to get rid of the two
idiots.

It took him nearly three hours to get
them to the basement, and another hour to figure out that he
couldn’t get them both in at the same time. He decided that he’d do
the woman first, then Chad. He was stuffing her body into the kiln
when he heard the doorbell ring. Moving through the basement to his
computers, he was surprised to see who he thought was a cop
standing on his doorstep. And he most assuredly didn’t look happy
to be there.

Jerry closed the lid of the kiln and
decided that he’d wait to start it. No sense in having the cops
smell what he was doing. Jerry was still laughing as he made his
way to the front of the house. When he opened the door, he stared
at the man standing there, not having a clue what to say. There was
something about him that made Jerry’s balls tighten to his body and
his skin feel too tight.

“
Jerry Craft?” He nodded
before he could think maybe he shouldn’t answer that. “My name is
Michael. You and I have to have a conversation.”

“
Michael who?” The man
shrugged, and Jerry frowned at him. “You won’t tell me who you are,
yet you expect me to allow you into my home. You’re stupider than
my ne…some other person I know if you think that I’m going to allow
you to come in simply because you think I should.” The man smiled,
and Jerry took a step back. He was terrified, yet he had no idea
why.

“
I never asked for
permission to enter. I simply asked if you were him and said that
we needed to speak.” Michael smiled. “It would be in your best
interest for you to speak to me. I have a great deal of information
about your future that you would need to know.”

“
I think not.” Michael
looked to his left, then back at him. Jerry looked as well,
wondering if the man had someone hidden around the corner to attack
when he let him in. But there was no one there, and he knew the man
was off his rocker. “What the hell do you want?”

“
Nothing from that area, I
assure you.” Jerry frowned again when Michael laughed. “I have
simply come to speak to you about Judith. She and the rest of us
would like for you to leave her alone. It would be in your best
interest if you were to heed what I have to say to you. You may
live longer, that’s for sure.”

“
Leave her alone, you say?
Are you by chance threatening me? I certainly hope the fuck you’re
not.” Michael smiled but said nothing more. “And what business is
this of yours what I may or may not be doing to my niece? You
sleeping with her? Fucking her maybe? I’ll have you know that she’s
not right in the head. Hasn’t been since she was a kid.”

“
She’s very well in the
head, and no, I am not sleeping with her. She is not my wife. She
is meant for another.” Jerry wondered what that had to do with
anything, but before he could ask, the man spoke again. “She is
living with a man that means a great deal to me, and I’d very much
like it if you would leave them in peace. Whatever you think you
need from her will do you no good if you are caught harming her.
There are others that are much stronger than you that would cause
you a great deal of…harm.”

“
I’d never hurt her unless
she tried something with me first.” At least not right away, he
thought. Jerry slipped his hand into his pocket to touch his gun
and found it wasn’t there. He tried to think where he’d left it and
was coming up blank. Jerry wanted this guy gone so he could finish
what he’d been doing and find his fucking gun. “You need to leave
now.”

“
Your gun is in the lower
levels with the two bodies you took there just before I arrived. I
believe that I interrupted your working with them. It’s a shame
that you killed them, as they did very little to warrant your
murdering them. But I suppose you are used to killing for pleasure.
It is, from what I know of you, something that you do a great deal
of the time instead of talking things out.”

Jerry held onto the doorframe tighter
but said nothing. How the hell did he know about…?

“
You should also be aware
that Judith has a good head on her shoulders and can locate any of
the bodies you have killed regardless of what you might do with
them in the kiln. They have records of such purchases as well.
‘What would a man who has no artist ability want with something so
expensive?’ is what they will ask you just before they look into
what you have been doing with it.”

Jerry stood there for several seconds
while the man smiled at him. He finally shut the door and leaned
against it to catch his breath. They knew about his kiln? About the
bodies down in the sublevels of his home? How had this Michael
known they were down there, much less what he’d been about to do
with them?

Moving to his office again, he sat
down and looked at the two blood stains on the floor. The chair
would need to be disposed of, as well as the carpet beneath it.
He’d never purchased expensive things for this room for this very
reason. He contemplated the conversation he’d just had with
Michael, even though he tried his best to think he’d dreamed the
entire thing up.

Judith was telling them things about
him. The guy had to be a fed, just as Bonds had told him about. The
problem was, he’d not been able to deal with the commissioner yet
and the man could be telling them all sorts of things as well.
Jerry tried to think what Bonds knew other than he was supposed to
cover up the deaths of the three men at Jelly, Jams, and Preserves.
A stupid name for a shop, but then she’d never had any business
smarts.

Jerry sat there for another hour just
telling himself, over and over, that things were not as bad as he
thought, and that the conversation with Michael had never really
happened and that he’d been overly tired. That was it. He was under
a great deal of pressure and hadn’t been sleeping well. Perhaps he
needed to fly out west, get himself a hotel room and a couple of
lovers, and forget about things for a while.

But this wasn’t something he was going
to let slow him, not when he was this close to the finish line. He
just had to work faster, that was all. Pulling out his tablet, he
began making corrections on his timeline.

Jerry had two shipments coming in the
day after tomorrow, and then another one the next week. He wanted
to have Judith with him during both these times because she’d be
able to tell him when he was being watched. And she would, too, if
she wanted to make it to her next birthday.

Jerry thought about what Michael had
said about her. She was living with a man now, was she? That would
help keep her in line if he were to get the guy and use him. Jerry
would have to make use of this information, and nearly reached for
the phone to tell Chad to get on it. But the blood stain was a
reminder that he was no longer with him. As much as he hated to
find another assistant, that was something else he was going to
need to do and added it to his list under the heading,
“Priority.”

Finding Judith’s man would be a piece
of cake for him. It would be simple, he supposed, to call the man
up, have him meet him for lunch, and take him then. Or he could go
to her house, barge in, and take the man. Jerry wasn’t stupid, he
had been in this line of work for a long time, and taking one man
would be easy enough with the right persuaders. A gun and rope
would do the trick. Smiling, Jerry decided that first thing
tomorrow he’d go to her house and wait for her to go out, then nab
the man and bring him back here. Simple.

He was deep in his planning when he
remembered the bodies in the basement. Jerry started to go down to
start the cleaning up process when his phone rang. He answered it
with a bark of his name and cringed when laughter greeted
him.

“
You should learn to be
more polite when answering your device.” Jerry snarled at the man,
but he laughed harder. “I have called to tell you that you will not
succeed in taking the man from her house. He is much smarter than
you and a good deal stronger.”

Jerry felt his entire mind seize up.
Looking around the room, he tried to see where the cameras were
hidden, and then looked down at his tablet. It had more information
on it than any device he owned, and he wondered if the man who had
sold it to him had lied about how safe it was. He’d purchased it
because it was easy to destroy when necessary, but held all the
information he needed at any given time.

“
I have no cameras in your
home, Jerrod Craft, nor do I have access to your little computer. I
could, I suppose, but I do not.” Jerry hadn’t been called by his
first name since…well, since his mother had died. “You should know
that she is very disappointed in her sons. Very much so indeed. She
said that her little donut would not have done so many bad things
had she raised him better. I told her it wasn’t her but you. You’re
simply a man who does not remember the upbringing she instilled
within you.”

Jerry put the phone in the cradle and
then got up and unplugged it from the wall. He was suddenly very
afraid. Not only did the man know about his plans, but Michael had
as well. Someone was talking out of turn, and the sooner he found
out who they were going to be dead. But it was far too late for him
to stop now. It was far too late for a great many
things.

Jerry was going to have to forget
about the information that had come from the caller and the visit.
First of all, he refused to believe it was real, and secondly…well,
secondly he was going to kill whoever was telling on him. It would
all fall to pieces before he could get Judith to him if he let a
couple of crackpots fucking scare him off. Finishing his work, he
found himself looking around the room more and more until he had to
leave it. Setting up a temporary office in his dining room, he
worked until he couldn’t work anymore. It was well after midnight
when he closed up his tablet, but he felt as if he’d made great
progress. Things were going to go down in the morning.

He was in bed when he started to
laugh. Judith was going to pay for giving him such a fright. There
was no way that anyone but she knew about his mother and her
calling him donut. It had been his passion as a child, eating
donuts as if there would be no more of them. Judith had been very
busy indeed if she knew that shit. She’d probably heard it from her
father. And if he wasn’t already dead, Jerry thought he’d find him
and kill him again. Closing his eyes, he let sleep take
him.

The dream settled over him slowly. The
man he’d shared a cell with was sitting at a long table with
someone Jerry had done a job with as a teenager. There were others
there that he knew. Names not so much, but faces for sure. He found
himself sitting at the head of the table when food was brought out
to them on large platters. He could actually smell the roast beef
and gravy. And he could almost swear that he could smell apple pie
coming from somewhere deep within the house.

Conversations flowed easily enough
around the table, he noticed. He caught up on information that was
outdated but still fun to hear. His cell mate had told him a story
about his first job, a story that Jerry had heard countless times
before but still thought funny. He told it with such gusto that
Jerry could swear that he’d been there with him.

Still food came to them. Platters of
meat, steaming hot and rare looking, just the way he liked it.
Bottles of wine were being poured into glasses around them, as well
as potatoes and vegetables being served from wide bowls. Jerry
never remembered eating any of the feast, but his plate was forever
empty of anything but scraps of food and bits of gravy. Whenever he
seemed to think about it, someone, a pretty man, would fill his
plate again and he’d look at someone else to talk to.

The men who served them were also
familiar. One he knew that he’d fucked for a month when he’d been
let out of prison. Another had been someone he’d done as a kid.
They didn’t look any different to him, still young and beautiful.
And some of them were actually naked. One such beauty offered his
cock to him as he filled his plate. Jerry, of course, never one to
turn down something free, suckled at him as he poured wine into the
glasses he could reach easily. He thought about this cock being
sucked by this man, and leaned back for him to take him when he
moved away.