The Killing League (17 page)

He then saved the results and sent the new statistics out to the gambling sites and administrators. He checked the gambling boards and fan websites.

The Killing League was getting some serious buzz.

Not only in Vegas, but he suspected there was some serious attention being paid in the halls of the FBI, or at least, in Wallace Mack’s world.

The Commissioner figured Mack had at least sniffed out a part of what was going on. God, he hoped so. He couldn’t wait to rip Mack’s life apart, one more time.

The Killing League would be his masterpiece. Right now, it reminded him of the first round of any major sports tournament, where there are no upsets, and the higher seeded teams crush the lower seeded teams. It was always the next stage where things really got interesting.

He clapped his hands together.

He couldn’t wait for Round Two.

69.

Vegas

The lights on the Vegas board blinked rapidly. Small groups of people sitting at tables glanced up at the big board and watched as the numbers changed.

THE KILLING LEAGUE

Florence Nightmare. 10-1.

Truck Drivin’ Man. 15-1.

The Butcher. 30-1.

Family Man. 15-1.

Lady of the Evening. 7-1.

Blue Blood. 5-1

The Messiah. 5-1

The Commissioner. 3-1.

ELIMINATION ROUND TWO

70.

Florence Nightmare

Ruth Dykstra was lost in one of her paintings. She listened to the men playing bocce in front of her, heard the chatter of men and women speaking Italian, smelled the sizzle of sausage, peppers and onions grilling in the big outdoor kitchen.

She didn’t like this loud Italian festival where her target had chosen to spend his afternoon. So she went back to her living room and her canvases. She could almost feel the brush in her hand. She saw a thick ribbon of vermillion red laid onto the canvas, then a palette knife smearing it in a ragged streak across a dark umber sky. Ruth closed her eyes. The colors and textures were like waves to her, the kind she vaguely remembered floating on in the ocean, that one time her father took her to the beach. Ruth rode the paint, felt its dark swirls comfort her.

“Oh!” she heard a bunch of the old Italian men exclaim. She wrenched her internal vision away from the mental canvas and looked at the bocce court.

“Hey, you finally won one,” said a short guy with spray paint black hair, black clothes and a thick gold chain around his bright red neck.

“Get used to it, Tommy,” a tall guy in dress pants said.

The men shook hands and started packing up the bocce equipment.

Ruth turned back to the long cafeteria-style table and looked at the crowd before her. There were all shapes and sizes of people lined up for pizza, gelato, or bowls of tripe swimming in red sauce. The crowd was loud, boisterous and ugly. She felt affronted by the crude faces that slurped up pasta and drank red wine from little plastic cups.

Ruth drank from her Styrofoam cup of coffee. She didn’t really drink it, she sipped, barely wetting her lips. She hated coffee, hated the way it made her feel jittery. But she needed to be doing something.

She watched with her peripheral vision as the tall man wearing dress pants strolled from the bocce court to the line in front of the beverage counter. Most of the players were getting plastic cups filled with beer.

It was time.

Ruth stood and held her cup of coffee in her left hand. She circled the table, and walked toward the line of men waiting to get their beer.

In her right hand was the syringe, no bigger than a thimble. It was hooked onto a small circle of metal that went around her finger. From the back of the hand, it looked like a simple eternity band. But the syringe’s capsule and needle were laid flat against the inside of her palm. She simply had to spread her fingers wide to straighten the needle. She could then plunge it into a body part, squeezing her fingers together to hold the ring in place.

When she was even with the tall bocce player, she tripped and her scalding hot coffee poured directly onto the back left pocket of the man’s pants, followed by Ruth’s right hand which drove the needle directly into his buttocks. The man jumped and swore, turning to face Ruth. She turned to look back at the nonexistent crack that had tripped her up.

“I’m so sorry, sir,” she said, and rushed to grab a napkin from the table, her face still turned away from the line of men who were talking in loud voices.

Ruth reached the end of the drink counter where the napkins were and continued right around it and disappeared behind the makeshift wall of the temporary bar.

She walked quickly away as she heard the men’s voices change. Someone shouted and cursed.

Ruth smiled and pictured the painting in her head. A thick line of red shot across the expanse of the composition, electrifying it. The image sent a shiver of pleasure up and down her entire body.

71.

Mack

The Technology and Information division within the FBI is located on the seventh floor of the Hoover building. Reznor called ahead and less than an hour later, she and Mack were back inside the building.

They sat down across from Agent Wanda Fillmore, a deathly pale and slightly overweight woman with enormous black eyes that reminded Mack of drawings of Emily Dickinson.

Reznor had told Mack that Fillmore owed her a favor. Apparently, Reznor had protected the young computer expert from an internal character assassination levied by a co-worker jealous of Fillmore’s virtuoso skills on the computer.

“Agent Fillmore is the one who discovered the shadow program on your computer,” Reznor said.

Mack nodded, wondering briefly if she had looked at everything on his computer, including his personal files.

“So tell me what you’re looking for,” Fillmore said. Her voice was surprisingly high and soft. Almost like a child’s voice.

Reznor briefly outlined the problem to her and she looked from Reznor back to Mack.

“Do you really think he went in through the official access portals?” she said.

Mack shook his head. “No, probably not,” he said. “We figure this guy is a pro. He most likely figured out a way to either get around the official entry, or he somehow created a fake profile.”

“But you’re the best, Wanda, and we figured you might take this as a challenge,” Reznor said.

Mack saw the color red flash through Fillmore’s pale cheeks. He figured the young woman didn’t get too many compliments.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

“You can do it, Wanda,” Reznor said.

Mack hoped she was right.

72.

Truck Drivin’ Man

It was the sound that startled Roger Dawson.

He had waited outside the redneck bar where his target, a prison guard, got plastered every night. Dawson couldn’t blame him. If he’d had a job in this jerkwater part of Michigan, he’d be knocking back beers and whiskeys every goddamned night, too.

When his assignment got to his car and fumbled for his keys, Dawson stepped from behind a truck parked next to him and swung.

But it didn’t sound right.

He had expected a thud when he drove the aluminum baseball bat into the lower back of his target. Instead of the sound of a wallop of metal applied to the muscle and bone of an unsuspecting man, the telltale sound of metal hitting metal filled the air.

Dawson felt the vibration run up his hands and he winced.

The man was pushed forward by the force of the blow. He bounced against his car and landed on his back.

Dawson tightened his grip on the bat and saw with pleasure that the man was reaching for his lower back, a look of pain and horror on his face. Yeah, did you feel that, buddy? Dawson thought. Get ready for more.

Dawson stepped up, brought the bat back, the man’s head a big soft target for the pain he was about to unleash. Just like that woman in the parking garage in San Francisco.

He’d knocked that one out of the fucking park.

Dawson grinned at his own wit and his biceps bulged. His forearm muscles stood out in stark animal rage as he reared back. The smile left his face and he gritted his teeth, relishing the horror he was about to deliver.

The man’s hand reappeared from the small of his back and Dawson spotted the gun.
He had hit a goddamned gun.

Dawson swung, trying to beat what he knew was coming. Bullet proved faster than bat. The shot sounded a millisecond before Dawson completed his swing. It straightened him and the crack of the bat against his victim’s skull sounded weak.

A searing pain shot through Dawson’s shoulder and he felt the bat fly from his hands. He staggered back, noting with satisfaction that even with a half-assed swing the bastard’s head was dented in and that he’d flopped back onto the pavement, blood draining from his right ear.

Dawson’s head spun. Blood poured down his left arm. He had to get away.

He staggered to his feet, heard the door to the bar open behind him. Country music spilled out into the night air. He would have to run for it. He took a deep breath and stepped forward just as something hard hit him in the back of the head.

Dawson stumbled forward and felt his face slam into the pavement.

Not good
, he thought.

73.

Nicole

She double checked the address given to her by Mary Cooper, the private investigator. It was a residential neighborhood, just north of Los Angeles proper.

Nicole pulled the Acura to a stop kitty corner from the house where “Kurt” supposedly lived.

She took a deep breath. A part of her had wanted to forget it, just move on and ignore him. But Nicole had learned the hard way that sometimes it was better to initiate the confrontation on your own terms, at your own time. Yeah, she could talk to him at class, but then he would be prepared, he would expect to see her there. Now, she could catch him off guard, hopefully surprise him into telling the real truth.

And that was why she was here. The truth. She just wanted to know why Kurt had approached her and why he had lied.

Did he know about her past? Or was it just a typical game for him?

She got out of the Acura, locked it, and walked to the front door of the house. Nicole rang the doorbell and waited. She tried again, but no answer.

Nicole walked around to the side of the house and peeked in the garage’s window. Two cars were inside. Someone had to be home. She wasn’t going to just walk away now.

She turned back to walk toward the front of the house when she sensed movement behind her. Nicole ducked and turned, putting distance between herself and whoever was behind her.

Kurt lunged at her but she deflected his outreached hands, drove an elbow into his jaw, and a straight left into his kidney. He sank to his knees and reached behind his back. Nicole’s hand flashed to her ankle and the knife was in her hand and then at Kurt’s throat. He brought his hand back out.

It was empty.

“Honey?” a woman’s voice called. A pretty brunette peeked her head around the corner of the garage. She let out a little yelp when she saw Nicole.

“I’m calling 911!” she screamed. Her head disappeared back behind the garage.

“NO!” Kurt yelled. The woman’s head reappeared, but she looked only at Nicole.

Kurt looked up at Nicole as well.

“I can explain,” he said. Nicole wasn’t sure if he meant her, or the woman who was obviously his wife.

74.

The Butcher

When James Milford opened the door to his apartment, he immediately had a flashback. He wasn’t standing on the threshold of his cheap one-bedroom apartment, just back from a long day at the body shop. He wasn’t finally home, his arms and legs tired from the hard work with a backache from standing on the concrete floor all day.

No, he was back in prison.

His second day in prison, to be exact, when they finally came for him.

That day, James Milford had received no warning from anyone else in the yard. The only notice he received was from the bolt of terror that came directly from his nut sack, zipped up his spine and shot adrenaline through every part of his body.

He had turned and surprised the would-be attacker with his own shank. Word spread quickly among the population that James Milford was the real deal.

So when he pushed the door to his apartment open, the same electrical charge ran up his nerve center. Where it came from, he did not know. In fact, after the attack in the prison, he’d often wondered what had given him that moment’s warning. Was it God? Some ancient, primeval instinct?

He never came up with an answer.

Now, that same intuition took over. Somehow, he knew everything was wrong.

So he simply let go of his keys, opened his hands and watched the older man with the giant meat cleaver burst from the darkness of the apartment and swing at his head. Milford leaned back, saw the enormous knife blade whistle past his face. He heard the giant knife bury itself in the cheap hollow wood door.

The attacker looked at Milford, then at the knife.

Milford was surprised that he had no idea who this man was. He figured it would be a face from prison. Someone he had wronged. Or even the face of a family member, a relative of one of his victims.

But this man, with the slicked back hair, the weird face, he had never seen before.

The attacker lunged for the knife now wedged into the door. He tried to free it from the cheap fiberboard.

Milford, too, grabbed the handle of the knife, placing his hand over his attacker’s hand.

But with his left arm, he drove his elbow into the strange man’s jaw.

The man staggered. Milford wrenched the knife free from the door and swung it in a short arc, much smaller than his attacker’s haymaker. The blade entered the man’s cheek and cut through his mouth, severed his tongue.