Don’t Mess With Me
I raised my binoculars and watched as the kid left the envelope on the floor, picked up his bike and sped away. A few seconds later, the door opened and he stepped out. He looked this side and that, and noticed the bike receding, the kid pedalling furiously. As if a couple hundred furiously, I’d say.
He then noticed the envelope and bent down to pick it up. For a moment, I wondered what would happen if he opened it inside, but he didn’t wait. Better for me.
I knew what the note said. I had written it half an hour ago.
I know who you are. I know what you do. I know what’s in the trunk of your car. Meet me at the Yellow Beach, pier 3, 20:00 sharp. Bring two thousand.
I had to give it to him: the guy was cool. Possibly ex-military, I judged, due to his stance and demeanour, and my life depends on judging people correctly. And I seldom err. He barely reacted: a casual bystander wouldn’t have noticed anything. But I did. I saw the surprise, then the anger, then the resolution, all three feelings flickering by in seconds.
He went inside. I checked the time: seven thirty had already passed; he needed to hurry. I had timed it on purpose. Now everything depended on my having assessed him correctly. And that had been difficult, because all I knew of him were through the news.
The guy had made a mistake. All of them do, sooner or later, according to everything I had ever read. Deep inside, most of them want recognition. In order to have recognition, they need the publicity. And to have more publicity, they increase their pace, or go bizarre. They make mistakes, and are finally caught. Some experts say they want to be caught from the beginning. So those who don’t really crave the recognition, those who don’t really want to be caught, those are the really dangerous ones.
Not that there were those who were not dangerous, mind me.
In my opinion (as a judge of people, not as an expert) this guy was at his peak. He enjoyed himself, he got what he craved. Whatever it was. And he was in no hurry yet: I couldn’t say anybody but me had noticed he existed. The news were there, the connection was not; his attacks were too sparse.
I hadn’t expected him, but he was here now, and I was going to make him pay. Nobody bags one of my marks, but me.
I had been shadowing Linda for weeks, learning everything I needed about her, until that day when we casually met at the gym. One hour later, we were having dinner together, as if we had known each other for years, and she was pouring her heart to me. We laughed, we cried, we drank. I drove her home -well, the Uber guy did it- and we ended up in her bed. An extra I didn’t mind. I slept in, I made her breakfast in bed, and we didn’t leave that bed in two days. Well, except when we visited the bathtub. Linda felt guilty, and happy. She hadn’t known. She had suspected, but she hadn’t known. She had needed her divorce, and me, to notice.
Me, I was waiting for the moment to pounce, grab her money and disappear. I was earning her confidence. That’s where the “con” comes from.
Maybe a felt a pang of guilt. A tiny one. But it was my job, and I am the best at my job. Like Wolverine. And I needed the money, and it wasn’t as if I was going to run away with all of it. After all, the bastard her ex-husband was had left her well provided. I was going to redistribute all that wealth a little bit.
But this guy crossed my path. I should have noticed him before, because he cannot have struck randomly; they seldom do. So he must have been watching her, and possibly me, for some time. Today, Linda had been shopping, and I had been watching her from afar. Some extra details never hurt. Just in case, I made sure she wouldn’t recognize me if she got a glimpse of me. But she didn’t. Why would she?
That’s how I saw it all. Linda in the parking lot, walking towards her car, her beautiful legs in those nice black stockings I had given her. I love black stockings. And he struck. Swift, precise. He couldn’t have known I was watching, he couldn’t have known I had seen him grab her, drug her and carry her to his car’s trunk, and drive away.
Ten seconds. That’s how long it had taken him.
I followed him. what else could I do? I know how to do it, so that he didn’t notice. I drove past his home, parked a bit beyond, and stopped for thinking.
In my mind I saw the news articles in succession. Linda was his type, I noticed. Tall, blonde, beautiful, divorced. Like the others. As it always happens to me, I saw the pieces of the puzzle, and I saw the whole picture.
The bastard. He had been operating for years. And he had Linda now. I had to act quickly, and based only on the information I remembered from the news. If I recalled correctly, and I always do, Linda was still alive. He liked to keep them alive, and move by night.
I hoped I was right. I was running out of daylight.
He stepped out again, car keys in his hand. He checked the time.
It all depended on the time. There was only one route that would allow him to reach Yellow Beach before eight. I hoped he knew it. I counted on him knowing it.
I started my own engine and drove off, letting him overtake me. At the end of the street, he turned left, and I released the air I didn’t know I was holding. He knew the route.
And if he knew the route, he must have known about the pesky road patrol a couple kilometres beyond. He wouldn’t rush, not even if he was in a hurry.
What he hadn’t noticed was his broken rear light. I had smashed it before I had payed the biker kid. Tonight a pesky road patrol was going to bag a serial killer.
~~~~
This is my entry for this week’s Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Knock Knock, Who’s There?
It’s taken me too long to write this story, because all I came up with were ideas for micro-fiction pieces, or things that had already been done. Then I asked my son what would happen, and he said there was a dead person at the door. Specifically, a body, left by the murderer, who knocked on the door and left.
That’s not what I chose to write, but his idea got me thinking and so, this evening, I sat down and put the story down.
