MOSTLY MURDER: Till Death: a mystery anthology Read online

  “We were going to arrest Mr. McGee on several counts of premeditated murder.”

  “What! Murder?”

  “Assassination, more like. We believe he is the professional killer for hire known as ‘the Lion’.”

  “That’s preposterous! How can you…?” She shook her head, long blond, sun-streaked tresses flicking over her shoulders, the archetypal Californian girl. “How the hell did you arrive at that conclusion? My father is a security consultant.”

  “We believe that was a cover for his illegal activities as an international assassin.”

  More head shaking.

  “Based on what, dammit? Some hunch you had one morning while eating a bagel? I have looked into you, Senior Special Agent Thompson, and it seems you have a certain… fixation on this ‘Lion’ person. You’ve been on his case for years with no results. Time’s running out for you, isn’t it? What happened? Retirement looming, and no suspects? Your pride got the better of you? You pick the first candidate you can think of? How can you possibly connect my father to the work of a professional assassin? You searched my parent’s house, I’m told, after you murdered my father. Did you find anything to back up your claims?”

  “Ms. McGee, it’s true the investigation was getting nowhere. That I will admit. That was certainly the case until I thought of contrasting travel itineraries with the dates and times of the killings we know about. That took a lot of computing power. We had to seek Homeland Security’s help. Anyway, the analysis told us most people travelling on the dates in question from destinations near to where the assassinations took place would only show up in a low percentage of all the cases. A couple of the incidents on average. Just coincidences. We found we had a shortlist of a little over a hundred people who had traveled from more than one of those destinations within a few days of the killings. Your father’s name appeared in over twenty percent of the cases. That is well beyond any casual probability I know of. He was our prime suspect. No one came near him in that analysis.”

  Tessa let out a short, derisive laugh.

  “Where were these killings, Senior Special Agent? Conferences, hi-tech companies, private upscale estates?”

  “Most of them…”

  “My father was a security consultant, as I’ve already told you. He designed and improved the protection measures around those same buildings for those very same clients. He was paid to analyze the measures in place, to assess their effectiveness, to recommend improvements…”

  “Yet the assassin’s targets still died.” A smug smile accompanied Thompson’s statement.

  “My father makes recommendations. People don’t have to implement them, though. That’s how it goes. I work for that company, too, as do my mother and brother. Does that make us suspects in your investigation as well?”

  “What roles do your family members have in your father’s company?” Thompson took out his notebook, flicked it open to a blank page, extracted his cheap disposable pen, and sat poised to write.

  “My mother handles logistics. My brother Mark is the electronics and computer systems expert, and I cover the financials and contracts as well as being the company’s lawyer. It’s a family business.”

  Thompson finished his notes and looked at the two women. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by Mary.

  “Agent Thompson…” she began.

  “Senior Special Agent Thompson.”

  Mary treated the man’s interruption as though he had not spoken.

  “Are you married?”

  The question threw the FBI man off his stride.

  “What?”

  “I asked if you were married?” she repeated, her voice heavy with forced patience.

  “I was. Twice.”

  “What happened?”

  “The job.” He kept his replies short, evidently wary of saying more.

  “Okay, now I understand.” Mary glanced at her daughter, exchanging one of those looks lasting only a fraction of a second that women use to convey long messages. “That’s why you don’t understand exactly what you’ve done. You see, you haven’t just murdered my husband, Agent Thompson, you’ve killed me, too.”

  She paused, letting her enigmatic statement filter through Thompson’s brain.

  “You have two failed marriages because of your job. You want to know why? It’s because you treat your life with your partner as separate from whatever you do at work. You are in both universes, or at least you try to be, at first, but your partner isn’t. Sooner or later your partner’s exclusion from the other universe you inhabit will start to grate on their nerves. You will tend to use your other existence as a refuge from the rejection you feel at home. Then you’ll end up spending far more time away from your marriage doing stuff related to your job. The result is usually divorce. You had no unity, no balance, no complicity in your life.”

  “I don’t see where this is going…”

  “Todd and I met a long time ago through our respective professions. We collaborated, then fell in love. We partnered not just as a married couple but in our professional lives, too. We supported each other constantly through all the problems our work threw in our way. We shared the triumphs and the failures. The highs and the lows. We were a unit, a single entity in many respects. That is why our marriage worked and lasted so long. Sure we argued; it was a sign we cared. Cared about what we did, and about each other. The quarrels also meant one of us hadn’t subjugated the other, hadn’t canceled the other’s personality. Couples who never argue are not in a marriage; they’re in a dictatorship. What you have done, Agent Thompson, is demolish that wonderful creation. Ruined what it took us decades to achieve in one moment of self-serving blindness. Our marriage was our business, our profession. You will not be forgiven for this.”

  “Are you threatening me Mrs. McGee?” His tone held menace.

  “I wouldn’t stoop so low, Thompson.”

  A nervous stillness invaded the room. For over half a minute no one spoke.

  Tessa finally cleared her throat and started to stand.

  “If that’s all, Senior Special Agent, we’ll be leaving.”

  Thompson said nothing.

  The two women left the conference room and took the elevator to the ground floor. A few minutes later they boarded a cab heading north.

  They traveled in silence. Other than to give the driver the address of an oyster restaurant on Ocean Drive in Santa Monica, neither woman spoke during the twenty-minute drive. The table had been reserved the day before. They sat alongside each other with their backs to the window and the view of the sea. That would make lip-reading through high-powered lenses almost impossible. The transparent plastic awning around the terrace outside also helped. Tessa removed a device that looked like a cell phone from her bag and surreptitiously attached it to the windowpane. She pushed the slider switch on one side and the jammer started up. It sent subtle vibrations through the glass and emitted a white-noise masking signal which, when combined, would make attempts to listen through laser or long-range microphones useless. The additional hubbub from other patrons would make their conversation as private as they could hope to achieve. They were almost certain Senior Special Agent Thompson would have detailed a surveillance crew to follow them. He was desperate to justify his actions as time ticked away to his retirement date. If he could show the death of Todd McGee had happened during the attempted arrest of a professional assassin, he would be vindicated, at least in his own eyes.

  They placed their order, a half-dozen grilled oysters and the establishment’s famous lobster roll for both. A bottle of cold Sauvignon Blanc from the Napa Valley. Tessa leaned close to her mother’s ear and spoke in a low tone.

  “Mom, can I ask you a question that’s been on my mind for a while?”

  “Sure.”

  “When you and Dad met and married, were you in love?”

  The question, had it been asked by any other daughter of any other mother, might have seemed odd. However…

  “At first o
ur marriage was a convenient way to do business. As you know, some of our clients in the Arab countries frown on women in business, which makes it difficult to earn contracts there. Being married did make a difference though. For my work, it also meant people didn’t look too closely at why I accompanied your father on his trips. My particular perspective allowed him to stand out in a very competitive industry and, at the same time, benefited me. We had been working as a married couple for almost four years before we realized we had fallen in love. Crazy, isn’t it? They say arranged marriages are more solid than the more natural sort, and I guess ours was ‘arranged,’ albeit by us. We certainly had a good one for almost forty years.”

  “I think it’s rather sweet. Did Dad know what you did from the beginning?”

  “Yes. His consultancy was failing. Clients not paying, that sort of thing. So when I came on the scene, we exploited those clients, and I was able to help by injecting cash into the legitimate side of the business. Symbiotic, I guess you could call it, but it worked well for both of us.”

  Tessa paused, running the meeting with Thompson through her mind. “What do you think he’s going to do next?”

  “Thompson? Well he’s under a lot of pressure to conclude his investigation. You said he was retiring in eight weeks, right?”

  Tessa nodded.

  “Then he will probably pull out all the stops to prove his hunch about Todd was correct. We can expect agents following us twenty-four seven, our phones bugged, probably the house, too. You need to tell your brother to sweep every day, and nothing important is to be said indoors. They’ll be digging into our bank accounts also, personal and the company. They won’t find the offshore accounts. When their Office of Professional Responsibility starts to investigate Thompson’s actions, that will make him even more inclined to do something stupid. It’s going to be a difficult time for you and your brother. Are there any contracts in the next few weeks?”

  “One. South Africa. I was prepping it when you called about Dad. I can put it on hold though, or even subcontract if necessary. Mark hasn’t got anything scheduled for the next three months. The Hong Kong trip was to collect for the last job in Asia.”

  “Okay. That’s good. Downtime for everyone…”

  “But you’re not going to stand idly by and let Thompson get away with what he did, are you, Mom?”

  “Of course not! That man doesn’t know what’s coming his way. I need to tie up a few things first, though.” She paused. “When you lose your life partner through natural causes, even accidental death, it must be devastating. When they are murdered right in front of your eyes… there are no words to describe what I feel right now. It’s just a big, black emptiness.”

  * * *

  It had been a long day for the FBI SWAT team. A joint raid with the Drug Enforcement Agency in the early hours of the morning led to seventeen arrests, all following an anonymous tip. Then, toward midday, another call from the same source had informed of a homegrown terrorist group planning an attack on a soft target, a shopping mall. They had been returning from the first call and were still geared up when the order to divert to the old Californian bungalow near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum had been received. That operation had netted them over a hundred kilos of ANFO explosive, several submachine guns, and six perps. With a huge sigh of relief, the team had trudged toward their Lenco Bearcat armored vehicle just in time to learn their unidentified informant had called in yet another tip. This time it was a self-storage locker containing Semtex explosive, placed there by a pro-ISIS group. The address given was not far from their last operation, so it was clear who was expected to respond. At least a storage locker was a fairly low-risk situation. They would secure the premises and wait for the FBI Bomb Techs to arrive. The place could be booby-trapped. The team was tired after the day’s accumulated activity. Not the best time to be on top of their game.

  They waited for thirty minutes before the Bomb Techs appeared, checked the locker in question, and pronounced it safe for a breach. There was Semtex inside, stacked in ubiquitous orange bricks in one of the far corners, but far fewer than the haul their caller had promised. Had they been less tired at this juncture, maybe, just maybe, they might have started to question the string of tips.

  The FBI SWAT team commander waited until the Bomb Techs had loaded the explosives into their own transport before ordering a final sweep of the area. They already had the details about who had rented the unit, and another FBI team was on its way to the renter’s address. It would turn out to be a false lead.

  Finally, the call came to board their Bearcat truck and head back to base. The weary men climbed into the back of the vehicle as the commander took his seat up front with the driver. The three-hundred horsepower Caterpillar engine roared into life. The day was over for the team, at least that’s what they hoped.

  They had traveled just two blocks.

  Ahead, a street junction.

  A single figure walking near the intersection.

  The Bearcat’s driver slowed.

  The pedestrian was an elderly woman wearing a floral dress, oversized sunglasses, and an expansive straw hat with a large, bright-red, paper flower, something the few witnesses would focus on later in their descriptions rather than the woman’s face. She stepped off the sidewalk into the path of the SWAT vehicle. The driver reacted by applying the brakes hard. The powered hydraulic ABS disk brakes squealed as they brought the seventeen-ton vehicle to a juddering halt. The woman’s scream was lost inside the armored cocoon of the tactical truck. Her collapse into the middle of the road was visible to the driver and commander though.

  “We never made contact! She must be deaf if she didn’t hear us coming,” said the driver.

  “And blind,” added the commander as he cracked open the passenger door.

  The commander approached the fallen form and leaned over the old woman. He reached an arm around her waist and held her proffered left arm with his own right hand. He did not suspect anything until the microsecond before it was too late.

  A cold, metal object jabbed under the bottom of his bulletproof combat vest. With a dull pop, a deadly projectile penetrated his torso below the sternum, raced upward through his left lung, smashed into his heart.

  The woman took the strain of the man’s weight easily, lifting him erect in a way that the driver thought the opposite to be true. Now matters speeded up. Shedding her elderly sloth, the old woman let go of the SWAT commander’s corpse and, in two long strides, reached the open door of the Bearcat truck. She extended her arm and fired the Russian-made PSS Silent Pistol again. A headshot at the man behind the wheel. From inside the vehicle’s cargo area, the other team members did not hear the firing weapon over the growl of the Bearcat’s engine.

  Another rush forward. Two steps up into the cabin. The hat flew away to reveal a younger face beneath.

  “Hi boys. Remember me?” she said loud enough to draw the attention of the tired men in the back of the SWAT truck.

  Four spherical, green M67 fragmentation grenades bounced into the cargo bay of the Bearcat. Instantly recognizable to the SWAT team, they induced sudden panic as the crew fought to open the rear doors and escape the deadly blast.

  Four short seconds of yells, thuds, an inhuman scream. The half-inch of high-tech ballistic steel protecting the SWAT team from outside aggressors now made for an effective killing ground for the grenades’ five-meter lethal blast radius.

  Four seconds.

  Time to await instant oblivion for some.

  Time for the assassin to hurl herself toward the fallen commander’s body, seeking shelter beneath his bulk from the hell unleashed.

  * * *

  Another week. Another cemetery. This time, multiple funerals with all the pomp the FBI could muster for their fallen. After the priest had said more words at the gravesites. After the piper had played ‘Amazing Grace.’ After the twenty-one gun salute. After the folding of flags and their subsequent conveyance to next of kin. After the lowering of t
he caskets. After the queue of people waiting to throw a handful of dirt into the open graves. After tears and sadness. After hugs and condolences. After almost all had departed. Only then had Senior Special Agent Ryan Thompson approached the gravesite of the commander of the FBI SWAT team. In all honesty, he had hardly known the man; could not say he was a friend. But then, SSA Thompson had so few he could include in that category.

  The sun sliced through a cloudless blue sky, glinting off his prominently displayed FBI badge with its black band of mourning. Thompson squinted as he looked around at the now-empty last resting place for so many. He felt warm in his dark suit. Uncomfortable, perhaps, at this nearness to the end of the journey. Retirement would come soon, very soon. Another journey over, with nothing in particular to look forward to afterward. He stood, facing the hole in the ground, looking at the dirt-spattered wood below without really focusing his eyes. Thinking, musing on the last week.

  Thursday, the day after the attack on the SWAT team, had been his birthday. Two colleagues had remembered and brought him a single cupcake with a lonely candle. He’d smiled and done his duty, then invited them for a drink and lunch. Both had refused with thanks, citing meetings for ongoing cases. A couple of cards appeared on his desk. One from his coworkers, indecipherable scribbles purporting to be from the rest of the office’s occupants. One from someone in LAPD.

  At home, he had received none. His smartphone had pinged indicating a notification. He had mail. Sitting in the inbox of his personal email account was a single electronic greeting card sent through a popular Internet site. It was addressed to him by his full, official title. FBI Senior Special Agent Ryan Thompson. It was not signed.

  It read ‘The Lion has avenged the murder of an innocent man.’

  He had stood there in the midst of the bustling office for over two minutes, staring at the single line of text. Then his training kicked in. He made a beeline for the Computer Forensics department and had the sending email address traced. Dead end. Just created for the purpose of requesting the greeting card. The card had been selected over a week before and had been scheduled for delivery that morning. The tech had woven his magic and somehow obtained the IP address of the computer used to send the card to the greetings service. He had laughed aloud when the results came back. The IP address was for his own laptop at home. He had not sent this, of that he was sure. How many might believe this amongst his colleagues was another matter.