Run Away(20)

“Of course I’m serious.”

“It’s not named for a fish.”

“What, you never heard of a Dorado fish?”

“I’ve heard of it, but El Dorado is a mythical city of gold in South America.”

“But it’s also a fish, right?”

Ash said nothing.

“Ash?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Yeah, it’s also a fish.”

The target stepped back out of his house. He started toward his garage.

“They all have to be done differently?” Ash asked.

“I don’t know about differently, but they can’t be connected.”

Meaning it couldn’t be like Chicago. Still, that gave him plenty of flexibility on this one.

“Watch the house,” he said.

“I’m not coming with you this time?”

She sounded hurt by this.

“No. Take the wheel. Keep the car running. Watch the door. If anyone comes out, call me.”

He didn’t repeat the instructions. The target had gone into the garage. Ash started toward it.

Here is what he did know about the target. Name, Kevin Gano. Married twelve years to his high school sweetheart, Courtney. The four Ganos lived on the top floor of this two-family home on Devon Street in Revere, Massachusetts. Six months ago, Kevin had been laid off from Alston Meat Packing plant in Lynn, where he’d worked for the previous seven years. He’d been trying to find another job since, to no avail, so last month Courtney had been forced to go back to work as a receptionist at a travel agency on Constitution Avenue.

Kevin, trying to make himself useful, picked up the girls every day from school at two p.m. That was why he was home right now when the rest of this working-class neighborhood was quiet and still.

Kevin was standing by his workbench unscrewing a DVD or Blu-ray player—he earned a little money doing small repairs—when Ash approached. He looked up and gave Ash a friendly smile. Ash smiled back and then Ash pointed his gun at him.

“This will all be fine if you stay quiet.”

Ash stepped all the way into the garage and pulled the door down closed behind him. He kept the gun trained on Kevin, never taking his eyes off him. Kevin still had the screwdriver in his hand.

His right hand.

“What do you want?”

“Put down the screwdriver, Kevin. Cooperate and no one gets hurt.”

“Bullshit,” Kevin said.

“What?”

“You’re letting me see your face.”

Good point.

“I’m in disguise. Don’t worry about it.”

“Bullshit,” Kevin said again.

Kevin looked toward the side door, like he was going to make a run for it.

“Kelsey and Kiera,” Ash said.

Hearing his daughters’ names froze him.

“It can go one of two ways. If you make a run for it, I’ll shoot you dead. Then I’ll have to make it look like a bad home invasion. That means I go into your house. What are Kelsey and Kiera doing in there, Kevin? Homework? Watching TV? Having a nice snack? Whatever. I’ll go in, and I’ll do things so horrible you’ll be glad you’re dead.”

Kevin shook his head, tears coming to his eyes. “Please.”

“Or,” Ash said, “you can drop the screwdriver right now.”

Kevin did as he was asked. The screwdriver clanked on the concrete floor.

“I don’t understand. I never hurt anyone. Why are you doing this?”

Ash shrugged.

“Please don’t hurt my girls. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t…” He swallowed and stood a little taller. “So…so what now?”

Ash crossed the garage and placed the muzzle of the gun against the side of Kevin’s temple. Kevin closed his eyes right before Ash pulled the trigger.

The echo was loud inside the garage, drawn out, but Ash doubted anyone outside of it would take notice.

Kevin was dead before he hit the floor.

Ash moved fast. He placed the gun in Kevin’s right hand and pulled the trigger, firing a bullet straight into the ground. Now there would be gunpowder residue on the hand. He pulled the phone out of Kevin’s back pocket and used Kevin’s thumb to unlock it. Then he quickly scrolled through and found his wife’s contact information.

Courtney’s name was typed into the contacts with two hearts before and after her name.

Hearts. Kevin had put hearts next to his wife’s name.

Ash typed up a simple text: I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

He hit Send, dropped the phone on the workbench, and headed back to the car.

Don’t rush. Don’t walk too quickly.

Ash figured that there was probably an 80 to 85 percent chance the suicide scenario would hold. You had a gunshot wound to the head—to the victim’s right temple, the way a righty might do it if the wound was self-inflicted. That was why Ash had made note of which hand Kevin was holding the screwdriver in. You had a suicide text. You had gun residue on the hand. The extra bullet would probably look like Kevin had tried once and chickened out and then steeled himself for the real deal.

So the suicide scenario would probably be a buy. Eighty, eighty-five percent—maybe more like 90 percent when you added in that Kevin was out of work and probably depressed about it. If some cop was super aggressive or watched too much CSI, he might find some stuff didn’t add up. For example, there hadn’t been enough time to prop Kevin up before firing the second shot, so if some crime tech really spent the money to study the bullet’s trajectory, he might notice the shot originated from near the floor.