The Judge's List (The Whistler #2)(20)

He was about to reach for the knob to the front door when he heard the engine of a truck. Then a door slammed. He ducked into the dining room and glanced out the window. “Oh shit.”

It was an oversized Ram truck parked at the curb, with dunwoody custom homes painted on the driver’s door. Its driver was walking across the front yard, holding an envelope. Average height and weight, about fifty years old, with a slight limp. He would enter and immediately see Verno’s body in the den to his left. From that moment on, he would be aware of nothing else.

The killer calmly moved into position, ready with his weapon.

A husky voice called out, “Verno, where are you?” Steps, a pause, then “Lanny, you okay?” He took three steps into the den before the lead ball shattered the back of his skull. He fell hard, almost landing on Verno, and was too stunned, too wounded to look behind him. Butler hit him again and again, each blow splintering his cranium and spraying blood across the room.

Butler hadn’t brought enough rope for two strangulations, and besides, Dunwoody didn’t deserve one. Only the special people got the rope. Dunwoody groaned and thrashed as his mortal wounds shut down his organs. He turned his head and looked at Butler, his eyes red and glazed and seeing nothing. He tried to say something but only grunted again. Finally, he fell hard on his chest and stopped moving altogether. Butler waited patiently and watched him breathe. When he stopped, Butler took his cell phone out of a small pocket of his jacket and added it to his growing collection.

Suddenly, he felt like he had been there for an hour. He checked the street again, eased out the front door, and locked it behind him—all three doors were locked now, which might stall them for a few minutes—and climbed into his truck. Cap down, sunglasses on, though the day had been cloudy. He backed into the street and drove slowly away, just another inspector closing out a busy week.

He parked in a shopping center, far away from the stores and their cameras. He removed the surgical gloves and shoe covers and put them in a bag. He placed the two stolen phones on the seat where he could see and hear them. He tapped one and the name mike dunwoody flashed on the screen. He tapped the other and saw the name lanny verno. He was not about to get caught with the phones and would lose them in short order. He sat for a long time and collected his thoughts.

Verno had it coming. His name had been on the list for a long time as he drifted from one town to the next, from one bad romance to another, living from paycheck to paycheck. If he had not been such a shiftless and sorry bastard, his life might have been worth something. His early demise could have been avoided. He had signed his death warrant years earlier when he physically threatened the man who called himself Butler.

Dunwoody’s mistake was simply bad timing. He had never met Butler and certainly didn’t deserve such a violent end. Collateral damage, as they say in the military, but at that moment Butler didn’t like what he had done. He didn’t kill innocent people. Dunwoody was probably a decent man with a family and a company, maybe even went to church and played with his grandchildren.

Dunwoody’s phone blinked and hummed at two minutes after seven. “Marsha” was calling. No voicemail. She waited six minutes and called again.

Probably his wife, thought Butler. Really sad and all, but he had almost no capacity for sympathy, or remorse.

Collateral damage. It had not happened before, but he was proud of the way he handled it.



* * *



—

Mike Dunwoody had stopped drinking years earlier, and his Friday nights in the bars were now history. Marsha wasn’t worried about a relapse, though she still had vivid memories of the pub-crawling days with his buddies, almost all of whom worked in construction. In her last call that afternoon she had been specific: Stop by the grocery and get a pound of pasta and fresh garlic. She was making spaghetti and their daughter was coming over. He thought he would be home around six, after he dropped off some checks in the subdivision. With a dozen subs building eight houses, he lived on the phone, and if he didn’t take a call it usually meant he was on another line. If he missed a call, especially one from his wife, he returned it almost immediately.

At 7:31, Marsha called his cell for the third time. Butler looked at the screen and almost felt pity, but that lasted for only a second.

She called her son and asked him to drive to the subdivision and look for his father.

No one was calling Verno.



* * *



—

Butler was driving on county roads and heading north, away from the coast. He figured that by now the bodies had been discovered and the cops knew the phones were missing. It was time to get rid of them. He found the town of Neely, population 400, and drove through it. He had been there before, scouting. The only business that appeared to be open on a Friday night was a café on one end of the settlement. The post office was on the other end with an ancient blue drop box outside, next to a gravel drive. Butler parked in front of the tiny building, got out and walked to the door, opened it, went inside to the cramped lobby and saw a wall of small square rentals. Seeing no cameras inside or out, he left the building and casually dropped a 5×8 padded envelope in the drop box.



* * *



—

Dale Black was the elected sheriff of Harrison County. He had finished dinner with his wife and was leashing his dog for their nightly post-meal walk through the neighborhood. His wife was already outside, waiting, checking her phone. His buzzed and he wanted to cuss. It was the dispatcher, and any call at eight o’clock on a Friday night was not good news.