Devoted(87)
“Especially not if he is.”
The murder-for-hire operation that had called itself Tragedy had been thuggish. Atropos & Company styled itself as a refined person’s option for aggressive problem solving. Maintaining this image required a certain restraint, a sense of decorum.
Because they were here to invade the Bookman house, take mother and son prisoner, assist in their interrogation, eventually kill them, and dispose of their remains where they would never be found, they must be discreet. In a small town like Pinehaven, registering in a motel, even under false ID, would be leaving an easy lead for investigators to follow later.
Instead, from the tax assessor’s records, their associates had identified a potential property on Greenbriar Road, almost a mile south of the Bookman residence. The title was held in the name of Charles Norton Oxley and had been in his name for forty-nine years. Mr. Oxley had been on the county voter rolls for fifty-six years, so by all indications, he was at least seventy-seven years old.
The single-story ranch-style residence stood well back from the highway, shaded by cedars. Even a few minutes before five o’clock in the morning, lights were aglow in the windows.
On Interstate 80, south of Colfax, they had pulled into a rest stop that provided bathrooms as filthy as any in the state’s most deteriorated public schools. After carrying suitcases into the men’s lavatory and assessing the chances of contracting a life-threatening infection, they returned to the parking lot and stripped to their underwear at the open tailgate of the Escalade. They had dressed in black suits and white shirts and black ties, their basic FBI look, which served them well when they needed to deceive people, which was most of the time.
Now, in Pinehaven County, with dawn more than an hour away, looking uncommonly presentable for this time of night, they went to the front door of the Oxley house, unfazed by the wind. Knacker’s hair was short, incapable of being mussed, and Verbotski’s full head of hair looked even better windblown than combed. Their suits were well tailored and of the finest wool blend, capable of holding their shape through a gale.
The lighted doorbell escutcheon was half a century newer than the house and obviously included a camera.
Verbotski smiled at it.
Knacker was too impatient to fake a smile. He was a reliable partner and well trained in the mortal arts, but he looked and acted too much like an assassin. Verbotski was dedicated to mentoring Bradley Knacker, however, because he believed the younger man truly wanted to be the best that he could be in his profession. These days, many of the younger generation lacked a serious work ethic and, having been hooked on tech and social media most of their lives, had the attention span of a Chihuahua with ADHD. Knacker was able to focus, and hard work didn’t daunt him. If he could lighten up, develop a credible smile of some kind, and temper his gung-ho attitude with patience, he would be the perfect partner with whom to go killing.
A stoop light came on and a voice issued from the doorbell speaker. “What do you want?”
“Mr. Oxley? Mr. Charles Oxley?” Verbotski asked, raising his voice against the wind.
“Who wants to know?”
Holding his expertly forged badge and photo ID to the doorbell camera, Verbotski said, “Special Agent Lewis Erskine, FBI. We need to ask you a few questions.”
“Before the damn sun is even up?”
“We saw your lights were on.”
“What the hell questions? Questions about what?”
“There was a serious event at the Bookman residence earlier tonight.”
“Damn sirens all night, so a man can’t sleep. I don’t know a damn thing about what happened up there. I got enough damn problems of my own, what with the social security not paying me for fourteen months. Go away.”
Bradley Knacker looked as though he might shoot out the lock and break down the door.
Smiling, nodding, Verbotski said to the doorbell, “What problems with your social security, sir? Maybe we can help.”
“They stopped sending my check fourteen months ago, said I was dead. Do I sound dead to you?”
“It was your wife who died fourteen months ago.”
“How the hell do you know?”
Verbotski faked a convincing little laugh and shook his head and said, “We’re the FBI, sir. We know just about everything. We’re here to help.”
For a long moment, Charles Oxley said nothing. As a citizen of the modern state, he had uncountable reasons to understand that a slight excess of power rapidly became a lethal excess, that when an agent of the state insisted he had come to help, there was at least a 70 percent chance that he had come to punish or pillage. In the human heart, however, there was a perverse desire to surrender control to those who claimed a right to power and advertised their good intentions, to believe in something, even if the something was a hive lacking human order or a machine without a face. As Verbotski had known he would, Charles Oxley unlocked and opened the door, and welcomed them inside.
Oxley stood perhaps five feet six, a lean bantam rooster of a man. His face was dramatically seamed either by loss and hardship or by hard living, his nose a broken beak, his blue stare defiant.
In spite of his short stature, he might have been a successful scrapper in his day, never an easy target. But he was half a century older than Bradley Knacker and at least seventy pounds lighter, and one punch in the gut from the younger man all but lifted Oxley off his feet, sent him crashing backward into the wall.