Devoted(88)
Before Knacker could throw a punch or two into Oxley’s face, Verbotski said, “We don’t want blood all over the carpet if someone comes visiting and won’t go away and we absolutely have to open the door.”
Knacker grabbed the dazed and retching old man by the shoulders and steered him into the kitchen at the back of the house and shoved him into a chair at the breakfast table.
Verbotski found a door to a cellar, turned on the light, and went down to have a look around. There was an oil-fired furnace. An explosion and fire could be easily engineered.
When Verbotski returned to the kitchen, Knacker said, “He tells me there’s no children, and there’s no neighbor he’s friendly with.”
Adult children and neighbors were the most likely to drop in unannounced.
In a mudroom off the kitchen, Verbotski found a long woolen scarf hanging on a hook, but better yet were a few extension cords in a utility drawer. He took one of the extension cords into the kitchen and strangled Oxley to death.
Together, he and Knacker threw the body down the cellar steps. Verbotski turned off the light. Knacker closed the door.
The two of them went through the house, closing blinds and draperies where they weren’t already closed.
The two-car garage contained only a Ford Expedition. Verbotski drove the Escalade into the empty stall and closed the segmented door with a remote he found in Oxley’s vehicle.
By the time Verbotski came inside, Knacker was making coffee.
Because four men would be necessary to fulfill this contract, two of the additional principals in Atropos & Company would soon leave Reno in a black Suburban packed with the necessary gear. They would be here in three or four hours.
Verbotski made a phone call to Reno. He listed the items they would need to rig the oil-fired furnace for an unfortunate accident.
As cover and to launder money, the Dark Web entity called Atropos & Company did business as a high-tech security firm, under the name Supersafe Tomorrow. Their headquarters was in Reno because of the considerable advantages of Nevada tax laws.
Verbotski said, “The coffee smells great.”
“The old guy had a good Jamaican blend,” Knacker said, “and I spiced it with a teaspoon of cinnamon.”
92
In less than a day, Rosa Leon had traveled from the middling finances of the middle class to wealth, from a quiet acceptance of the hardness of the world to a belief in the magical nature of it, from a mundane life to one of high adventure, and she marveled at her flexibility.
Mrs. Brickit’s muffins had been eaten, and coffee had been drunk. Especially because of Ben Hawkins’s expertise in the strategy and tactics of war, a plan of sorts had been devised with surprising speed. They were proceeding on the premise that bad people from Tragedy would be coming soon—We Will Find You—and that, because of incompetence and corruption, Sheriff Hayden Eckman would provide them with no useful protection.
Sitting on the bed in one of the two guest rooms, Rosa had already done her part by using her iPhone to call Dorothy Hummel’s attorney—well, her attorney now—Roger Austin, whom she knew to be an early riser, up before dawn. She said nothing of Kipp, because Roger didn’t know the dog’s secret. But she succinctly laid out the incredible story of Woody’s investigation of his father’s accident. She didn’t mention the threat issued by the Dark Web operators behind Tragedy. She asked Roger to keep safe the document—“The Son’s Revenge: Faithfully Compiled Evidence of Monstrous Evil”—that was even then being emailed to him by Megan. She asked him to read it and then share it with two people in the legal system, judges or lawmen, whom he knew for certain were not corrupt and could not be corrupted.
“But how did you meet Mrs. Bookman and her son?” Roger asked in that deep, mellifluous voice that might have given her confidence in the attorney even if she hadn’t known him. “I never heard you speak of them before.”
“Oh,” Rosa said, “I’ve known them quite a while. It seems like forever. Listen, Roger, I haven’t said who was responsible for the death of Woody’s father. You’ll discover the name when you read his research, and it’s a shocker. The man is powerful and very wealthy. You might be tempted to wonder if it’s a fantasy that Woody has spun. But I swear to you it’s not. There will be additional proof coming.” She couldn’t resist adding, “It’s not a shaggy-dog story, Roger. Anyway, once you’ve read the document and thought about it, we very much need your advice about how to proceed in such a way that what Woody’s discovered will be believed and acted upon. Until the story is out there in the press, it doesn’t seem that Megan and the boy will be safe.”
When she concluded that call, her immediate contribution to the plan had been made, although she had a role to play when the coming day ticked into the afternoon. Now she stretched out on the guest-room bed, hoping to get some rest for what lay ahead, though she doubted that she could quell her excitement enough to sleep. In spite of her doubt, she slept.
93
While Rosa Leon spoke on the phone to Roger Austin, Carson Conroy was on the east side of Pinehaven, at the home of his friend Harry Borsello, who was about to drive into town to oversee the morning rush at his restaurant, Four Square Diner, and grab some breakfast of his own.