A Shadow of Death in The Woods (4 page)

He knew that Paul was on the fence about what to do. He wanted more data. Paul and his damn spreadsheets. He always wanted more data. He was a pencil and paper guy, well, computer guy nowadays, whereas Mike was more of an action guy. Paul wanted to study it to death. That is okay if you have data but what if you don’t have enough data and the consequences of a wrong decision so large? The rest of their lives depended on being right.

Still Paul was a cool guy. He had gotten them out of many jams, especially at work in Bob’s company. Paul could plan like no other. He was inventive and creative. His thoughts and ideas were always worth listening to.

And Liz? He honestly couldn’t read Liz. Liz had always been a mystery to Mike. She seemed to go along with whatever Paul wanted, at least in public, but Mike thought that she had considerable influence with Paul in private. Paul and Liz were another strong couple who got along well together and functioned as a team. They would work out their ideas about the stranger and in the morning would present a united front. That said, Mike estimated that they were on the fence and wanted to see more data in the morning.

Well, they couldn’t do any more today. Mike was going to bed. They could take on this mess again in the morning. Perhaps they would have more data from Ohio.

Frankie was ready for bed. God, he loved her. She was his whole life. He couldn’t live or didn’t want to live without her by his side, literally. He loved it when she snuggled up to him in bed. According to macho lore, real men didn’t like to snuggle. Well, Mike liked it. Frankie was his other half and he wanted to keep it that way. If the stranger had to go to do that, then that was what would happen.

Chapter 4

Paul and Liz Jackson

Paul was on the horns of a dilemma. It was clear that Bob wanted to let Jack
live
but it was equally clear that Bob’s judgment was clouded by the fact that Jack had saved his and Jane’s life. That could cloud anyone’s judgment.

On the other hand he could see that Mike wanted to kill Jack just to be safe. There is nothing wrong with safe except when it involves taking a life.

Worse, Bob had insisted on keeping Jack here until tomorrow. That meant it wouldn’t be safe to kill Jack at The Cabin. Paul had argued strongly that they take Jack to a motel that night. Paul had one picked out that was fifty miles away. It was perfect. But Bob had prevailed and Jack was staying at The Cabin. Well, maybe that wasn’t so bad. They didn’t want to kill Jack at The Cabin anyway. Too messy.

Paul owed his life to Bob and Bob was his boss. He most always did what Bob wanted. But this was a big decision. Their freedom might depend on this decision. It wasn’t just some business deal, which if it went bad, there would be another business deal down the road. This was a bet-all-of-your-marbles decision. It had to be right but what was right?

Paul liked planning and he liked spreadsheets full of data. He loved using math and logic to solve problems. He did almost all of the tactical project planning for Bob’s company and he was good at it. He could plan out huge construction projects with spreadsheets, workflow diagrams, hour estimates, cost estimates, material requirements, all kinds of logistics and he was almost always right on the money. He loved it.

What he didn’t like so much was making judgment calls. Decisions without enough data. That is what they faced here. Mike had hired a detective in Ohio to investigate Jack but on the weekend they were going to get only preliminary data by the next day.

Paul sipped his brandy. The brandy wasn’t going to help make a better decision but it was something to do while he thought it through. He had been pacing himself all evening and he was stone cold sober and in a quandary.

Jack had a family back in Ohio. In addition to depriving the family of a husband and a father, they had to consider what the family might do if Jack didn’t come home. It sounded to Paul as if Jack’s wife’s family had a lot of money and was very influential in Ohio. That being the case the family could bring heat down on them if things went wrong and there was an investigation. That wasn’t good. As Mike would say, ah crap, nothing is good about this situation.

Well, maybe one good thing. It didn’t sound as if Jack’s family knew exactly where he was riding. So if Jack disappeared, the authorities wouldn’t know where to start looking. Maybe. Jack hadn’t stayed in a motel so there was no record there. One problem was that, under questioning, Jack mentioned he had gotten gas with a credit card. That left a record and an arrow pointing in this direction. That was bad.

Bob wanted to let Jack live and Mike wanted him dead. That left Paul in the middle making the final decision. Well, of course the women had a vote as well because this affected their lives too. Jane, of course, wanted to let Jack live. In fact, she had caught Paul alone and had made a teary plea for his release. Jane was an emotional wreck from almost being raped and killed, seeing Jack kill a man and being nearby while Bob killed a man. She knew she would not have left the woods alive without Jack. Sure, she would vote in favor of letting Jack live.

Frankie’s opinion was going to be important as usual. First, she always judged people accurately. Second, she would influence Mike. Everyone thought that Mike was a tough SOB and ran the family but Paul knew better. True, Mike was tough but he never ran rough shod over Frankie. Frankie was his love and his life. He always listened to her.

Paul had never figured out Frankie’s background or where she came from. She refused to discuss it no matter how much she drank and she could drink. Booze didn’t seem to affect her much. In any case she never talked about her childhood or where she grew up. Mike never talked about her background. Maybe he didn’t know. He didn’t talk about his childhood much either but Paul knew it wasn’t a happy one. He knew Mike had grown up in the social services network, which was more or less childhood jail. They were a pair and they enjoyed each other’s company. They were so tight together that you couldn’t slide a piece of paper between them. Their love for each other was strong and something to admire. You didn’t see that much in real life.

One would think therefore Frankie would vote with Mike. Well, think again. Frankie had her ideas, opinions and thoughts. No one except Frankie could influence or change her mind, including Mike. This had always amazed Paul. It had also caused Paul to develop a strong, unshakable faith in Frankie’s judgment. Paul thought that one should always listen closely to Frankie.

Frankie wanted to let Jack live. She didn’t voice many arguments as to why. She just said it was the right thing to do and she trusted Jack. She thought Jack was a man of his word and that he had heart. Paul wasn’t sure what Frankie meant by heart but it was clear that she wanted to let the man live.

Interestingly, Mike was okay with the fact that Frankie opposed his recommendation. Paul knew from experience that they would not argue about it. They might try to sway each other but they would never argue. Paul estimated that tonight Frankie would have some impact on Mike’s thinking but she probably was not going to change his mind nor would Mike change Frankie’s mind. So another two votes canceling each other was Paul’s opinion.

Liz, unlike Frankie, listened to Paul. He could change her opinion. Paul didn’t like this so much. He would rather have had a mate more like Frankie in this respect. Because Liz’s opinion was malleable, Paul was very careful how he approached Liz. He wanted her honest, independent opinion, not a mirror reflection of what he thought. Paul had watched Liz’s body language closely and he estimated that she really thought that they should kill Jack. He figured she probably thought it was too dangerous to let Jack run around with his knowledge of the murder.

Since it was the guys who had the training and were the ones to do the wet work, their votes weighed in more than the women’s votes. Actually, it wasn’t as simple as voting. It was more of a consensus process with everyone voicing their opinions and supporting logic. They would discuss it until a general consensus was reached. They would do this tomorrow morning.

Still Paul knew that it really boiled down to what he thought. It was going to be his opinion that counted the most because he would be the tie breaker. His was the deciding vote, so to speak. Paul was in effect going to be the one who decided if Jack lived or died.

He hated the responsibility. Paul had done his share of killing, especially in Africa. Africa was a nightmare. They were caught in a crossfire and a third of the team had been wiped out. Mike and Paul had been captured after they ran out of ammunition. Bob had organized a raid and got them freed, except it wasn’t that simple. Bob and the living members of the team who weren’t captured made the counterattack but they all had to fight tooth and nail to overpower their captors. It was a bloody night. Paul believed that Mike enjoyed the killing. Paul did it just to survive. He still could see the look on the face of one man who was choking on his blood after Paul had cut his throat. No amount of brandy would ever make that look go away. On the other hand Paul knew with no uncertainty that if the tables were reversed that same man would have enjoyed cutting Paul’s throat. Paul had no regrets over what he did; he just wished it didn’t have to happen. Most of all he wished that the man’s face would go away.

The situation with Jack was not as clear. If the tables were reversed, would Jack kill Paul? That was an interesting question. What kind of man was Jack? Was he trustworthy? Was he stable? Could he take the lifetime pressure of being on the wrong side of the law? Could he not brag? Could he not tell his wife? Could he maintain the same life style after what happened in the woods as before or would people suspect something was wrong and press for answers? And if they pressed for answers, could Jack take the pressure and soldier on?

It is a whole lot easier to kill a man than it is to cover it up for the rest of your life. You not only have to live with however you feel about the killing but you have to deal with the practicality of never giving away any information on the deed. Some people, maybe most, cannot deal with the secrecy. They have to tell someone and that is how they get caught. That is, if they were smart enough to have pulled off the deed without leaving evidence behind.

Paul had studied this problem extensively. He found that most killings were spur of the moment, unplanned and badly executed. Those people were caught, not because police were clever or well organized, but because the killers did stupid things. Maybe they had personalized license plates or they dropped a knife with their finger prints on it and their prints were on file. Or maybe they didn’t think about security cameras and on and on. Basically most criminals were stupid, which meant that they would get caught short of pure luck.

The flip side of this was a smart person or team who planned well and had the discipline to keep silent. Law enforcement was not prepared for this type of criminal. A well-planned, well-executed crime had a very high probability of success—as long as no one talked. Someone talking was the Achilles’ heel of the “perfect” crime.

A key to understanding how police work is to understand that large organizations do not operate by intelligence. They operate by systems, procedures and sheer people-power. To solve big problems, they overwhelm the problem with numbers of people and resources. Since there is a limit to the amount of resources taxpayers can supply, there is a limit to how much police can do.

The fact that large organizations do not operate by intelligence is why all revolutionary innovations come from individuals or small organizations. TV-style detecting is carried out by mavericks but large organizations have an antibody-like mechanism that rejects mavericks. Cleverness and innovation are killed like viruses. This is why cleverness and good planning can evade police—as long as everyone keeps silent for the rest of their lives.

Bob, Mike and Paul, along with other ex-military people, had carried off their share of deeds to generate needed cash to rebuild Bob’s family business. They had gotten away with it because of excellent planning, flawless execution and, above all, complete silence after the deed. Why was the Mafia so successful? Silence. So it all boiled down to whether they could trust Jack to keep his mouth shut for the rest of his life. How can they predict that?

In Jack’s favor was the fact that Jack had willingly committed a murder. It is true that if he had gone to the police immediately, he might have been able to successfully argue self-defense. But he hadn’t done that. Instead he had abetted in a second murder and was, so far, helping to cover up both killings. Also in his favor was his apparent sanguine attitude about the whole thing. He was showing no signs of cracking.

He was obviously an intellectual, a man who read and used his quick mind. In fact, Paul felt that Jack might have been the smartest one in the group tonight. Paul was sure that Jack understood perfectly what was at stake and yet he didn’t let it rattle him. He wasn’t going to beg either. He was physically a big man. In fact, he was huge. He had the self- confidence of a big man who never had to worry about what other men thought or did. Yet Jack wasn’t arrogant. He knew that he could not power his way out of this. He wasn’t armed and he figured we were and rightly so.

Paul could build a spreadsheet showing all these items in neat order. He could assign probabilities and do calculations. He also knew that in the end it would all come out a wash. This was a case for a coin toss except Paul couldn’t cotton to the idea of deciding a man’s fate based on a coin toss. Paul was going to have to come up with something better than that. But Paul had no idea what it was. In the words of Mike, ah crap.

Maybe he should listen to Frankie. She was uncanny in assessing people. It must have something to do with the way she grew up. People who grow up in an abusive situation often develop a keen sense of reading other people’s feelings, kind of a self-protection mechanism. Paul figured that it must have something to do with survival instincts. This ran counter to Paul’s thinking. He was strictly a logical person. He wanted facts and figures to analyze the situation to come up with a rational plan or explanation. Frankie on the other hand had feelings and made judgments about people that later almost always were right on the money.

It wouldn’t do any good to talk with Frankie. She would have no rational reason for trusting Jack. She might make up something to satisfy a discussion but in reality she only had feelings one way or the other. It was right-brain thinking rather than the logical, data-based left-brain thinking. Her feelings in this case were strong and in favor of letting Jack live.

Jane on the other hand was a basket case. She was overwhelmed with what happened in the woods. She was so glad to be alive and have Bob alive that she was ready to worship Jack. You couldn’t depend on anything that Jane thought at the moment. However, it was something to be said in Jack’s favor for saving their lives just because it seemed to him the right thing to do. You don’t see much of that anymore. Years ago before the U.S. had gone from rural to mostly urban, it was common for people to help their neighbors and friends in time of crisis or need. Nowadays everyone wants to avoid becoming involved and they want the government to solve their problems. Jack didn’t have a lot to say on the matter but you could tell he came from the old school and was willing to help a person in need. Maybe Jane was right but you couldn’t tell with her being in such an understandable state.