I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2 (40 page)

Push it down!

Shifting amongst targets could make it harder on law enforcement to stop him, but there were no sustainable strategies left.

“They have my name, my face, my DNA.” Kevlar couldn’t save his ass. He had one mission left, maybe two, before they closed in on him. That was what he could rationally hope to accomplish. What he couldn’t figure out was why was there nothing on the radio? How could thousands of police officers have his name and description and keep that secret?

“And how does that connect to Dimitri Vosilych?” he wondered.
Ok
, he thought,
they violated my rights.
But if that ever came out in the news it would be a hiccup, not an earthquake.

Captain Sam was right; the snakes were connected… like that monster with all the snakes coming out of her head. The one you couldn’t look at without turning into stone.

Money was the real connection, money beyond anything they could spend in ten lifetimes.

A bomb would go much further, take more of them out at one time; he recognized that. With a bomb he could strike more deeply. But that’s not who a sniper is, not what a sniper does, not what he would ever do. He could not bomb Vision Partners into oblivion.

“You’re a sniper, not some bomber scumbag. You set your aim and you kill who you aim for.
A clean way to kill, a clean way to die.
”

He returned to the laptop, virtually walking along Google Maps, taking in street views along Park Avenue and Central Park West. Just two Manhattan residential structures, two buildings with a few dozen units apiece, held more net worth than half the nations on Earth.

He imagined the billionaires, each seated on the top of pyramids of grain, miles and miles high. Grain enough to feed the world, more grain than they could ever possibly consume, and all of it spoiling while they hoarded it beneath them.

The image surprised him. Satisfied him, too. He had never thought about it in that way, not until that precise moment.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“I won ten thousand dollars.”

“You what?” Callie screeched. “How did you do that?”

He wanted to keep the secret, but what was the point? “I want to buy you the diamond, Cal. I want to start off fresh and do it right this time.” Owen fanned the edge of the bills and looked at them. He still couldn’t believe it. “I’m making real money.”

“Slow down, Owen. You’re getting way ahead of yourself.”

“I’m in Jersey now, not far. A couple miles from the stadium.” A chill ran through him the minute the word came out his mouth.
Stadium.
“Cal, I want to see you and spend some time with the boys.”

“How did you suddenly get ten thousand dollars?”

“It’s a bonus. I’ll explain later. Let me spend it on you.”

“We’ll talk about that,” Callie said. “Next week. I’m away this weekend.”

Owen swallowed hard as she hung up the line. Suddenly, he needed to set the money down and step away from it.

*****

Their task felt impossible. Owen pored through the target options, speculating over Spencer’s selection criteria and assigning weight to each one. He raised attention to anomalies, the Central Park shootings, the auction house. Not everything was a social event and Spencer’s next target certainly did not have to be one of those.

Ten thousand dollars didn’t change his reality or Callie’s; Owen recognized that, but he had a win in his column, his first win in way too long.

“He’s coming off two badly broken legs,” Owen reminded Miller. “He might decide to lay low.”

“You’ve seen the footage. He’s moving around just fine.”

Miller considered and rejected Owen’s thinking. “Spencer has no imagination,” he countered. “He takes orders. That’s what career sergeants do. You’re a lieutenant, right? Is it any different in the police department?”

The comparison annoyed Owen. “I came up through the ranks.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that rank and IQ don’t correlate. Neither do service rankings. I’m a detective lieutenant; a navy lieutenant is like an army captain; in the department, a detective lieutenant is roughly equivalent to an army major.”

Miller wasn’t interested; Owen could see that his attention had already drifted away.

“Stephen, can you pull maps for each of these event locations?” Owen asked. He purposely turned his back to Miller.

“Get them up on the wall so I can visualize them.”

“Where are you going with this?” Miller wanted to know.

“Egress,” Owen answered him. “It’s easier getting in than getting out, but he always manages to escape. I want to eliminate locations that impede escape and see what we get.”

So far, what Owen knew about Miller is that the man hit the booze hard then switched it off instantly. Miller loved fancy food and liked his fancy words. He announced that he was a “Kill Manager” like that was a normal job. And he talked a hell of a lot more than he listened.

The word “stadium” still lingered in Owen’s head like a foul odor. That and Callie spending another weekend… with Doctor Marc?

“Well?” Miller wasn’t asking rhetorically after all. “Who does the thinking at NYPD?”

“Look, I’m not a spokesman for the department, ok? But we’re up against way too much here. I don’t care what sort of technology we’ve got; we can’t cover the Tri-State area with six people!”

“We’ll do precisely that; we’re blanketing from Queens to Jersey and north to Connecticut,” Nussbaum claimed. “You cops may be the face of law enforcement, but this software is the new brains and the backbone, too. I have 150 cameras for every law enforcement officer in the Tri-States Area; 500 cameras for every set of police eyeballs on duty, and that is only scratching the surface. I’m only starting to get the feel for what we have. There’s a protocol called Minerva here. DOD and NSA stuff, dealing with responses to internal terrorism and social upheaval. I’ve never seen anything like this except theoretical stuff. What we’re into here is real. We are only into tracking; the enterprise side of this interfaces with DOD drones and all sorts of futuristic scalability. If I’m right, and I’m pretty damned certain I am right, four people and this software can support national coverage. These capabilities make ‘feet on the street’
a meaningless anachronism.”

“For fucks sake,” Owen argued, “you can’t trust this to computers!”

Nussbaum and Miller seemed lost in their own imaginary worlds. “Miller, Spencer is going to attack and we’re going to be counter-punching,” Owen insisted. “We need manpower! There are 50,000 cops within fifty miles of this spot. You’re not utilizing them and you’re jeopardizing lives by keeping them in the dark!”

Miller smiled. “An hour ago you looked happy enough,” he told Owen cynically. “You get many $10K bonuses with NYPD?”

*****

Spencer followed a Craigslist ad to a basement room inside a decrepit Victorian that was chopped into fourteen cash-only rentals. Paid by the week. The hard-luck housemates aside, the space was warm, when he turned on the shower water came out, and he could join shared Wi-Fi for $15.

Web maps and real estate sales information provided reams of information on the target location, everything from the other residents in the building to layouts of most of the units inside it. The place may have looked like any other pre-war Manhattan building, but behind the brass and glass doors, the simple understated awning, the classic marble surrounding the doorway and the air conditioners hanging out the windows, the building was a fortress. There was even a book written about the building and its famous residents. The richest one was reputed to regularly work the door staff harder than anyone else and gave just $15 dollars, begrudgingly, for an annual Christmas tip.

Their Park Avenue address was for early mornings and mid-week. They all had other residences. Spencer noted that.
Early mornings. Mid-week.

He would have shot anyone who could afford to live there, but that strategy did no good. Spencer studied the face on the laptop monitor. “That’s a snake, Captain,” he murmured.

The real estate sites shared prices, layouts, and amenities. Whether it was described or just implied, every unit had internal security systems: alarms, reinforced entries, cameras, safe rooms. The building had no resemblance to Central Park West; these were not people who spared security costs. For all he knew, they could have evacuation tunnels with high-speed trains.

Impediments were everywhere. Their parking was hidden. Big trees in front interrupted sight lines.

“You need to get on-site,” he confirmed aloud. All the mapping software in the world couldn’t replace fundamental reconnaissance. “Put your boots on the ground.

“It has to have an emergency safety plan. How do I get it?”

An outline was starting to take shape. If he could get inside disguised as a first responder, he could freely mix in the stairwell and get out again to the street through the side door. But how many stairwells? What if they shut down the whole structure with him inside?

“No good,” he concluded. “Get them outside. Hit while they’re outside.”

He had to make them evacuate, on foot, to channel them to a location that he chose. He needed to keep them out of the garages.

“What’s your fire position?” he asked himself. “And how do you get out afterward?”

Spencer snapped vectors covering front of Park and 71st. Just one open convergence: the open terrace, seventh floor.
There
. Sight lines on Main and Side, functionally equidistant; range 120 meters, down angle from sixty-five feet elevation. Piece of cake provided they evacuated through either door.

“Wanna have a party?” a high raspy female voice interrupted him through his thin door. “Hey. I’m real good, baby.”

Spencer shut the laptop and put it on top of the stacked index cards, then froze and listened.

“Baby, I do it all. I mean everything.” After thirty seconds, she smacked the door with a resounding thwack. “Fuck you, man. You think I need you? Shit. I don’t need nobody.” Her voice trailed off down the dark hallway.

Spencer waited then went back to examining the street directions, the closest subway stations, alleys, and parks, everything that went into supporting survival. There were still plenty more snakes. But this one was a python squeezing the entire country.

*****

“Got a hit!” Stephen shouted. “A copy/printing company in Yonkers.”

Owen knew the area. It was only twenty-five minutes away from North Bergen driving against incoming morning traffic. He bobbed on his toes anxiously as Dilip projected Spencer’s image onto the wall. It looked like they could reach out and touch him.

“I’ve got people I know on Yonkers PD,” Owen called toward Miller. It was Spencer, confirmed. He was calmly making color copies; the screen image was black and white, but with white paper all around for contrast, Spencer was clearly using a darker shade.

“I can call in a bench warrant!” Owen pleaded. Miller seemed detached, like he was in another world.

Why was he exposing himself just to make copies
? Miller wanted to know. Color copies. When he was done at the self-service copier, Spencer took the four copies off the tray, pulled a thumb drive from the machine, and then walked to the cashier.

“He’s going to leave!” Owen argued. “We need to call Yonkers PD!”

“Show me visuals outside the store,” Miller barked over Owen. “Get them on the wall. Now!”

Kip displayed a map screen in the upper corner of the wall projection, centered on Saw Mill River Road, and then opened a one-mile outward radius. Thirty-eight active cameras showed, but just four exterior cams, traffic-monitors located at thoroughfares and highway entrances. Nothing that would display Spencer, his mode of transportation, or where he was headed.

“Shut up!” Miller snapped. “Nobody is calling PD. This is internal assets only. You are being well paid to keep this low-profile.”

“This is Yonkers, not Pennsylvania,” Owen griped. “He’s right up the road. For fuck sake! He’s about to walk out of there and vanish again and we’re sitting on our asses. We sit on our asses and that bastard gets away!”

“Spencer will kill your Yonkers PD,” Miller stated bluntly.

Owen fought the urge to scream. “Tell me how we’re going to stop him then! Your phantom commandos aren’t there!
He’s right there, in real time!”

Spencer’s live image was cast across the long wall. “That piece of junk killed my best friend. That guy—right fucking there!”

But Spencer didn’t pay the cashier and didn’t walk out. He was directed toward the print center’s computer stations and sat down facing directly toward the security camera they were all watching.

“Can you pull up what he is doing?” Miller asked Stephen.

“If he is online and if we can get an IP address.” Stephen turned toward Dale and the others. They were already on it.

Owen brought his 9mm out from its holster, released the clip, checked it and reloaded in a continuous fluid motion. “Watch your show, I’m going!” he shouted.

“Hold up!” Miller ordered.

Owen ignored him. On the run, he slammed his hand onto the bar mechanism and shoved the door so hard that it slammed against the outside wall of the building.

“Turn around!”

Owen accelerated. “I can’t do any good here!” he yelled behind him. “Keep me posted!”

He drove seventy-five miles per hour. At the Fort Lee Bridge, he took out his gold detective lieutenant’s medallion and rubbed his fingers on it for luck. He was onto the Hudson Parkway heading north when Miller phoned. “He’s gone. You should thank Christ you never took him on. You’d die.”

Miller went silent while he considered. “You’re up there now. Keep going and do some police work. We’re trying to find out from here what he was doing on the computer. See what you can get on your end then call me back,” he told Owen.

“And Irish,” Miller added, “that was your mulligan. Don’t pull that twice.”

*****

Owen was pulling into the parking spot across from the copier store when he realized that he couldn’t remember anything between the George Washington Bridge and where he was sitting at that exact moment. Five or six miles of driving, a complete blank.

He crossed the parking lot and entered the glass double doors and then he was in front of the same cashier, the cashier Spencer was speaking with in the video.

“May I help you?” the man asked. He was a twenty-something overweight version of the techs, Kip and Dale.

Owen looked back at the glass double doors, swept his eyes over the copy machines and the people using them, around past the computer area, and back to the cashier standing in front of him. He registered the signs: COPYING/COMPUTERS/PROJECTS/PAPER/CASHIER.

“NYPD,” he announced. He broke PD rules, not giving a damn and displaying his gold medallion during a suspension. “There was a man here a few minutes ago, six feet, slim, light brown hair cut short. Used the copy machines then was on the computer.”

The cashier nodded.

“What can you tell me about him?” Owen asked.

“Um,” he stammered. “This isn’t New York City. Are you supposed to be here?”

Owen looked at him incredulously, repeating to himself to keep it together and tensing as though he might go off.

“Would I be driving all the way here if it wasn’t important?” Owen yelled back. Eyes turned to look at him from every corner of the store. “Let’s start again,” he whispered. “What did he copy?”

“I should call my manager.”

“I can call Riverdale Avenue and bring in Yonkers Police right here,” Owen threatened. “You want to talk at the stationhouse or you going to cooperate?”

“How would I know?” the cashier answered. “Five sheets: a couple canary, a couple pale sky, and a rose petal. I don’t know what was on it. He made copies. Then he used the computers for a few minutes. Doing business cards. He did a minimum order of 250.”

“Show me.”

The cashier shook his head. “It’s all online. I just rang it up. Cash payment.”

He looked up on his screen and scrolled down to the receipt then spun the monitor around toward Owen. “Five sheets color, 40 cents; 250 two-color basic cardstock, $12.95; overnight delivery, $17.70; one pack of 3 X 5 index cards, $1.19; plus tax, total $34.93.”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“The shipping address! When they’re finished, where are the business cards going?”

The cashier spun the monitor back around and clicked through, while Owen waited anxiously for that address.