Off the Beaten Path (18 page)

The Sergeant had taught him a couple of valuable lessons that day, never go off half-cocked, never show your emotion to your opponent, and never ever call a twenty year gunny Sergeant a Pussy.

Girard had learned plenty of other lessons over the years, all of them the hard way. Every lesson he learned along the way came with a scar, either an emotional, a physical, or a psychological scar. In Girard's eyes those were the best learned lessons, the ones that left a scar. What better way to remember a mistake than to look in the bathroom mirror at a see the scar tissue of a knife wound, a reminder to yourself
never to trust anyone, ever, or the emotional scar of remembering that a girl he loved years ago had betrayed him.

Most of Girard's training was self-taught. He had taught himself to shoot, mostly pistols. He hated rifles, they were too long and too awkward, and mostly too hard to hide or travel with. You couldn't always have a rifle on you, but you could always carry a pistol. This was his logistical reason for loving handguns; his sadistic nature was the real reason. He wanted to look into the eyes of the person he was going to kill.

Girard's fighting skills were to say the least, masochistic in nature. He learned everything he knew about fighting from bar fights, most of which he started. He would sit for hours in run down beer joints and biker bars drinking cokes and watching the toughest thugs in the bar. Girard had discovered what cops had known for years, alcohol slowed the reaction time of most people. Watching two drunks fight was like watching two guys in slow motion telling the other guy what he was going to do. It was as if they were screaming out, “Hey, I'm going to throw a left hook now,” it was almost comical when you were watching this spectacle sober.

When a guy was good and drunk he would walk right up the biggest, meanest guy in the bar and start a fight with him. Without warning or provocation he would punch the guy in the face or kick him in the kneecap. Most of the time this worked and the guy would drop like a sack of potatoes. Sometimes he misjudged, and the guy would bounce right back and make Girard pay for his gross miscalculation. And Girard had the scars to prove it.

He spent hundreds of hours teaching himself how to throw knives with deadly accuracy, and not just expensive well balanced throwing knives. Girard practiced with every knife imaginable, regular kitchen knives, old hunting knives, and dull butchers knives. Girard believed that if he only became proficient with perfectly balanced weapons he was limiting his abilities. If the time ever came that he didn't have
access to one of his perfectly balanced throwing knives he would make due with whatever knife was handy.

But knives were not the only instrument that he practiced throwing with deadly accuracy. To Girard everything that could be picked up and thrown was a weapon no matter how crude it was. He trained himself to pick up any item in the flash of a second and sling it at a target he selected at the exact same time. It didn't matter what the object, rocks, a coffee cup, a picture frame, or an old shoe. If it had enough weight to be thrown and hit the target he chooses he considered it a weapon. He was walking home from the corner market one night with a bag of groceries and a black cat made the fatal mistake of crossing the sidewalk about thirty paces in front of him. Girard reached into his bag of groceries and hurled a can of string beans at the cat like he was throwing a fast ball into a catcher’s mitt. The can caught the cat right behind his right ear and killed him on impact; the poor feline never knew what hit her. When Girard reached the spot on the sidewalk where the lifeless body of the cat was laying he reached down and picked up the can of string beans placed it back in his grocery bag and continued on his way to his apartment without barely breaking his stride. He had string beans for dinner that night.

The man that stepped out of the cool night air and into the bar could not have looked more nervous if he had a knife pressed against his neck. Despite his attempt to dress down and hide his identity he looked as out of place as a nun in a bordello. His disguise consisted of the oldest cloths he owned which by the standards of the bar he had just entered he was the well-dressed man in the bar. He was wearing his oldest pair of Jeans, which still had the remnants of a pressed crease in them. A pair of old running shoes, a work shirt he had borrowed from his Gardner, and an old leather jacket that he kept around for sentimental reasons. To top of the ensemble he his head was covered with an old baseball cap that he had meant to throw out years ago. He was clearly a fish out of water.

He made his way to the bar and ordered a beer. While he waited for the beer he tried to look everywhere else but at the raunchy patrons on both sides of him up and down the polished wooden bar. He did not make eye contact but he could feel their eyes on him. It felt like their eyes were saying, “What the hell are you doing in here?”

Girard touched the 9mm under his coat and adjusted himself in his chair. He watched the man at the bar with mild amusement. For a guy that was supposed to be so smart the man looked like he had just made the biggest mistake of his life.

When the guy at the bar got his beer he looked around the bar until he spotted Girard sitting in the corner. He left a ten dollar bill on the bar and headed straight Girard like he was on a mission. He didn't see
one of his new drinking buddies at the bar snatch up his money before the bartender saw it. When he reached the table where Girard was sitting he stopped and looked down at Girard with a hard cold stare,

“Why do you insist on meeting in shit -holes like this?” He snarled.

“Because they are Shit-Holes.” Girard replied with a smirk.

“Let's get down to business,” the man snapped at him as he pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from Girard.

“Whatever you say, Clarence old boy.”

Clarence Palmer shot him an evil look across the table and spit out in a muffled scream of panic, “I told you never to use my name in public.”

“Sorry, I forgot,” Girard offered with a mock apology. He leaned across the table and his eyes narrowed,

“Let me tell you something about the fine upstanding establishment where we are currently meeting. I could stand up right now and put three slugs in your heart and walk out of here like I was walking down the beach on Sunday afternoon. I might even stop at the bar on my way out and have a beer before I left. And when the police came to collect your frumpy ass the few people that would be left here, those without criminal records would not have seen a thing.”

In a weird twisted way this seems to put Clarence a little more at ease. Clarence was more concerned with being seen with Girard than he was about being shot by him. Clarence leaned back in his chair and relaxed just enough to be able to force a knowing smile across the table. Girard did not waste a lot of time,

“What do you need done?” asked Girard in a down to business tone.

Clarence considered very carefully the next few words out of his mouth. He knew what he wanted, but actually saying the words out load chilled him to the bone. Despite all the horrible things he had done in his life, the thought of what he was about to say made him slightly sick to his stomach.

Girard watched him closely; he could see Clarence turning a lovely shade of green, his hand trembling around his bottle of beer, and the hesitation in his eyes,

“Come on Clarence old boy, spit it out, I haven't got all night.”

“I want someone eliminated.” Clarence snapped, before he could change his mind.

“There, that wasn't so tough was it?” Girard Mocked.

“You might not be so overconfident; this is not going to be so easy.” Clarence Said.

They concluded their business and Clarence got up from the table. On his way out the door the bartender yelled at him, “Hey buddy, you going to pay for that beer?”

Clarence looked at the laughing thugs at the bar. He started to protest that he had already paid for the beer but looking at the crowd along the bar he realized that this was probably a bad idea. He reached into his pocket and handed the bartender another ten and headed out the door at a quick pace, one of the criminals at the bar hollered as he reached the door, “Come back real soon.” Everyone at the bar laughed.

Girard waited a few minutes and then made his way onto the street without anybody noticing that he had even been in the bar. He put his head down and headed uptown. After about ten blocks and a couple shortcuts up blind alleys he was in front of a parking structure. He chose not to take the elevator or use the stairs; he made his way up the car ramp to the top level of the parking garage. He reached the top level and stopped to look around to make sure that he didn't have any company. Then he cut across the concrete structure to the far corner of building pushed the clicker once to unlock the doors and climbed in and fired up the Silver BMW.

Jack took careful aim at his target, one of the five one gallon milk jugs full of water sitting on five consecutive fence posts two hundred yards across the meadow. He squeezed the trigger slowly and the gun jumped as the firing pin hit the primer and the bullet exploded out of the end of the barrel. The first jug burst as Jack took aim at the second jug and pulled the trigger. He repeated the smooth steady motion three more times until all five jugs were remnants of their former shape. When he emptied the rifle he surveyed the scene to make sure that he had hit all of his targets. Jack looked down at Sam and asked, “What do you think, Sam.”

Jack checked the chamber to make sure it was empty and laid the rifle down on the front seat of his pickup. As he walked the distance across the field to retrieve the remains of the milk jugs he was thinking about Kristin and how most of her problems could be solved if someone would do to Clarence what he had just done to those milk jugs.

Jack knew that Clarence was not just hiding behind the law he was twisting it for his own amusement. Clarence was like one of those guys in prison that earned a law degree and then spent all of their time and energy suing every company, person, and organization that had ever touched his life. Standing over the shattered milk jugs Jack laughed as he looked down and said out load to Sam,

“Yep, looks like justifiable homicide to me.”

Kristin glanced up from her desk once in a while to see what was going on around her or if there was anything that required her immediate attention. She carefully watched the meeting going on in the conference room. Kristin and Mecca had worked out a signal between the two of them. When Becca thought that it would be helpful for Kristin to make an appearance at a negotiation Becca would set the pen she was constantly twirling between her fingers down on the conference table and give it a spin. That was the gesture for Kristin to leave the confines of her office to freshen up her drink in the break room and then poke her head into whatever meeting Becca was overseeing at the time. It was an incredibly effective technique they had employed dozens of times to relieve the tension in some very serious discussions. No one had ever caught on to their joint collusion, not even the staff. Kristin could also see down into the lounge and the gym to make sure that the models were playing nice with each other. She understood better than anyone the heightened egos and jealousy associated with the fashion industry. She glanced up to the second floor where at the present there was a photo shoot in full swing. The shoot was for the cover of a local magazines fall fashion issue. From where she sat it looked like everything was running smoothly in every corner of the building. But mostly her gaze fell on the front door as she was watched and waited impatiently for the afternoon mail delivery hoping for a letter or a postcard from Jack, he had not missed a day since he had left Seattle. Melissa had taken note of Kristin’s sudden
interest in the routine mail delivery. She could feel Kristin’s eyes fixed on her from the moment the mailman walked through the front door until she had sorted the stack of mail. Melissa had even changed her daily routine to accommodate Kristin’s anxious moments waiting for the mail to be placed securely on her desk with Jack’s letter on the top of the pile. Up until a week ago Melissa would sort all the mail carefully pulling out the junk mail and placing each piece of mail that belonged to the staff in their cubbyhole behind the front desk. Since Jack had left for Montana Melissa’s primary duty was to locate Jack’s letter, find as many pieces of mail that belonged to Kristin in the shortest amount of time possible and place the letter on her desk without any delay. The third day one of Jack’s letters arrived Melissa considered for just a moment absentmindedly leaving Jack’s letter in the stack of mail that remained on her desk then bringing it up later. While Melissa pondered little her prank she glanced up at Kristin’s face. The thought of not delivering Jack’s letter never crossed her mind again. Kristin tried to act like she was preoccupied when Melissa walked into her office and placed the stack of mail on her desk but the moment she turned to go she could hear Kristin tearing open the letter. Even with her back turned Melissa could feel the smile on Kristin’s face. Everyone in the building had noticed the change, and not just in the new way of delivering the mail.

Jack’s letters were not intense confessions of love and emotion they were deeper than that. The words that Jack put down on paper would never be published in a book of poetry or love sonnets. His letters simply contained the everyday events of a man that wanted her to experience each moment of his day as if she were right there beside him. Jack did not just describe what he did each day he painted her a picture of what he did each day and how he accomplished each task. She could smell the wild flowers in the morning sunlight and feel the rough lodge pole fence or the pair of old leather work gloves. She could see Buck and Sara grazing in the pasture and hear the heard of elk
bugling at the tree line. She could smell the cloud of dust kicked up on the dirt road when a truck drove by and the drop in temperature when a storm was rolling over the mountain. It was as if he kept a pen and paper with him throughout his day and every time he completed a chore or thought about her he would take the time to sit down and write what he was thinking about. Today’s letter was no different. It described in great detail how Jack rescued one of the yearling buffalo calves that had got stuck in some very deep mud along the creek bottom. Kristin could see Jack’s cloths covered in mud and streaks of dirt running down the side of his face where he had to push with all his strength to free the calf. She laughed when she read the part where Buck backed up as Jack tried to climb up on his back Buck wanted nothing to do with his mud soaked owner. The closer Jack advanced the further Buck retreated, Buck won the argument and Jack had to settle for walking back to the barn with Buck and Sara taking the lead. Kristin could smell Mary’s kitchen as she fixed Jack and Ben Lunch. She smiled at the thought of Sam’s daily walk out to the end of the driveway to watch for her red Mercedes to appear. At the conclusion of each letter she felt as if she had been right there beside him for the entire day. The letters were more than the words written on the paper she could hold the letter up close to her face and almost smell Jack’s aftershave. She would close her eyes and run her fingers gently over the paper as if to retrace Jack’s hand over each word on the page.