She lowers the newspaper and smiles.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks.
Melissa turns the briefcase toward him and reaches out and presses pause on the stereo. The briefcase actually belongs to Joe Middleton. He left it with her the same day he never came back. “I’m here with the other half of your payment,” she says.
“You know where I live?”
It’s a stupid question. Melissa doesn’t point it out to him. “I like to know who I’m doing business with.”
He unwraps the towel from his waist, the entire time keeping his eyes on the cash in the briefcase. His dick sways left and right as he starts drying his hair.
“It’s all there?” he asks, still drying his hair, his face at the moment behind the towel and his voice muffled.
“Every dollar. Where’s the stuff?”
“It’s here,” he says.
She knows it’s here. She’s been following him ever since their initial meeting two days ago, where she gave him the first half of the payment. She knows he picked up the stuff only an hour ago. He went from there to here with no stops in between with a bag full of items his parole officer wouldn’t be too pleased about.
“Where?” she asks.
He wraps the towel back around his waist. She figures she could have just come in here and shot him and searched the house anyway, but she needs him. The stuff probably won’t be hard to find. She figures a guy who would ask You know where I live? to somebody standing in their bedroom is the kind of guy who hides things in the roof space or under the floor.
“Show me,” he says, nodding toward the money.
She slides the briefcase toward him on the bed. He steps forward. The twenty grand is made up in fifty- and twenty-dollar bills. They’re stacked neatly into piles with rubber bands around them. Over the last few years most of her income has been through blackmailing people or burglaries, some from the men she’s killed, but a few months ago she came into some pretty good money. Forty thousand dollars, to be precise. He thumbs through some of it and decides it must all be there.
He moves over to the wardrobe. He drags a box of clothes out then lifts the patch of carpet and digs a screwdriver into the edge of the floor and Melissa finds herself rolling her eyes, thinking how lucky guys like Derek are that they can’t be charged for stupidity along with other crimes. He pries up the boards. He pulls out an aluminum case the length of his arm. Melissa stands up so he can lay it on the bed. He pops the lid open. There is a rifle broken into separate pieces, all of it slotting into foam cutouts.
“AR-fifteen,” he says. “Lightweight, uses a high-velocity, small-caliber round, extremely accurate. Scope too, as requested.”
She nods. She’s impressed. Derek may be stupid, but being stupid doesn’t mean you can’t be useful. “That’s half of it,” she says.
He goes back to the manhole. Reaches in and pulls out a small rucksack. It’s mostly black with plenty of red trim. He sits it on the bed and opens it. “C-four,” he says. “Two blocks, two detonators, two triggers, two receivers. Enough to blow up a house. Not enough to do much more. You know how to use it?”
“Show me.”
He picks up one of the blocks. It’s the size of a bar of soap. “It’s safe,” he says. “You can shoot it. Drop it. Burn it. Hell, you can even microwave it. You can do this,” he says, and starts to squeeze it. “You can mold it into any shape. You take one of these,” he says, and picks up what looks like a metal pencil, only with wires coming from the end of it, “and stab it in. Attach the other end to these receivers,” he says, “then it’s just a matter of firing the trigger. You’ve got a range of a thousand feet, further if it’s line of sight.”
“How long does the battery in the receiver last?”
“A week. Tops.”
“Anything else I need to know?”
“Yeah. Don’t mix them up,” he says, and holds up one of the remotes. “See this piece of yellow tape I’ve put across it? It lines up with the piece of tape I’ve put on this detonator. So this,” he says, holding up the detonator with the tape, “goes with this,” he says, holding both the remote and detonator together.
“Okay.”
“That’s it,” he says, and starts packing them into the bag.
“I need your help doing something else,” she says.
He keeps putting things away. “What kind of something?”
“I want you to shoot somebody,” she says.
He looks up at her and shakes his head, but the question doesn’t faze him and doesn’t slow down his packing. “That’s not my thing.”
“You sure?” She holds up the newspaper and shows him a picture of Joe Middleton, the Christchurch Carver. “Him,” she says. “You shoot him, and I’ll pay you what you want.”
“Huh,” he says, then shakes his head again. “He’s in custody,” he says. “It’s impossible.”
“His trial starts next week. That means transport every day, twice a day, back and forth from jail to the courthouse. Five days a week. That’s five times a week he’s going to step out of a police car and make his way into the courts, and five times a week he’s going to step back out of the courts and into a police car. I already have a spot where he can be shot from, and an escape route.”
Derek shakes his head again. “Things like that aren’t always as they seem.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think they’re just going to drive him the same way every day, and just drop him off outside the front door? That’s where your spot looks over, right?”
She hadn’t thought of that. “Then what?”
“They’re going to mix up the route. They’re going to try and get him there in secret. They might put him in a normal car. Or a van.”
“You think so?”
“A trial this big? Yeah. I’d put money on it,” he says. “So whatever plan you think you might be hatching, it isn’t going to work. Too many variables. You think you can just hide in the building somewhere and take a shot? Which building? Which direction is he coming from?”
“The courthouse doesn’t move,” she says. “That’s not a variable.”
“Uh huh. And which entrance will he be using? They’re going to mix that up too. That’s why whatever spot you think you’re going to shoot him from is probably not going to work.”
“What if I can find out the route? And the way he’ll be going into the courthouse?”
“How you going to do that?”
“I have my ways.”
He shakes his head. She’s getting sick of all the negativity. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s just too hard a job. Shooting somebody like Joe, nobody’s going to get away.”
“Who can help me?”
He puts a hand to his face and strokes the bottom of his chin. He gives it some serious thought. Then comes up with an answer. “I don’t know anyone.”
“I’ll pay you a finder’s fee,” she says, trying not to sound desperate, but the fact is she is desperate. She’d already had a shooter lined up for this, but it fell through. Now she’s running out of time.
“There is nobody,” he says. “Sourcing weapons is one thing,” he says, “but it’s not like I have a Rolodex full of people we can call if we want somebody dead. It’s the sort of thing you have to do yourself.”
“Please,” she says.
He sighs, as if the idea of letting down a pretty lady is just too painful for him. “Look, there may be somebody I can call, okay? But it’ll take a while.”
“I need a name in the next few days,” she says.
He laughs, his mouth opening so wide she can see a few missing teeth near the back. She hates seeing that kind of thing. Hates people with missing teeth about as much as she hates being laughed at. “Lady,” Derek says, and she hates being called lady too—it’s impressive Derek has just gone three for three. “It’s just not going to happen. Even if my guy could do that, he would never accept to do it so quickly. Killing somebody is about homework,” he says. “It’s about the money too, but not this late in the game.”