With the major assets out of the way, Brian then tried to decide what to bring with him as souvenirs of his past life. Ultimately, he settled on just taking some clothes and nothing else. The mere process of trying to decide on more personal things had evoked too much pain and even more anger in him. The only thing he was going to miss was his family and some of his NYPD buddies, though he was confident he’d be seeing them sometime in the future.
The plan that they had settled on, provided things went as they envisioned that day, was for him to take Jeanne directly to JFK Airport, where she was scheduled to take one of the last flights of the night heading to Europe. It was a Turkish Airlines flight to London. From there she was scheduled to go on to Frankfurt, Germany, where she would pick up a rental car. Brian was to go from dropping Jeanne off at JFK to Floyd Bennett Field in order to return the Remington plus the equipment he’d borrowed from the ESU Academy. He was then to drive out to Newark Airport where he was scheduled to take a morning Delta flight to London. From there he was to also connect to Frankfurt, where he and Jeanne would meet up and drive to the South of France.
Ten minutes later they were heading south on the Hutchinson River Parkway, and Jeanne again broke the silence. “What do you think are the chances we’ll need to break into one or both houses?”
“I’m counting on the chances being relatively small,” Brian said. “Both Kelley and Williams strike me as mildly obsessive-compulsive creatures of habit, as we’ve observed. If there is to be a break-in, it will be at Charles Kelley’s and only if he fails to follow his normal outdoor shower routine. You’ve remembered your handheld two-way radio, right?”
“Of course.” She patted the shoulder bag on her lap. “And one for you, too, so that we can communicate if need be.”
“Good idea,” he said.
One of the first things they’d done after determining where each executive lived was to go by the homes the following morning so that Jeanne could figure out the frequencies of their respective wireless security systems. She’d done it with her laptop when the outer gates had opened and closed for a delivery. She had explained that by dialing in the frequency on her radio, she would be able to swamp the respective systems, making it possible if need be for her and Brian to walk in their front doors without being detected and deal with any indoor motion detectors. She reminded him that the key thing that she’d have to remember was to let her radio stop transmitting for a second or two every so often to keep the central alarm system from recognizing it was being artificially overwhelmed. Brian wasn’t sure he understood, but was confident that she knew what she was doing.
“I know it sounds silly considering what we are planning to do,” Jeanne said, speaking up yet again after a few more miles of silence. Although he was pensive under the circumstances, as accustomed as he was to anticipating action and controlling his emotions, she had a nervous urge to talk. “But I’m glad we learned that both of them had been recently divorced.”
“I know what you mean,” Brian agreed.
During their intense, weeklong investigation of Heather Williams’s and Charles Kelley’s habits, they had learned a number of unexpected things, some of which were encouraging for what they were planning to do. They discovered that prior to the coronavirus pandemic both executives had undergone messy and rather public divorces, during which custody of the involved children had been awarded to the respective former spouses, none of which surprised them. This information bolstered the impression Brian and Jeanne had that Heather and Charles were grossly egotistical, greedy, unempathetic, narcissistic people, and accordingly bad parents.
A few minutes later they drove across City Island Bridge and turned onto City Island Avenue, a straight-shot street that ran due south the entire length of City Island. It was now slow going because of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, made worse by numerous double-parked cars and a series of traffic lights.
“I like this neighborhood,” Jeanne commented as they passed numerous hole-in-the-wall restaurants, all of which had expanded their outdoor dining onto the sidewalk and into the street due to the pandemic restricting their indoor seating. “It feels authentic and reminds me of parts of the Jersey Shore, with a kind of run-down but charming honky-tonk feel.” The architecture ran from ramshackle modern to bastardized Victorian.
Brian was preoccupied and didn’t answer. At this point of the journey, it was taking longer than he’d planned, as they had never driven the length of City Island Avenue in the afternoon. It was now almost four-thirty, and he wanted to be in position at least by five, when Heather Williams would arrive home. The plan was to wait until after the security people had done their daily sweep of the grounds before he would take up his intended position within a group of dark green Adirondack chairs grouped at the end of Heather Williams’s pier. His intention was to shoot supine, using the chairs as cover. Jeanne was to remain in the Zodiac beneath the pier alongside the sailing yacht to be prepared for a fast getaway if it was necessary. A similar strategy was to be used at Charles Kelley’s, only there Brian was going to take advantage of being able to shoot from within the cabana, which offered significantly more cover.
“Jesus Christ!” Brian complained, losing a bit of his composure as they were forced to wait behind a pickup truck double-parked outside of the Original Crab Shanty. There was no break in the line of cars coming from the opposite direction.
“Are you getting nervous?” Jeanne asked, glancing in his direction.
“Only time-wise,” Brian admitted. “I hope we haven’t planned this too tightly.”
Finally, there was a break in the incessant oncoming traffic, allowing Brian to skirt the truck blocking the road. He quickly accelerated but then immediately had to stop for a traffic light that inconveniently turned red.
“I think we are good,” she reassured him. “We’re almost there.”
Jeanne was correct, and they were able to pull into Butler Marine just a few minutes later. It was on the opposite, east side of the street such that the marina faced out toward Hart Island. Traversing the parking lot, he drove as close as he could to the base of the dock, which was home to the slip where their Zodiac slowly bobbed. Once there he quickly did a three-point turn and backed up as close as he could.
“Okay,” Brian said, jumping out of the car. “Let’s get her loaded up quickly. No turning back now.” They gave each other a look of agreement.
Along with some of the fishing gear and several canoe paddles, Brian gingerly picked up the bag containing the Remington MSR and slung it over his shoulder. Jeanne gathered up the rest of the fishing gear, and the two of them walked out to the boat without attracting any undue attention from the half dozen or so people attending to their boats farther out on the dock. While Jeanne climbed on board to stow everything and make ready, he went back to the car to get the equipment he’d borrowed from the ESU if a home invasion became necessary, including the ketamine dart pistol. The dart gun was in case they had to deal with Charles Kelley’s two pit bulls, which they had learned about during their extensive reconnaissance.
With everything shipshape in the Zodiac and the outboard idling, Brian went back to the Subaru, pulled the blanket back over their luggage, and moved the car to park as close as possible to the marina’s office. He thought that would be the safest place in the lot because the office was open until eleven p.m. with people coming and going. At that point of the venture, a theft of their luggage would be an unqualified disaster.