Prologue

     For more than two weeks Richard Defur had made no mistakes but still the man followed. As Richard sat down for lunch with his business partner he had no idea the gentleman wearing sunglasses, leather gloves and a three piece Armani suit seated four tables to the left was there because of him.  In fact, because he had been staring at his waitresses’ breasts asking her to repeat the types of whiskey the restaurant carried, Richard had not noticed when the man, while being led to his seat by the hostess, seemingly stumbled and swooped up from the floor the ticket the valet had given Richard moments before.  It was this misplaced valet ticket that ultimately damned Richard.

     At lunch, after three or four drinks, Simon Baxter, Richard’s partner in a financial consulting firm, broke the news that one of their most important clients, Leonard Harris, would be taking his business elsewhere.  Leonard was a thirty something dot.com entrepreneur and valuable not only because of his wealth but because he was young and offered the potential of many decades of high cost consulting hours.  On his way to drunk, Richard slammed his whiskey onto the table cracking the glass and evoking stares from those seated around him.  He cursed and shouted for the bill and it appeared he and Simon had been arguing.  That they weren’t mattered little and Michael Handler, the man who had been following, knew his time had come.

     When the shouting started and Michael heard the glass crack on the table he pulled out two twenties and asked a passing busboy to tell his waitress he needed the bill.  He waited until Richard and his lunch date had left the restaurant and trailed them outside.  Michael had parked his Mercedes on the street and was forced to choke down a chuckle as he walked past Simon and Richard.  Richard was shouting at the valet,”I don’t have my fucking ticket but you damn well know which car is mine!”

     Ten minutes later Richard finally secured his red BMW 650i convertible and, as he screeched his tires and drove away from the valet stand, Michel pulled in behind him. 

Richard drove straight to Simon’s house. A beautiful Victorian set back from the road and hidden among giant oak trees in Kenilworth, one of Chicago’s wealthiest suburbs.  Michael had followed the pair to the home on two other occasions and come back once on his own to scout it out.  Since first finding Richard he had had an inclination that Simon’s house might be the place.

     He passed Simon’s driveway and continued a quarter mile down the road where he pulled into the parking lot which doubled as the local wildlife preserve. A dozen other cars dotted the expansive lot and Michael went to the trunk, removed a half dozen zip lock bags, stuffed them into his front coat pockets and, now on foot, hurried back down the road towards the house.

     Rounding the corner he was just in time to see Richard’s BMW pulling out of the driveway.  Michael stood quietly for a second, listening for approaching cars and then, casually, strode onto Simon’s property, walked up the driveway and rang the front door.  When Simon answered Michael smiled and asked, “Is the lady of the house available?”

“She’s not home” Simon answered tersely and, before he could close the door, Michael had pushed his way into the foyer.  He pulled from his coat pocket one of the bags which contained a silver Hammerli SP20 pistol stolen earlier in the week from the night stand next to Richard’s bed. He pointed it at Simon. 

“Up the stairs” Richard demanded without bothering to remove the gun from its container.

     Simon tried to speak but his words came out in a mumble and Richard asked, “Is there anyone else here?”  It was all Simon could do to shake his head no. Simon backed up the stairs never removing his eyes from the gun. He probably did not see it flash when, as the pair reached the second floor, Michael pulled the trigger and, from three feet away, put a bullet squarely between Simon’s eyes.  Michael didn’t even bother to make sure Simon was dead as he began busying himself organizing the contents contained in his remaining zip lock bags. 

From one Michael pulled a few strands of hair he had plucked from Richard’s comb during the same visit that yielded the gun. He dropped them near Simon’s body.  From another he pulled two small shags of carpet he had taken from Richard’s bedroom.  Michael placed these carefully on the third stair from the top. Last, he removed the red valet ticket he had plucked from the restaurant floor not two hours ago and let it drop over the edge of the staircase where it fluttered off a small bureau and came to rest on the marble floor below.

That was suppose to be it, but turning to leave, he noticed the door swinging open as Richard’s partner’s wife and child returned home.  From the seventh stair he shot the woman in the front entranceway as she turned to put her coat in the closet. She crumpled against the wall and was staring at Michael with an expression of disbelief when he reached the bottom of the stairs.  The child had started bawling and Michael did not even hesitate as he turned and shot the young boy where his blond shaggy hair was parted just above his nose. The kid went over backwards and was almost certainly dead even before the mother began trying to drag herself across the floor to reach him. Michael shot her again and quickly began reviewing his dilemma.

     He had already planted all his evidence upstairs and decided immediately the two additional bodies would look exactly like what they were, unfortunate victims who had come home at precisely the wrong time.  Comfortable with his analysis Michael stepped over a rapidly growing pool of blood coming from one of victims out into the cold afternoon sun and calmly walked down the driveway and back towards the lot where he had left the Mercedes.

Michael felt a small wave of regret for killing the kid but it passed before he had even retrieved the car. After all, it really was Richard who had gotten them all killed. He had led Michael to this place and the victims were, by any reasonable judge’s standards, Richards’s.  They were unfortunate but unavoidable casualties in Michael’s greater plan.

     He disposed of the gun in a picnic area just a few hundred feet from where he had parked. The area was upscale and he had no doubt that whomever found it would call the police.  That was the key; not just having whatever it was you wanted found discovered, but hiding it in a place where people would find it in a way that looked like it was hidden on purpose.  Indeed, three days later, after Richard had already been arrested, a child throwing a football with his father went to retrieve an errant pass and stumbled across the still loaded gun. He brought it out to show his dad and, eventually, the gun made its way to the police.

  It was even registered, and, although the kid and his father had muddied any clear prints which might have existed, the police had no problem proving it was the murder weapon and then tracing the gun back to Richard. Before leaving it in the woods Michael had taken a single bullet from that gun and hidden it in place no one would ever find. Not, at least, without his help.