Killer Move

Hunter waits for the body to reach a temporary point of rest, then brings the butt of the pistol down on the back of the other man’s head.

Later he takes the set of house keys from the kitchen counter. He locates the heart of the CCTV surveillance system in the office space on the first floor, establishes that it spools what it observes—both inside the house and outside—to hard disk. He removes the drive. So long as the next part goes smoothly, he has effectively never been here.

He leaves the house via the front door, locking it behind him after he has propped the man’s unconscious body against it. An injection has ensured that the man will not be waking any time soon.

Hunter reopens the main gate and fetches his car from the restaurant parking lot. He loads the comatose body into the trunk, reenables the gate’s entry pad, and rearms the security system. Then he drives sedately back out onto the highway.

Within half a mile he has become a ghost who was never there, and never did anything at all.

CHAPTER FIVE

“You’re sure?”

I shrugged. “Hazel, I’m not sure, no. Like I said, this is an overheard conversation—which I wasn’t a part of—and I’m keen that you not jump to any conclusions. I just thought I should let you know what I’d heard.”

The woman opposite me frowned. Hazel Wilkins, midsixties, widowed owner of three prime beach-view condos within The Breakers. She was dressed head to toe from boutiques around the Circle, some doubtless visible from where we were sitting taking this midmorning coffee—the sidewalk table outside Jonny Bo’s street-level café. Hair once blond was shot with gray, but she was still a good-looking woman.

“Tell me again. Word for word.”

I really didn’t want to go through it all again. Partly because, despite forty dire minutes in the gym, my head still felt fragile from all the wine the night before. Mainly because the conversation I was alluding to was entirely fictional, and I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said the first time.

“The play-by-play isn’t important,” I said airily, as if keen to keep things on an elevated level. “Bottom line is that he and Marie look like they’re holding to the no-improvements-this-season rule. As they have for the last few years.”

“Tony’s an extremely self-centered man,” Hazel said briskly. “And she’s worse. Dangerously so. Neither is capable of being happy unless they’re pushing other people around. I’m tired of it and I’m tired of them. I’ve been an owner here right from the start. They ought to respect that. They ought to respect me.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said, holding my hand up to attract a waitress. This meeting had gone on long enough. I needed to be somewhere else. Somewhere out of direct sunlight. “They have their own way of doing things, and progress comes hard to people. There’s comfort and convenience to the status quo. Everyone needs a compelling reason to change.”

I might have kept quoting random self-improvement mantras forever, but thankfully a waitress arrived with the check, though not the waitress who’d been serving us previously. It was, as a matter of fact, the girl who’d waited on Steph and me the night before. She evidently saw me noticing the switch.

“Shift swap,” she said. “Or maybe Debbie just exploded. You never know. Hey,” she added, belatedly recognizing me. “Back so soon? Should get you a loyalty card.”

“Is there one?”

“Not really. But I could make a prototype, maybe. Out of a serviette and, like, drawing our logo on it.”

“What would the rewards be?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “But the card itself would be an awesome thing.”

I handed over my personal Amex. She went back indoors.

“You come here often, Bill?” Hazel asked, one eyebrow lightly raised.

“Last night,” I said. “Stephanie and I had a great meal on the balcony. That girl was our waitress.”

“You must be on the up if you’re making a habit of hanging out at this place.”

“Hardly a habit. It was our anniversary.”

She nodded, her eyes vague. Phil Wilkins was six years dead, but it didn’t take a genius to work out that his wife still missed him hard. I’d met Phil a couple of times, soon after we moved to Florida, and even when hobbled with advanced cancer you could tell he’d once been a man of compelling character. Hazel still presented well, but there was an air of pointlessness about the performance. She was keeping her end up because that’s what you did, not because she especially wanted anyone to notice, or cared what anyone still alive thought of her. It was as though her husband had told her to stand to one side and wait for him while he fetched the car, but then had never come back to collect.

Her hands lay together on the round metal table as if they had been mislaid by someone else. I put one of mine gently on top of them.

“Look,” I said, as if the idea had just come to me. “You want me to try to have a word with Tony?”