See No Evil

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I threw the door open to find Gray, today wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, looking like an August thundercloud about to hurl lightning bolts at anyone within range. He had the day’s Amhearst News in his hands.

He stalked into the house. “Look at this!” He shoved the paper at her.

Staring at me from the front page above the fold was a picture of Ken Ryder, looking stricken. Standing beside him, hand on his shoulder, was Gray, and standing beside Gray, looking heartbroken, was me.

“Ken Ryder, husband of victim Dorothy Ryder, being comforted by friends Grayson Edwards and Anna Volente,” read the caption beneath.

“I didn’t even know the picture had been taken,” I said. “That reporter must have done it.”

Next to the picture were my head sketches of the red-shirted man. Beneath his picture were the words: “Do you know this man? Wanted for questioning in the murder of Dorothy Ryder.”

I put my forefinger on the face of the red-shirted man. “The drawings reproduced well.”

“That’s not the only likeness that reproduced well,” Gray muttered. He dragged a hand through his hair.

I stared at him. “What?”

He pointed to my face, then to the caption beneath.

I went cold all over. “He knows who we are.”

FIVE

Dar Jones was not a happy man, but he also wasn’t a particularly worried one. He just hated that the job hadn’t gone perfectly. He prided himself in being the best hands-on for-hire killer in New Jersey, maybe the whole Northeast. Maybe the entire country.

He wasn’t one of those prima donnas the movies were fixated on, the guys who used rifles and scopes and elaborate scenarios. He was a good, basic craftsman. Hire him, and your intended target went down quickly and cleanly. No prints. No clues. No DNA. No nothing but a dead body, done up close and personal so there was never any doubt.

So this time a woman saw him. Granted it irked him. After two weeks of casing the development, he knew that everyone was gone way before seven. Last night was the very first night someone other than the Ryder woman was there at that hour. Who could have guessed?

But so what? It wasn’t like the woman in the window was a threat or anything. He hadn’t looked like himself. So what if she saw the man with the light brown hair and the bushy mustache? She’d never finger him, not in a million years.

He ran his hand back over his naturally black, poker-straight hair and smiled to himself as he looked out his oversized window at the Atlantic Ocean rolling relentlessly onto the Seaside, New Jersey, beach. Even that red shirt with the little pony over the heart was a disguise. He’d never wear one of those preppy rags. He’d go naked first. And khaki slacks? He shuddered.

Basic black was his color. Black jeans, black T, black athletic shoes and socks. If he had to get dressed up, like for a funeral or to eat at some fancy-schmancy restaurant, he had his black cashmere sports coat. When winter came, he had his black leather bomber. If it was unbearably cold, there was the black down jacket.

The Man in Black. Just like Johnny Cash. Too bad he couldn’t sing like Cash, but then Cash, if he was still alive, couldn’t kill like him. Dar grinned. To each his own.

He could still see her horrified expression when she saw his gun. His grin broadened. She probably thought she was very fortunate to have escaped with her life. She probably spent the night thanking her lucky stars.

He laughed out loud. Like he’d ever miss. If he’d wanted, she’d be as dead as the other one. But all he’d needed to do was scare her so he’d have plenty of time to drive away.

Even if she’d seen him leaving, he’d been driving the black Taurus with the Pennsylvania plate with the scene of the old square-rigged warships fighting on it. The numbers and letters on the plate were impossible to read because they blended so well with the picture. Everything was beige. The plate was registered to Jon Paul Jones, just like the false registration and insurance papers, all with a phony Pennsy address. If anybody ever tried to trace the address, they’d end up at the credit union in South Coatesville.

Dead end.

The Taurus was tucked away in New Jersey, in Tuckahoe in a garage behind the house of a little old lady who was as daffy as they came. Every month an automatic bill payer sent her a check under his phony name, Jon Paul Jones. He kept just enough cash in the account in a Tuckahoe bank to pay her.