Honorable Assassin (22 page)

Once they were back in Sydney, they went to
the hall of records. Gordon looked up everything about Lee; Terry
researched Linda Pierce. It seemed that Lee had been indicted twice
by Internal Affairs for brutality. Both times he had managed to
walk when the witnesses refused to testify when scheduled. The
third time, he actually shot someone and didn’t kill them. With a
willing witness and a third charge pending that would most
certainly stick, Lee was forced to retire. That was about four
years earlier. Linda had left him for good about the same time.

Linda was the daughter of a farm family,
good if simple stock. Long-time owners of grazing land and
livestock, they had managed to buy up the properties on both sides
of them when the land came on the market and so owned a substantial
spread. The court orders were sealed, but it looked likely that she
had returned to the family farm.

When Gordon mentioned he would like to pay
them a visit, Terry insisted that he had more knowledge and
experience and he should be the one to go. Gordon did not argue but
it led him to ask where Thompson Barber had been raised. Terry told
him Tarrytown.

A few kilometers north of Orange, Terry
pulled his Holden to the side of the road and opened the petcock on
his radiator. He was careful not to drain off too much of the
coolant. He didn’t want to damage the engine, just make a
convincing show of it.

The Pettigrew farmhouse was warm and
inviting, the farm well maintained and modern. The family was
friendly and more than willing to give him some water for his
radiator. He explained that he was a representative of the Kingston
Insurance Agency and he was going out to examine some claimed
damage when his temperature gauge indicated he was low on coolant,
so he pulled in. Having lived in the general area since he was
eight years old and on a similar farm, it was not difficult to
strike up a conversation about weather and pests and crops and
yield and then he got around to insurance. He told them he was
certain that he could give them a better rate for insurance than
they currently paid if he could just get their names and the
particulars on the equipment.

The head of the household was quite old and
set in his ways but, while he still ran the farm, his sons and
daughters did the work. He had three sons and two daughters. Two of
the sons were married and lived in the refurbished farm houses on
the properties to each side. The youngest son, Paul Pettigrew, was
unmarried and though a large and beefy man, Terry suspected he was
a homosexual. The two daughters both lived in the family home.
Linda and her sister Lisa were almost the same age. Lisa was a
school teacher in nearby Euchareena and Linda worked on the farm,
having been recently divorced.

It was not difficult for Terry to catch
Linda’s eye. She was by far the oldest woman he had ever made a
pass at but that diminished neither her looks nor her personality.
After he had the particulars recorded for an insurance quote, he
was reluctant to leave. He spent some time talking about farm work
and noted that he was fond of hunting foxes and rabbits. It worked
perfectly. Lisa was still at school and Paul, the youngest son,
could not stand the sight of blood, but Linda was more than happy
to lend him a rifle and take him out to the woods for a little
shooting.

If Terry had thought it would require some
work to seduce Linda Pierce he was mistaken. She took him to a
secluded glade, set her rifle down and grabbed him. He was more
than willing and she was a wildcat. The lack of male companionship
on the farm had left her ravenous and when presented with a
handsome and well-formed man such as Terry Kingston she was quick
to take advantage.

Linda was in phenomenal shape for a woman of
her age and had never had any children. Terry was bulging with
muscles from his regular trips to the gym and particularly well
endowed. The two of them copulated in the woods like wild animals
until they collapsed, completely drained. Twenty minutes and a
cigarette later they were at it again.

Later that day, Terry insisted that he still
needed to inspect the damage he had been on his way to see, but
promised he would be back the following day to deliver a quote for
a policy on the farm.

The following day he did return, much to
Linda’s delight, and though it was a bit old fashioned, he asked if
he could escort Linda to dinner in town. Linda’s parents were
charmed, and so she and Terry went to dinner, eschewed the movie
and rented a motel room for the night.

In the soft romantic glow of the night,
Terry pressed her delicately for information on her past. She was
reluctant to talk about her previous marriage. She would only say
that he had been a bastard and that she would gladly give up the
pittance of alimony he paid her to see him in the ground. She
refused to tell him how she had gotten the scars on her bottom.
This worked well for Terry and he pressed her no further for
information. As soon as he was able, he reached for her again and
found her ready.

The romance blossomed over the next couple
of weeks. Terry did some work on the farm, showing Paul how to
replace the head gasket on a tractor, and walking the fence lines.
He took Linda to see some of the Olympic Games in Sydney, took her
to a movie and generally wined and dined her. He was careful not to
respond to the looks Lisa gave him. Lisa was clearly jealous and
would have given Terry a ride if he had wanted, but that was not on
his agenda. Besides, Linda was all he could handle at present. It
was like she was making up for years of lost time.

After a couple of weeks, Linda finally told
Terry how she had gotten the scars on her backside.

“He was finally caught,” she said. “His
viciousness caught up to him when he shot a man. You knew he was a
constable, right?”

“No, you never said.”

“Well, he was. He came home pissed and angry
and put the handcuffs on me and whipped me with his belt. That was
when I left him. If I’d had a gun I would have shot him. I hear
tell he’s got lots of guns now. Of course, he tried to tell me how
sorry he was and that it would never happen again, but I knew if I
let it go once, it would never stop.”

“That’s it then. I’m going to kill him.”

“No! You’ll never get close to him. Lee is a
terribly dangerous man. He might shoot you if he knew we were
engaged.”

“Are we engaged?”

“Well,” she said coyly, “in what we are
engaged in.”

“What you don’t know is that I am a terribly
dangerous man as well.”

“Oh, you certainly are.” She reached out her
hand and found what she wanted, already primed.

“How bad do you want this done?”

“Oh, I want it.”

“No, I mean how bad do you want him
punished?”

“What on earth are you asking and why do we
need to talk about him?”

“He chained you and whipped you. He left
scars on your beautiful bottom and for that he needs to be
punished.”

She let go of his manhood and looked him in
the eye. “You’re serious. You really want to kill him?”

“Yes, I really want to kill him.”

“Oh, how romantic.” There was no more
conversation for some time.

In the sweaty afterglow Terry asked her,
“What would you be willing to do to see him get his just
rewards?”

Lee Pierce was astonished to see his ex-wife
at his trailer door. He had not wanted the divorce and had beaten
himself up emotionally for a long time over it. He had tried
several times to reestablish their acquaintance but it had been in
vain. His letters had gone unanswered and she would not talk to him
on the telephone. Now, here she was, looking wonderful to him and
talking about getting back together. It was too good to be
true.

Lee and Linda went on a few dates together
and talked about the good times, but she would not sleep with him.
At the end of the day she got back in her car and drove off. After
a week, it was driving him mad.

It was the beginning of November, the middle
of spring, when Linda showed up at Lee’s trailer door looking like
she had been run through a blender. She would not allow Lee to
touch her but asked if she could use his bathroom to clean up.
There was blood on her torn clothing and both her eyes were swollen
and bruised. While she was trying to get the blood off her shirt
she told her ex-husband about the truck driver who had raped and
beaten her. She didn’t know his name but he was driving an
International and heading south from Brisbane. He had raped her
after forcing her into his truck at Newcastle and had left her in
there, tied up. The abrasions on her wrists were all the proof she
needed of that. She had written his license plate number on her
shirt. It was all that was necessary to send Lee Pierce into a
murderous rage.

As soon as Lee was gone, Linda Pierce opened
her trunk and took out a package wrapped in a blanket. After
leaving the package in the trailer, she got back in her car and
headed for the nearest police station. She walked in and announced
in a loud voice that she had just been assaulted by her ex-husband.
He had beaten her for refusing him sex and then threatened her with
a gun. She claimed he had gone into a rage and left her at the
trailer. Her statement contained the quote
“If I stay here I’m
going to kill you.”

The man driving the International South from
Brisbane was completely innocent. There was nothing in his truck
but sundries, imported from South America. He had no idea why the
man in front of him kept jamming on his brakes but would not let
him pass either. It was obvious that there was going to be a
problem so he fished his tire thumper out from behind the seat and
prepared to defend himself.

It was not the Irishman’s usual
modus
operandi
to send a message claiming the destruction, before the
destruction had been accomplished, but in this instance he did. The
message he left spoke of the job in the past tense as if he had
already done it, but the truck indicated as having destroyed was
pumping down the road in fine order. Gordon followed the identified
truck south after spotting it from the northbound lane and making a
quick u-turn. He had spoken to his intern, as he had taken to
calling Terry, who had promised he would be waiting at an entrance
and would be behind him before he knew it.

When the Jeep passed him at high speed and
pulled in front of the truck, Gordon got ready. The man in the Jeep
was clearly trying to stop the truck.

The truck stopped and an angry driver got
out with a two-foot length of pipe. He was large and would have
been able to thump most unarmed men. The man that jumped out of the
jeep was far from unarmed, however. The man held a Smith and Wesson
1911 in each hand and as the driver turned to get back into his
truck, Lee Pierce shot him through the back. He walked up to the
prone truck driver and was obviously about to shoot him in the head
when Gordon opened fire with a Glock 22. The .40 caliber rounds
from the Glock blew large holes in their target but did not prevent
Lee from putting a round in the innocent driver’s head as he died.
Gordon paused only to put one in Lee’s head and then leaped back
into his vehicle and drove off at high speed.

“Yes, it was a damn sloppy operation on both
our parts,” Gordon said. “Both the primaries are dead but I cannot
be sure I did not get seen. I would hate for some well meaning
citizen to come out and say I was the one they saw shoot a man on
the road. I’ll be in hiding for a while, at least until the police
decide they don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

“You are sure this was the Irishman then?”
Abel was as gracious as always, regardless of the fact that he was
discussing a double murder. He smoothed his tie and examined his
nails.

“Yes, sir. This was our man. He sent a
premature message this time but the voice was the same. I have
ended the Irishman’s reign of terror. I expect payment will now be
forthcoming.”

“Of course. A job well done. You will need
to go to the warehouse on Barclay Street, after five. You will be
paid there.”

“I had assumed I was to be paid here.”

“I’m sorry, Adam and I never handle cash.
It’s so dirty. Do you know where the Barclay Street warehouse
is?”

“Yes, of course.”

Abel saw the cloud cover his specialist’s
face and asked if there was something wrong. The man said no and
left quickly.

The Barclay Street warehouse was the one
where Gordon had seen Victor Wellington tortured to death. He
wondered what he might be expecting when he got there. He
considered calling Terry for backup but, while he trusted the young
man as much as an assassin can trust anyone, he did not have enough
faith in his judgment. He also wanted not to be the cause of his
death.

After five o’clock the warehouse area was
empty of traffic but well patrolled by the police. They were bored
with their uneventful but necessary routine and usually gathered at
the coffee shop about midnight.

Gordon waited for the patrol to pass the
area a bit after eight and climbed the fire escape to the roof
across the road. Through the scope he could see men sitting around
a desk in an office, playing cards. He took out his cell phone and
made a call. Half an hour later a car pulled up and a man carrying
a pizza got out and banged on the employee’s entrance. The men
inside pulled out their pistols, went to the door, and absolutely
terrified the young man trying to bring them the pizza they had not
ordered.

Gordon was disappointed that he was unable
to see the full interaction but he trusted his instincts. It would
not be the first time a powerful man had retained his services and
expected to be able to get away without paying him. He pulled his
cell phone back out and dialed Abel Troy’s number.

“Mr. Troy,” he began when the secretary had
put him through, “there are four armed men at the warehouse you
directed me to. As far as I can see they are waiting to eliminate
me from the game. You have two options here. Either we take care of
this amicably, in a public place tomorrow, or I kill all four of
these men and then you and your brother. What do you say?”