Ogrodnik Interior 2.0c (21 page)

Elliot’s attention was drawn to the tree line on the right where he thought he saw movement. The blackness was so complete that, as he stared at the area, he imagined he saw shapes. He knew that in order to see in extremely low light conditions, the trick was to not look directly at your subject. Half a million years of evolution had produced a multi-purpose viewing organ ideally suited to the needs of the evolving human. The types of cells in the center of the cornea are used for direct viewing and are good for distinguishing color and detail; the types of cells used for peripheral vision are found off center and although poor at distinguishing detail were effective for detecting movement in low light conditions. He set his gaze 20 feet to the left of his target and didn’t move it.

There it was again—a movement, a change in the depth of blackness in the shadows, a momentary glint from something metallic.
It’s not an animal; it’s a man,
he thought. Whoever it was, he was moving slowly. It was almost imperceptible, certainly undetectable if you weren’t looking for it. Over the background roll of the river, he heard the sound of a small branch snapping and all movement stopped. Minutes later, Elliot wondered if maybe he’d lost track of the lurking shadow. If maybe the shadow was now beside the house looking for entry. He reached down slowly, mimicking the caution of the shadow, to pull his gun from the overnight bag at his feet, and he did so without taking his gaze from the window. It took minutes before Elliot had the gun in his hand and still no movement from outside, only imagined sounds and false shadows. The shadow shifted again.
This was a very cautious man,
he thought, but Elliot was as cautious as the shadow he watched. He sat perfectly still as the shadow advanced slowly and was now no more than 10 feet from the window and about to disappear from his view. Elliot still did not move. The gun handle sweaty in his grip, he strained to hear any sign of the shadowed stalker. He thought he heard a scuff against the house coming from the side where the entrance was. He imagined the fabric of a jacket scraping against the house's stone exterior.

There was a soft sliding sound from behind him. He slowly turned in his chair to find its source. He heard it clearly now. It was the sound of a doorknob turning, slowly and gently so as not to make a sound. He was relieved that he had locked the door behind him. The sound at the door stopped. Elliot waited for the next attempt, gun held out at arm’s length, ready to shoot. The crack of door window glass shattering brought him out of his chair and into a crouch, gun held straight out aiming at the broken window on the door. He heard another scuff sound from outside the door and what sounded like an intake of breath, and then an arm came through and turned the knob to let the door swing open.

Everything slowed down for Elliot as if the world were in slow motion. His body, frozen in time, unable to move, unable to even apply the ounce of pressure the trigger was calling
for. He crouched by the chair, mesmerized, soaking in every detail of the scene as it unfolded before him. He
heard a voice in the distance yelling, “I’m coming in,” but Elliot had no control over his physical form. Half of a torso leaned in through the open door, and he saw the darkened silhouette of a monster wielding a knife half the size of his arm. The silhouette then retreated immediately.

“Forsman, it’s Rayce. Stand down! Put your weapon away. Do you hear me?”

Elliot pulled out of his trance and snapped back to the present.

“Forsman, do you hear me?” Rayce yelled again.

“I hear you,” he said with cheerless relief.

“I’m coming in.”

“I thought you were stalking me. I thought you were one of Yilmaz’s men.”

“Sorry to disappoint. You’ll find Yilmaz’s guy outside. We need to get rid of him.”

Elliot got up out of his crouch and moved to the door. Lying on the ground just outside the door was a body. In the low light, his black clothing and ski mask made him look like a two-dimensional outline of a man. He saw a shiny patch of black on the man’s upper back and knew it was the end product of a killing knife.

“What are you going to do?” Elliot asked.

“I don’t want to get caught with a body on my property. I’ve got a roll of plastic wrap in the garage on the work bench. You get that, and I’ll find some tape.”

By the time Elliot came back with the wrap, Rayce was already there with a roll of duct tape and in the process of looking through the man’s pockets.

“I want to wrap some heavy rocks in with his body, and then we’ll let the river take him downstream where he’ll settle into the basin. Leave his head, feet, and hands exposed so we give the fish something to nibble on until he gets dredged up, if he gets dredged up.”

The two worked silently for the next couple of minutes until the man was trussed as per Rayce’s instructions. Rayce picked up a knife sticking in the garden and wiped it clean. He then pushed it deep in between the wrap and the man’s body so it wouldn’t fall out; they carried the bundle down to the river. Rayce pulled the body through the rocky shore and out beside a large boulder that was on the edge of the fast moving water. From there he pushed the body into the torrent and let the current take it away.

As he walked up to the house, Rayce made a phone call.

“Hello, Gaetan. Rayce here. I have a gift for you that needs to be picked up tonight. “

“How hot is it?” the voice on the other end replied.

“It’s not hot tonight, but by mid-morning, I expect it will be.”

“Leave it on Rue Chene. My guys can be there in an hour.”

“Okay,” he said and hung up.

Rayce looked at Elliot. “Get your car, and drive me up the road to this guy’s car,” as he pointed farther east.

Elliot didn’t ask questions and drove Rayce to the car hidden in an overgrown access road to a farm that was long gone.

“Follow me, not too close.”

Rayce led them to a secondary road that wound up a shallow hill at the foot of a mountain and pulled into the cleared area beside an abandoned granary. He didn’t dally and got into the car as soon as Elliot stopped.

“Back home.”

“Why drive the car here?”

“The people who will be taking the car want to make sure that there are no active GPS or transponder services running before they move the car to the chop shop.”

“And they’ll come tonight to take it?”

“They’ll be here soon. They’ll disable any locator technology and then take the car back to their shop. The parts from that car will be en route to a dozen different auto body shops by mid-morning.”

“It sounds like you’ve done this before?”

“I do what I need to do. “

“How did you find Yilmaz’s guy? Were you waiting for him?”

“My phone told me. I have a perimeter alarm that keeps me posted on any movement in the area surrounding the house. When I saw the car hidden in the old driveway, I knew you must have been followed. I ditched my truck farther up the road and backtracked. It didn’t take long for me to see where he was and where he was going. I took a shortcut and was waiting for him near the back door.”

They drove for another couple of minutes before speaking again. “Why did you put your knife in with the body?”

“Weapons are cheap. I’d rather buy another knife or gun than get caught with a weapon that can be traced back to a body.”

“There’s my truck. Let me off here,” said Rayce as he pointed to the backend of a truck in a roadside pull-off.

“I’ll meet you back at the house.”

**************************************

“You can take the room at the end of the hallway on the left. They’re coming for us now, so get some sleep while you can. ”

“Are you going to sleep?”

“I’ll grab some when I’m finished. I have a call to make,” said Rayce as he made his way to a circular metal staircase off to the side of the kitchen area.

Rivka returned from her sister's, entered the house and secured the door behind her as she always did. It had been a long time since she had spent time with her sister. She told herself that was because she was too busy but knew that she’d been subconsciously avoiding her since the Stungun episode. She thought about the recent developments in the Stungun case and how it would change her life if she could close the case. She sensed something that she couldn’t identify at first, something good but recently unfamiliar. It took her a few moments to recognize the feeling of serenity, a feeling that her life was moving in a positive direction, and she smiled.

She draped her jacket over the back of a kitchen chair making sure she wouldn’t leave a crease and headed straight for the fridge even though it was already 1:00 a.m. As she stood looking at what might slake her gnawing hunger, she paused, making no movement or sound at all. She wouldn’t be able to say what caused her to shift into high alert, only that she sensed that something was amiss. There had been no noise, and nothing seemed to be out of place, but her instincts were screaming. She closed the fridge door quietly and un-holstered her gun. Feeling the gun in her hand filled her with confidence, and she carefully moved toward the adjoining rooms. As she entered the living room, she recognized her alert. There it was again: a faint, almost imperceptible smell of body odor, a smell that didn’t belong in her house. It was the unsanitary smell of a person who did not bathe regularly and didn’t care. It was the smell of the big man, Ogrodnik. Rivka crouched down to three quarters' height and entered the room gun first. The gun swept across the dark shadows of the dining room finding only table and chairs. She tiptoed across the living room area as if the floor was wet ice. The smell was stronger now, or was it? She thought he must be close. The sunroom entrance lay before her. It was a square room at the side of the house with a few pieces of furniture along the house wall. There would be no place to hide if he was in there. She stopped at the entrance, straining to detect even the slightest movement, a muted breath or foot scuff along the floor to confirm her intuition. There was nothing, only the sporadic, drifting scent of an unwashed man: little enough to make her think she might be imagining it but just enough to think she may not be. She contemplated backing off, retreating to the outside and phoning Elliot for backup. A dozen years on the force had taught her the dangers of acting alone, especially against someone as dangerous as Ogrodnik, but years of obsessing about the Stungun Killer took precedence. She controlled her breathing and prepared herself for the confrontation to come; she’d shoot first and ask questions later. Rivka lunged in through the door at half height and swept her weapon across the sunroom. The incoming moonlight offered a perfect view of the empty room.
Damn!
she muttered to herself. 

A rustle of clothing alerted her to the movement behind, but it was too late. A huge arm swept across her torso and picked her up as the other arm reached out and grabbed her gun wrist. The gun wrist was smacked against the door jamb with bone cracking force, and the gun skidded off into a dark corner of the room. The big man gathered both of Rivka’s arms and torso in a one-armed hold from behind and brought the other hand up to cradle her face to still her thrashing. He held her head still and whispered directly into her ear, “I told you we would meet again, my petite cyclamen.”

Rivka struggled but could not escape his crushing hold. She was suspended six inches off the floor and could not move her arms, torso, or head. Her thrashing legs found his shin with her heels but to no apparent effect. He applied strength to his hold and forced the air from her lungs until she stopped. 

“Better, this will go smoother for both of us if you come along agreeably. That way I won’t have to hurt you,” and then added, “before I’m ready, that is.”

Rivka was totally helpless, and she could feel his erection pressing into the back of her thigh. He removed his hand from her face and applied the Taser. Rivka spasmed and then slid into the dark.

Elliot awoke to the sound of activity in the kitchen. 6:45 a.m. No nightmares. Time to get up.

“Morning.”

“Forsman,” Rayce acknowledged without looking up. “There’s cereal and bread in the pantry and fruit in the fridge. Help yourself.”

“Coffee?”

Rayce pointed to a fresh pot over by the fridge.

Elliot sat across from Rayce with his coffee and watched Rayce scribble out notes on a pad. After a few minutes, he asked, “What’s next? “

Rayce looked up from his notepad. “Whatever advantage we thought we had is now gone. They sent that guy out here for a purpose. It was not a recon mission. He was sent to kill you and whomever else might get in his way.”

“How do you know?”

“He had a silenced gun tucked into his waistband when I took him. Did you see the tattoo on his wrist?”

“Yes, it looked like a Middle East language.”

“It was Arabic. It translates to ‘infidel.’ That man fought in the Middle East: probably in Syria or Iraq. He’s a merc.”

Rayce waited for a few moments as if he were deciding what to say. “I visited Eastern last night and took the facility out.”

“Took the facility out. What does that mean?”

“There were only four mercs at the compound. They left themselves vulnerable, so I took the opportunity to eliminate them and then burned the compound to the ground,“ Rayce stated without emotion.

Elliot looked at Rayce trying to find words for his next question.

“You killed four men last
night? Were they the guys we’re looking for? They might have been innocent.”

Rayce’s drew in a deep breath before answering. “There are no innocents. These men are soldiers, hired killers. When they got this job, they brought their guns with the intent to use them. They know who we are and where we live. It’s them or us, Forsman, and, just so we’re on the same page. Sarah’s and your father’s killers will answer for what they’ve done. And I fully expect they’ll answer with their lives.”