CHAPTER NINE

 

 

MARY JO WALKED from the mall to her stolen brown Ford sedan not drawing any attention to herself, climbed into the brown sedan and ten minutes later had it parked on the top of a pine-tree covered hill just to the right of town.

She had turned the car around so she could go straight down the hill she had just come up and be lost in the streets below in thirty seconds, long before anyone below even knew what hit them.

She left the car running and left the disguise bag in the car. She then took her rifle and made sure it was loaded.

It was actually a deer rifle, a classic bolt-action Roberts with a scope. The rifle was a collector’s item that she remembered back sixty years ago really liking for a job similar to this one. The thief who had given her this rifle had assured her it was accurate and had been tested.

She tested it on him and he had been right, actually. The thief was still one of her husband’s unsolved cases.

She moved to the small stone wall that kept tourists on this hill from tumbling over the edge of a fairly steep cliff down into an old stone quarry below. This small turn-around often held teens out parking for some first love experiences in a parent’s car.

She was so old now, she could barely remember her first sexual experiences. They had not been pleasant, she remembered that much.

That’s why she enjoyed the modern pleasant experiences now. Just like she enjoyed her drinks. When good, they were both worth savoring.

The rock quarry two hundred feet below was abandoned and mostly a playground for neighborhood kids after school and in the summer.

The body of good old Sam lay below her, right where she had dumped it. Someone had covered it.

Killing never did anything for her, one way or the other, and poor old Sam was just bait for her husband who was the real target.

She checked the area in the small clearing around her to make sure no one was nearby that she would also need to kill.

Thankfully it was clear.

Her husband stood with two detectives in a tight group near the body, talking.

Good, she would take care of all three at the same time. First her husband, who was her target, the one she was getting paid to kill. She had slept with her target for fourteen months. She thought of it like a cat playing with a mouse.

She studied the scene quickly one more time. By taking out the other two detectives, it would slow down any investigation.

“Goodbye, dear,” she said softly. “This is what you get for pissing off the wrong people who have far too much money.”

The rifle was loud, but had almost no kick.

The echo of her first shot bounced around through the trees and over the surrounding farmlands and down against the rock walls.

Her husband went to the ground instantly.

She knew the entry wound would be small in his chest, but most of his back would be blown away from the high-velocity rifle as the hollow point bullet expanded on impact and blew him apart.

She quickly took out her husband’s best friend with a second shot before anyone even thought to move for cover.

She killed the third detective as he turned to run.

She picked up the three shell casings, made sure she had left nothing else where she had fired, brushed around the dirt to kill any shoe prints, then put the gun back in the case open on the back seat of the car and headed down the road.

She turned away from the police and then worked her way slowly back toward the mall.

She parked the Ford sedan next to her Jeep again. Then she transferred the disguise bag and everything into her car and put the rifle back under the back seats.

She climbed into her Jeep and turned on a high-tech scanner she had in her purse that told her if any camera was watching at all.

Nothing, as she had known for this area of the large mall parking lot.

She quickly pulled off her disguise and tossed them into the bag, zipping it up and putting it on the floor behind her driver’s seat.

Then she took off the thin, transparent gloves she had been wearing that were embedded with fake fingerprints and stuck those in the pocket of her jeans.

She hit almost no traffic on the short drive home.

That was nice. Her job was done now.

All she had to do was make sure nothing came back toward her and get paid before moving on and vanishing into the next job.