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9:45 A.M.
Georgetown, Washington D.C.—Residence of Percy Weston
Mere coincidence brought David Thurman into a ritzy, small area of D.C. at the same time as the stranger. He and his father, Carson Thurman, moved into a Tudor-style home adjacent to a church with his father’s latest bimbo, a bust-heavy college professor named, Connie, who drank too much beer and loved sports. The stranger came to Georgetown three days later, settling into the cottage on the property of the area’s only Mormon church.
Thurman was bored with life that spring—when Connie and his father weren’t making rambunctious love with her belting out cringe-worthy pleas to God, they were spending his alimony catering to Connie’s physical beauty and taking walks along the nearby Potomac River—so he used his time learning all about the stranger residing on the grounds of the church. Thurman had decided his first act was to surveil. Watch the man’s every move. Because Thurman was ten-years-old and the only child of divorcees, he was well-trained in the art of watching adults. Investigating and observing them. To begin with, like any surveillance, he needed a watch station. No place better than his bedroom window; it had an unrivaled view over-looking the stranger’s cottage. In his father’s army duffel he found a pair of modern binoculars, and at the Georgetown University school store, he stole a composition book and pack of ballpoint pens to log the movement of his target. His first misdemeanor for which he wasn’t arrested.
The first thing Thurman noticed was the stranger kept odd hours. He cleaned the church grounds during the day. By seven p.m. he left the cottage with a book bag, riding a bicycle, the same one that he had come to town on. He was a man that kept a strict schedule. Punctual. A man of great repetition.
Three months into Thurman’s investigation the stranger’s cottage was raided by Metropolitan P.D. He was accused of peddling cocaine and reefer on the Georgetown U campus. Later that night, Thurman stole one of his father’s guns and hid it under his pillow. He feared the stranger had caught him surveilling his moves and thought that he reported them to the authorities, bringing about his arrest. Bored even more thanks to his subject’s arrest, though, Thurman ratcheted up his mischievousness. He was caught swiping a camcorder from an electronics shop on the area’s main shopping track. Connie conspired with his father and sentenced him to two weeks of solitary confinement in his bedroom.
Perfect.
Not a problem for Thurman who used the binoculars to spy on the church’s pastor. He watched the pastor welcome a new stranger to reside in the cottage, who kept up the same routine as the last arrested resident. To Thurman’s fresh detective-eye the new stranger looked a lot like a drug pusher. Verification arrived when the stranger was escorted to a police cruiser followed by a handcuffed, Pastor Jonathan McKee. Thurman knew it. It was the moment he began to believe in coincidence.
That was thirty-six years ago.
Today, forty-six-year-old, David Thurman, dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt and cotton sweatpants—both with Georgetown University embellishments—jogged up to an elegant Tudor house in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. A two-man diplomatic security detail was posted at the front of the white-painted house. What about the back, brainiacs? Thurman thought. He felt sorry for the men who babysat, United States Supreme Court Chief Judge Percy Weston, a white-haired liberal appointed by former president Cotter. Their black Yukon Denali was parked between two orange cones in front of Justice Weston’s purlieu, at the ready to whisk the judge wherever he wanted to go 24/7. Thurman estimated the rent-a-cops weren’t necessary and another waste of taxpayer’s dollars. The biggest problem in Georgetown—where the murder rate was negative some-odd percentage points—was drunkard Georgetown students walking pass the judge’s home from an off-campus party. Occasionally, they taunted the judge’s security. Tired their patience. Gave them a little excitement. Most times they were ushered along, but there was a time or two a student found their faces pushed into the judge’s lawn with guns in their faces.
Having a bonafide security team in Washington was reserved for the real players—the president and Vice President, no doubt, the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Director of the FBI, and the Director of the CIA. All other players were left to fend for themselves unless, like Justice Weston, a specific threat was made to take their lives. Thurman knew that Justice Weston had a credible threat on his life, because he had made it on an Internet message board used by ISIS sympathizers. The site was religiously monitored by the CIA.
Both bodyguards had red hair and freckles. Strawberry Shortcake’s brothers, no? One had more hair than the other. When Thurman slowed in front of them and jogged in place, they pushed their blazers back, setting their hands on their pistols. Perhaps, I should have called ahead, but he wanted to surprise the justice.
“Guys,” Thurman said politely. God, I hate political correctness. It’s loaded with lies and deceit. “I’d like to have a brief word with Justice Weston. Think you can give him a ring and ask him to come out?”
The men gave Thurman a menacing stare, and one of them said, “Absolutely...not?”
The way the men looked at each other screamed that they had no idea who they denied an unscheduled face-to-face with the judge.
“Why don’t you run along,” the one with the shorter hair said. He was irritated by the request.
Thurman shook his head and thought. How could it be that these imbeciles not respect my presence? “I won’t be, as you say running along until one of you at least advise the justice of my request.”
Neither bodyguard replied. They stared at the man before them with an uncertain glare and wondered what kind of simpleton jogged to the front of the chief justice’s home and demanded a meeting. The number one judge in the world.
Again, the one who was losing the hairline war spoke. “I’m going to ask you to keep it moving or I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
Thurman snickered.
“You’re a real piece of work,” he said, smiling condescendingly. He was extremely pissed that some D.C. rent-a-suit had the gall to attempt to block his access to Justice Weston.
“My work is to protect the justice, period. If I was to call him about a jogger’s request for him to appear I wouldn’t be worth a damn to this great country, would I?” the guard with the longer red hair said, smirking.
In one swift violent motion, Thurman put a neat hole the size of a nickel between the tough SOB’s eyes. Punishment for his grandiose insolence. Then, he sent a silence shot slicing through the partner’s scalp. “I don’t think either of you are worth a damn to this country or apparently to the good judge,” Thurman said, confiscating the dead men’s side arms. “Thank you, kindly. Just exercising my right to bear arms, fellas,” he said, walking up the narrow path towards Judge Weston’s front door. He whistled the Alfred Hitchcock Psycho score and thought, á bon chat, bon rat. To a good cat, a good rat.
Ready or not, here I come.