CHAPTER 20

 

The killer turned the key in the lock, mentally visualizing the tumblers rotating in unison before he heard the decisive click of the deadbolt.

He was in.

The room was dark as pitch. He stepped quietly over the threshold and closed the door behind him. He trained the beam of the flashlight around the mudroom until he spotted the doorway that would take him into the kitchen of the palatial home.

Although he had never met him in person, he loathed the man who owned this beautiful home; or mansion might be a more fitting word. He hated everything that he stood for. And unlike his other victims, this man’s most beloved thing in life was not his wife or child or another human being, for that matter.

His love was a bit more material than any of that.

So in order to make the man pay his debt to society, he would take away that which he loved more than everything else: his house and everything in it.

And later on, after he’d had enough time learning how to do without his beloved possessions, he would blow away the motherfucker.

But first things first.

The killer stepped into the kitchen and shone the beam around. As expected, the room was enormous and contained state of the art appliances and furnishings. As he looked around at the monstrous stainless steel custom gas range, shiny granite counter tops and stainless refrigerator the size of a supermarket cooler he felt the overwhelming urge to grab one of the carving knives from the holder and deface everything in the room.

But he took a deep breath and managed to let it pass. Why expend all of that energy anyway?

What he found inconceivable was the fact that the security system for this home was so old and obsolete that a child could disarm it. And that was the extent of security—no video cams, no laser beams, no motion detectors, no nothing. It was as if Mister Moneybags dared somebody to fuck with his shit. Like he was somehow above ever having his worldly possessions stolen or tampered with.

What a bloody fool. It had just made his job all that much easier.

He entered the adjoining dining room with its beautiful cherry table and matching bentwood chairs. The dining room set alone probably cost more than he had earned in the last two years. His thoughts returned to the kitchen knife for a second before he moved on.

The living room looked more like a ballroom than anything else. A gigantic crystal chandelier hung from the high ceiling over a scene that could be set in a castle. Adorning the walls were at least a half dozen paintings by artists ranging from Matisse to Goya to Picasso. Although he wasn’t a big art aficionado, the killer was fairly familiar with the masters and appreciated the impressive breadth of this collection.

He wondered what all of these were worth, sum total. The figure had to be staggering.

The art collector of the house was really going to miss these.

He stood back for a moment and tried to imagine a ballroom dance going on in this place. A jazz band set up at the far end, women dressed in their finery rattling their jewelry and the men looking rich, arrogant and successful. The scenario made him want to puke. He could imagine the smartly dressed waiters kowtowing to everybody’s whim as though their lives depended on it. Offering drinks from a silver tray and serving food from the buffet table—every one of them secretly wanting to eliminate the whole lot of partygoers while they sucked up to them.

Pathetic, really.

His mind went back to the Gulf war. He remembered how incredibly poor and downtrodden the citizens were, desperately trying to raise their families and scrounge up enough food to survive. While at the same time the rich bastards with more money than they could ever count were running the whole goddamn show—taking whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it and to hell with the lowly masses.

They were nothing but numbers, those pitiful folks.

Mister Moneybags would fit right in there.

He almost wished that the man were home right now so he could kill him and be done with it. But that wouldn’t work. He had to make him suffer a bit first. His number would be coming up another day, so to speak.

He smiled and went through a huge pair of swinging doors to a foyer. Across the marbled tile floor was the entrance to the library and to his right an ornate spiral stairway winding up to the second floor. He entered the library and was taken aback by its size and elaborate furnishings. Two walls contained enough shelves of books to accommodate a small town. Adorning the furthest wall were more notable paintings along with a couple of classic Ansel Adams photographs of Yosemite. An impressive gas log fireplace with a massive oak mantle made the room seem cozy and luxurious.

It almost seemed like a shame to let all of this go up in smoke.

He went over to a door at the end of the room and entered the study. He peeked behind the individual pieces of hung artwork until he at last found what he was looking for. There behind a Monet was the wall safe.

He had worked on a safe like this before and estimated that it would take at least a half hour to crack the combination. He had little doubt that it would be worth his while. He took off his nylon backpack, removed his tools and went to work.

Forty-five minutes later he opened the safe door. Inside was what amounted to a king’s ransom comprised of gold, silver, diamonds, bonds, land deeds and a thick wad of cash. He flipped through the crisp new bills and estimated there to be about ten grand. He stuffed the cash into his backpack and dumped the rest of the treasure into a thick canvas bag. The killer had no plans on keeping anything other than the cash and was only taking the rest because it might actually survive the explosion. The last thing he wanted was for anything valuable to be salvageable. He could think of a lot of charities that might appreciate a generous donation but now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that.

He closed the safe, replaced the Monet, slipped the canvas bag into his backpack and left the room. As he checked the time he was impressed with how smoothly everything was going. Had his life not been forever altered by the circumstances he’d found himself in, he might have made a decent career as an undercover agent for the government. The CIA, for example. He chuckled to himself as he returned to the foyer.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor and cased out the place. In addition to the master bedroom and three bathrooms, there were five bedrooms of which three were furnished. The others were little more than storage rooms for more artwork and odds and ends. It was obvious there was no lady of the house judging by the lack of a woman’s touch in any of the furnishings. The lord and master of this manor lived alone with only a maid and landscaper at his beck and call to keep things running efficiently.

The killer entered the master bedroom and immediately saw the huge framed portrait of the man’s father hanging above the fireplace mantle. Everything Mr. Moneybags possessed could be traced back to the huge fortune his hardworking father had left to his only heir after his passing. This fact made the man all the more despicable, for he hadn’t worked a day in his life yet owned all of this.

Easy come, easy go.

He smiled ironically, checked his watch again and walked over to the fireplace.

Show time, he thought.

He knelt down and located the valve for the gas. He rotated the handle as far as it would go and heard the hiss of the escaping gas. Then he stood up and strode briskly out of the master bedroom. He opened all of the doors on the second floor and turned on the gas to the other second floor fireplaces.

On his way back down to the first floor, the adrenalin kicked in and the sensation of absolute power permeated his entire being. Finally after all of this time justice was being served. This house was owned by a man who was at the top of the food chain—the big cheese who had made the divine decision to destroy the lives of all those hardworking people. What the fuck did any of these folks mean to him anyway in the grand scheme of things? Here he sat with more wealth than anybody could ever imagine calling all the shots. Why was it that the rich always felt that they had to get even richer? Why couldn’t they just leave well enough alone and not be so goddamned greedy?

He would never understand it.

What he did understand was that this man had to pay for what he had done. He had played the numbers game and decided out of a grand total of x, that y must be eliminated. Just like that. Just to save a few bucks.

The fucking shithead.

The killer spent the next few minutes turning on the gas to all three of the first floor fireplaces. He ran down to the basement, located the furnace and killed the pilot light. He overrode the thermocouple and turned on the gas.

He returned to the kitchen and could smell the distinctive odor of natural gas filling the house. He was in fact beginning to feel a bit of a headache coming on.

He went over to the stove and took the firing device out of his back pocket. He’d learned how to rig these things in the Middle East. The unit was little more than a small electronic timer connected to a pair of wires which ran to an electronic spark igniter—like a pilot light found on a modern gas range.

He set the timer to ten minutes and placed the device on top of the stove. He reached behind the range, unplugged the power cord and turned on the gas to all of the burners. Finally he turned on the gas to the oven and opened the oven door.

He had about nine minutes to wrap things up and get as far away from this place as he possibly could.

The bolted through the kitchen and out the back door. He nearly tripped over a gray cat on his way out. The cat meowed and he picked it up. It had a collar with a tag that said My name is Lucy. If you find me, please return me to 205 Terrace Court for a generous reward.

Aw, the master’s pet kitty cat. The man had a heart after all.

The killer opened the door and pitched the cat inside. The least he could do was return his pet under the circumstances, ha-ha.

He eyed the guesthouse located further down the driveway and ran to it. He walked around to the rear of the house, took out a tiny strip of paper from his pocket, pulled off its backing and attached the barcode to one of the rear windows.

He returned to the main house and suddenly recalled that there was something else he wanted to take before leaving Morrow’s place in cinders. He re-entered the house just long enough to snatch it before the fumes nearly knocked him out. Outside he stopped for a moment to suck in several lungfuls of fresh air. Then he walked briskly down the driveway until he reached the small footpath that would take him to his car, parked the next street over.

He checked his watch. In five minutes it was going to look like friendly forces in Iraq had just bombed this place. Andrew M. Morrow would be arriving home in another hour and find himself unable to recognize the place he had spent so much time and expense for his suck-up guests to rave about.

It would all be reduced to burning embers and literally a crispy shell of its former self.

The thought made the killer want to jump for joy.