Authors: Chuck Barrett
"I don't own a unit here. A friend of mine is letting me stay here for a few days." Love pointed to the East Tower. "I'm over there."
"My husband, Martin, and I are up there." She pointed to the West Tower. "Is this your first time in Pointe-à-Pitre?"
Love couldn't help but smile. Not at what Teresa Kingsley said, but at how often this routine worked. A chance first meeting followed by a second. The woman had already let her guard down so now Love would just pour on the charm and in no time Teresa Kingsley would think she had met her new best friend. And her new best friend would prove to be the death of her.
They talked for an hour, ordered lunch from the grill, and then started drinking.
By 3:00 p.m. Love was getting a slight buzz and Teresa Kingsley was well beyond that point. Her speech was slurred and she had almost fallen out of her chair three times from laughing so hard.
"Abby, you are one of the funniest women I've ever met. Martin will love you." Kingsley sat up in her chair and turned to face Love. "I have to go with my husband to a business dinner tonight, will you go with me?"
Love hadn't expected this. She had too much to do tonight while Martin and Teresa Kingsley were at their dinner meeting. That might be her only opportunity to case the Kingsleys' condominium since the hit was planned for tomorrow night. "No, that wouldn't be right. But thank you for the generous offer."
"Please, Abby. All they're going to talk about is business. Blah. Blah. Blah. Real estate, rum factory, yada, yada, yada. I won't know anybody there. I'll be bored to death. It'll be so much more fun if you're there with me. I'll have someone to talk to for a change."
"No. Really." Love insisted. "It wouldn't be right."
"Come on, Abby. After dinner, we'll leave them to their business and go do something fun."
"I don't know." Love found this woman's pleas hard to resist.
"It won't cost you anything, Abby. My treat. Please? You'll have fun, I promise."
Love couldn't believe she was giving in, that was unlike her. Especially when it came to a hit. "Alright, Teresa. I'll go." She saw Teresa Kingsley's smile turn into a grin.
Enjoy it while you can my new friend…because my idea of fun is beyond your imagination.
A
ugust 17
—1:00 P.M.
METech Laboratories
Leuven, Belgium
H
e extended
his hand to greet Kyli as he walked into her lab.
She moved past his hands and wrapped herself around his chest in a full embrace, squeezing him tight. He liked the warmth and feel of her body molded to his.
Nearly a year had passed since Jake met Kyli Wullenweber, a scientist for METech in Belgium. The lavender smell of her hair filled his nostrils. She lifted her head and her soft amber eyes met his.
"Do I make you nervous?" Kyli asked.
Jake unwrapped her arms and held her hands at arm's length. "Sometimes." He wanted to say more but he knew he'd fumble it and besides, Francesca might walk in any second.
"Like now?"
"No." Jake wanted to look and act calm.
She didn't flinch when Jake spoke, just laughed. Her sexy, playful laugh. Kyli was tall, nearly as tall as him with an ivory complexion and thick chestnut hair. She had a splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her eyes sparkled every time she smiled. Even though he would never admit it, she excited him every time he was around her. She acted so cool. He knew she was taunting him.
“How long will you be here this time?” Kyli asked.
“Only as long as it takes you to make a DNA toxin.”
“Is that all?"
“I'm afraid so, we’re in the middle of an assignment.”
"Careful Jake, Kyli will put her spell on you.”
"Huh?" Jake turned and saw Francesca standing behind him. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough," Francesca said.
"Busted." Kyli smiled.
Jake felt his face flush. He pointed his fingers to Francesca then back to Kyli. “You two have met, right?”
Both women laughed. “Of course we've met, Jake,” Kyli said. “Franny’s been here lots of times with Mr. Wiley.”
“Franny?” Jake smiled at Francesca. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
Kyli interrupted. “That’s my nickname for her. Francesca sounds so…formal and exotic. Franny is cozy and friendly.”
“Right. Tell that to her next victim.” Jake laughed and shook his head. “We should be done in a few days then I have a couple of weeks off.”
Kyli leaned close to Jake’s ear and whispered.
He smiled. "Sounds like fun."
Kyli motioned with her head, like she was trying to be subtle. Jake followed her eyes and noticed the new plaque on the wall. “Is that it? Your doctorate diploma finally arrived?”
“Yep. Two days ago.” Kyli pulled it off the wall. “Can you believe it took them nearly four months to get this little piece of paper to me?”
“The bastards.”
“Shut-up.” Kyli swatted Jake's chest. “Now you’re just picking.”
“A little.” Jake reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a clear sealed bag. “Brought you something.” Inside the bag was a tiny vial.
“What do we have here?” Kyli grabbed the bag and held it up to the light. “Ah, from Skeeter?”
“How'd you know?"
“I designed the DNA extractor for Wiley's mosquito drone.” Kyli put one hand on her hip. “Whose is it?”
Jake glanced at Francesca then back to Kyli. “Can’t tell you,” he said.
“Is this a hit?” Kyli placed the bag on her workstation. “Don’t answer that. How long do I have to work on this?”
Jake pulled up a metal stool and sat down next to Francesca. “Wiley said to make it your top priority."
He remembered the first day he met Kyli; Wiley dropped him off at the lab, leaving Kyli in charge of his orientation. They were in this laboratory when she explained her research with DNA. With the growing threat of DNA toxins by hostile governments and militias against the West, she explained, her research was based on the premise of learning how DNA assassination worked so it could be defended against.
In the months to follow, her research had reached new proportions and she'd perfected the toxins and antitoxins of DNA assassination. So much so that Elmore Wiley, at the mandate of the Greenbrier Fellowship, had authorized the first assassination utilizing a DNA toxin on a human subject. The toxin was delivered by one of Wiley's emissaries, a South Korean woman named Su Lee, who delivered the toxin to Kim Jon-il on a train in North Korea causing the ailing dictator to have a fatal heart attack.
"How long will you need?” Jake asked.
“At best? Three or four hours.” Kyli reached into a box and pulled out two gloves. “Is Skeeter delivering the toxin? Because that hasn't been tested yet?”
“Nope.” Francesca slid an open pack of Wrigley's peppermint gum across the desktop. "Chewing gum."
“Seriously? How can you be sure he’ll chew it?”
“What makes you think it’s a man? Could be a woman, you know. Women like chewing gum too.” Jake smiled. "Right, Franny?"
Francesca sneered then nodded.
“You two aren't going to answer any of my questions, are you?” Kyli asked.
Jake shook his head.
“Very well. Any chance you have medical records?”
Jake opened his backpack, dug around and pulled out a large manila envelope with a metal fly clasp. “Latest blood work-up. Copy of physician's records."
"Seriously?" Jake heard the excitement in Kyli's voice. "How'd you pull that off?"
"Compliments of one of Wiley's hackers at the new office in Virginia. Sanitized, of course.”
"But of course." Kyli slipped on a purple glove. "I would expect nothing less."
"Purple now, huh?" Jake pointed at the box of gloves. "What happened to the pink gloves?"
"Found out I'm allergic to latex." Kyli held up a glove. "These are nitrile rubber. Where can I find you?”
Jake pointed at Francesca. “We'll be in the conference room by the RF lab.”
He stood, pushed his stool under the counter, and followed Francesca out of Kyli’s lab. Jake and Francesca stopped at the elevator door as Francesca pushed the call button.
“What the hell was that?” Francesca asked.
“What?”
“That.” She motioned back toward Kyli’s lab. “Between you and Kyli. Are you banging the boss’s granddaughter?”
“Banging?" Jake furrowed his brow. "Seriously?”
The elevator door opened, Jake followed Francesca inside, the door closed.
“So you’re the one,” Francesca said. She pushed the button for the RF lab.
“I’m the one…what?” Jake felt the elevator move.
“She would never give me a name, but her eyes would light up every time she talked about that
special guy
she’d been seeing. And I just saw that same sparkle when she talked to you…so now I know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Kyli and I are just friends.”
“Just friends, my ass. I should have known. It all makes sense now.” Francesca grabbed Jake’s arm. “Does the old man know?”
The elevator chimed and the door opened.
“Does the old man know what?” Elmore Wiley, Kyli's grandfather stepped into the elevator.
A
ugust 17 7
:30 A.M. CDT
Katzer Funeral Home
Nashville, Tennessee
S
cott Katzer knew
his suspicions were correct as soon as he unzipped the body bag. The transferring funeral home claimed to have effectually embalmed the kid's body even though the odds were stacked against it. The seventeen year old died from a drug overdose, his body undiscovered for nearly thirty-six hours. Decomposition and bloating had set in by the time the funeral director embalmed the young man. When Katzer unzipped the bag, the bloated face of the young man stared up at him, tongue protruding through swollen lips. The deceased had been discovered in his bed with his head hanging over the side, a pool of dried vomit on the floor.
The odor told Katzer that putrefaction had set in. Purge from the deceased had discharged from the mouth, nose, and ears. With modern advancements in embalming, it had been a number of years since he'd encountered remains in this bad of shape and decided as soon as he saw it that he was too old to deal with remains in this condition. It was time to let the younger embalmers handle the distasteful parts of the job. His gag reflex kicked in, the three-day cross-country drive from the Portland, Oregon funeral home to Nashville in the back of a van under the scorching August sun was too long for any dead body, much less this one.
“Oh, Hell no. Not today.” Katzer turned his head and zipped up the body bag. Why couldn’t the relatives just spend the extra money and fly their loved one home? Six hundred more dollars was all it would have taken yet they opted for a three-day van rental plus driver expenses versus a nine-hour plane ride. As soon as the driver had dropped off the body bag, Katzer thought he could detect the faint smell. Now the stench would remain in his nostrils for hours.
He burst into the break room and pointed at a junior embalmer and a summer intern from the Gupton-Jones College of Funeral Services in Decatur, Georgia. “You two handle Mr. Wilson’s remains—he needs to be ready by noon.” He looked at the young intern sitting at the table. “It’ll be good experience for him. I need to call the family and try to cancel, or at least postpone, the family viewing.”
“Yes, sir,” The junior embalmer said.
Katzer started to leave, then turned to the young apprentice. “And you…try not to vomit on the deceased this time, please.”
Katzer himself was a 1964 graduate of the John A. Gupton School of Mortuary Science when the school was located in Nashville. His courses seemed easy. An advantage he had since he'd worked in the funeral home for his mother and stepfather since he was ten. The Katzer Funeral Home was located on the opposite side of Lebanon Pike from the Mt. Olivet and Calgary Cemeteries. Although not his biological father, Matthew Katzer was the only father he'd ever known and had adopted him and his twin sister when they were two years old. Matthew Katzer died tragically and mysteriously in 1966 in an accident while working on a tractor in the Mt Olivet Cemetery. Scott and his mother had been running the funeral home ever since.
Katzer remembered the somber mood of preparing his stepfather’s body while his petite mother stood silent and watched, her blue eyes swollen and bloodshot from the seemingly endless flow of tears. The next day they interred his remains in a small plot in the back of Mt. Olivet Cemetery. The young Katzer thought it odd his mother chose to bury her husband in such a parsimonious manner. It wasn't’ like the family didn't have money. The funeral services business had proven lucrative for the Katzer family. Funerals were expensive and there was never a shortage of customers, especially now, as the baby-boomers were coming of age.
His mother was one of the most respected funeral directors in Nashville, handling funerals for some of the city’s most prestigious residents including congressmen, senators, as well as several top country music artists. She had a soothing, empathetic voice. While the emotional duress of the situation made the grieving family vulnerable, his mother was an expert at influencing them to open their pocketbooks.
He flipped open his appointment book and dialed the number. A woman answered on the second ring. “Mrs. Wilson…”
A few minutes later Katzer placed the phone on the receiver after successfully convincing the family that a viewing was not a good idea due to the condition of the remains. He was surprised by the family's response. Initially, the Wilsons had been downright difficult to deal with and he dreaded making the call, but strangely enough, the family seemed to take this news in stride. Perhaps now they had accepted the painful truth behind the demise of their son. The drugs had alienated him from the rest of the family. In a strange way, Katzer sensed, the Wilsons were relieved the ordeal was over.
Death can cause a myriad of emotions.
He remembered a late November day in 1967 when a man was so distraught because the cosmetologist was unable to completely conceal a bruise on his deceased wife's forehead that he balled his fist and struck Katzer on the jaw in the viewing room. Katzer fell backward and crashed into a spray of flowers, shattering vases and ruining the display. He was shocked when he looked up and saw his mother holding a gun. She put a quick stop to the fracas and, after his mother explained the reason for the blemishes on his wife, the man apologized.
After business hours, Katzer sat with his mother and recounted the day. She explained to him that it wasn’t the first time she had been forced to pull a gun in the funeral home. The first time she actually shot a man. Trying to deal with his loss with a bottle of whiskey, a man came to the funeral home drunk, began to rant, and throw things. He grabbed pictures from the walls and hurled them across the funeral parlor, busted a candle display against the piano, and threw an urn through a window. That’s when she shot him in the leg. The police came, arrested the drunkard and never charged his mother with any wrongdoing.
That was also the day he found out that Matthew Katzer was not his real father.
And how he really died.
And why.
C
harleston
, South Carolina
A
shley Regan unpacked
her Eagle Creek luggage in a hurry to get to the book. She never got a chance to thoroughly examine it before she and Sam Connors left Europe to return home. Because of the cold and moisture of what she figured must have been decades in the ice, the book must be handled with special attention to avoid damage.
She had sealed the book in a plastic bag and then wrapped it with care inside some of her clothes before packing it in her checked luggage. She didn't want to risk the possibility of losing the book at security by carrying it onboard.
There were laws against what she was doing. International laws. She knew because one of her clients narrowly escaped jail time for removing an ancient artifact he discovered while vacationing in the ancient city of Istanbul, Turkey. Found guilty of violations of the UNESCO Convention on the Mean of Prohibiting the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, her client was lucky to walk away with nothing more than a hefty fine and forfeiture of the artifact. All because he thought the item would make a cool display on his mantle.