Hometown Favorite: A Novel (31 page)

There never had been a new Tyler. Bruce was right all
along.

When Tyler reached over to zip his bag closed, he turned
around in the desk chair and looked at the door. No one was there. He finished zipping his bag and returned to typing on
the computer as he continued his phone conversation.

"You're doing great, girl;" he said, speaking just above a whisper. "It's just like taking a nap. Listen to me. I've got everything set
up, and I'm about to buy our plane tickets. Tonight we're gonna
be flying south of the border and ... hold on. Hold on"

Tyler heard the baby starting to crank up into a full-blown
squall from the kitchen, and he did not want Sabrina to hear the
noise in the background and turn her anxiety into full-blown
panic. He swung the chair around and saw Bruce standing in
front of him, holding a nine iron.

"I'll call you right back, baby," Tyler said and closed his phone
and set it on the desk. "That was your sister. Says your uncle's
not feeling well and she's bringing him back to the house"

Bruce stood his ground and waited for Tyler to move. The
crying intensified.

"Ain't you gonna do something to keep that baby quiet?"

But Bruce did nothing, said nothing. He was waiting. It
would not hurt Robert to cry.

"So is history gonna repeat itself, my little brother?"

It would repeat itself but with a different outcome. Bruce
was not going to wait until the others got home. He was going
to finish it now, his way. He was going to finish what he started
in Los Angles outside his apartment door, and this time there
was no posse to eliminate. It was man-to-man, and he was
determined to rid his family of this evil for the last time.

"You know when I get out of this chair, you're gonna die,"
Tyler said, drumming his fingers on top of the desk. "Do not
go to the hospital. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Go
straight to the morgue"

Thus saith the old Tyler. If Bruce had only spoken up sooner, if he had only expressed his fears about Tyler from the beginning, perhaps this moment might never have arrived. But it
was here. It was real. And it would be over soon.

The crash in the kitchen and the ensuing shriek from the
baby were the distraction Tyler needed. He leaped out of the
chair the second Bruce turned his head toward the noise. Bruce
recovered enough to make one swing with the club, hitting
Tyler in the rib cage, but did little to stop his momentum.
Tyler grabbed the iron with one hand and slammed the heel
of his other hand into Bruce's nose, knocking him backward
into the glass coffee table.

The glass exploded, and Tyler turned away, squatting down
to shield his face and body from the flying glass.

When the glass settled to the floor, Tyler stood and raised
the golf club in preparation for a second assault, but there was
no counterattack. Bruce lay motionless on his back. A shard
of glass had pierced his neck.

Bruce felt a current pulsating through him like a small electrical charge. His impending death did not frighten him. He
accepted it. What he struggled to accept was the failure of his
second attempt to prevent this malevolence from overtaking
his domain. He saw the blurry image of Tyler standing above
him, resting the nine iron on his shoulder.

He closed his eyes, feeling the strength flow out of him. He
knew it was time to rest. He had done all he could do, and he
felt a peace replacing the loss of vitality, a peace that brought
knowledge-a knowing that the world would someday recognize what he had know all this time.

Tyler watched until the last flicker of life had departed, and
then he went into the kitchen to quiet the shrieking baby. The baby had knocked the bottle off his tray, spilling juice on the
floor. Pure rage merged with the adrenaline coursing through
Tyler, and within minutes, he had silenced the baby's cries.
Permanently.

He surveyed the kitchen like a dissatisfied artist trying to
determine what brushstroke he needed to complete the picture.
Tyler listened. The only sound was his own breathing. A cluster
of fresh ice cubes dropping into the ice container in the freezer
startled him, and he raised the golf club, prepared to strike.
He opened the door to the freezer just to satisfy his curiosity
and then slammed it shut.

He reviewed the murder in each room and realized it was
not quite the plan he and Sabrina had discussed, nor was it
what he had envisioned in his private contingencies, but after
pausing long enough to contemplate what had been accomplished, he felt as if he could live with this alternative. In fact,
this scenario would be better for the future at large. He had
crossed a line from which there would be no turning. He had
made irrevocable choices, and it would require a few innovative
brushstrokes before the canvas was complete. But he could see
the big picture. He could do the simple math and figure out this
reduction in the population would give him fewer responsibilities down the road. Nothing like a little pandemonium to help
clear the mind and bring everything into focus.

If he was committed to this altered plan and would see the
upcoming challenges through to the end, this could very well
evolve into the master plan that would make him famous. He
had raised the bar. The criminal world would marvel for years
to come about this day and what he pulled off. But he had to
be very, very smart.

Tyler's cell phone started ringing, and he saw it was Sabrina's number. He returned to the office, leaned the golf club against the desk, and unzipped his bag. He peeled off the latex
gloves, put on a fresh pair, and then removed a nine-millimeter
Glock and zipped the bag closed. After securing a round in
the chamber, he stuffed the weapon into the back of his pants
and took a few deep breaths. He decided it would be best to
shield her eyes from the calamity in the kitchen as he guided
her from the garage through the house to the office. He had to
keep the visual trauma to a minimum, and there was no time
to clean up the aftermath. Besides, leaving things as they were
might work well in his master plan, he thought. He trusted
his instincts to improvise. Still, it was going to be hard to keep
Sabrina focused on the task at hand on the computer with the
bloody scene just a few feet away.

He figured Sabrina was calling to tell him she was almost
there, so he glided through the kitchen and opened the door
into the garage. The moment he silenced his phone, the door
to the garage started opening, and he stepped back into the
kitchen until he saw Sabrina driving Dewayne's car into its
slot. The car flew into the garage, and she stopped it just before
crashing into the back wall. Sabrina catapulted out of the car as
if a snake had just slithered out from under the seat, her arms
waving as though sending a distress signal.

"I can't believe we're doing this. I can't believe we're doing
this;' she said, skating in circles over the paved open space
where Rosella parked her car.

Tyler pushed the button in the kitchen to close the garage
door, then scooped Sabrina into his arms and pressed her close,
encouraging her with words of praise and comfort while covering her face with multiple kisses until she was able to gain
control.

"We're going to see this through, baby. It'll be over soon;" he said as he looked over her shoulder at Dewayne's slumped
body in the front seat.

After making sure Sabrina was calm enough to release, he
reached into the front seat and unbuckled Dewayne's seat belt.
He grabbed Dewayne by the arm and leg and was surprised at
how easily the dead weight of the big man slid across the leather
bench seat of the Denali. Maybe the pulsating adrenaline rush
had given him superhuman strength.

Once he positioned Dewayne in the driver's seat, Tyler tested
which posture looked more natural to his master plan: would
it be more natural to have Dewayne slumped over, his head
resting on the steering wheel, or would it be better if they found
him leaning with the back of his neck on the headrest?

He asked Sabrina for her opinion and immediately regretted it. He knew from her response he needed to be direct in
all his requests, so he grabbed her arm, pulled her over to the
opened door, flattened out the fingers of her right hand, and
scraped her nails down Dewayne's left cheek, which left his
head leaning to one side, a position Tyler had not considered
but liked for its ordinary pose.

This simple task reinvigorated the hysteria from minutes ago
when Sabrina leaped out of the car, so Tyler decided it was time
to let her know the original plan had advanced into a master
plan much greater than the sum of its parts. The master plan
required him to downgrade her role.

With one hand, Tyler covered Sabrina's mouth, and with the
other, he placed the barrel of the Glock against her temple.

Her eyes widened to take in this incomprehensible universe
as she sucked air through the mesh of Tyler's fingers. What
horror had befallen her? What had happened to change the
dream of paradise?

In a whisper as gentle as the breath of a sleeper, he told her it would be best not to scream, and if she did everything he
asked of her, then all would be well. He kissed her head and
her eyes and then moved his hand from her mouth and kissed
her lips. When he felt some of the tension begin to subside,
Tyler placed his hand over Sabrina's eyes and led her out of
the garage, through the kitchen, and into the office.

The second decisive moment was at hand. When he sat her
down in the desk chair, he spun it around so she would see the
gravity of her situation and cooperate with him.

"It was an accident;" Tyler said before spinning the seat
around and pinning her shoulders against the high back of
the leather chair to keep her from attacking him if she was so
inclined.

Sabrina's eyes began to throb as if to reject what she just saw,
but her eyes failed to protect her and the image of her brother's
death registering on her brain like a massive weight. She felt her
head sinking into her shoulders unable to support the heaviness. She saw Tyler's lips moving, but she had to concentrate
to hear the words.

". . . he just fell;" Tyler said. "We were messing around ...
the fool tripped ... I'm telling you. . ."

What was he telling her? What was he saying? Sabrina heard
the words, but she could not understand them.

"... And when that baby wouldn't shut up ... I tried, you
know ... I tried to calm it down, but things went bad ... I
picked it up and things went bad..

Sabrina protectively moved her hands over her abdomen.
She felt her heart and lungs burst into flames. This must be what
hell is like, she thought. This is what it is going to feel like inside
my body. I'm going to hell when this is over. For her part in this
tragedy, she was convinced she deserved nothing less.

Tyler pulled out the drawer and saw the taped, laminated
sheet of the log-ins and passwords for the different business
accounts. He blocked Sabrina's side vision and pressed the tip of
the weapon against her head while she worked on the computer.
He thought it best that her brother's body should not visually
distract her as he pushed her to work in haste.

Through the magic of SWIFT codes, Tyler was becoming a
wealthy man. He could feel the tingle in his spine as Sabrina
typed in each password for a Jobe Enterprises, Inc., business
account, and he watched the millions depleted from each account into his own. Tyler had set up a numbered account in a
Caribbean bank for the transferred money.

Using the office computer to establish the account as well as
to book the airline tickets was a stroke of genius, he thought. It
would all make logical sense to those who would come upon
the aftermath of this event and have to interpret and make
sense of this bedlam.

With the click of the keyboard, millions disappeared from
one account and appeared in another. In a matter of only a
few minutes, Tyler had fulfilled his rags-to-riches American
dream. But he must not become giddy or careless here at the
end, he reminded himself. He must remain focused and not
be sidetracked from what he had set in motion.

Sabrina had not spoken a word through the entire computerized banking process. The only account that did not have a
log-in and password on the sheet was the Jobe personal checking account, which, she swore, contained only a few hundred
thousand dollars.

It was a paltry sum compared to the millions waiting for
him. Tyler would not be a greedy man. Let them say of him
when people recited this story that he had not left this family
in destitution, that he had shown restraint.

"I thought you had changed," Sabrina said, and she covered
her mouth to stifle the sob bubbling from her throat.

"I changed my address;' he said, checking the last of the
numbers on the screen to make sure they matched the numbers
he had printed off when he set up the account.

"But your job ... and church, the things you told me ...
how you treated me..

"You can read about it in my autobiography," he said, and
once he was assured that all the numbers checked out, he had
her shut off the computer. "I'd like to thank the academy for
this award for best actor in a leading role in bringing down
the house of Jobe;" he said as he caressed Sabrina's swollen face
with the tip of the gun.

In the final terrifying moments as Sabrina felt the cool end
of the gun slide over her skin and she looked into Tyler's grinning face, one lucid thought came to her. She had opened the
door of her heart and this house to the devil. There could be
no forgiveness for what she had done, only punishment and
death.

Sabrina knew what was coming and she would not go without some level of resistance. Tyler grabbed a fistful of her hair
and yanked. She released her grip of the armrests and rose to
her feet. He kept the tension on her hair, lifting her almost
off her feet as he jammed his weapon inside his pocket and
clutched the nine iron leaning against the desk.