“I know what I’m doing. I wouldn’t be volunteering if I didn’t.”
“Ok, I trust you. But I have to tell you that my fear is getting the best of me. I am tired of having to do all this stuff to reel it back in. I’ve become weakened. I feel like I just don’t have it in me anymore.
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do. You may not believe it, but I feel fearful all the time. I just relate to it differently. It’s just a feeling. I’ve learned to become detached.”
“I wish I could.”
“No, you don’t. Once you start to divorce yourself from feelings it becomes very difficult to get it back again.”
We finished up the gym session and headed back upstairs. While showering I found myself thinking about what Bill said. And the tears began to flow. I was at such a weak moment. I was just so tired, so spent. I wanted to get on with my life. But I was a marked woman. I would never have peace as long as these men were alive.
I had to kill them. I hoped Bill would do it. I would never ask him to do that, but it sounded like he’d already volunteered for the job.
Chapter 8
Bill
“So, what’s new?” I asked.
I sat down in the chair across from my buddy Al. He leaned back and pulled his flask from his special hiding place. He took a big shot of his whiskey and glanced around to make sure no one was looking. I didn’t judge. The man had been through some shit. So, have I. Got to take the edge off the damn knife of life sometimes.
“Well, we don’t have much unfortunately. I told you to wait on my call.”
“Yeah, well I got tired of waiting.”
“I don’t have any more news but my guys are on it.”
I sighed. “Why does that not surprise me? Look, here I got something for you to look at.”
I pulled out my phone and emailed him the footage from the security camera outside my house last night. It had actually got some good footage of these assholes firing a gun at the squad car.
I emailed it to him. A moment later his computer dinged. “You’ve got mail.”
He took a look and a few more sips of whiskey. His eyes went wide and he began to chuckle. “This might be it. Yes. Good job.”
“You identify these guys? They are wearing masks this time. I guess they finally wised up. If you keep trying to kill someone and fail, odds are you will be caught, especially if you aren’t wearing a mask.”
“Check this out,” Al said.
I came around to his side of the desk and watched the footage. He magnified a section and then pointed to something. He paused it at just the right spot. I saw one of the gunmen firing a pistol at the car. He was wearing a black jacket, but the sleeve had slid up when he extended his firing arm. There, plain as day was a very distinctive looking tattoo. It was a dagger with an eagle’s skull surrounding it. How lovely. His mother would have loved it.
“Ok,” I said. “Can you trace that? Is it weird enough?”
“Oh, it’s weird,” he said. “Let’s check a few shops out and see if anyone has seen this thing.”
He slapped me a high five.
I tagged along and we went to seven different tattoo parlors before we finally got a match on something. A woman working at Lou’s Tats said that she knew a guy named Randy Dobbs had a tattoo like that. He used to date her sister a while back. The guy was crazy as hell and always talking about how he was going to be filthy stinking rich.
“Where can we find him?”
“He lives on Pedmont,” she said. “It’s a fairly nice apartment for an auto mechanic.”
I glanced at Al. He nodded at me. This had to be the guy.
We checked online and found a listing for a Randy Dobbs at 2434 Pedmont, apartment 29. When we got to the apartment, we glanced around first to make sure that no one was eying us suspiciously and especially that Dobbs wasn’t expecting us at all. You could never know how crafty these idiots could be from time to time.
“Randy Dobbs! Police. Open up!”
There was no answer, so Al kicked the door in and we entered. We did not have a warrant, but Al wasn’t going to wait around for hours or even a day or two to get one from the judge. Not to mention the fact that I was not a cop in any way, shape, or form. I was really just along for the ride.
The place inside was very clean and orderly. But it felt like no one had been there for a few days. We checked the downstairs, then went up to the bedroom. We found most of the clothes in place, but there were some gaps in the closet that told me this guy had left in a hurry.