Sutherland followed him to the airplane and watched him unlock the right-side front door. “Give me your keys, and I’ll unlock back here,” Sutherland said.
The man tossed him a heavy bunch of keys. As Sutherland opened the door, he managed to free the car’s ignition key from the bunch, then he set the suitcase in the luggage compartment, leaving the keys in the lock.
After a preflight inspection, the man and his wife got into the Bonanza, and ten minutes later they were rolling down the runway. Sutherland waited until the airplane had disappeared to the north, then he got his duffel and a tool kit out of his airplane, put them into the rear of the Mercedes, started the car and drove away.
He had his printed maps, and it took him less than half an hour to find the home of his target. He cruised past the house, and as he did, he saw a woman leave by the front door, get into a pickup truck in the driveway and back out. She looked like the cleaning lady, and there was no other car visible at the house. He drove a little farther down the street and saw a dirt track leading into some woods. He turned into it and drove to a clearing, where the land had been scraped clean. There was a sign advertising a construction company planted on the lot. Looked like someone was going to build there.
He got out of the car, taking his tool kit, and made his way through the woods back toward the house. When he arrived at where the trees met the lawn he stopped and watched the place for signs of life for a while, then he approached the house and began looking into windows. Plantings at the front of the property shielded him from the street.
At a rear corner of the house he found the dining room and the kitchen. At a breakfast nook beside the kitchen window, a place had been set for one person, and a bottle of wine left on the table. Apparently, his subject did not use the dining room when eating alone.
Sutherland stood with his back to the window and looked at the woods, some thirty feet away, as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He checked angles and heights and picked out a spot with a good line marked by the center of a row of azaleas planted at the edge of the woods. Perfect.
He removed a glass cutter and a set of suction cups, affi xed the cups to the selected windowpane, then cut the edges of the glass repeatedly. Finally, he banged on the bracket of the cups with his fist, and the glass snapped out. It would have fallen into the dinette, but he was holding on to the suction cup bracket. Gingerly, he freed the glass from the suction cups, then turned the glass and drew it outside through the new opening. He put the suction cups and the glass cutter back into his tool kit and walked to the spot in the row of azaleas. He stood behind them, then sighted, then knelt and did the same. The kneeling position would be just right. He tossed the glass pane as far as he could into the woods, then shucked off the latex gloves and walked back to the car.
He drove downtown and found a movie theater with a double feature playing and bought a ticket. He saw both movies twice. He didn’t want to be walking around town and risk being noticed by someone who could identify him later.
WHEN SUTHERL AND LEFT the movie theater it was twilight, and he had forty minutes until he went to work. He drove back to the vacant lot, switching off his headlights before he turned down the dirt track. There had been lights on in the house when he passed and a car in the driveway.
He took a small flashlight from his tool kit, slipped it into his pocket, then opened the duffel and assembled the rifle, screwed in the silencer and loaded a magazine, though he expected to fi re only once. You never knew.
He found his way to his firing position behind the azaleas and sat down cross-legged behind the row of bushes. He checked the rifl e again, shoved in the magazine and racked the slide. He checked his watch: ten minutes to eight.
At five minutes to eight, the kitchen light went on, and a man walked to the refrigerator, took out a covered dish, put it into the microwave and pressed some buttons. He stood for two minutes while the dish warmed. Sutherland could have shot him then, but he would have had to break glass, which might distort the trajectory and even alert a neighbor.
Finally, the man removed the dish from the microwave, set it on the table, picked up a corkscrew and opened the bottle of wine left for him.
Sutherland rose to one knee, rested his elbow on the other knee and sighted through the space with the missing pane. It was a shot of only a little more than thirty feet.
His subject sat down at the table, lifted his glass, took a sip and set the glass down.
Sutherland thumbed down the safety and squeezed off the round.
His subject took the bullet in his left temple, spraying blood and gore, and went down. Not even his wineglass was disturbed. Sutherland put the rifle on safety and made his way back to the car, where he unloaded and disassembled the rifl e and returned it to the duffel.
Half an hour later he drove into the darkened airport and parked the car where he had found it. He took a bottle of Windex and a cloth from his tool bag and wiped down every surface he might have touched, then shook out the fl oor mat to remove any dirt he might have tracked into the car. He took his tools and duffel and walked back to his own airplane.
EARLY THE FOLLOWING morning, in the soft, green light of the predawn, Sutherland set down his airplane on the Everglades strip, taxied to the ramada, refueled the airplane, then got into the Jeep Wrangler he kept at the little house and drove home to Jupiter and his wife.
Later that day, an unmarked envelope containing a large sum of cash was left inside the front screen door of his house.
41
STONE WA S PACKING his bags after a late breakfast when his cell phone buzzed. “Hello?”
“It’s Eggers.”
“Morning, Bill. I’m just packing for the return trip.”
“Unpack,” Eggers said. “You’re back on my dime.”
“What’s up?”
“Warren Keating’s attorney just called me. Early this morning, his housekeeper arrived and found him dead in his kitchen, shot in the head.”
“Suicide?”
“The lawyer didn’t have any other details.”
“This just gets weirder and weirder,” Stone said.
“Yes, it does. I want to know what’s going on, and I want you to find out for me. Take another week if you need to.”
“At my usual hourly rate?”
“I’ll spring for a generous flat rate. We’ll talk it over when you get home.”
“Okay, Bill. I’ll be in touch.” Stone hung up and walked out onto the front porch, where Dino was drinking a second cup of coffee.
“Ready for the latest?” Stone asked.
“Always.”
“Warren Keating has died from a gunshot to the head.”
“His own or somebody else’s?”
“That’s what I want you to find out. Call your buddy on the Connecticut State Police.”
Dino dialed the number and pressed the speaker phone button.
“Robbery Homicide, Lieutenant Dan Hotchkiss.”
“Dan, it’s Dino.”
“You again?”
“Me again. I heard about Warren Keating.”
“Are you still in Key West?”
“Yes. News travels fast in this modern age.”
“I want to know how you heard about it. The media don’t know yet.”
“Keating’s lawyer called a lawyer I know, who called the lawyer I’m down here with. I am not a suspect.”
“You are until I say you aren’t.”
“All I know is that he was shot in the head. Was it a suicide?”
“If it was, he managed to hide the gun after he was dead. Oh, and he removed a pane from the kitchen window so he could shoot himself through it without scattering glass everywhere and making a lot of noise. A very neat fellow, Mr. Keating. Quick on his feet, too.”