“Can I help you?”
“I have an appointment with Mr. Gordon.”
She squinted her eyes a bit, then looked back at her computer display. A few clicks on the keyboard followed, then she replied, “I don’t see anything on his calendar. Are you sure you have the right day and time?”
“Wednesday at 4 p.m.”
“Well, I’ll let him know you’re here, Mister…”
“Banks. George Banks.”
The woman smiled and moved down a short hallway, knocking on one of the doors. After opening the door and poking her head in the office for a moment, she returned to her desk.
“He’ll see you now,” she said.
Gordon’s office door was partially open, but Mixell knocked nonetheless, pushing it open wider before introducing himself.
“Have we met,” the man replied, “or talked on the phone? I don’t recall making an appointment to meet with you.”
“Actually, we’ve never met, nor do I have an appointment today.”
A perplexed look crossed the man’s face. “Then why are you here?”
“I need a job, and I was hoping you had an opening.”
“I’m sorry, Mister — what’s your name again?”
“George Banks.”
“I’m sorry, George, but I don’t have any openings right now.”
The man’s response had been a likely outcome of today’s task, but Mixell wasn’t yet ready to concede defeat.
“I’m looking for weekend work. I’ve already got a weekday job, but I don’t make much money and not enough to support my family, so I was hoping to pick up some work on the weekends. I imagine you’ve got to pay your employees extra for weekend deliveries. I’ll work for the standard rate, minimum wage even. And I can start this weekend.”
“Minimum wage? Every Saturday and Sunday?”
Mixell nodded.
“All right, George. You’ve got yourself a job. Minimum wage plus five extra dollars an hour.” He gestured toward the woman at the desk. “Carole will provide the paperwork you need to fill out.”
He stood and approached Mixell, offering his hand. “Welcome to Gordon’s Wholesale.”
The paperwork was quickly filled out and Mixell returned to his Jeep, pulling the SUV out into traffic for the second of the day’s errands.
Less than half an hour later, Mixell stopped by a local grocery store. Pushing a cart through the aisles, he quickly found what he needed — at least from this store — and entered a self-checkout lane. Had anyone bothered to peruse the items in his cart, they would have concluded that he was either very hungry or had a lot of mouths to feed.
He made a few more stops at different stores to prevent anyone from noticing the unusual quantities he was purchasing, and eventually headed toward his rental home in Woodmore.
46
WOODMORE, MARYLAND
Cheryl Payne parked her truck on the gravel driveway near the front door of her father’s home. After visiting a nearby friend, she had decided to stop by and check on her new tenant, see if there was anything that needed repair or improvement. George’s Jeep wasn’t at the house, so she assumed he was out and considered returning another time. But she decided to knock, just in case a friend had borrowed the car.
After receiving no response, she started back toward her truck, then stopped to peer through the living room window. Everything appeared as it had during her walk-through on the day George had decided to rent the house — not a single piece of furniture had been moved, nor was there any sign that George had moved in. Perhaps he had only a few belongings, which were probably in his bedroom.
As she walked toward her truck, she noticed a set of tire tracks through the grass leading to the barn. George had been keenly interested in the barn for some reason, and she wondered why. After retrieving the keys from her purse — she had given George the spare keys to the property — she headed into the backyard. The barn was locked, as expected. Looking over her shoulder to ensure George wasn’t pulling into the driveway, she unlocked the door and slid it aside. After she flipped the switch by the entrance, yellow light illuminated several unexpected items.
In the center of the barn, a small worktable had been set up, and clamped to it was one of those extendable desk lamps frequently found in college dorms. On the table was a single tool — a metal X-Acto precision knife. As she wondered what George was up to, Cheryl spotted what appeared to be a stack of boxes or crates covered with a blanket. She pulled the blanket away and examined two large wooden crates and a small one on top, each with unusual markings. The markings on the front of the large crates caught her attention.
CHARGE DEMOLITION M112
She pondered the words, wondering if the crates contained what she thought they did, then spotted another marking.
HIGH EXPLOSIVES
Cheryl sucked in a sharp breath, her pulse quickening when she heard the sound of an approaching car.
She threw the blanket back over the crates and hurried to the barn entrance, quickly pulling the door closed behind her, fumbling to slide the padlock shackle through the hasp and into the hole in the padlock body. Finally, the shackle went in and she turned around just as George’s Jeep came into sight. As the SUV ground to a halt, Cheryl hoped — and prayed — that there was a simple explanation for her new tenant’s possession of several crates of explosives.
After turning off the engine, Mixell kept his eyes fixed on Cheryl Payne. The woman was standing in front of the barn door frozen in place, her eyes wide with fright. It took only a second to process what had occurred — that she had another set of keys and had seen what was inside the barn. Mixell took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was only one way this could play out. He reached into the glove compartment and slid his pistol into one back pocket of his pants and the suppressor into the other.
He stepped from the Jeep and waved to Cheryl as he casually strode toward her.
“Hi, Cheryl. What brings you around? Is there something you need from the barn?”
It took her a second to latch onto the lifeline he had thrown.
“Yes… actually, yes. There’s, ahh, some tools in the back I need for a project at my house. I was hoping you’d be home, and when you weren’t I tried to get into the barn, but the door was locked.”
“Not a problem. Just show me what you need and I’ll put ’em in your truck.”
“That’d be great, George.”
She forced a smile, but Mixell noticed the slight quiver of her lips.
He unlocked the barn door and pushed it aside. The lights were on. His eyes went to the crates, noticing that the blanket was draped over them in a haphazard manner, not neatly like he had left it.
Cheryl Payne had clearly seen too much.
She accompanied him into the barn, and Mixell stopped when they reached the crates. Cheryl took a few more steps before she also stopped and turned. Offering a disingenuous smile, Mixell straightened the blanket, returning it to how it had been previously placed. Then he waited for Cheryl’s inevitable realization — that he knew what she had seen, and that she would likely not leave the barn alive.
Her eyes went to the crates. “I… I don’t need to know what you need that for. I really don’t care. It’s none of my business.”