Trying to breathe, trying to find even a whisper of breath ina throat filled with shattered debris.
Mason caught Mrs. Harrison and laid her very gently on the floor, holding her down to keep her heels from hammering on the hardwood as she died.
Jacob closed the door. He took the coffee out of the bag and removed a pistol. It was not another .22. It did not fire bullets at all. The weapon looked vaguely like a silvery space pistol from a bad science fictionmovie. It didn’t look entirely real.
It was.
The weapon was a Jarvis USSS-2A pneumatic mushroom-head nonpenetrating stunner. Very effective for the quick and humane slaughter of cattle. Unlike the captive-bolt stunners, this one did not even break the skin. No risk of contaminants. No need to meticulously clean the fittings to remove DNA.
“Doris—?” called a man’s voice from down the hall. “Whowas at the door?”
They could hear the shower water running.
Jacob nodded to Mason, who rose from the corpse, and together they walked down the hall toward the bathroom.
Sixteen minutes later, they were in the Focus driving away.
The two men were in the front, Boy was in the back. She had been waiting for them in the lobby.
There were three corpses in the condominium.
Professor Milo Harrison,deputy department chair of applied robotics at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi, and his wife, Doris. And Professor Harry Seymour, chairman of the school’s experimental aeronautics department.
The car moved at a comfortable pace along Edgewater.
Away from the three dead bodies.
Away from the Imperial Condominiums.
Away from the column of dense smoke that rose from that building.
Several fire enginesscreamed past them. Five separate police cars roared by. No one took note of the nondescript car with its nondescript passengers.
They drove to a motel outside the city limits and checked into their rooms. They left all of their equipment in the car. A minute later, a silver-gray Toyota Camry and a beige Honda Civic pulled into the lot and parked in front of the rear exit. The drivers of thosecars got into the Focus and drove it away. They took it to a scrapyard on Holly Road, got into a black SUV, and left. The Focus was crushed within minutes. Later, it was added to a load of scrap metal that would be taken by heavy truck to the docks and included in a shipment bound for Japan.
At the motel, Boy went into one room and the two graduate students went into another.
Boy stripped offher clothes and stuffed them into a plastic container. All other personal effects went into the same container. Naked, she went into the bathroom, took a shower, dried herself thoroughly, removed an aerosol can from a bag on the sink, and doused herself with a dark spray-on tan. She put contact lenses in her eyes, injected collagen into her lips, slipped on a blond wig and padded clothing. The lastthing she did was put on padded shoes that added two inches to her height.
After she left, a cleaning woman came in, took a hazmat suit from her cart, put it on, and proceeded to clean every inch of the room with industrial cleaner and bleach. She poured acid down the drains to dissolve any traces of hair or other DNA. Another cleaner did the same in the room used by the two young men.
The plasticcontainers of clothing and personal effects were taken to a waste site and dumped into a tub of hydrofluoric acid. The residue was mixed with plastic and ball bearings and allowed to harden. The hardened blocks were dumped from fishing boats out at sea.
All of this took place within a few hours of the three murders at Imperial Condominiums. It is possible, even likely, that more than half ofthese procedures were unnecessary, even wildly so. They were done anyway. Nothing was left to chance.
No trace was left.
Boy drove her new car to New Orleans. The trip took nine hours.
Mason and Jacob drove a more leisurely route along I-10 west to Alamogordo, where they checked in to the Holiday Inn Express. And waited.
They
Mason caught Mrs. Harrison and laid her very gently on the floor, holding her down to keep her heels from hammering on the hardwood as she died.
Jacob closed the door. He took the coffee out of the bag and removed a pistol. It was not another .22. It did not fire bullets at all. The weapon looked vaguely like a silvery space pistol from a bad science fictionmovie. It didn’t look entirely real.
It was.
The weapon was a Jarvis USSS-2A pneumatic mushroom-head nonpenetrating stunner. Very effective for the quick and humane slaughter of cattle. Unlike the captive-bolt stunners, this one did not even break the skin. No risk of contaminants. No need to meticulously clean the fittings to remove DNA.
“Doris—?” called a man’s voice from down the hall. “Whowas at the door?”
They could hear the shower water running.
Jacob nodded to Mason, who rose from the corpse, and together they walked down the hall toward the bathroom.
Sixteen minutes later, they were in the Focus driving away.
The two men were in the front, Boy was in the back. She had been waiting for them in the lobby.
There were three corpses in the condominium.
Professor Milo Harrison,deputy department chair of applied robotics at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi, and his wife, Doris. And Professor Harry Seymour, chairman of the school’s experimental aeronautics department.
The car moved at a comfortable pace along Edgewater.
Away from the three dead bodies.
Away from the Imperial Condominiums.
Away from the column of dense smoke that rose from that building.
Several fire enginesscreamed past them. Five separate police cars roared by. No one took note of the nondescript car with its nondescript passengers.
They drove to a motel outside the city limits and checked into their rooms. They left all of their equipment in the car. A minute later, a silver-gray Toyota Camry and a beige Honda Civic pulled into the lot and parked in front of the rear exit. The drivers of thosecars got into the Focus and drove it away. They took it to a scrapyard on Holly Road, got into a black SUV, and left. The Focus was crushed within minutes. Later, it was added to a load of scrap metal that would be taken by heavy truck to the docks and included in a shipment bound for Japan.
At the motel, Boy went into one room and the two graduate students went into another.
Boy stripped offher clothes and stuffed them into a plastic container. All other personal effects went into the same container. Naked, she went into the bathroom, took a shower, dried herself thoroughly, removed an aerosol can from a bag on the sink, and doused herself with a dark spray-on tan. She put contact lenses in her eyes, injected collagen into her lips, slipped on a blond wig and padded clothing. The lastthing she did was put on padded shoes that added two inches to her height.
After she left, a cleaning woman came in, took a hazmat suit from her cart, put it on, and proceeded to clean every inch of the room with industrial cleaner and bleach. She poured acid down the drains to dissolve any traces of hair or other DNA. Another cleaner did the same in the room used by the two young men.
The plasticcontainers of clothing and personal effects were taken to a waste site and dumped into a tub of hydrofluoric acid. The residue was mixed with plastic and ball bearings and allowed to harden. The hardened blocks were dumped from fishing boats out at sea.
All of this took place within a few hours of the three murders at Imperial Condominiums. It is possible, even likely, that more than half ofthese procedures were unnecessary, even wildly so. They were done anyway. Nothing was left to chance.
No trace was left.
Boy drove her new car to New Orleans. The trip took nine hours.
Mason and Jacob drove a more leisurely route along I-10 west to Alamogordo, where they checked in to the Holiday Inn Express. And waited.
They
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