ACT OF BETRAYAL
(Written as Morgan Avery)
"ACT OF
BETRAYAL is a chilling police procedural that centers on revenge. The
story line is taut as the action begins on page one and never eases up for a
moment. Clever twists with a fresh, unique mystery." - Painted Rock
Reviews
Chapter One
Cut didn't have the
connections to pull off the murder inside the prison, but now his target was
on the outside. The timing couldn't be better. He always
associated the summer heat with the day that his boy died.
It was
hot in the apartment, but Cut was used to the heat.
His lean body sweated freely and the undershirt he wore was soaked
under the arms and down his back.
The last week of July in St. Louis was bad enough when a person could
lie in the deep shade of a tree and let the breeze take away the sweat.
In his long years he'd spent many an hour enjoying such a breeze, the
kind that left behind a salty taste on the skin and a hope for more than
distant thunder from heavy clouds in the west.
Compared to an afternoon under a shade tree, the apartment was a
little slice of hell.
It would have been nice to open the window.
Though he had rented the apartment months ago,
he had only furnished it with two rickety wooden chairs he'd picked up at
Goodwill. That was back in February, and he hadn't noticed that the
apartment didn't have air conditioning then.
No wonder the rent was so cheap.
Even in something as important as deciding where the target would
die, Cut was a practical man.
No need to part with more money than he had to.
The linings of the leather gloves he wore were
soaked with sweat. He'd worn
the gloves every time he was in the apartment.
As the weather turned hotter, his palms, encased in winter gloves,
responded like the tongues of eager puppies.
Smelled like a wet puppy, too, one that had been rolling to pick up
odors that were only attractive to another dog.
After being sweated in and dried a few times, the gloves had lost
most of their flexibility. He
was planning to throw them out afterwards, which was a shame because they
had cost him fifteen bucks.
Last week he had brought in all the supplies he
needed. Securing the chemicals had been an interesting challenge,
something he'd never had occasion to do.
Cut spent some time putting the weather-stripping on the door and
sealing the heat vents with plastic bags.
He'd found a dead mouse in one of them, dried and stiff, and taken it
as a good omen.
On the Big Day, he got to the apartment at
seven in the morning, after treating himself to a biscuit breakfast and a
cup of coffee at a fast food place.
It was a good thing he remembered to bring the insulated picnic jug
of water. He took a sip, the
cool water mingling with the sweat on his lips and trickling down his
throat. He tilted his head back
to enjoy the water, like a bird drinking.
He pictured himself carousing in a bird bath, fluffing his feathers
and shaking the water down to his skin.
It helped some, took his mind off the heat.
He wasn't an imaginative man, but when he did get a good mental
image, he held onto it.
A couple of
years in Vietnam had taught him that heat was a relative thing.
An enlistee at the age of thirty-four, Cut was almost rendered
helpless by the heat when he stepped off the plane and into the jungle.
Then he put it behind him in his practical way and got on with the
business of surviving.
He stayed in one country's service or another for fourteen years,
moving into covert activities after the evacuation.
He wasn't in the U.S. Army after Vietnam, but the action was
rewarding and the paychecks were regular.
His only complaint was that it seemed like every place he was sent
was blazing hot or so cold he began to think that blue was the normal color
of his fingertips. He found he
had a talent and a love for knife work, both close-in and with throwing
knives that flitted like black wings of death, and he earned his nickname
time and again. When he started
to slow down, he told himself that it was a young man's work and he should
get his bony carcass out of the way and let them carry on.
But he kept the name because he liked it.
It was four in the afternoon.
Cut's stomach was empty, but his determination was fueled by thoughts
of his only son, who had been so cruelly taken from him.
He pulled off one glove and fished into his pocket for a peppermint
candy. He popped it into his
mouth, then carefully placed the wrapper back in his pocket and tugged the
sweaty glove back on.
Released from
prison that morning, Cut's target was on his way to the apartment.
It had to be so. When a man got out of prison, he got himself a few drinks and
then he got himself a woman.
For the past several months, the target had corresponded with a woman,
Ginger Miller, who lived in the hot-as-hell apartment on the third floor of
an apartment building in south St. Louis.
Cut knew all about that,
because he wrote the letters himself. Ginger was the name of a teacher he'd had a crush on in sixth
grade, and when the opportunity came up to choose a woman's name, he
indulged himself. She didn't
really live in the apartment, but the target didn't know that.
Ginger's letters had started out friendly, then grown hot and
encouraging, and the last few had been an open invitation for sex.
The young man on the receiving end of those
letters would be coming to Ginger's apartment, as surely as a raccoon to an
open garbage can.
He sucked in the heated air, held it in his
lungs, and thought that he could open the window for a little while and
close it after the target arrived.
No good. He'd already
used the petroleum jelly, sealing the window glass and the frame as best he
could. That hadn't done his
gloves any good, either.
Just when he was berating himself for having
weak thoughts of cool breezes and bathing like a bird, he heard the stairs
creaking. Exhaling deeply but silently, his lips pursed into an O, Cut
flexed his fingers and fought the stiff gloves. It was time.
Perched on one of the chairs near the door of
the apartment, he waited for the knock.
When it came, he pressed the button on the tape player on the floor
next to him.
"Come on in," the sexy female voice said.
"The door's open."
He had recorded it from a porno movie.
The door opened and the target stood there with a
silly grin on his face and a swelling below the belt that probably wasn't a
wad of money in his pocket. Cut
rose and swung his fist in one smooth motion.
As he guessed, one punch was enough to knock the unsuspecting man
out. Even though Cut was
sixty-six, he knew he was strong.
He kept up his arm strength with pushups every morning, and the
morning of the Big Day had been no exception.
It paid off.
The target landed flat on his back in the hall.
Cut dragged the unconscious man inside the apartment and over to the
other chair, parting the sheets of plastic that he'd thumb tacked to the
ceiling. Grasping him under the
arms, he lifted the man easily to the chair that stood there.
He stripped him of his clothes, thinking that added a nice touch of
humiliation, then secured him with arm, leg, and chest restraints.
He had decided against restraining the head.
If his target thrashed around and convulsed, so much the better.
Then Cut taped the man's mouth.
No sense taking the chance that anyone would hear him scream.
The young woman on the first floor was home with her baby, but as far
as he knew, the residents of the other apartments weren't home.
He had watched the building, and on other Wednesday mornings the
place had been deserted except for 1B, the woman and baby.
Cut had eliminated lethal injection first
thing. Too gentle, although if
he left off the anesthetic part of the process, it had possibilities.
It would have been interesting to try electrocution, but Cut feared
electricity since the time he had nearly died of a bad shock as a child. He couldn't set up an electric chair himself, and he couldn't
very well hire an electrician.
Too many questions and not a clue what he could answer that didn't sound
bad. Bringing lumber up the
three flights of stairs to build a gallows held no appeal at all. He couldn't do a firing squad properly with only himself to
hold a gun, and besides, he didn't want to be thought of as some kind of
cheap-thrills Charles Bronson in the Death Wish movies.
He picked up the jug of water and doused his captive. As soon as the man got through sputtering and became fully
alert, his eyes showed fear.
Good.
After taking a last look at the man's pleading
eyes, and watching him struggle against the restraints, Cut closed the flaps
of the tent, walked over to door, and yanked the cord he had strung.
He picked up the water jug and tape recorder.
No sense wasting perfectly good things.
He would like to stay and watch, but he was
worried that gas would escape the makeshift tent and make staying inside the
apartment dangerous. He had a
fleeting thought for the woman and the baby in 1B, but knew he had sealed up
the apartment pretty well, including the windows and vents.
They should be okay.
He heard the fizz of the cyanide tablets as they hit the acid, and moments
later saw very faint tendrils of vapor rising from the bucket.
Standing at the door, watching through the clear plastic, he saw Rick
Schultz, Detective Leo Schultz's son, hold his breath as long as he could,
holding onto life. Inevitably,
the young man released the pent-up air through his nostrils, and took in his
first breath of deadly gas. Cut
closed the door tightly and left him to die.
A son for a son.
