The Killing League

97.

The Commissioner

He knew the house well. Nicole Candela’s bungalow was so typical. He could picture the bitch telling friends about her “cute little house” like it was her choice to live here, rather than a big mansion in Beverly Hills or Malibu.

Such bullshit.

He’d been inside. When she’d gone on one of her long hikes in the hills, he’d slipped in and gone through everything. The big bed, the artwork of local artists on the walls, the cozy living room and the big gourmet kitchen.

He knew Nicole Candela very, very well.

He’d even gone through her silly little scrapbook. The Commissioner guessed it was probably some kind of tool for therapy. To help her look on the bright side of things. He laughed. Yeah, she’d see how well that would work.

The Commissioner’s mind went back to that moment in the woods, when it was just the three of them: Nicole, Kostner and himself.

Or so he had thought.



He stood at the edge of the clearing, camouflaged by the thick stand of trees to the left of the action. He had a gun and he was ready to use it. He wasn’t quite sure how he wanted to play this. He could be a hero, but he could also be the one taking all the pleasure.

And then the unthinkable happened.

Kostner started talking and playing with the knife, wasting time. He almost took over, but before he could move, the bitch yanked out the punji stick and buried it in Kostner’s throat.

He started to break cover from his hiding spot, get in there and try to stop it, but it was too late.

And then that f*cking a*shole Wallace Mack stumbled into the clearing, tied off the bitch’s wounds and carried her out of the clearing. He saved her life. A f*cking hero. And he would probably get credit for finding Kostner.

All the planning, all the effort, all the help he’d given Kostner as part of his master plan.

All ruined.

Forever.

Ruined by Wallace Mack and the bitch Nicole Candela.

He wept. He wept as he ran back to his car to get the hell away before the cops showed up.

He was gone, and no one ever knew he was there.

But by then, everything had changed.

The Commissioner parked his car, got out, and walked toward Nicole Candela’s house.

After all this time, he was finally going to exact his revenge.

He was going to finish the job that Jeffrey Kostner had botched three years ago in that clearing in the woods.





98.

Mack

Mack couldn’t decide what pissed him off more: Whidby’s arrogance, or his utter lack of clear thinking. The man only had vision when it came to covering his ass, or kissing someone else’s ass to get ahead.

He called Reznor’s cell again, but it went to voicemail.

He gripped the wheel. He drove too fast, and the sense that things were spinning out of control nearly overpowered him. Adelia killing a man at his home. The attack on Nicole. Reznor in the ER.

He had to stop this, and stop it now.

He called the D.C. office and asked to be put through to Wanda Fillmore. He prayed that she was in.

She picked up on the first ring.

“Agent Fillmore, it’s Wallace Mack,” he said, trying his best to sound calm and controlled. Whidby had probably already painted him as a raging lunatic to the entire Bureau.

“How is Agent Reznor?” she said. Mack remembered how Fillmore had blushed at Reznor’s compliment. There had been an unspoken bond of respect between them. He could use that.

“She survived, but they tried to cut her eyes out,” Mack said.

He heard the sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.

He had to push his advantage.

“Wanda, I know you looked into the access records for the cases Reznor and I discussed with you.”

“I did,” she said.

“And I know that you gave your report on those to Whidby,” he said.

“Yeah, he didn’t seem real interested in the details, just the locations,” she admitted.

“Locations?” Mack said. “Plural?”

He heard Fillmore tapping the keys on a keyboard. “Yeah, multiple addresses all around Los Angeles.”

“Let me guess,” Mack said. “You suspect they all came from one person, using a convoluted server re-routing process, but Whidby told you otherwise. Part of his conspiracy theory, right?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “How did you know?” she said.

“Do me a favor, Wanda,” Mack said. Technically, he knew she probably shouldn’t as he wasn’t officially with the FBI anymore. He hoped she wasn’t a stickler for protocol.

“See if any of the addresses match the name Lance Gilford.”

Just saying the name of Ellen Reznor’s ex-husband sent shivers down Mack’s spine. He remembered the man, his arrogance, his ambition. He’d desperately wanted to become a profiler like Mack, but had gotten booted out of the Bureau, right after his marriage to Reznor had ended. The rumor was that he had failed several drug tests.

He also fit Mack’s profile to the letter.

“This will take me a little bit,” Fillmore said. “Can I call you back at this number?”

Mack thanked her, and hung up.

Now, he had to make sure Nicole was safe. If Gilford had done his homework, and he clearly had, he would know how much Mack cared for Nicole Candela.

She would be the ultimate target.

He cursed himself. He never should have left Nicole in the first place. He picked up his cell phone and called her number.

It rang seven times before he hung up.

He stomped on the accelerator and roared down I-10 toward Santa Monica.

He hoped he wouldn’t be too late.

Again.





99.

Nicole

She sat on the bed with Sal. She stroked the soft fur on his throat. The temporary bandage had been removed, mainly because he had scratched at it constantly.

Nicole couldn’t really believe it. Her life, back on track after so long, was rocked once again to its foundations.

She fought to keep her thinking straight. She still had Thicque. Tristan had recovered, and other than a bump on her head was her old self.

And now she had Mack.

It was like finding a part of you that you didn’t realize was missing. She thought of their night together. Never in a million years would she have thought that being with someone could make her feel whole. It just sounded so ridiculously New Age-y she almost wanted to vomit. But goddamnit, it was true.

She had been missing something in her life. And now she knew what it was.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard one of the cops outside yell something. It sounded like he told someone to stop. She stood as Sal growled a warning. She pushed him back onto the bed, and shut the door. He didn’t need to get excited and re-open his head wound.

Nicole went to her front window and looked out. What she saw made no sense whatsoever.

Jay Lucerne walked toward her house, a gun in his hand.

It looked like he was sweating. His face was red. She ran to her front door and fumbled with the locks. Her hands were shaking as she struggled to open the door.

More shouting.

She managed to get the security chain free, and was about slam the deadbolt open when she heard four shots.

Nicole ran back to the window.

Jay Lucerne, her friend, her business partner, was on his back in her front yard, the front of his shirt soaked with blood.

The cops were standing behind their car doors.

“No!” she shouted.

She ran back to the front door, grabbed the doorknob as a bright flash of pain erupted from the back of her head.

Her face slammed into the door and she tasted blood and then the hardwood floor rushed up at her. By the time her face slammed to a stop, she was already out.





100.

The Commissioner

He slung Nicole Candela over his shoulder and walked out her back door. He heard the dog barking, debated shooting it, but it wasn’t worth the time and effort.

There had been a cop in the back, but he was now in the front yard, looking at the poor, lifeless body of gourmet and restaurateur Jay Lucerne.

The Commissioner went through the postage stamp backyard, hopped the small fence Nicole Candela shared with her neighbor. He walked through the neighbor’s yard to his car. He popped the trunk and dropped her inside.

He got behind the wheel and smiled.

Poor Jay Lucerne.

He would do anything for his gay lover. The Commissioner had sent a picture of the poor man to Lucerne, and told him he would die unless he showed up in Nicole Candela’s front yard with a gun.

It hadn’t really mattered, because the man was already dead, and the Commissioner was fairly certain he would have been able to get into Nicole’s house without too much trouble. But the diversion out front had made the process nearly foolproof.

He clapped his hands together.

He only wished he could see the expression on Mack’s face when he found out that his dear sweet Nicole was in the hands of the man who was slowly ruining his life.

How Mack would feel like a failure. He’d been slow figuring out Jeffrey Kostner. Sure, he’d arrived in time to stop Nicole Candela from bleeding to death, but that was a small consolation.

No, Mack would take this one hard. Even harder than the news that his old partner was dead. The Commissioner hoped Ruth Dykstra had been able to cut out Reznor’s eyes. That would infuriate Mack even more.

Mack would come for him, the Commissioner.

And then the ruse of this little killing game would be over and the Commissioner could get what he’d wanted all along.

Wallace Mack.





101.

Lady of the Evening

Paul Whidby always used the same escort service when he was in Los Angeles. The company called itself Tuscan Catering Services, but it wasn’t Italian food they provided to fulfill their clients’ appetites.

They specialized in women who didn’t mind a little rough sex.

The more they liked to fight and scratch and claw, the more satisfied the customers.

Paul Whidby had first learned of Tuscan when they appeared on the periphery of a larger human trafficking case several years back. At the time, Whidby had been a field agent in the Los Angeles office.

The case had gone to trial, but Whidby had kept Tuscan out of the case files in exchange for Preferred Customer status with the escort service. It was a strategic move that had provided him many, many hours of entertainment and saved him thousands of dollars.

Now, he sunk into a low couch in the bar area of the W Hotel in Westwood. It was right next to the UCLA campus, and Whidby preferred the area to the touristy trap of Santa Monica and the Promenade. This area was home to college students, intellectuals, and residential neighborhoods. Not the cliché surfers and tourists in Santa Monica and Venice Beach.

He had a dry martini in front of him, and he watched the bar with interest. It was a game he liked to play with himself. The challenge was to see if he could spot his “girl” before she spotted him. The electronica soundtrack pulsated throughout the dark bar area. Everything was either black or dark purple, it seemed. Even the eye shadow of most of the women at the bar.

Whidby felt great. His team was hitting every one of the addresses the computer tech had discovered. No doubt, whoever was behind the killings would be found at some of those locations. They’d bust the ring, and Whidby was in town for the press conference. It was only a matter of time before he climbed even higher in the organization. The title of “Director” was definitely in reach.

Plus, he had Wallace Mack out here to take the blame if anything went wrong. He’d probably find something to blame Mack for, even if everything went right. He laughed.

He drank from his martini and had just speared the olive when a voice reached out to him.

“Hello,” it said.

Whidby looked up. He smiled. She had won the game by spotting him first. But in Round Two, she was going to lose and lose big.

“Hello,” he said. He took her in. She was a little bit older than most of the girls, but ladies who liked it rough weren’t exactly plentiful. He didn’t mind one with a little extra seasoning on her.

Amanda Dekins smiled back down at Paul Whidby.

She reached her hand out to him and he took it.

Together, they walked to the elevators.