Chapter 107
H E FINALLY ARRIVED IN STOCKBRIDGE, near the Massachusetts-New York border, and used his GPS to find the right house. He was ready to do his worst, to be the Butcher again, to earn his day’s wage.
To hell with good deeds and good thoughts, whatever they were supposed to prove. He located the house, which was very “country” and, he thought, very tasteful. It sat on a tranquil pond in the middle of acres of maples and elms and pines. A black Porsche Targa was parked like a modern sculpture in the driveway.
The Butcher had been told that a forty-one-year-old woman named Melinda Steiner was at the house ? but that she drove a spiffy red Mercedes convertible. So who did the black Porsche belong to?
Sullivan parked off the main road behind a copse of pines, and he watched the house for about twenty minutes. One of the things he noticed was that the garage door was closed. And maybe there was a fine red Mercedes convertible in the garage.
So ? once again ? who owned the black Porsche?
Careful to stay under the cover of thick branches, he put a pair of German binoculars to his eyes. Then he slowly scanned the east and south windows of the house, each and every one of them.
No one seemed to be in the kitchen ? which was all darkened windows, no one moving about.
Or in the living room, either, which was also dark and looked deserted.
But somebody was in the house, right?
He finally found them in a corner bedroom on the second floor. Probably the master suite.
Melinda, or Mel, Steiner was up there.
And some blond dude. Probably in his early forties, presumably the owner of the Porsche.
Too many mistakes to calculate , he was thinking to himself. A real cluster-f*ck of errors.
What he could also calculate was that his seventy-five-thousand-dollar fee for this job had just doubled, because he never did two for the price of one.
The Butcher started to walk toward the country house, gun in one hand, toolbox in the other, and he was feeling pretty good about this job, this day, this life he had for himself.