Perfect killer

CHAPTER 69

From his vantage point half in a culvert leading under Martin Luther King Jr. Drive close to its intersection with Sunflower Road, the compact, muscular man surveyed the ramshackle cotton gin with his small monocular night-vision scope. Brad Stone had been good with his caution and preparation, but nobody was perfect.

The man bristled with a poised aggressiveness that made his fingertips pulse with every beat of his heart as he crouched in the standing water left by the previous night's rain.

He was as dark as the shadows embracing him, dressed entirely in black from his tightly laced, government-issue, high-top tactical boots to the summer-weight, cotton, skistyle mask never found in retail stores and designed for cool concealment, not warmth on the slopes. His black turtleneck was turned up to meld darkness with the bottom of the mask. Thin, black latex gloves covered his hands. A small earphone wire led to the man's portable radio as he monitored the law enforcement channels.

In the round image intensifier, the man observed Jasmine Thompson cross the street and give Brad Stone a hug as they stood under the tin-covered overhang where cotton wagons once stopped to be emptied.

Not long after the two had gone inside, the man watched an Itta Bena police car approach from the direction of Balance Due with its headlights out. Three men got out of the police car and walked over to a pale silver SUV. One of the policemen checked the license number against a sheet of paper, then proceeded to transfer the SUV's contents to the squad car. They drove away as stealthily as they had come. The man frowned as the taillights disappeared. There had been absolutely nothing in the radio chatter about this.

After the police cruiser left, the man made his way like a shadow to the gin and tucked himself under a tumbled-down loading dock near the wagon shed. The distant sounds of blues music trailed off about a quarter before three. The man waited easily with his thoughts. Nine minutes later a dark, older-model Jeep turned off MLK Jr. Drive, cut its headlights, and bounced slowly along the dirt path. The man raised the monocular and spotted attorney Jay Shanker's face through the windshield. Pay dirt.

The Jeep stopped under the shed. The engine died. Shanker sat still as the engine cooled with its simple tune of tinks and creaks.