The Wrong Man

50

On the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, Patrick Cahill stretched his calves and his quads, rolled his ankles, and ran in place to keep warm. To his right the sky over the lake was an intense pink, anticipating the rising sun. His breath lingered before him. It was probably just a hair above freezing, if that.

He was at an intersection, with his eyes trained six houses down the block. He wished he weren’t so conspicuous, but he had no choice. His intel was vague at best.

He runs, he was told. Jason Kolarich runs along the lake every morning, rain or shine.

Not being particularly familiar with the city, Cahill had mapped it out last night. He had Kolarich’s address. So that was point A. But the lakefront-point B-was another matter. The lake spanned the entirety of the city’s east border. And there were a dozen different ways that Kolarich could access the lakefront from his townhouse. He’d have to go about three blocks east from his house. That was the easy part. But he could go north or south, and he could cut through a park or take a main artery. If Cahill were able to predict the spot at which Kolarich would reach the lakefront, it would be a simple matter of waiting for him. But since he couldn’t, he had no choice but to follow him from his home.

There. Kolarich walked out of his townhouse at about a quarter to seven. He was wearing a sweatshirt and running shorts. He was a big guy, bigger than the photograph could convey. He jogged down the five stairs, opened the gate, and immediately took off to his left, eastbound, toward the lake, like he was shot from a cannon.

Cahill had to give him space, naturally. He receded into the shadow of the first house across the street. Kolarich paid him no heed, didn’t even look in that direction. He crossed the street and ran north.

Good. He was probably headed to Ash. That was the most logical route. It was a major east-west artery that ran all the way to the lakefront.

Also good that he knew where Kolarich was heading, because Cahill was going to have a hell of a time keeping up with him. This guy was practically sprinting. Cahill was in good shape and liked his chances with him one-on-one-even better two-on-one-but he couldn’t possibly run that fast.

“He’s coming to Ash, I think,” he said into the microphone that was tucked under his shirt collar. “Faded red sweatshirt and black shorts. Headphones in his ears and an iPod on his waist.”

Through his earpiece, he heard: “He’s coming to Ash you THINK?”

“He’s a fast fuck. I can’t keep up with him,” Cahill managed through halting breaths, sprinting after Kolarich.

It was two city blocks north, then three east. Cahill lost him and felt a flutter of panic before the words came through his earpiece.

“Got him. He just headed south on the lake path. You’re right, he is a fast fuck.”

Cahill calmed a bit. Up ahead he approached the lakefront, which at Ash meant taking a ramp down to a tunnel that ran beneath the highway along the lakeshore. He caught his breath as he walked down the ramp. The sun was just beginning to appear over the lake, casting fluorescent pink and orange color across the skyline.

Then he was in darkness inside the tunnel. It ran the length of the four-lane highway above it and then some. The floor was a flat concrete. There were puddles of water and even a little ice. Other than the flat floor, the remainder of the tunnel was the typical tube shape, the highest point about ten, maybe twelve feet. There appeared to be overhead lights, but they were inoperative. Two homeless people slept against one side, huddled in blankets and layers of clothing with a grocery cart full of their possessions next to them. The chill helped stifle the odor, but it still reeked of urine.

When Cahill reached the end of the tunnel, a running path of cinder forked to the left for north or the right for south. Straight ahead and you were ten yards shy of the beach and the lake.

To the right, the land rose up at a forty-five-degree angle until it met the outer barriers of the highway. A “grassy knoll” if there ever was one. The perfect ambush site. Kolarich would leave the tunnel, follow the cinder path to the right, and not even think to crane his head upward and to the right to look up the hill.

Just what his partner, Dwyer, was thinking. He was standing halfway up that hill, checking on angles down toward the mouth of the tunnel. He nodded at Cahill.

Dwyer was part of the Circle, too. He was ex-military like Cahill, though he was dishonorably discharged after serving five years in the stockade for sexual assault. Dwyer was bad news, but when it came to carrying out an exercise, he showed a steely discipline.

Cahill had demanded a partner for this job. You want to ambush someone while on a jog, you needed two people to be sure.

“He went south,” said Dwyer, slowly descending the hill. “Like a bat out of hell.”

Cahill looked up the hill again. “So it would be a tough shot from the hill.”

“I can hit a human target from ten feet away no matter how fast he’s running,” he said. “So can you.”

“But it’s not supposed to look like sniper fire,” Cahill said, looking around. “Manning said they’ll be suspicious when this lawyer goes down. It has to look like a robbery. It has to be convincing.”

“Who robs a guy while he’s jogging?”

Cahill sighed. It was a problem. True, people had been killed for less than an iPod or expensive running shoes. But it wasn’t usually by a gun. It was more hand-to-hand stuff. A knife, maybe. Cahill had used a rope on Bruce McCabe, but that was different. Still, a good old-fashioned strangulation or blow to the head was the best way. Make it look like a struggle ensued, a grab-and-run gone bad-someone tried to swipe his iPod, he resisted, there was a fight, and he ended up dead. Theoretically, sure. But this guy Kolarich? He wouldn’t be an easy drop.

“We could disappear him,” Dwyer suggested. “Shoot him and cart him off. You pull the car up to the ramp. Two minutes, the whole thing’s over. And we have a dark tunnel for cover.”

But that wouldn’t look anything remotely like a robbery. Plus, that would require privacy of at least five minutes-not the two Dwyer was suggesting-in a very public area.

Another runner, an elderly man, slowly jogged past them. A couple of bicyclists flew by as well. The sun had risen now, and the men had to squint as they looked around.

The lakefront wasn’t terribly crowded at dawn in the middle of winter, but it wasn’t entirely deserted, either. And if they were going to take Kolarich out in a sniper-style ambush, they needed total privacy.

Every option posed risks. Some would look more like a robbery than others. But in the end, Manning had left Patrick Cahill with one final instruction:

Don’t fuck it up. Make him dead.

“See you tomorrow morning, Kolarich,” Cahill said.