valet’s eyes were bugging out. Well, let him stare, Earl thought, because he didn’t tip valets.
Ten minutes later he parked in front of Rampersad’s house. High fence, decorative and deadly. Spikes on top. Rottweiler at the gate, eyeing him as he got out of the car. The house was at the southeastern end of the Savannah, not one of the stately homes farther up the road. Not a rich man’s home, but not a poor man’s home either. “You wanna win the game you gotta make the rules,” he said as he slipped out of the car and started up the walk like he lived there. He opened the gate like the Rottweiler was no more than a puppy. The big dog met his hand as he slipped a steak into its mouth and he made a friend for life.
Dogs smelled fear as your adrenaline flowed. Earl wasn’t afraid.
He knocked on the front door and waited.
No answer.
He waited and watched as the dog wolfed down the steak. Dani had been right, there was nobody home. Rampersad would be at the Red House going over security for this evening’s dedication speech. His wife spent her afternoons at the country club, tennis and swimming. There were no children and the police chief had no servants.
Piece of cake.
He opened the front door with the key and stepped into the entryway. A couch, two chairs, new and covered with plastic were the only furnishing in the sitting room on his right. The hardwood floor was covered with a fringed Persian carpet with plastic runners over it. Earl wondered if they took the covers off when they received guests. He passed through into a larger living room. This must be where the family spent most of its time, he thought, looking at the well lived in furniture and the giant screen television. He moved through the room quickly and into a dining room. A large table surrounded by six chairs set off the center of the room. The dining set looked new, a sharp contrast with the living room furniture, but the teak wood wasn’t covered.
From what Dani had told him the kitchen was the door to the left and Rampersad’s office was the door on the right. The rifle would be in the gun rack behind the desk. He pushed the door open and smiled as a hinge squeaked. It was a man’s room, floor covered in rich brown wall to wall carpet, walls covered in oak paneling, the paneling covered in trophies, lion and leopard from Africa, tiger from India, jaguar from Brazil, puma from America, buffalo, elk, kudu and deer. Rampersad was a hunter.
He spent a minute admiring the trophies. He was a hunter himself. Then he turned his attention to the back of the room and the large teak desk facing toward the door. The darker Trinidadian teak stood out like a throne against the lighter American oak. The chair behind the desk was also teak, but the gun rack the chair was touching was oak and glass. And in the rack, the hunting rifles. It was the World War II Springfield thirty-ought-six he was after.
Dani had told him all about the gun, but his hands trembled slightly as he opened the case. He looked at the weapon with a mixture a fascination and religious awe. Sometime, long ago, a gunsmith had put a lot of time in on it. It had a custom stock with a modified pistol grip so that the hunter could wrap his hand completely around it and still have a loose and easy trigger finger. It was the perfect hunter’s rifle and a flawless assassin’s weapon.
The bolt action would only suit a man confident and competent enough to hit what he was shooting at the first time. And Rampersad was such a man, if one were to believe the trophies decorating the walls were all brought down by him. He checked out the other six rifles in the case as he lifted out the ’06. All bolt action. Earl believed it.
He heard the unmistakable sound of a car pulling up into the driveway. Shit, he thought, as he replaced the rifle in the cabinet and eased the glass door closed. He remained behind the desk for a second, wanting to be sure, then he heard a key inserted into the front door, heard the door open, then close. There was a door on the right side of the room and Earl moved toward it, opened it and found a full bathroom complete with tub and shower.
He heard footsteps crossing through the house and his instinct told him that soon they’d be coming his way. He had only one choice. He moved into the bathroom, eased the door closed, pulled the shower curtain aside and stepped into the tub. Was it Rampersad or his wife? And if it was Rampersad, was he armed? He heard someone set something down. He heard the heavy steps of a heavy man coming through the dining room.
“ Elizabeth, are you home?” It was a male voice. Rampersad.
Then there was quiet, followed by the familiar sound of water running in the kitchen telling him that Rampersad hadn’t stumbled on to his presence. Yet. The sound of the refrigerator door opening and closing told him he was getting something to eat, or maybe ice for his water. He strained for any drop of sound. He heard the scrape of a kitchen chair against the floor. He was sitting down at the kitchen table.
For a long few seconds no sound came. He was alone in the shower-tub with only his labored breath. The chair scraped against the tile floor again, sending shivers of ice over his skin, cooling the sweat on the back of his palms. Rampersad was getting up.
He heard the footsteps as they left the kitchen. They were getting closer. The squeaking hinge told him that Rampersad was in the den. He leaned back against the tile wall, willing his heart to quiet as the bathroom door opened. He closed his eyes, and survived by taking baby breaths, silent from even God’s ears. Every sound Rampersad made was magnified by the small room and his shooting imagination.
Rampersad belched and Earl silently shuddered, but stayed quiet. He heard the creak of tiny hinges as he opened the medicine cabinet. He heard him take out something, heard the rattle of pills in a glass jar, heard him pour them into a beefy hand, heard a sound like a drain being pulled on a tub full of dirty water as he gulped them down. He almost screamed when Rampersad closed the cabinet door.
Earl heard him leave the den, heard him leave the house and then he heard the car start. A close call, he thought, as he stepped out of the tub and left the bathroom. Back at the cabinet, he opened it again and lovingly took out the weapon, this time admiring the scope. It was a variable power piece of optics with a top magnification of thirty-five. He put the rifle to his shoulders, sighted through it, looking through the crosshairs, and whistled. A man, or woman, with steel nerves, and something to mount the weapon on, like a tripod or a window sill, would be a dead accurate shot at five hundred yards.
Ramsingh was a dead man, he just didn’t know it yet.
In an oak chest next to the gun rack, Earl found a leather rifle case for the weapon and the ammunition. He slapped a five round clip into the rifle, but didn’t chamber a round. Then he stuffed the weapon into the bag. “Mission accomplished,” he said. Then he remembered his friend out front and stopped at the refrigerator, where he liberated two pounds of hamburger. At the door he fed the grateful guard dog, then he whistled his way to the car.
He was still whistling when he pulled out into the traffic. He had the murder weapon.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dani eyed the crowd below and wiped the sweat from her forehead. The room was air-conditioned, but it didn’t matter, she sweat before a hit, she always had. She was ten stories up, but she felt like she was down there with them. She tried to imagine the panic that would ensue when the prime minister went down.
A little less than two hours to go and they were packed in almost as tight as they were at the calypso fest. Already people were pushing and shoving, trying to get as close to the stage as possible. Everybody loved the cricketeer. It had to gall Ramsingh. To get an audience to listen to him he had to have George Chandee on the podium with him. Had to let him speak second if he wanted the crowd to stay through his own speech. Ah, Ram, Dani thought, turning away from the window, life isn’t fair.
But that’s what makes it so interesting. Who would have ever thought that she’d fall for a backwoods southern sheriff? Well, maybe not backwoods, but definitely not the type of man who was going to be invited into the Washington social scene. She’d miss the parties, the gowns, the gossip, walking with power, being in on the cutting edge of crisis, but she’d missed it for the last year and survived.
She dry fired the rifle, pulling the bolt back and shoving it home again, and squeezing the trigger. It was a heavy weapon, heavier than she preferred, but she’d make it dance in her hands in a very short time. Ram would die, George would have his country, and the Salizars would have no more problems laundering their money.
She moved her gaze back to the throng beneath her. The sun peeking through a moist, partially cloud covered sky painted the crowd below with a friendly brush. From her perch the people looked freshly scrubbed in the tropical
