Beyond Suspicion

was concrete. His cheek was pressed against the sidewalk, exactly where he’d fallen.

At first, he had no memory of where he was. Dawn was just a sliver of an orange ribbon on the horizon. Jack tried to sit up, but his body ached all over. It was as if he’d been hit by a truck. Finally, he forced himself onto his knees. The ringing in his ear was gone, but he felt nauseous. Probably a concussion. He closed his eyes and tried to stop the spinning. He opened them and strained to focus on something, anything, in the middle distance. Slowly, he began to get his bearings, and the memory of last night came back to him. The footsteps behind him. The blow to his back that sent his cell phone flying across the lawn. His chin banging on the sidewalk.

He touched his jaw. It was definitely sore. His gaze drifted toward the fence, and he spotted a little orange light blinking in the darkness. He squinted, then realized what it was: his cell phone emitted that light whenever he had a message. He tried to stand up, then yielded to the pain. He rolled like a dog and grabbed the phone, then dialed Cindy at her mother’s. She answered after just three rings.

“Hi. It’s me.”

“Jack, where have you been? I’ve been calling your cell, but you didn’t answer.”

His head was pounding. “What time is it?”

“Almost five.”

“In the morning?”

“Yes, the morning. What’s wrong with you? Have you been drinking?”

“No. I got beat up.”

“What?”

The simple act of talking made him short of breath. He groaned lightly and said, “Somebody beat the holy crap out of me.”

“Are you okay?”

Jack forced a yawn in an effort to loosen his jaw. A sharp pain ran though his head like a railroad spike. “I think I’ll be okay.” In about a month, he thought.

“Who did this to you?” she asked, her voice quaking.

He started to explain, but it hurt too much to talk. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”

“It’s not okay! They just left, and you weren’t even here. I had no idea what to do.”

He sat bolt upright, concerned. “Who came?”

“The marshals.”

“Federal marshals?”

“Yes. They had a search warrant.”

“What did they want?”

“Your home computer.”

That spike was back in his head. He grimaced and said, “Did you give it to them?”

“Yes, of course. Rosa said I had to.”

“You spoke to Rosa?”

“Yes, I couldn’t find you. They wanted your office computers, too. Rosa’s going ballistic.”

“What’s the federal government doing in this? Did you ask Rosa?”

“No. But she did say something about the IRS.”

Jack was silent. Three little letters no one liked to hear. “You sure that’s what she said-IRS?”

“No. She said ‘Internal Revenue Service.’”

He took a deep breath, which was a big mistake. All it took was a little extra air in his chest cavity to press against the spine and send him reeling with pain. It was as if he were being kicked in the back all over again.

“Cindy, I’m going to call Rosa now. But as soon as I talk with her, we all need to talk.”

“You and I need to talk first. Alone.”

Between last night’s beating and now the IRS, he’d almost forgotten about the Jessie sex tape. “You’re right. We need to talk.”

“Sooner rather than later.”

“That sounds good to me.”

“Okay. Just call me as soon as you finish with Rosa.”

“I will.”

“Jack?”

“What?”

“What’s going on with the IRS?”

“I’m not sure. Listen, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

They said good-bye, and Jack switched off the phone. His mouth hurt, partly from having talked too much, mostly from having kissed the sidewalk last night. He spat a little blood into the grass and slowly pushed himself up onto two wobbly feet.

“Wonderful,” he said as he tried to straighten his back. “The IRS.”

24

•

Macon, Georgia, was a good place to die. And that was exactly his plan.

He called himself Fate, the favorite word of Father Aleksandr, the priest in his native Georgian village-the other Georgia, the lands beyond the Caucasus Mountains-who’d told him since boyhood that everything happened for a reason. The concept had always overwhelmed him, the very idea that every thought and every deed, every action and every inaction, was part of a bigger plan. The problem was, he didn’t know what the plan was, couldn’t fathom what it should be. What if he made a decision that somehow managed to screw everything up? He preferred to lay that kind of ultimate responsibility on somebody else, even when doing the very thing he did best.

That made him a peculiar killer indeed.

He was seated behind the wheel of his rented van, parked on the street corner a half-block away from the chosen household. The sun had set several hours earlier behind an overcast sky. The nearest street lamp was at the other end of the street, leaving him and his van in total darkness. Frost from his own breath was beginning to build inside his windshield. No matter how cold it got, he didn’t dare start the engine for fear of drawing attention to himself. He didn’t need the heater anyway. He had his own source of warmth, a fifth of slivovitz, a potent vodka made from plums. “Peps you up, colors the cheeks” was a slogan known to millions of Eastern Europeans. At seventy-percent alcohol, it was also the ultimate insurance against the inhibitions of conscience. The Budapest whores knew it well. So had the snipers in Chechnya, who’d dosed themselves heavily on the devil’s drink before potting away at women and children caught in their crosshairs. On occasion, Fate had known it to make him braver too, though he drank it simply because he liked it even more than chacha, a grape vodka popular among Georgians. So long as he followed his own rules, he enjoyed his work; he didn’t need any vodka to ease his conscience.

He poured another capful of slivovitz and then lit it with his cigarette. The genuine stuff burned a pretty blue flame. He watched it flicker for a moment, then tossed the flaming cocktail down the back of his throat.

It was a ritual he’d performed since his teenage years, when Fate had found his first victim-or, more appropriately, when his first victim had found Fate. He and the other hoodlums in his gang never selected a target. Victims identified themselves. The boys set the criteria and waited for someone who fit the bill to come along. The next guy to walk by wearing sunglasses. The next woman with brown eyes. The next kid on a bicycle. Back then, it was just for fun, perhaps an initiation or other gang-related right of passage. That kind of silliness was behind him. His work now had a purpose. He murdered only for hire.

It was the perfect arrangement for a killer who didn’t want his work to upset the larger plan. Victims were preselected, not by him but by someone else. He didn’t even have to choose the manner of execution. His victims did. It could be a complete surprise, the sleeping victim never regaining consciousness. Or death could be days,