The Little Job that Could

Previous Chapter: Unburdening

OK, it isn’t the simple little job it looked like when I started out. The target turns out to have fairly sophisticated security, not the throw-away stuff the public gets. She’s coy about showing herself outside, though the glimpses I get tell me it isn’t because of her body. She might not be fantastic looking, but she has nothing to be embarrassed about. She doesn’t have human security, but she does have several well trained dogs. I’ve dealt with dogs before. It’s very hard to train them not to eat, so drugging them is fairly straightforward. However, I don’t want to do that just to get in and place some bugs. It’s hard to get the dosage just right and groggy watch dogs in the morning are sure to set off alarm bells.

Isabel’s research indicates the target’s involved in money laundering, but mostly done via electronics, so she doesn’t need to leave her house very often and doesn’t have to worry common criminals will bother her for the cash she doesn’t have. It would be nice if she was into sunning at her pool, both because of the access as well as to get some eye candy, but either she isn’t into that (she isn’t that tan) or the recent cool weather has driven her inside. I’m pretty sure she’s alone in the house – extensive thermal scans of the exterior aren’t showing anything but her and the dogs – but it’s a fairly large house with a basement, so I can’t be certain.

The client doesn’t have any particular concern about how it’s done. In that case, I usually do sniping, but the target isn’t giving me any opportunities. I decide I’m going to put the dogs to sleep and use the direct approach. I tell Isabel what my price is and wait to learn if the client will pay. It’s a half day or so before I get the response: go ahead. Isabel tells me the money is in the bank, so I’m going to do this thing tonight. I’m starting to like having Isabel in the office, my earlier sneering dismissal to the contrary. Normally, I’d travel back to a safe house to communicate with the client about the price of the job, now I just stay put and wait for a response. It sure cuts down on the time I spend in airports!

I do some shopping at the local butcher, wearing a cover that will lead to the usual dead end if anyone connects the target’s death with the dogs. It’s a shame to adulterate such nice steaks with the drugs. Then again, I am giving them to dogs. In experiments over the years, I’ve discovered that dogs prefer meat that’s aged at room temperature. I guess it releases more smells. The typical steak from the fridge doesn’t elicit the same response as one that has been out for a few hours. The idea with multiple dogs is to feed them at the same time, just far enough apart that they won’t fight, but still close enough that they’ll wolf down the food and not dilly dally and perhaps be turned off by the taste of the drugs. I briefly have a moment of concern when the dogs initially seem to be trained to ignore food, but once the first one starts eating, the rest quickly join in. There had been some barking when I first showed up, but they tended to bark whenever anyone walks down the street, so the target learned to ignore these as false positives. Of course, in this case I’m a real positive, but such is the nature of alarms. You either commit to investigating every single one, so you can catch the true positives, or the alarms become useless. I’m sure if I tried to climb over the fence, the dogs would have changed the tenor of their barking, which would have alerted the target, but I’ll wait for the drugs to take hold before I do that.

It takes about fifteen minutes for the dogs to get to sleep. I wanted a dose strong enough that they’d be out for hours, but not strong enough to put them in danger. Ideally, they’ll wake up in the wee hours of the morning and this will appear to be a locked room mystery.

I disable the electronic alarms, though they are a bit tricky. These are the smarter alarms that send an encrypted “I’m alive” message periodically, and this design is considered extremely hard to defeat. And it would be, if they used a really good random number generator to establish the keys. Instead, one of the dummies who designed the system used a very poor generator, and it only takes my tools a few minutes to get the right key out of the thousands that should have been quintillions. With that, I can send the “alive” message even though I’ve disabled the alarm. Another poor design element that works nicely in my favor: when the alarm is reconnected, and detects no current threat, it immediately goes back into its normal “alive” message, so I can reconnect as I leave and the system will never know it was breached. The cameras are a tiny bit more complex, but only a tiny bit. I have to basically set up my own, that sends an image on a loop, but the keys and reconnection are the same. The price people pay to avoid false positives. Fatal price, in this case.

Once in the house, I have to be cautious. Even though Isabel gave me the floor plans as filed with the building department, people often make last minute changes during construction and, of course, furniture can be placed anywhere. I ghost around, looking for her on the first floor, but don’t find any sign. I’m going to try upstairs before the basement; she might be in bed already, even though it’s only just past midnight. The house isn’t that old, and is well built, so no creaky floors to give me away. While I didn’t put an actual Nightingale floor in my place, the alarm is deliberately made to sound like a settling house or a creaky floor. That way, if anyone gets into the house, they might not realize an alarm is going off.

Ah, I think she’s upstairs. I see some light under the door that’s supposed to be to the master bedroom. I glide to the door; it isn’t latched and is slightly ajar, so I can see in. I see a light in the bathroom; a monster thing even bigger than mine. I hear some noises there, so assume that’s where she is. I gently push open the door; she’s had all the hinges oiled, so no creaking. I like creaking doors, and seldom oil my hinges just because I feel more comfortable with the sounds. However, there’s also a trick you can use: generally, if you take up the weight of the door as it hangs against the hinge, it won’t creak as it swings. In any case, no creaking to give me away, and I don’t see anyone else in the room.

I move toward the bathroom and see she’s soaking in a gigantic tub. It probably took over an hour to fill; I expect she’s been in there a while to make it worth the wait. It seems my timing is just right, she’s getting out. She looks quite nice naked. I’m wondering, if she had a choice, how she would like things to wind up. I decide to let her dry off and get a robe on, then, after she sits in a chair, I shoot her in the back of her head. After she slumps forward, I check to be sure the dirty deed is done. No problems. Now, just work my way back out, ensuring there are no traces and the alarms are all re-enabled. I briefly check on the dogs. They seem to be OK, so I didn’t dose them too high. It should be a nice locked-room mystery for the police, when her body finally gets discovered.