Killing Two Birds with One Triple-Tap

As I walk through the parks of Heavens’ Lane, I readjust my tie. I dislike wearing suits, but if I’m going to blend in up here, I need to wear the ridiculous outfit. Pulling on the overly obvious headphones, I press the button to pump the noise around into my ears. I need to be aware of my surroundings, of course, but most people in a Heavens’ Lane park are living in their own worlds. Combining the monkey suit with a clean shaven face and nude makeup to accentuate and pronounce his facial features, no one who knows me would guess that this was me.

As I walk through the park, bobbing along as I pretend to be listening to mindless music from a few years ago, I keep an eye out for the trash burners. The people who pretend they are busier and more important than they are. The people who think they are closer to the lower classes of the City than their wealth would ever allow them to be. It feels so fake from the outside, but to embody this place, I need to remind myself that it is how they earnestly feel.

After several trash burners who look right, I spot him. A trash burner who looks, to this place, like every other burner. But his equipment is perfectly matched, and his shoes are too pristine. Trash burners are a poorly funded part of society, they rarely have any new equipment, and always have gear that’s slightly mismatched. As I watch him, I notice he’s walking wrong. He’s walking small, like he doesn’t want to be noticed. A real trash burner walks grumpily, like every step is too much effort to deal with people bothering them. And, most key, he’s walking the last burn’s paths. Not a big enough deal that anyone would notice, heck, in most cases even people who would notice would just sigh and move on.

Quietly, keeping the facade up, I follow a good distance behind the burner. From across the street, I watch him follow the old route, step by step, until he heads into an apartment. Large, luxury, filled with corporate sorts. Has units of a similar design to his previous victims. Bingo.

I walk to the crosswalk, but cut across before I reach it, passing another person doing the same on the other side. I double back and head into the building a half a minute or so after the false trash burner. He’s no longer in the lobby, and the stairwell door is closing. I call the elevator, and start flipping through my phone. Who here fits the profile that Homicide worked up of this guy’s victims. Three possibilities. The elevator dings. Two on the seventh floor, one on the fifteenth. Guy’s taking the stairs. Might be a paranoia thing, but he is still more likely to go to the seventh floor than the fifteenth. And, either way, the timing means I should try fifth first anyways. Pressing 5, I wait for the doors to close without pressing the close button. No one is going to be coming, of course, it’s lunch time and the people of this area can afford to go out for lunch, when they’re not staying at work. But not making waves is another key aspect of being from Heavens’ Lane. I wait as the elevator moves up to the fifth floor. I keep my eyes forward, so that the specifics of my face are obscured from the camera by the headphones.

The doors open. I step into the hall, and start to walk towards one of the two. Chosen at random. As I walk slowly but confidently, I notice from the corner of my eye, the trash burner exits the stairwell and heads in the opposite direction. Interesting. Too purposeful to be a reaction to my presence. I stop at one of the doors, and start fumbling around my pockets to pull out a key, watching in my periphery as the false burner uses a key to enter an apartment down the hall.

There’s a camera by the elevator and stairwell, but that’s the only camera on the floor. I take a deep breath, then head around the building the long way. Moving lightly, I listen through the door to the neighboring apartment. No sounds. Perfect. I flick on the infrared lights around my headphones to obscure my face if there’s any personal camera in this person’s apartment. Then, using the bump, I open the apartment door’s lock with ease.

Locking the door behind me, I carefully and quietly slip over to the bathroom window of this apartment. It should be adjacent to the bedroom window of the apartment that the killer is in. He is likely in the kitchen, ready himself for the end of work. Checking to make sure no one is looking up from the street, I climb out the window, keeping it open behind me. Keeping tight to the wall, I jimmy the bedroom window open. I pause, listening, but no movement happens. So, sliding the window open, I slip into the soon-to-be victim’s apartment.

I check the files on her. Kelsey Louisa Winberts, thirty-two. Seems the sort to have a gun. Safe under the bed, among the clothes, or in the closet. The closet would be the most common, but that would also put me in clear view of the bedroom’s open door. Instead, I make my way over to the dressing drawers. Quietly opening each, I check under the neatly folded clothes. In the second drawer down, under a collection of negligees, is a sleek looking gun safe. Unfortunately for her, as expensive and sleek as it is, the safe was made by gun manufacturers, not lock manufacturers. I take a few steps back and carefully remove the badge, poke my finger through and press the button to reset the lock. Then, opening it up, I take the gun, then replace the badge, leaving the safe closed but unlocked under her pillow.

I move around the bedroom a bit, keeping low. There’s a mirror on the bathroom door of the apartment, which he can use to see into the kitchen from a certain angle. Sure enough, the man in a trashburner outfit is there, listening, waiting. Holding the knife he will be using to kill Miss Winberts. So, I settle in too. Time to wait.

It takes a few hours, but soon enough there is the telltale clacking of heels on the floors of the hallway outside. She’s early, as she is every Friday. The door unlocks, and in the mirror, I watch as the killer gets himself ready. He’s waiting for her to be inside. The door closes and locks behind her, and she walks into the living room, tossing her bag down. Only after the bag hits the ground, does the killer come out, opening by throwing the knife into her. Not lethal yet, but close, I think. I need to wait. But now, the killer is distracted. I start to move closer, poised ready to strike when the time is right. Because if she can survive, she could contradict the story. Which means I have to wait.

It takes two more stabs, before she wouldn’t be able to make it long enough for an ambulance to make it here and save her. The killer wants her to suffer. He’s talking about how her types, the management, are ruining the world, breaking the poor. How they all deserve it. Boring talk, and more reason she can’t survive. Another aspect of the story that she might contradict. But once that third blow hits, I smile and rush around the corner, sliding in so that my hands are by her face, as I shoot the killer, once in the head, and twice in the torso, from that position close to where she’s dying.

The killer and victim are both shocked by this, though the victim’s shock lasts longer, as the killer collapses backwards, dead. Time to tell the story, and fast, because someone will have called my coworkers. Seventeen minutes for them to reach us. First, powder. I take out a small makeup kit, but what is inside is not makeup, but trace gunpowder. I dust it across Kelsey’s clothes as she starts asking me, “What is this?” and “Why are you?”

Next, the killer. I take the kerchief covered radio and codebook out from my pocket, and slide it into the killer’s uniform’s pocket. Too bad for him. “Congratulations,” I say as I return to the dying woman’s side, “Your final act in this world was managing to kill a serial killer.” I open her hand, laying the gun into it. She tries to raise the hand to shoot me, but partway through she passes out from the blood loss. Another bullet shoots out, embedding itself in the wall. Lucky. The residue pattern should be even more accurate now.

Then carefully, I extricate myself from the situation, returning to the bedroom. I slide through the window, and this time, I close the bedroom window and the bathroom window behind me. I carefully walk through this apartment, making certain not to touch anything, before I exit into the hallway. Still shouldn’t be caught on camera, I know, so instead of returning to the lobby, I head over to the fire escape, which is connected to an alley below. Opening the fire escape’s door would set off the fire-alarm, but there is a window next to the escape. I open that window and clamber around to the fire escape’s fifth floor landing, then reach back to close yet another window behind me. Almost home free.

I rush down the staircase, not bothering with lowering the ladder down to the upper-ground level, but instead falling down the last story, rolling with the fall. Heading to the dumpster, I slide open the maintenance hatch below it, and slip down into the bowels of the city. Only once in the bowels do I change back into my normal clothes, wiping off my makeup and carefully applying a light stubble appearance, so that I look like, quite frankly, myself. It’ll grow back by work on Monday, but until then, it’s just an extra couple minutes any time I’m heading into public.

I move through the bowels with practiced precision, before coming to the valves leading into the Undermarket district. I move through the valve, and find myself a lovely little series of illegal gambling houses. I head inside, to get myself a perfect alibi that I can’t use but people will support. Always good to be seen in a place without clocks on days that you do crimes.

The man at the door looks at me and nods, but does not open the door. I smile. “Mind if I just pop in to use the restroom?” I say the passphrase.

The large man nods, and opens the door, replying, “Go right in, it’s the third door on the left.”

Walking to the third door on the left, I enter the bathroom. I wash my hands, then head to the out of order toilet stall. Flushing twice, the rear wall opens, revealing a gambling room. Greeting Pete Nightlee, the proprietor here, I say, “Pete, what’re the big fish doing today.”

“Chance, we got a couple on the wheel,” he replies, following me as I start to move deeper into the casino, “And, of course, you’re old friends playing draw in the back room, but we both know you’re not getting in there.”

I shake my head and chuckle. “I’ll just stay at the pennytables for a bit, until the big money moves somewhere more my style,” I reply. He nods as I walk over to the blackjack tables and put a rather large bundle of cash in. The dealer looks up at me. “That’s a bit much for this table,” he says.

I smile. “Don’t worry,” I say, “I’m not upping the price. I’m just going to be here a while.”