Page 51 of PSYCHOlogical

“What do you want me to write down, dip-shit?” he asked.

“Just write Wallace 1730 and suppressor.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ll explain what it means when I’m done.”

“Got it,” he said. “Wallace. 1730. Suppressor.”

“Appreciate it,” I said. “Now. Close the door. This could take a minute.”

He pulled the door closed.

I waited for five minutes, hoping he’d finish the beer he was drinking. The more alcohol he had in his system, the better my plan would work. I slipped the silenced pistol in the waistband of my jeans, against the small of my back. After covering it with my shirt tail, I washed my hands.

I wiped the area free of any fingerprints with the hand towel. Protecting the door handle from finger prints with my shirt tail, I opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

Out of his line of sight, I whistled jokingly. “Holy shit. You don’t want to go in there.”

“Thanks for the warning,” he said with a laugh.

I walked into the kitchen. “Did you write that stuff down for me?”

Standing on the kitchen’s tile floor facing the television in the living room, he tilted his head to the side. “Sitting by the bottle of Jack.”

“It’s embarrassing that I can’t remember shit lately.”

“Don’t tell that bitch, Rhoades,” he said. “I just answer ‘no’ to all her questions. I don’t even listen to them.”

I feigned being drunk and stumbled to his right side. I draped my left arm over his upper back and pulled him close, bringing his right shoulder against my left. “Appreciate it, Brother.”

He chuckled. “You’re fucking drunk, aren’t you?”

Not too drunk to do this…

I stumbled forward, taking him with me in the process. At the same time, I slipped my right hand into my waistband and retrieved the pistol. While he was trying to regain his balance, I pressed the tip of the silencer against his right temple and pulled the trigger.

The .45 caliber slug exited the barrel with a thwack! The left side of his head exploded as the bullet exited his skull. He fell into a pile of lifeless flesh at my feet. At the same time his body hit the floor, pieces of his fragmented skull landed on the countertop beside him.

I gazed down at his crumpled body. Blood began to pool on the floor around him. I needed to act quickly, or the coroner’s reports wouldn’t support my plan. I slipped on the latex gloves I’d been carrying in my right pocket. Using my gloved hands, I grabbed the note, folded it, and placed it in the front pocket of Pike’s jeans.

I removed his phone from the other pocket and texted a message to Wallace’s phone.

Pick me up. Truck’s broke down.

I put his phone in my pocket and turned toward the kitchen counter, being careful not to step in the pooling blood.

Despite what’s shown in the movies, square whiskey bottles are nearly impossible to break over someone’s head. Using the bottom of the bottle would allow me to thoroughly clean his DNA from it without damaging the paper label. Clinging to the hope that my belief held true, I used my folded tee shirt as a buffer and hit him with the bottom of the whiskey bottle hard enough on the crown of his forehead to create what appeared to be a terrible rug burn, right at the scalp.

I unscrewed the lid from the bottle of whiskey and tossed it on the floor at his side. I watched as blood pooled around it. I wiped the bottle clean, then pressed Pike’s fingers against it as if he were gripping it. I carefully carried the bottle to my rental car, grabbed my bag, and went inside.

Leaving Pike’s hair, blood, and the whiskey bottle at the next murder scene would link him to the crime. I plucked a handful of hair from his scalp and placed it in a Ziploc bag, then removed a small down pillow from my bag. Using Pike’s right hand, I fired the pistol into the folded pillow and retrieved the slug. Upon finding the two spent brass shell casings, I placed one in my bag with the lead slug I’d removed from the pillow case.

A good investigator would check the pistol’s shell casings for fingerprints. The bullets in the magazine were currently free of any fingerprints, but that was about to change. I pressed Pike’s thumb and forefinger against the spare brass shell casing and tossed it onto the floor beside him. I removed all the cartridges from the pistol’s magazine and one from my bag. After pressing Pike’s fingerprints into each of them, I loaded the magazine and slid it into the pistol’s magazine well.

I positioned the loaded pistol—less one spent cartridge—loosely in Pike’s right hand.

The crime scene investigator would find cordite on his hand and right arm, confirming he’d shot the pistol. The one spent cartridge casing was left on the kitchen floor with his fingerprints on it. His fingerprints would also be on each of the cartridges in the magazine, which would provide proof that he, in fact, loaded the gun.

Instead of the investigator’s finding the two spent cartridges that were actually fired, they would only find one, indicating one shot was fired in the “suicide”, and that the shot was fatal. Me pressing the barrel to his temple would cause powder burns, which would support him not being shot from across the room by someone else.

The Wallace 1730 note in his pocket would suggest that he had a meeting with Wallace at 1730. The suppressor note would have been a reminder for him to get the suppressor from the armory for the pistol he used to commit suicide, which is exactly where I got it from.

After cleaning my shot glass and placing it in the cabinet, I washed out my beer bottle and dropped it into my bag. I then removed his boots and put them in the bag along with the pillow. Lastly, I suctioned some of his blood into a small syringe and placed it into a Ziploc bag before wiping the kitchen free of any fingerprints.

On my way through the garage, I grabbed his hat from the countertop, the garage door remote from the visor of his truck, and his jacket from on top of the workbench in the garage.

I glanced at my watch. 1715.

I had twenty-two minutes to kill the next member of New Dawn’s soon to be defunct program.