HE SLEP T U N T I L nearly noon, then he walked up to the highway and found a diner, where he had a large breakfast. Back at the airfield, he found it pretty much deserted. An occasional airplane would take off or land, but there was no tower, not even an offi ce, just a bunch of airplanes tied down, waiting for the weekend and their owners.
As he stood there a Mercedes station wagon drove up, and a man and a woman got out.
“Good morning,” the man said, “or is it afternoon?”
“Barely,” Sutherland said. “You off to somewhere?”
“Yeah, we’re visiting some family in Maine for a couple of days.”
He opened the trunk to reveal four suitcases.
“Let me give you a hand,” Sutherland said, taking one of the bags out of the trunk. “Which airplane?”
“The Bonanza over there,” the man said, nodding. “Thanks.”
Sutherland followed him to the airplane and watched him unlock the right-side front door. “Give me your keys, and I’ll unlock back here,” Sutherland said.
The man tossed him a heavy bunch of keys. As Sutherland opened the door, he managed to free the car’s ignition key from the bunch, then he set the suitcase in the luggage compartment, leaving the keys in the lock.
After a preflight inspection, the man and his wife got into the Bonanza, and ten minutes later they were rolling down the runway. Sutherland waited until the airplane had disappeared to the north, then he got his duffel and a tool kit out of his airplane, put them into the rear of the Mercedes, started the car and drov
e away.
He had his printed maps, and it took him less than half an hour to find the home of his target. He cruised past the house, and as he did, he saw a woman leave by the front door, get into a pickup truck 18 3
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in the driveway and back out. She looked like the cleaning lady, and there was no other car visible at the house. He drove a little farther down the street and saw a dirt track leading into some woods. He turned into it and drove to a clearing, where the land had been scraped clean. There was a sign advertising a construction company planted on the lot. Looked like someone was going to build there.
He got out of the car, taking his tool kit, and made his way through the woods back toward the house. When he arrived at where the trees met the lawn he stopped and watched the place for signs of life for a while, then he approached the house and began looking into windows. Plantings at the front of the property shielded him from the street.
At a rear corner of the house he found the dining room and the kitchen. At a breakfast nook beside the kitchen window, a place had been set for one person, and a bottle of wine left on the table. Apparently, his subject did not use the dining room when eating alone.
Sutherland stood with his back to the window and looked at the woods, some thirty feet away, as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He checked angles and heights and picked out a spot with a good line marked by the center of a row of azaleas planted at the edge of the woods. Perfect.
He removed a glass cutter and a set of suction cups, affi xed the cups to the selected windowpane, then cut the edges of the glass repeatedly. Finally, he banged on the bracket of the cups with his fist, and the glass snapped out. It would have fallen into the dinette, but he was holding on to the suction cup bracket. Gingerly, he freed the glass from the suction cups, then turned the glass and drew it outside through the new opening. He put the suction cups and the glass cutter back into his tool kit and walked to the spot in the row of azaleas. He stood behind them, then sighted, then knelt and did the same. The kneeling position would be just right. He tossed the 184
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glass pane as far as he could into the woods, then shucked off the latex gloves and walked back to the car.
He drove downtown and found a movie theater with a double feature playing and bought a ticket. He saw both movies twice. He didn’t want to be walking around town and risk being noticed by someone who could identify him later.
WHE N SUTHE R L AND L E FT the movie theater it was twilight, and he had forty minutes until he went to work. He drove back to the vacant lot, switching off his headlights before he turned down the dirt track. There had been lights on in the house when he passed and a car in the driveway.
He took a small flashlight from his tool kit, slipped it into his pocket, then opened the duffel and assembled the rifle, screwed in the silencer and loaded a magazine, though he expected to fi re only once. You never knew.
He found his way to his firing position behind the azaleas and sat down cross-legged behind the row of bushes. He checked the rifl e again, shoved in the magazine and racked the slide. He checked his watch: ten minutes to eight.
At five minutes to eight, the kitchen light went on, and a man walked to the refrigerator, took out a covered dish, put it into the microwave and pressed some buttons. He stood for two minutes while the dish warmed. Sutherland could have shot him then, but he would have had to break glass, which might distort the trajectory and even alert a neighbor.
Finally, the man removed the dish from the microwave, set it on the table, picked up a corkscrew and opened the bottle of wine left for him.
Sutherland rose to one knee, rested his elbow on the other knee and sighted through the space with the missing pane. It was a shot of only a little more than thirty feet.
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