Brutal Honesty-Part Four

Dimitri Youngblood stared in shock at his victim-to-be. Kenneth Wilkinson seemed greatly at ease, and even amused at the killer's bewilderment.

"You've come to kill me, haven't you?" Wilkinson asked, not waiting for an answer. "But of course you have. I should have known..." He laughed bitterly. "I should have known it would come to this. But I never expected it, not really. You know, I was just really beginning to understand that-"

"Shut up," Dimitri ordered tersely. "Don't talk again." The barrel of his gun was pressed into Wilkinson's forehead. "And drop that gun." Wilkinson's pistol clattered to the floor. Dimitri didn't bother to retrieve it.

Wilkinson's demeanor changed. "Please, I don't really want to die. I'm young, and I...I have money, lots of money..." He sounded desperate, pleading, "Please, I have my whole life ahead of me! You don't have to do this! It doesn't have to be this way! Please!"

Dimitri looked at him.

"Tell her, tell her I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"She'll understand. You will, won't you?"

Dimitri responded by firing twice into the powerful body of the Baltimore Orioles star pitcher. Wilkinson collapsed to the floor, his eyes staring into Dimitri's. The pitcher's eyes were blank, dead. The killers' eyes were burning.

Natalie was drinking coffee at the kitchen table of her hotel suite when the phone rang. She carefully avoided tripping over piles of paper on the floor as she made her way to the phone.

"Hello?"

"Natalie, it's Casie. There's been another murder."

"What?!" Natalie almost dropped her coffee. "We already saw three bodies, dead and gone with. What happened?"

"In Washington D.C. Orioles pitcher Kenneth Wilkinson shot to death in his home. They found another poem, Natalie."

"One you wrote?"

"Yeah." Casie paused for a moment, then sighed. "Look, Natalie, I really don't want to talk about this over the phone. And we need to get back to D.C. anyways."

"Murder happened in D.C.?" Natalie wasn't aware the Orioles pitcher lived in D.C.

"Two blocks away from your house." Or that close to her.

"I agree. We should go. But first we should take the case files from the LA office before we leave. I'll meet you at the Hoover building ASAP."

"No," Casie disagreed. "We'll go together. I'm sitting outside the hotel in a rental car. Plate number B4B1GRL. Someone has a sense of humour. Hurry up, I'm waiting and the cab driver is impatient too."

"I'll be there in a minute." Natalie did a rush job of packing the rest of her clothes in the little suitcase, and then stuffed her laptop and toothbrush in the briefcase. She performed one last check before flipping the light switch and striding down the hall. She made it only ten feet before remembering. "Crap." Natalie returned to the hotel room and dug out her sidearm from under the pillow before strapping it to her thigh. Can't forget that, now can we? She thought to herself wryly.

Outside she immediately spotted Casie, wearing a dark red tunic top and black pants. Casie noticed her a moment later, and waved, not smiling.

"So what happened?"

"We'll find out when we get there," Casie said grimly. "The Director herself called us in. Said she wanted us there stat."

"What? When did this happen?"

"About an hour ago." Casie turned to her partner. "It's going to be hard to keep the press away from this one, Natalie. Those vultures smell blood-in more ways than one. The thing is, this thing is top priority. We need to find whoever is doing this-and if it's a hired professional, who's paying for this." She looked out the window. "And I need to know where they're getting my poetry from."

The woman called over a secure line. Dimitri answered, keeping his voice low. "Yes?"

"Youngblood. You finished the job?"

"Yes," he replied shortly. "Wilkinson is in the bag-literally. I watched them carry out his body." He laughed humorlessly. There was s sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.

"You went back?"

"I stayed," he corrected his employer. "And why not? It's my right."

"You shouldn't have. It's dangerous."

"Aw, dangerous, schmangerous." Dimitri noticed flashing lights in his side mirror.

"You should know better-you're a professional." her voice, strangely, was not hysterical, just cold and calculating. Reprimanding a man she saw only as a tool-not even an asset.

"Can't talk now, sweetie. Looks like a cop in my rearview mirror." He cut the connection before she could protest and pulled over like a good little citizen. Dimitri rolled down the window and the cop stuck her head in.

"There a problem, Officer?"

"Sir, you were driving at ninety-four miles per hour, and the speed limit is sixty-five. I'm going to have to see your license." The woman's fiery red hair matched the fire of his anger at being pulled over.

"You'll have to see my license, will you?" he mimicked in a sarcastic tone. "Well what if I don't have one?" But of course he had one. Fake, of course.

"Sir, have you been drinking?"

"Drinking? Why, no, ma'am, I don't believe I've had a drink in years."

"Sir I find that hard to believe."

"Tell me, madam, do you take some sort of pleasure at pulling over innocent citizens? That's no way to do your job."

Before the cop could answer, Dimitri shot her in the face and drove away. It wasn't often he killed on impulse, but the woman had grinded him to the last nerve. She deserved it too.

<a href=http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977214719&nav=Namespace>Part Five</a>