The Interloper

  The Interloper

  by Dave Zeltserman

  Copyright 2014 by Dave Zeltserman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To fellow noir fan, Ron Clinton

  Part One

  The Hunted

  Chapter 1

  Dan Willis watched through a pair of binoculars as his target left his house through a side door to collect the morning newspaper. The target was one Brian Schoefield. Age thirty-seven, average height, and carrying an extra sixty pounds that made him appear soft with fat sausage-like arms and legs. He wore a bathrobe and slippers, both worn and tattered, and Willis could make out that Schoefield also wore a stained tee shirt under his robe. Probably boxers, too, but that was only a guess on Willis’s part. Overall, Schoefield had a pasty look about him.

  It was nine fifty in the morning. Schoefield stopped to squint at the sun before moving cautiously to where his newspaper had been tossed. It was almost as if he knew he was being watched. Willis doubted that. More likely, Schoefield had just woken up. That was evident not only from his pasty look, but from the way the little hair Schoefield had left on his scalp was sticking up in disarray as if he had just rolled out of bed, which only added to his overall sloppy appearance.

  Willis sat in a house three addresses down on the opposite side of the street. The house had been foreclosed four months earlier and still lay vacant. Like most of the houses on the street, it was mostly a dump. A small two-bedroom cape-style house that needed a lot of work, although not as much as Schoefield’s house seemed to need, at least from the outside. Willis guessed the bank would probably end up knocking it down and building something bigger. That was probably the fate of most of the houses on the street.

  With the blind down and open only a crack, Willis wouldn’t be able to be seen in the second floor bedroom where he was camped out. He’d arrived at six AM with only a folding chair, a thermos of coffee, and a bag of donuts. He’d waited patiently since for his target to show. Half of the coffee had been drunk and three of the donuts eaten. He knew he should’ve brought healthier food, that the donuts would only make him sluggish and slow him down later, although that wouldn’t matter. Today was only for surveillance.

  If the assignment had been marked as a homicide, Willis would’ve been done already. From that distance, he would’ve had no problem putting a bullet through Schoefield’s skull. But Schoefield had been marked for an accidental death. Those were trickier, which meant that the assignment was going to take more time and require more surveillance. Suicides were even trickier. Natural causes were the easiest. With the drugs he had access to, Willis could usually get those assignments done within a day. He preferred them and not just because of the four-thousand-dollar bonus he would receive for jobs done in less than a week. With natural deaths, he could usually inject his targets while they slept and they’d never have to know they were being terminated. Even though his targets were enemies of the state, Willis preferred peaceful deaths. He derived no pleasure from the fear and pain he forced some of his targets to suffer.

  Schoefield hesitated for a moment to look around before he reached down to pick up the newspaper. The actions of a guilty conscience, Willis thought, his lips pressing into a grim smile. Once Schoefield had his paper, he moved back to his house and disappeared inside. Only then did Willis allow himself the luxury to move from his post so he could stretch out his legs and arms, all of which were stiff from his almost four hours of silent vigil.

  Dan Willis was forty-two. Six feet two inches, a hundred ninety pounds, he had a rangy build with long and muscular arms corded with thick veins; his powerful hands even more so. His face was long, rough-hewn; his eyes slate gray and heavily lidded, his nose thick and revealing several bumps and bends as a lifelong reminder from his amateur boxing days when he was a teenager. Willis’s hair was still mostly black, peppered only slightly with gray, and was kept short. While he had shaved earlier that morning, he was someone who would never look clean-shaven. Even at that early hour, he already had a pronounced five o’clock shadow. He wasn’t what anyone would consider handsome, but he never had any trouble with the ladies, at least before he took the job with The Factory. Since then, he hadn’t had much interest. The last time he’d been with a woman was thirteen months ago.

  After allowing himself the luxury of stretching for as much as sixty seconds, Willis returned to his chair to continue his surveillance.

  Chapter 2

  Dan Willis joined the U.S. Army after finishing high school and was assigned to Military Intelligence. While he didn’t kill anyone directly, he knew his actions contributed to dozens of Iraqi hostile deaths, if not more, during the first Gulf War. After three tours, he decided the army wasn’t for him, and when he left it was with the rank of Sergeant, although he probably would’ve made Staff Sergeant if he had signed up for another tour. He next tried college, and after two years decided that wasn’t for him either. Without too much difficulty, he found a job as a salesman for a liquor distributor in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, and discovered that he was good at it. He easily developed a good rapport with his customers who were buyers for liquor stores, bars, and restaurants, and he did well. The life appealed to him. He made decent money. He met interesting characters as well as plenty of attractive women to flirt with and some to have affairs with, and he made sure none of them ended badly. After fourteen years with his sales still going strong, his supervisor called him in to tell him he was out of a job. The powers that be decided that they were going to automate customer ordering through their website, and so they were going to let their sales force go.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Willis said. “My customers like me, and without me pushing our brands you’re going to see orders drop by at least a third, probably more than that.”

  His supervisor was Tony Manzoni. A thick bull of a man who ignored the smoking ban in the workplace and always kept a lit stogie between his lips. He grunted out in agreement.

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” Manzoni said. “But it ain’t my call.”

  Willis nodded, understanding that Manzoni’s hands were tied. “You got anything for me?” he asked. “Delivery, maybe something in the office?”

  Manzoni shook his head slowly, ash dropping off the tip of his cigar. “Nothing. I’m sorry, Willis. But I got to let all you guys go. Brass ain’t giving me any options here.”

  At first, Willis wasn’t concerned. With his rep, he was mostly convinced he’d get another job with a competing distributor, but it was late 2012 and with the national employment holding steady at ten percent for over four years, he found that wasn’t the case. Worse, it seemed to be a growing trend with many of these distributors to axe their sales force in favor of automating orders online. Willis spent his first month contacting distributors throughout the country without any luck. While he would’ve liked to have stayed in Akron where he had built up solid contacts, what really mattered to him was finding a job. In a way, he was lucky. He had never married, his expenses were low, and he had saved some money. After three months of striking out with other distributors and seeing his funds shrink, he realized he was going to have to get a job in another industry, but still held out hope that he’d be able to transfer his sales experience and line something up. With each successive mo
nth of unemployment he felt less sure of that. After eleven months of being out of work and piling up debts that he knew he’d never get out from under, he considered either suicide or robbing banks, and was torn over which one. That was when he got a call. The man calling identified himself as Colonel Jay T. Richardson, and asked whether Willis still considered himself a patriot.

  “I see you’re an ex-Army guy,” Richardson said with a heavy Southern drawl which Willis couldn’t quite place. Maybe South Carolina. Maybe West Virginia. “According to your records you served two years in the Gulf where you did a fine job defending your country. My question to you, Mr. Willis, is whether you’d still be willing to do the hard work necessary for your country’s sake?”

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “’Cause, Mr. Willis, our country needs men like you right now, and if you’re willing, we’d sure like to discuss the matter with you.”

  Richardson refused to talk more about what the job entailed, but Willis agreed to be flown down to Virginia and be interviewed. Richardson transferred the call to his secretary who then filled Willis in on the details. The interview process would be a five-day ordeal and Willis was not allowed to mention the interview to anyone, was not to bring a cell phone with him and, further, was not to bring any device that provided GPS tracking—that he’d be searched and if he violated these terms he’d be sent back home. Willis agreed, and the secretary booked him on a flight leaving the next morning.

  When Willis arrived at Norfolk International Airport in Virginia, he was met at the gate, then taken to a room where they searched him as they’d promised. After that, they put him in a van filled with other candidates and whose windows had been blacked out so they couldn’t be seen out of. The candidates had been warned not to talk to each other; that if they did they’d be disqualified. And so, for the three-and-a-half-hour van ride, they all sat quietly without a single word being spoken. When they arrived, they were taken for physicals and fitness tests. A few of the candidates washed out. After that, they were separated. Willis was taken for a psychological evaluation.

  With the questions they were asking, Willis figured out quickly that what they were really after was knowing how he’d react if he’d have to take a life or see people die, so he lied and gave them the answers that he knew they were after, which were basically making him look like a cold-blooded sociopath. He must’ve passed their psychological evaluation, because next came the lie detector test. Willis knew that for the most part they didn’t care about his answers and were after whether they could get a clear true-false reading from him. If the polygraph results were fuzzy, he’d be eliminated from further consideration. Of course, if he revealed something alarming to them he’d also be eliminated, but what they really wanted to know was whether they’d be able to plug him in at any time in the future and be guaranteed an accurate reading. Willis was able to relax enough to pass the test. Once the polygraph test finished, he was done with his second day of testing.

  Starting on day three was what Willis could only figure was an IQ test. For two days they threw problems and puzzles at him, and put him under severe time pressure to solve them, often with a lot of background noise and other distractions. It was tiring, but Willis held up during the testing, and must’ve passed because they didn’t send him home at the end of day four. It was on day five that he met with Colonel Jay T. Richardson. Up until that point, nobody had told him what the job was that he was interviewing for. He had his ideas, but they were only guesses.

  Richardson was in his sixties. Built like a fireplug, he had thick silver hair cut like a bristle brush and a red face that wrinkled like a beagle’s when he smiled or scowled. At first, he sat scowling at Willis, and kept that up for a good minute before signaling for Willis to take a seat. The two men were alone with Richardson seated behind his desk. Willis took the chair across from him.

  “Son, what I’m about to tell you is highly classified. You know that, don’t you?” Richardson said, still scowling deeply.

  Willis knew that and confirmed that he knew it. Before the process started, he had to sign disclaimers acknowledging he’d be under the threat of treason if he ever mentioned a word about the place or anything he had learned.

  Richardson nodded and leaned forward, his scowl weakening. “What I’m about to tell you will shock you,” he said with a sincere gravity. “Our country has been overrun by insurgents. These are everyday people like you and me who have been indoctrinated and are now hell-bent on destroying us. We’re at war, son, and like it or not we’re fighting for our very lives.”

  Richardson’s lips pressed tightly together, his red face turning a bit redder, his eyes glistening with anger. “The problem is that while we’ve been able to identify who they are and what their objective is, it would be a severe security breach if this were to leak to the public. Because of that, Congress created a new department, Homeland Protection, of which I’m a part of.”

  Willis had never heard of a Homeland Protection department, but he didn’t doubt that what Richardson was telling him was the truth.

  “We need foot soldiers, son,” Richardson continued. “This is maybe the most important war this country will ever fight, but it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to involve great personal sacrifice and you’d be doing assignments that you might find unpleasant. But they’re necessary. Are you interested, Willis?”

  “How’s the pay?”

  Richardson smiled at that. “The pay’s good,” he said. “Better than what you were making peddling liquor. And the job security will be even better.”

  Richardson explained more about Homeland Protection and the job he was offering Willis, which was to be one of over four thousand new foot soldiers against the new hidden menace, soldiers whose existence would never be able to be acknowledged by the government. The problem was that while they were able to identify the insurgents, they didn’t have enough evidence to round them up or prosecute them, so Congress gave Richardson and Homeland Protection extraordinary powers to deal with the insidious and imminent threat to the country’s survival. Before getting Richardson’s call, Willis had been a coin flip away from either blowing his own brains out or committing crimes that could’ve resulted in innocent lives being taken. He accepted the job with little hesitation. He needed a paycheck and any kind of steady work, and the signing bonus they were offering would get him out of debt. He decided he’d be able to reconcile the job requirements with knowing that he was protecting his country.

  Over the next three months, Willis went through extensive training with a squad of forty-seven other new hires. It was weird and very different than his army training. The rules were no communication among each other, so, while he was part of a squad, everything he did was in isolation with any sense of camaraderie banished. During those three months, Willis learned efficient ways to kill, stage fake suicides, and cover up murders so they’d appear to be accidental deaths. Firearms were his strength, as well as hand-to-hand fighting. Back when he was in the army, Willis could’ve been a sniper, he was that good with a rifle.

  Upon completion of his training, Willis was assigned to the Boston area. His only contact was going to be his immediate handler, a man whom he would know as Barry, and who he would only have a phone number for. Barry would monitor Willis’s performance and would provide support as necessary, such as intel and access to weapons and drugs. The Factory, the name of his division of Homeland Protection—which he surmised was short for The Death Factory—had some sway with the local authorities. While Barry couldn’t have a murder covered up, he could sometimes arrange for a lower police presence in a certain area and other such things, which could make Willis’s job easier if he planned ahead properly.

  During the time that Willis had been actively working for The Factory, he had eliminated twenty-three targets. Brian Schoefield was to be number twenty-four.

  Chapter 3

  Schoefield left his house an hour and ten minutes later. He had that same cautio
us look as he made his way to his car, again seeming as if he knew he was being watched. Willis didn’t believe that was the case, but even if Schoefield knew he was under surveillance, Willis didn’t much care. After Schoefield drove off, Willis used the opportunity to relieve himself and then slipped out the back entrance so he could walk to where he had left his car three blocks away. He wasn’t in any hurry. Since he had planted a tracking device on the undercarriage of Schoefield’s car, he’d have no problem finding where Schoefield was heading to.

  It turned out Schoefield drove to a nearby coffee shop downtown. Willis was able to spot Schoefield through the window as he sat alone engrossed in his newspaper, a large coffee on the table next to him. Willis could’ve set up surveillance to see whether Schoefield was meeting anyone, but he guessed it wasn’t the case, and instead drove back to Schoefield’s house.

  He already knew from Barry that Schoefield didn’t have an alarm system. If he did have one, the odds were Barry would’ve been able to get Willis the security code to disable it. The locks on the house were decent, but it still didn’t take Willis much effort to break in using his burglar picks.

  Willis was surprised at how clean and well kept up the inside of the house was, especially given the disrepair of the exterior. The house was a small two-bedroom ranch, but it had a pleasant feel inside, and while it seemed decorated by a woman’s touch, Willis saw no clear evidence that Schoefield had ever been married; at least there were no photos of children on display, or alimony or child support bills.

  Willis started in the kitchen as he searched through any mail or papers he could find, then moved to the living room, and finally Schoefield’s two bedrooms, the second of which had been set up as an office. What Willis was doing represented a breach of protocol since he wasn’t there to figure out a way to kill his target, but instead to satisfy his own curiosity. It was just hard to believe that the sad sack he’d been observing was an insurgent, but then again he felt that way with almost all his targets. As Richardson told him, these were people who looked and acted like anyone, and in many cases, natural born citizens who had been indoctrinated into the insurgency. Still, the assignments had been nagging at Willis, and with Schoefield he wanted to see the evidence himself. After going through Schoefield’s file cabinets, he still hadn’t found anything unusual. What did stand out was that Schoefield had his computer password protected. Why would anyone password protect their computer inside their own home? Willis considered making it look like a home burglary so he could take the computer and have someone crack into it and find the evidence that Schoefield was a traitor, but he couldn’t think of how he could explain the need to steal Schoefield’s computer to Barry. It probably would only put him in deep trouble with The Factory. A beep alerted Willis that Schoefield’s car was on the move. He’d been in Schoefield’s house for almost two hours with nothing gained. He cleaned up any evidence that he’d been there and left through the back door. After that, he made his way back to his surveillance post. The GPS tracking unit indicated that Schoefield was heading back home. If he ended up going someplace else instead Willis would track him down.