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Special Author’s Note:  Chapters 9 and 10 of The Hitman have been a long time in coming.  I hit an unfortunate dry spell in my writing and my muse ditched me for warmer climate.  Rumor has it she was vacationing in Hawaii.  LOL!

However, she has finally returned!  Still, I continued to hit a brick wall when trying to tackle Chapter 9.  For some reason, the words just wouldn’t come.  BUT… thanks to my wonderful beta, Tori, we finally managed to get this done.

And so, because of her help and encouragement and the fact that she helped write a large portion of this chapter, I am happily naming V.N. Levitski as co-author of chapter 9. :-)

Thanks, my friend for going above and beyond the call of a beta!  You rock!

Chapter 9

Rachel entered the police precinct, feeling incredibly self-conscious as she approached the front desk.  The desk sergeant sitting behind the desk reminded her of how every police show on television tended to portray such officers: elderly, graying hair, harsh features, heavyset, crabby disposition, suspicious of everyone. 

That thought made her nervous.

What if they saw right through her?

What if she wasn’t able to convince them that she knew nothing of Gabriel?

God, how she was dreading this!

Taking a deep breath to settle her nerves, she stopped before the desk.  “Excuse me,” she called softly to the officer.

He was reading over what looked like a report of some kind.  At the sound of her voice, he looked up.  “What can I do for you, little lady?” he asked, his voice gravely from forty years of chain-smoking.  He eyed her for a moment as if sizing up her claim before she even made it.

“I need to,” she began and swallowed convulsively.  “I, uh, I need to report a threat against my life.”

One gray bushy eyebrow rose slightly as if in disbelief.  He picked up a pen and pulled out a blank complaint form.  “What's your name?”

“Rachel Stone.”

He took down her address and phone number, then asked, “Who threatened your life?”

Rachel clasped her hands in front of her to keep them from shaking.  “My husband,” she answered softly.

The sergeant looked up at her again, a hint of sympathy showing in his dark eyes.  “Does he hit you, Mrs. Stone?  You can have him arrested for battery.”

Rachel shook her head.  “I know that Sergeant, but I'm here because I found out he hired a hitman to kill me.  I have proof here.” She dug in her purse and pulled out the cassette.

The sergeant stared at the cassette tape in her hand, his eyes widening when he finally realized who she was.  “Mrs. Stone, did you recently mail a copy of that cassette tape to us?”

Rachel nodded.  “Yes, Sergeant, I mailed it a few days ago.”

The sergeant picked up his phone and began punching in a number.  “We’ve been looking for you, Mrs. Stone.  Have a seat and I’ll have the detective assigned to your case come out.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” she answered and turned to go sit down.

~*~

Detective Harry Stanford appeared in the corridor less than a minute later.  He was in his late 30’s, of average height and though a little on the heavy side, he was in good shape.

His hair was a basic brown, cut short in an easy style that said he had better things to do with his time than mess with his hair.  His eyes were hazel with flecks of green, brown and gold all mixed together.  He had a good easygoing disposition, was known as being patient and very thorough and combined with his boy-next-door good looks and smooth voice, it made people comfortable around him and more times than not, he was able to get them to talk when normally they wouldn’t.  He was also very smart and had the uncanny ability to see right through people and more times than not, his hunches – his gut feelings – were more on the nose than most people cared to admit.

“Mrs. Stone?”

Rachael looked up and met the detective’s direct gaze.  “Yes?”

“I'm Detective Harry Stanford, ma’am,” he introduced himself as he stepped forward, offering his hand.

Rachael stood up, unconsciously wiping her palms against her thighs, then slipped her hand into his.

~*~

Rachel spent the afternoon at the police precinct.  She dreaded being there and hated lying, but knew that if Gabriel was ever going to be free to live a better life, then this was a necessary step.

She had brought another copy of the cassette tape in case they never received the one she had sent.  But they had it and they had been looking for her.

Detective Stanford showed Rachel into a small interrogation room.  “Forgive me for bringing you in here, Mrs. Stone, but it will allow us some privacy while we discuss your situation.”

“I understand, Detective,” she answered as she looked around the impersonal room.  In the way of furnishings, there was a table and several chairs and not much else.  The walls were a cold looking gray color and one wall had a rather over-sized mirror that she assumed was one of those mirrors where you couldn’t see 'them', but 'they' could see you.  The thought made her shiver.

Misunderstanding her body language and thinking her cold, Stanford offered her some coffee.  Rachel smiled and nodded as she sat in the chair he indicated.

“Yes, thank you,” she answered.

Truthfully, she wasn’t sure if she could stomach the caffeine with her stomach twisted in knots like it was, but she needed something to occupy her shaking hands.

“Cream or sugar?” he asked as he turned to go.

“Just a bit of cream,” she answered, her hands gripping her purse tightly in her lap.

Nodding, he excused himself for a moment and left the room.  A few minute’s later he returned with two cups of coffee and after handing Rachel hers, he settled down in a chair at the table.

“I'm glad you came in, Mrs. Stone,” he began as he opened a file in front of him.  It was a thick file indicating the police had been collecting a lot of data on whoever it was about.  “We've been trying to contact you for the past few days.  That tape you sent us is pretty damning evidence."

She nodded silently, words unable to pass the lump in her throat. As tough as this was, she wanted to do what she could to free Gabriel from his past.  But what was striking her now was the realization that her marriage, while it had been less than perfect for a while, would truly be coming to an end.  And while it wasn't her fault, she still felt the sting of failure, not to mention that the father of her child had deemed his own wife so disposable.

She was momentarily lost in all the emotions of the last few months and tried to physically shake her head clear of all the unpleasantness

She forced herself to take a sip of coffee and felt the hot liquid warm her insides.  “What will be done about my husband, Detective?  Will he be arrested?”

“Yes,” he answered, his hazel eyes lifting to meet her gaze.  “Based on the evidence in this tape, we have already issued a warrant for his arrest.  What I need from you now is a statement covering everything that has happened, beginning with when you received the tape.”

She nodded numbly at his words.  To think, all that had happened to her recently would get put into a file like some old tax papers.  Even though she could never love Martin again and she found herself falling fast for Gabriel… it hurt to think it all basically came down to paperwork.

Detective Stanford gazed at Rachel as he asked pointedly, "Do you have any idea why your husband would want to have you murdered?”

“No,” Rachel answered hoarsely. Taking another sip of the hot liquid, she hoped it would ease the tension in her throat as she attempted to speak again.  “Only what I told you before.  Our marriage has become a shadow of what it once was.  He spends all his time in Atlanta and rarely comes home.  I suspected he was having an affair with his secretary.  I had no proof of it, but I sensed a change in him, a sort of indifference that maybe only a wife can sense.  I wasn’t aware that he wanted me dead until I found the tape in my mailbox a few days ago.”

Detective Stanford nodded.  “Before we go any further, Mrs. Stone, I would like your permission to record this interview.” He indicated towards the recorder.  “It is simply for accuracy and for your own protection.” 

“All right,” Rachel answered with a nod of her head and watched as Detective Stanford placed a blank cassette tape into the recorder in the middle of the table and pushed the record button.

“This is Detective Harry Stanford of the Third Precinct of the Norwich Police Department.  Today is Tuesday, September 3, 1999.  I am interviewing Mrs. Rachel Stone of Norwich, Connecticut.”

Turning his attention to Rachel, he nodded his head.  “Mrs. Stone, would you please tell me in your own words how you received the tape that implicates your husband in hiring a known assassin and the proceeding events that took place up until now?”

Rachel began slowly at first, telling the story that she and Gabriel had fabricated in order to hide the fact that it had been he that had given her the tape.  Of how she had found the tape in her mailbox – no note, no envelope – just the audiocassette tape.  She went over how she had listened to the tape – no lie there – and how she had sat numb for a long time, unable to grasp what was happening to her.  She explained how she knew that her marriage was over – that she had even asked for a divorce – but that Martin would hear nothing of it.  He had threatened her, yes, telling her that if she ever tried to leave him, he would kill her, but it wasn’t until she listened to the tape that she realized he had been serious.  She then went over how she then decided to confront her husband, first making copies of the tape and mailing one to the police.  That she had her mom in North Carolina come get her daughter so she would be safe.  She left out the part about seeing Gabriel at the airport, but covered everything that had happened when she arrived at Martin’s office.  His anger, his threats.  How she went back home only to discover Martin had gotten there first and had physically attacked her, intending to rape her before killing her.  Then finally, how she managed to escape.

“He shot at you when you ran from the house?” Stanford asked when she was finished.

“Yes.”  She nodded, licking her dry lips.

“So, he's armed.”  It was more a statement than a question, but Rachel nodded regardless to confirm it.

“What about the stranger that picked you up?”

Rachel blinked, startled by the question.  “What?” she asked nervously.

“The stranger that picked you up when you escaped your husband,” Stanford repeated.  He shifted a few papers until he found what he was looking for and elaborated.  “We have here that several neighbors who were awaken by gunshots reported that they saw a tall, dark headed man in a pick-up truck stop and pick you up.”

“Oh, yes of course,” Rachel answered automatically, picking up her cup of coffee and taking a sip.  Her hands shook greatly as she placed the cup back on the table.

“Who was this person?  Did you know him?”  Stanford looked back down at the report and continued before she could answer.  “It states here that one of your neighbors, Mrs. Whittendale, saw this same truck in the neighborhood the week before.  It had been parked out in front of your home and it says here that she saw you talking with a tall man with long dark hair.”

Rachel paled and swallowed past the lump that had jumped up in her throat.  Her hands once more clutched at her purse in her lap as she forced herself to meet Detective Stanford’s gaze.  “Yes, now that you mention it, it might have been the same man.”

“You mean you don’t remember?” he asked skeptically, his eyes narrowing in on her.

Rachel took a deep breath and shook her head.  “The man who was outside my house a week ago was just a stranger.  I didn’t know him.  I saw him out there and I went out there to see what he was doing.  His truck had broken down, and he was attempting to get it running again.  It had been hot that day, so I offered him some iced tea and the use of my husband's tools.  He accepted the tea, but didn’t need the tools.”

She paused as she actively left out the part that Gabriel had come into the house and his attempt to scare her for letting him in.  “I left to go get my daughter at school and by the time I got back, he was gone.”

“I see.  And you don’t remember if the man that helped you last night was the same man that had broken down in front of your house last week?”

Rachel sighed and rubbed at her tired eyes.  “You have to understand, Detective, that I was very upset last night.  My husband had just tried to rape me and was planning on killing me.  I just wasn’t focused on what this man looked like.  It very well could've been the same man, but I couldn’t verify that with any certainty.”

Detective Stanford studied the woman before him for a several long moments, his hands folded together on the table before him.  “Do you have any idea how incredibly stupid it was for you to get into that man’s vehicle, Mrs. Stone?”

Rachel blinked in surprise, her hands dropping down into her lap as her gaze met the detectives.  “I beg your pardon?”

“Forgive me, ma’am, I mean no offense, but think for a moment.  Your husband hired a professional assassin to kill you.  A stranger shows up in your neighborhood and his vehicle just happens to break down in front of your house, then a week or so later, he just happens to be driving by your house again as your husband is chasing you with a gun.” 

He stared hard at her, carefully watching her reaction.  “Didn’t it ever occur to you that this stranger could have been the assassin?”

God, he doesn't know how much on the right track he is!

Rachel felt the color drain out of her face.  She wasn’t going to be able to pull this off.  She could see it in his eyes… he suspected that she knew more than she was telling.  She swallowed, wincing slightly at the dryness in her throat.

“I…” she paused to try and swallow past the parched tissue once more.  “No,” she replied as she shook her head and dropped her eyes hoping to convey embarrassment, “it never occurred to me.”

She twisted her fingers, her eyes riveted to their movement.  “At the time he first showed up in the neighborhood, I wasn’t aware that my husband was trying to have me killed, so I suspected nothing.  Last night…” she lifted her gaze to meet Stanford’s, “…last night, I was running for my life, Detective.  It just didn’t occur to me.  I wasn’t thinking 'this is an assassin' I was just thinking, ‘get me the hell out of here’.”

Stanford nodded slowly, turning her words over in his mind, trying to find any holes in her story.  “Why didn’t you come straight here last night, Mrs. Stone?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice barely above a whisper.  She was certain that he could hear her heart pounding loudly against her ribs.  “I know it makes no sense.  I know I should've come straight here, but I just wasn’t thinking clearly.  I was panicked – afraid – and all I wanted to do was to curl up somewhere alone and pretend it wasn’t happening.”

Detective Stanford sighed and sat back in his chair.  “Then why didn’t he bring you straight here?”

Rachel felt numb as she shook her head her mind racing to come up with an idea… any idea that could explain all of this away.  “I-I don’t know.”  Then suddenly the proverbial light bulb went off in her head as an idea came to her.  “I asked him to take me to my friends' house.  Buck and Kim Raines.  They're out of the country right now – touring Europe – and I’ve been house sitting.  I needed to get my head together.  I was so scared and the only thing I could think of was to get away and hide, so I had him take me over to their house.  Martin wasn’t aware that I was house sitting for Buck and Kim, so he would have never thought to come looking for me there.”

Detective Stanford made a few notes on the note pad before him.  “And this man who helped you – he didn’t offer to take you to the police or at the very least call them?”

“No, he offered to bring me here,” Rachel lied.  “But I convinced him to take me to my friends first.  I told him I would call the police from there.”

“And he didn’t leave his name or a number where we could reach him?”

“No,” Rachel shook her head.

“I find that odd, Mrs. Stone.  He's a witness to attempted murder.  He should have known that we would want to speak with him.”

“Perhaps he just didn’t want to become further involved, Detective.  I really don’t know.”

“Do you know what this file is, Mrs. Stone?”  He indicated with a finger to the thick file that lay open on the table.  Rachel shook her head, her eyes following the movement of his hands as he shifted through some papers.  “This file is on The Hawk.  Everything that we can link to him – information that we have collected over the past fifteen years – is in this file.”

Rachel’s eyes widened in shock.  It was a thick file.  A very thick file.  “Do you know how many hits we can connect to him, Mrs. Stone?”

“No,” she whispered as a sick feeling suddenly started to come over her.

“Fifty-three,” he answered, his voice suddenly cold and unfeeling.  “And that is only what we can verify.  There is no telling how many others we don’t know about.”

Rachel felt as if she would throw up.  Gabriel, no! Her heart cried out.  She didn’t want to believe that he was capable of killing all those people.  Why?  She squeezed her eyes shut to try and block the pain around her heart, but it didn’t help.

“That's fifty-three men, Mrs. Stone.  Some of those men were husbands, they had families.  Most of them didn’t do a damn thing to deserve what they got except they had the misfortune of knowing the person who hired The Hawk to take them out.”

“Why are you telling me all this, Detective Stanford?” she pleaded, wishing he would stop.  She didn’t want to hear any of this.

“Because instinct tells me that you're hiding something, Mrs. Stone,” he told her, his hazel eyes meeting hers with a hard look.  “Instinct tells me that you know more about this man who helped you last night than what you're telling me and for some reason you are protecting his identity.”

He tapped the file with his index finger.  “Up until now, The Hawk has never taken a hit on a woman.  Of the little facts we know about him, we know that it is a strict rule with him.  So we are more than curious as to why he suddenly accepted one now.

“I think,” he paused to fold his hands before him, “that The Hawk is getting ready to retire.  I think that he accepted this hit because your husband was willing to pay an enormous amount of money.  Enough money that The Hawk could just disappear and live out the rest of his life in comfortable style.”

Rachel shook her head.  “I still don’t understand what-”

“I think,” he continued, interrupting her, “that after accepting this hit, that for whatever reasons, The Hawk changed his mind.”  He pointed to the audiocassette tape that she had brought with her.  “I think that the reason you have that tape is because he gave it to you.”

Rachel felt her cheeks flush as her heart leapt up into her throat.  “What are you suggesting, Detective Stanford?”

“I’m suggesting that if you have any information whatsoever on The Hawk, that you should give it to me.  This man is dangerous, Mrs. Stone.  He is a cold-blooded killer and if you're protecting him, then you could be arrested for obstruction of justice.”

She could feel the blood draining from her face.  How could this man deduce all of that from just an interview?  She wondered if he realized just how close to the truth most of his deductions already were.

“Protecting him?” she gasped softly.  “Why in God’s name would I want to protect a man that was hired to murder me?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Stone, I was hoping you could tell me that.”

Then suddenly, she was mad.  Her face flushed as blood rushed back into her cheeks.  She leaned forward, her eyes snapping in anger.  “You listen to me, Detective Stanford.  I realize that you have a job to do and I understand that this Hawk person is an evil man and needs to be caught.  But don’t you dare try to turn this on me and make me into the criminal.”

She took a deep breath, her anger pushing her on, “I came here because my husband not only paid to try and have me killed, but also tried to do it himself.  I've brought you proof of the first part.  I'd think that along with my statement and those of the neighbors who also heard the gun shots along with seeing my husband charging out of the house chasing me with a gun in his hand would be proof enough of the second part.

“I will be forever indebted to the man who stopped to help me.  And I don’t give a rat's ass if he was Jack The Ripper, but I am NOT protecting him.  If he hasn't stepped forward, then I’m sure he has his reasons, but I personally don’t care.  You have your evidence, detective and the statements from the neighbors, I do not believe that he would have anything more to add that would help this case.”

Detective Stanford stared at Rachel for a long moment then finally nodded as if he’d finally come to some conclusion.  “All right, Mrs. Stone,” he began, his tone softened.  “My gut still says that something isn’t right, but I have no proof to say otherwise.”  He closed the thick file before him and straightened some papers that lay loose on top of it.

“I have your statement and a warrant has already been issued for Martin Stone’s arrest.  We have notified the Atlanta police department in case he tries to go back there.  We will find him.”

“Am I free to go?” she asked, afraid that they might want to keep her under guard.

“Yes," he said as he stopped the recorder, "but I want to know where you will be, so that we can protect you in case Mr. Stone tries to come after you again.”

“I'll probably go back to my friends' house, but like I said, Martin doesn’t know they're away, so he won’t think to look for me there.  I should be fairly safe, I think.”

“Possibly, but either way, I want you to leave me their address and phone number.  At the very least I can increase patrols in that neighborhood and we can contact you if we have any further questions or when we pick up your husband.”  He slid a pad of paper across the table to her.

Rachel tried to keep her hand steady as she wrote out Buck and Kim’s address down.  “I’m going to leave you with my cell phone number.  My friends' always arrange an answering service to collect their calls, so calling the house would be pointless.”

“That's fine, Mrs. Stone.  Just so that there's a way for me to contact you.”

Rachel nodded and finished writing out her cell phone number then pushed the pad and pen back across to the detective.  She gathered her purse and stood.  Stanford rose up with her and reached out his hand to shake hers.

“Please forgive my behavior with you, Mrs. Stone, but you must appreciate the importance of catching The Hawk.  If he is indeed looking to retire, then we must do everything in our power to catch him now before he drops from sight completely.”

“I understand,” she answered and slipped her hand into his.

He released it then walked her to the door.  “I’ll show you out.”  They stepped out into the hall and he led her to the front of the station.  “Oh, and one more thing, Mrs. Stone.”

“Yes?” she turned back to look at him.

“Since The Hawk is involved, the Feds will probably be called in and they'll want to interview you again.  If you can remember anything else about that Good Samaritan that helped you or anything more about how you got that tape, write it down, or call me.”  He handed her his card.  “Day or night.  My home number's on the back.”

Rachel nodded and took the card, trying hard not to show how upset she was that the FBI could become involved with this.  “Thank you, Detective.  I’ll do that.”

Slowly, she turned and left the police station, suddenly more terrified than when she had come in.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Hitman – Chapter 10