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Gould looked back on it now and saw it all very clearly. Getting pregnant was her way out, and it was her hold on him. He had little doubt she had stopped taking the Pill. She wanted an excuse to walk away, and better yet, one that would make him walk away with her. Gould shared none of her guilt over what they had done, but he understood it. This one last job was all he wanted. Seven more hours tops was all he needed. Rapp was being handed to him on a silver platter. He’d be disoriented from surgery, his instincts and skills greatly diminished. He could never again hope to have such a chance. Six million dollars if he did it right. A total of eleven million dollars to kill one man. He must have really pissed someone off to get a price tag like that on his head. Gould smiled at the prospect of so much money. They would have true independence. Live wherever they wanted and do so lavishly. A few more hours, he told himself. Keep it together and stay focused.
When he reached the road that Rapp lived on, he put on his Oakley sunglasses and slowed down like he was looking for an address. From the county road turnoff it was 2.4 miles to Rapp’s house. Gould passed an older couple walking their dogs, but that was it. He hoped it stayed this quiet all morning. He continued past Rapp’s house to where the road dead-ended and then turned around and came back. Everything looked good. Rapp’s car wasn’t in the driveway so Gould assumed it was in the one-car garage.
He backed the pickup down the long driveway and came to a stop ten feet short of the garage. Gould hopped out and was putting on a pair of work gloves when a dog came bounding around the corner. For a split second he froze. The dog let out a bark, but it was not the kind of bark Gould was so familiar with, the type a dog gives right before it lunges for your throat. This was more playful. Gould took off one of his work gloves and squatted down. He held his hand out, palm up, and the dog approached tentatively. Once it got a good sniff of him the animal relaxed and Gould scratched its neck.
“Not much of a guard dog, are you?”
The dog, a collie mix of some sort, just wagged its tail and looked at Gould with its big brown eyes. Gould glanced around and wondered if the dog belonged to one of the neighbors. He couldn’t imagine anything this docile was owned by Rapp. There was at least two hundred feet between houses on either side and there was a stand of trees and shrubs that delineated the property line. While the leaves had started to change color, none had yet fallen. Gould checked the dog’s neck for a collar. It wasn’t wearing one. The important thing is to keep acting normal, he told himself. If a neighbor came up he was here to do an estimate for new gutters.
Gould stood and unlocked the extension ladder. He lifted it out of the bed and carried it around to the side of the house where he set it on the ground. Six paces from the garage sto
od a big silver metallic propane tank. It was partially concealed on three sides by pyramidal arborvitae. Gould walked over and read the gauge. It was just over two thirds full. He nodded to himself and got to work. After standing the ladder up against the side of the house he went back to the truck and grabbed the roll of plastic, the knife, and tape. As he climbed onto the roof, the dog sat at the base of the ladder and watched him. Fortunately the fireplace and the two vents were all situated on the water side of the gable. Anyone driving down the road wouldn’t see him on the roof except when he was working on the chimney. That’s where Gould started. He tore off four long strips of duct tape and stuck them to the waist of his jeans. Next he cut out a large section of plastic and laid it over the top of the chimney. After all four sides were secured, he ran a strip of tape around the entire thing to make sure it was sealed. The vents took only a minute or two apiece.
Once off the roof he walked around to the back of the house. He stopped on the back deck for a moment and looked out at the bay. There were a couple of smaller boats not far from shore. He thought they were probably fishermen. Gould leaned over the railing. It was almost a straight drop down to the water. There were two boats tied up: a ski boat and a fishing boat with a deep v-hull. He walked up to the glass French doors and looked inside at the kitchen area. Going inside was a nonstarter. A guy like Rapp would have the place wired with every type of security device known.
Gould completed the circle of the house and ended up where he started. The air-conditioning unit was located between the propane tank and the house. Right next to where the cooling hose entered the house was the fresh air vent for the heating and cooling system. It was a six-by-six-inch galvanized cover that angled out from the house so that there was a three-by-six-inch opening at the bottom. Gould got down on one knee and with a needle-nose pliers removed the screen from the inside of the vent. He went back to the truck and got the extension cord and the remote receiving unit he’d picked up at Radio Shack. He plugged the remote receiving unit into an outdoor outlet, checked to make sure it was in the off position, and then walked to the end of the driveway. The dog followed him. He pointed the handheld remote at the garage, pressed the button once, and walked back. Gould was satisfied to see the remote receiving unit was now in the on position. He flipped it back to the off position and grabbed the extension cord.
The French Foreign Legion had taught him a lot of things, and one of them was how to make improvised explosive devices. Gould cut off the female end of the extension cord and stripped away the insulation. He twisted the two exposed wires together and then fed the cord into the fresh air vent on the side of the house. He figured eight feet was enough and plugged the male end into the remote receiving unit. Now things got a little tricky. Gould uncoiled the two high-pressure hoses, fed them into the vent with the extension cord, and then taped off the opening with plastic. There was only one thing left to do. He took the two forty-pound propane tanks from the truck, hooked them up to the high-pressure hoses, and opened the valves.
The dog came up and dropped a dirty tennis ball at his feet. Gould picked it up and threw it toward the road. The dog came roaring back and Gould gave the ball another good chuck. He checked his watch. It was ten after eight. He figured it would take about five more minutes to empty the tanks. Between throws of the tennis ball, he grabbed all but two of the gas cans and carried them over to the side of the house. Gould dropped down to one knee and listened to see if the propane was drained from the tanks. The hissing noise was gone, so he closed the valves and carefully extracted the high-pressure hoses from the side of the house. Gould quickly sealed the plastic with more duct tape, and then lined up the rectangular gas cans between the house and the large propane tank.
With a rubber-handled crescent wrench, he crawled under the big metallic tank and began to slowly loosen the gas line that ran from the bottom of the tank, underground, and into the house. With every half turn he’d stop and listen. He didn’t want the connection too loose or the neighbors might smell it and call in a gas leak, or possibly Rapp and his wife. He wiggled the line a bit and gave it one more quarter turn. A soft hissing noise came from the connection and Gould caught a slight whiff of liquid propane. He remained there for a few minutes to see if it remained constant. It did, so he crawled out from under the tank and unscrewed the caps on each of the gas cans.
If all went according to plan, the gas cans would be knocked over by the initial explosion. The cascading fuel would reach the underside of the large tank almost immediately. The fireball from the house would ignite the gas which in turn would mix with the slow leak from the large tank. The secondary explosion would obliterate the extension cord, the remote receiving unit, the gas cans, and probably the entire house. With no evidence left, all fingers would be pointed at the Chesapeake Bay Propane Company.
38
R app came out of his drug-induced sleep feeling groggy and disoriented. After a moment he realized he was in a hospital room. He looked down the length of his body at his knee. His leg was there, but he couldn’t feel anything. It was propped up in the air and covered with a blanket. Her touch was so gentle he didn’t even notice at first that she was holding his hand. He slowly turned his head and looked into his wife’s beautiful green eyes. Rapp blinked several times and looked around the room. The shades were drawn. He had no idea how long he’d been out. When he looked back at Anna, she smiled her perfect smile and asked him how he felt.
“Thirsty,” he answered in a hoarse voice.
She raised the bed up a few degrees and gave him some water through a straw. “The doctor says you did great.”
Rapp looked around the room again. “What time is it?”
“A little before eleven.”
“In the morning?”
“Yes.”
Rapp rubbed his eyes. “When can we get the hell out of here?”
She smiled. “I told them you wouldn’t want to wait around.”
“Can you open the shades?”
Rielly got up and pulled back the heavy gray plastic curtains.
Rapp squinted. He had the twisted look on his face that belongs to an extremely hungover man who is forced to endure the bright midday light without sunglasses. Anna knew there was no way they could keep him in bed for two more hours so she left to find his doctor. They came back a few minutes later and the doctor pulled back the sheet covering Rapp’s legs. He carefully unwound the Ace bandage and removed the ice pack. Rapp looked at his knee. It was yellow from the betadine they’d used to sanitize it for surgery. Rapp was surprised that it wasn’t more swollen and said so. The doctor explained that the surgery had gone very well. He’d cleaned out the cartilage and removed two bone spurs that were the likely cause of most of the discomfort.
“Can you feel anything, yet?” the doctor asked.
Rapp wondered which answer would get him home quicker. “A little bit.”
“Does it hurt?”
Rapp shrugged.
