Free John: The Senior Killer by Robert Waggoner Page A

smokes to satisfy his habit. She didn’t see him so
strange once she got by his dress and habits. Kind of typical of a
computer nerd, she thought while she fought the spicy taste and
rank smell of kimchee.
    Brad broke the silence by
saying that we should all retire for the night and get together at
six in the morning. Wendy thought that a good idea and thanked them
for a lovely dinner and went to her room. Looking at the wall clock
it said close to one am. After the bathroom and putting on her
nightdress, she peeked out the curtains and saw Brad sitting on a
small sofa reading some papers. Doesn’t ever sleep she wondered.
And his dog is always next to him as her eyes closed and the next
thing she realized it was six am. She never slept so well and she
remembered there wasn’t a sound after she went to bed: total
silence. A little scary, but when she dressed in casual clothes
climbing the stairs and looking out the tinted windows as daylight
was just breaking, she relaxed when Steve came up alongside her and
said, “Sleep well?”
    “Never better and why would
anyone live in DC when you could live here,” she answered with an
obvious rhetorical question.
    “Wendy, it wasn’t by chance
you were chosen for this job. Brad asked for you special. He thinks
you can be a real help with this difficult case we are
on.”
    Wendy was shocked and still
looking out the window which now had streams of water from a
soundless rain running down the window said, “How did he know or
how does he know me?”
    “Honestly speaking he was
given a list of profilers and liked what he read about you I
guess.”
    At that moment Brad came
through the door with one of his dogs. Both stopped on the entry
way and Brad stripped down to his running shorts. He toweled off
his dog and walked to the stairs.
    Wendy had a first look at
his body. When he walked it seemed he floated on air. Legs were
well muscled, but not overly so. It was the same with his arms and
shoulders, powerful but not bulging. His body seemed hairless, but
that was not unusual for blondes. Some of her friends would say he
had a wedge of a body. Wendy felt an electric current run through
her body and especially the sensitive areas. Her thoughts were
interrupted by Sujin coming through the door. She too stripped down
to shorts and a wet T-shirt, following her husband down the
stairs.
    Wendy said to Steve with a
look of curiosity, “Don’t they ever sleep?”
    Steve with a small grin
said, “Not much. I would guess a couple hours a night is all.
Something to do with Eastern religion, but as I’m a complete
neophyte about that discipline, your guess is as good as mine. I
will say that I’ve never seen him or her tired. And believe me,
I’ve had occasion to witness when he had operated in the field for
four days straight without any sleep or rest.”
    Wendy looked back at the
view now that daylight gave her an outline of the coming day. She
saw what appeared as sand dunes running to south and the Pacific
Ocean is beating the beach with large waves of the storm in
progress. No way did she want to be out there in this weather. She
was a city girl and didn’t like the rain. The smell of breakfast
cooking with Earie working mostly soundless in the kitchen drew her
away from the view. She was starving and wanted a cup of coffee in
the worst way. Earie must have sensed the need for both Steve and
Wendy as she placed two mugs of steaming coffee on the old wood
table by the window. Steve took her by the arm and both sat at the
table sipping fresh coffee.
    Billy came up looking like
he just crawled out of bed, but then he always looked that way. He
almost ran into the door while fumbling for his smokes. Rocky was
hot on his heels and wanted to play. The door faced east so the
weather was hardly noticed when the door opened or closed. Sujin
had turned off the security at the door, but the outside was always
on. Brad had informed Wendy about the ground security and to not go
outside