Free Forty Acres: A Thriller by Dwayne Alexander Smith Page A

closet inside Martin’s study served as a kind of in-home records room. Stacks of cardboard boxes filled the rear of the four-by-four space. The boxes were each labeled with a year, the oldest being 1989, and every single one was jam-packed with old bills, bank statements, and receipts. Just inside the door of the closet stood two tall metal filing cabinets. These cabinets were of much more interest to the Handyman because they contained the Greys’ most recent documents. Martin’s filing system was excellent, making the Handyman’s job simplicity itself. In under an hour the entire contents of both filing cabinets were digitally duplicated and stored on a tiny flash drive in the Handyman’s hip pocket.
    Cloning the computers found in his victim’s homes was usually the most unpredictable and time-consuming part of the Handyman’s work. Besides the desktops and laptops that were used by the victims every day, many homes contained several older computers as well. These were obsolete machines stubbornly hoarded because the owners refused to discard an item that cost them a small fortune just a few years ago. To do a thorough job, the Handyman liked to clone every computer in a victim’s house. Older computers were usually slower or had faulty hard drives that required the installation of special software to coax their data free. Sometimes these computers also had passwords that had to be cracked, requiring even more precious time.
    The Handyman encountered none of these technological obstacles inside Martin Grey’s home. The Handyman found only three computers—a Dell desktop located in Martin’s study and two MacBook Pro notebooks in their bedroom. The MacBook decorated with an Apple rainbow sticker belonged to Anna, and the other belonged to Martin. Neither machine was password protected and they each took mere minutes to clone. Martin’s desktop was a different story. The Dell XPS did require a password to gain access, but with the use of a sniffer program that the Handyman wrote himself, he was able to decrypt Martin’s code in no time: LAWMAN. The Handyman almost laughed when Martin’s password flashed on the screen. His victims’ lack of imagination never ceased to amuse him.
    What brought the Handyman the most relief about the evening’s work was that neither Martin nor his wife had returned to the house—leaving him to complete his work in peace. Only twice had the Handyman been forced to kill his victims in order to make a clean escape. He didn’t like killing, but like everything else that he set his mind to, he was good at it. No, the Handyman liked it best when he was able to complete his work quickly and quietly, then vanish into the night as if he had never been there at all.
    The Handyman checked the hard drive’s progression bar again: 85 percent complete. Only five more minutes to go. Maybe he’d get back to his hotel room in time to catch his favorite television program, Crime 360 . It was one of what seemed like a million cable shows that focused on police forensic techniques. What made Crime 360 stand out was its amazing level of detail. The very latest methods in crime scene analysis were exposed for the viewing public’s entertainment every Saturday night at nine p.m. The Handyman often wondered if the producers of these shows ever worried that they were teaching crooks and murderers how to evade detection and prosecution. The Handyman, of course, was already well familiar with most of the techniques demonstrated on the show, but occasionally he did pick up a trick or two. Like the episode about—
    What sounded like a vehicle pulling into the driveway seized the Handyman’s attention. He grabbed his silenced handgun from the toolbox. The study was situated in the rear of the house with no view of the driveway, so he bolted into the living room and stalked to the nearest window.
    The Handyman inched back the curtain and peeked out.
    A blue Grand Cherokee crept to a stop in the