The Envelope

There was a person in the envelope on the table in front of him.

It had always been somewhat disconcerting to him that everything you could ever need to know about a person could be summarized in a manila file folder. A thick one, but still, it was depressing. Sex, age, weight, height. Photographs. Work, family, friends. Schedule, habits. Hobbies. A human being, condensed into a few dozen sheets of paper and a handful of photos. Over the next week or so the man at the table would become intimately familiar with this person. But they would never meet, except ever so briefly through the telescopic sight of his rifle.

The process of learning a person well enough to kill him is only as complicated as the killer chooses. Some don't know their victims at all, but those people are usually psychopaths or the basest of criminals. The man at the table was a professional, and he liked to take his time. To be worth what he was paid, he had to know what he was doing. He was a master of the clean kill – one shot, one kill was the mantra that ran through his head every single time at the moment of decision, a ghost from his military past. A muzzle flash, a bullet hole in a window, and a dead body. There was never any trace of the shooter, and for that kind of accuracy, you had to know your target – and your surroundings – very, very well. His services didn't come cheap, and he hated to disappoint.

He began the slow process of sifting through the information. His target was male, a sixty-three year old corporate leader who also happened to be very dirty. There was blood on his hands, and not a little. The man at the table preferred that, it was better knowing that his target had it coming. Not that it was necessary. The target spent most of his day in a high-rise office building, which was good – men of his caliber generally preferred large, open windows so that they could look down on “their” city. A vanity that would cost him, if it proved to be true. And judging from the provided recon photos, it was. The man at the table sighed; he had been hoping for a challenge. A skyscraper adjacent to another, a glass walled office... people should be more cautious this day and age, he thought. Especially bad people. They tended to attract the attention of other bad people. Like him.


~


Over the next several days the man at the table came to the conclusion that the office building was, indeed, the most suitable location. His home had been ruled out early; not only was it more difficult to gain line of sight through smaller residential windows, but it meant that the kill would be in front of the man's family, and he tried to avoid that when possible. Nothing does wonders for the psyche like the back of grandfather's head exploding at family dinner. Another likely location was a favorite golf course. Always a solid choice, golf courses provided an abundance of cover, as well as nearly countless opportunities to make the kill as your target stands stock still to line up his shot as you line up yours. But in this case he had a time frame to deal with, and couldn't be sure when the target would decide another round of golf was in order. The office became the obvious choice.

The adjacent building, however, presented a problem. It wasn't tall enough; the target's office was on the 42nd floor of his building, while the building across the street only offered 35 floors. The building one back from it provided enough height, but the distance would test him. Perhaps there would be some challenge to this after all.

The chosen tower contained the office space of many different companies, a maze of cubicle farms, lobbies, supply closets, and corner offices. This was good; a person can move with much more freedom through the halls of a shared building than one owned by a single corporation. Only a hotel would have been better, but he was not permitted that luxury this time. A bit of research provided him with the name of the company renting the space that would provide him the best vantage point: BD Computers. It was a small hardware design firm, a boutique computer shop for the Wall Street wealthy who had nothing better to do with their money than purchase computers with handmade mahogany panels and mother of pearl inlaid optical mice. It would take a bit of social engineering to gain sufficient access to, and would be even more of a challenge to gain the significant level of privacy his task required. He made an appointment.


~


It hadn't been difficult to gain the required access to the chosen building, or the location within. A few phone calls posing as an interested new client, gaining access to building schematics from one of his local government contacts, then bluffing his way past the lobby security, which was as simple as a manufactured ID badge and a look of determination. Once past the lobby the hard part was done; people look for abnormalities and block them at the door, but once you're inside, and look as if you know where you're going, it's generally assumed that you're supposed to be there.

He was dressed in a dark suit, stylish sunglasses, and carrying a perfectly usual if slightly over sized briefcase, ID badge clipped to his lapel, he looked like any of the other affluent businessmen weaving their way through the corridors. Except that his heart was beating roughly twice as fast as it should. He always felt this rush of adrenaline before and shortly after, but during the actual process of making the shot, it was crucial to stay calm and steady.

He turned into a men's room and locked the door from the inside. The janitorial staff would be able to unlock it without any trouble, but for now the closed door would give him the privacy he needed.

The first thing he did was to pull on a pair of paper-thin leather gloves. They gave him the tactile feedback he needed while serving to cover the tracks left by anything he might touch. The restroom doorknob was the only thing in the entire building he had actually touched with his bare hands, and his prints would be so smeared and covered by dozens of other restroom patrons that it wasn't a concern. Now he had to hope that the schematics he'd been studying were accurate.

He climbed onto the toilet in the stall farthest from the door and began unscrewing the air conditioning grate. It was one of those large, square ones that provide ample ventilation for a large business complex, and also happen to be just the right size for crawling inside. He had the second screw out when he heard someone outside try the doorknob. He froze. They jiggled the knob once more, then nothing. This either meant that they left in frustration to find another restroom, or that they would be contacting maintenance to open the door. Either way, he had to hurry.


~


As he adjusted for wind, distance, bullet drop, and the dozens of other variables someone of his skill takes into account, he watched the target having an energetic telephone conversation. He was hundreds of yards away and slightly elevated above the office window, but the powerful telescopic sight of his rifle made the distance seem much less of an issue than it actually was. In truth, he was in a precarious and not entirely comfortable position; prone and on top of an industrial storage rack that housed cleaning supplies, toiletries, and for the moment one highly trained and motivated killer.

His awkward vantage point was a small slit window high on the storage room wall, the opening barely wide enough for his tripod. It had been sealed shut, but an emergency hammer designed for breaching car windows had made short work of it, and the tiny shards of falling glass had been so dispersed by the breeze once it reached the ground below that it was very unlikely anyone would notice.

His breathing was slow and even, and he wasn't sweating. He had always found that he could be perfectly calm in the heat of the moment, the adrenaline rush did not come until immediately afterwards. He made a slight adjustment to the calibration of the rifle, and squinted through the scope.

“Stop moving, damn you.” he thought. The target seemed to enjoy grand gesturing when discussing business matters, even when the other side of the conversation was on a phone. He decided that he would wait until the conclusion of the call – it would be rude to cut such an obviously important conversation short, anyway.

He waited. He was a very patient man, but knew that he did not have an unlimited amount of time before someone from the maintenance staff would need something from his chosen perch – perhaps even the same janitor who had surely unlocked the adjacent hall's bathroom door by now.

The target was off the phone, and leaning back in his rich leather chair peacefully. Not moving an inch. The man tightened his grip on his weapon ever so slightly, and held his breath.

Now.


~


The man parked his car and sat quietly in his driveway, listening to the radio report of the murder of an as-yet-unidentified businessman in his downtown office. He smiled a slight but satisfied smile, turned off his car, and walked up to the front steps of his home, where he collected the mail before going inside and turning on the television news, where a similar report was currently breaking.

He took off his jacket and sat down at the kitchen table. He began sorting his mail, and smiled again.

There was a person in the envelope on the table in front of him.