Debra Webb - A Deeper Grave

He had been tracking the Executive Executioner for two months. Finding her had been a little trickier than he’d estimated. The Big Easy was the forty-year-old former schoolteacher’s preferred hunting ground. She’d left victims all the way from Houston to Tallahassee, but New Orleans apparently held some significance for her. It wasn’t her hometown though. Adele Pratt was from Jackson, Mississippi. She had been a daddy’s girl all the way up to the day he’d dropped dead in his office. Her father had been a low-level ad man at a major firm where he worked ridiculously long hours in an attempt to keep the boss happy. Adele had been murdering ruthless businessmen like her dead daddy’s boss for nearly a decade.

Nick reached above his head and stretched his back. He’d been waiting and watching for hours, day in and day out. It was almost time. His prey was on the verge of taking her next victim.

Adele Pratt didn’t know it yet but she was finished.

For the first thirty years of her life she’d never shown the slightest reported penchant for violence, and then one of her students shot herself right in front of Adele. Something happened to her in that moment when a fifteen-year-old decided she couldn’t deal with her demanding and ironically high-level executive father for a moment longer. Adele’s family hadn’t heard from her since that day. They all thought she’d gone off somewhere and taken her life. But that wasn’t the case. Nick had found poor, sweet, reserved Adele. She had been busy giving all those demanding men like her father’s old boss and her former student’s father what she believed they deserved—a truly nasty death after hours of slow torture.

She had lured in her latest prey and, if she followed her usual MO, tomorrow night she would make the kill. Oil tycoon Race Cashion had no idea what a lucky man he was. Adele, aka Alana Jones the Executive Executioner, was about to retire permanently.

The day’s thick humidity had eased a little with the darkness, but the air was still far too suffocating for Nick’s liking. Halloween was approaching and the city had spent the entire month celebrating death in all its grim beauty. Nick stood and stretched again. The rocking chair he’d vacated eased back and forth once, then twice. The elderly man who lived in the house Nick used for a vantage point was sleeping off his nightly drunk. He generally started around five and by ten or so he was down for the count. Nick had to give him credit, he had good taste. The bourbon he inhaled night after night was some of the best the average man could buy and likely exhausted the biggest portion of his retirement check. Each night Nick tucked ten bucks into the coffee can over the stove. The old guy had cut a hole in the lid and used the can like a piggy bank where he kept his change. By the last week of the month the mound of quarters, nickels and dimes was probably all he had left. This month when he removed that lid he was going to have a nice surprise. It was the least Nick could do for the use of his back porch.

He picked up his backpack and slipped across the narrow yard, using the overgrown shrubbery for cover. There were a few preparations he needed to make before Adele returned home. He approached her back door, listening for any sounds of trouble. Picking the ancient lock was too easy. People who renovated historic homes should never rely on the security of a century-old lock. He silenced the alarm and then reset the system with the code she’d written on a sticky note and stuck to the wall above the keypad. It wasn’t that Adele was too dumb or flighty to recognize the recklessness of leaving the code in plain sight. Not at all. The woman was highly intelligent. She simply wasn’t afraid.

Maybe she really wanted someone to come in and end her misery.

The house was quiet. Adele didn’t own any pets and she never had company. No friends, not even her targets were allowed in her home. Nick had searched the place thoroughly and discovered the photographs and trophies from her kills. During that thorough search he’d memorized the layout of the interior, which allowed him to move about inside now without the aid of light. The back door entered into a small laundry room, which led into a long narrow hall. Beyond the two doors in that hall, one leading into a bathroom and the other to the master bedroom that had once been two bedrooms, was the remaining space that served as the kitchen, dining, and family room. If the lady of the house followed her usual routine, she would arrive home shortly and take a bath. After a long soak in the tub she would go to bed.

Adele lived lavishly. Fine clothes and jewelry and a top of the line Lexus. The men she murdered supported her in high style and they had no idea they were paying their own murderer. Nick removed his backpack and started to unzip it when the purr of her luxury sedan broke the silence.

She was early. He shouldered his backpack and took a position in the elaborate bathroom. Down the hall the key turned in the lock with a concise click. As soon as the door swung inward the alarm began its urgent warning. She entered the code, silencing the system.

Her soft laughter filled the air. “You are too wicked,” she teased.

Nick stilled. Was she speaking on her cell phone?

“You bring out the devil in me.” The male voice was deep and slurred.

Nick swore silently. He recognized the voice—Race Cashion. Had she moved up her timeline? Why deviate from her MO and bring the man she intended to murder here? Maybe she had a little something extra planned for Cashion. Nick mentally ran a couple of adjustment scenarios and decided on an alternate plan of action of his own.

More playful back and forth echoed through the house. Cashion was obviously inebriated. Adele’s actions didn’t make sense. She never murdered a victim in her home. Like a fox she hunted and slept alone with the two being mutually exclusive. Maybe tonight was about a last-minute opportunity to milk this kill for more money—retirement money perhaps. Whatever the case, Nick’s task had just grown considerably more complicated.

Adele led her prey to her bedroom, not turning on a single light. Suited Nick fine. His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness. He spent the next fifteen minutes listening to frantic, drunken sex. When Cashion muttered something about the bathroom, Nick readied to put him out of commission.

He moved soundlessly to the side of the door as it opened. Cashion shoved it closed as he reached for his dick. Nick closed one hand over the man’s mouth and simultaneously wrapped an arm around his throat in a sleeper hold. Cashion struggled for three or four seconds, but he was far too wasted from the alcohol and physically spent from the sex to put up a real fight. Nick lowered his naked, unconscious body to the floor and eased back to the door.

Adele would be waiting. To deviate from her usual pattern was not unheard of, but to commit the murder where she lived was risky. Perhaps she was ready to move on, adopting another alias and home. Or maybe she had sensed someone was watching her and decided to act out of character just to see what happened.

Nick opted to wait and let her come looking for her lover.

A full minute elapsed before she called out her lover’s name. When Cashion didn’t answer she flipped on the light in her bedroom and came to the bathroom door, pushing it open. She stood naked in the open doorway staring down at the man.

“Fucking useless bastard,” she grumbled as she moved toward him.

Nick slipped behind her and she stalled, her body going rigid as his shadow fell over her.

“Hello, Adele.”

Before she could whip around and charge him, he grabbed her and pulled her against him, one hand closing over her mouth.

She kicked and elbowed frantically as he carried her back into the bedroom. She squirmed and twisted, but her slight frame was no match for his. On the bedside table he spotted the hypodermic needle she used to disable her victims. These days more serial killers than not used drugs on their victims. The ease of purchasing injectable drugs on the internet or even on the streets made their work far less complicated. Clearly she had planned to finish Cashion tonight. As if she’d read his thoughts, she stilled in his arms. It wasn’t necessary to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking, but he wouldn’t use the drug on her. The risk of overdosing was far too great. Adele wasn’t getting off that easily.