John Locke - Saving Rachel

As for not wanting to live with or marry her, that has nothing to do with Rachel and everything to do with my job. I kill people for a living. If my enemies found out about Rachel, her life would be in constant danger. As for Sam’s income being off the books, I have an obvious conflict of interest: if the authorities dig into Sam’s activities, they might eventually find my money and seize it.

This topic consumed many hours of our conversation, and I began wondering if there might be another way to solve Rachel’s dilemma. If I could find a way to rob Sam’s clients, I could siphon off enough money to make Rachel financially independent. Then she could afford to leave Sam without making any demands on his income. I got with Victor, and he surprised me by insisting we hire a team of former FBI profilers to do a psychological evaluation on Sam in order to decide how best to deal with him.

Between Lou Kelly and me, we had reams of information on Sam, enough to get a definitive conclusion by the profilers.

Their conclusion was you don’t torture a left-brain genius guy like Sam. His personality is fragile, and he could go into a meltdown and become completely unresponsive.

“This kind of guy is very unique,” the head profiler told me. “He’s one in a hundred million, which is how he was able to develop this type of computer program in the first place.” “So how do we get him to reveal sensitive information?” I said. “The best way is to short-circuit his brain.” “Come again?”

“Sam Case is an extreme detail guy. You’re going to want to throw as much at him as you can. Hit him with circular references and things that make no sense. Put him on sensory overload. Confuse him. Put him in unfamiliar situations.”

“Give him a complete mind fuck?” I said.

“Precisely.”

I lined up Callie Carpenter to be his girlfriend, which took a hell of a lot longer than we intended. Sam being a workaholic, we couldn’t find a plausible way for them to “meet.” In the meantime, Callie established her identity as Karen Vogel. With our Agency connections, she managed to get a Kentucky driver’s license, Social Security card, and several credit cards. Then she got a job and a checking account and bought a condo in Karen’s name. She made the connection with Mary’s friend and co-worker, Chuck.

While all this was going on, Victor and I assembled the team and equipment we would need to put Sam’s brain into overload.

Finally, five weeks ago, we managed to get Karen and Sam in the same place at the same time in a plausible scenario that allowed Callie to manipulate him into making his move. The rest, as they say, is history.

Then we had Karen break the news about Rachel’s affair to Chuck, who told Mary. At first, Mary didn’t believe it, so she followed us to a hotel one night. Mary, protective big sister that she was, gave Rachel an ultimatum: confess the affair to Sam, or she would. Mary and Rachel argued back and forth for several days, and as the anger escalated, the fights became heated. And one day, without any input from me, my friend Salvatore Bonadello, crime boss of the Midwestern United States, got a call from a woman named Rachel Case of Louisville, Kentucky.

Rachel wanted to know how to go about hiring a hit man to kill her sister.

You could have knocked me over with a feather! My intention had been to have Mary meet Sam and tell him about the affair. Then we were going to orchestrate an entire drama around his trying to catch Rachel in the act. We had all sorts of twists and turns to confuse him.

But Rachel had taken things into her own hands.

I told Sal to let it slide. The original plan would work, and no one had to die. Sal wanted the forty grand he was going to charge Rachel for the hit. He wanted me to take the contract and split the fee. I told him if he insisted on killing Rachel’s sister, he’d have to cut the fee to twenty grand and we’d give the entire sum to Jimmy Squint, because I didn’t want Rachel to pay any more than she had to. Sal is not the sort to leave money on the table, but after I reminded him that his take of the heist would be five hundred million dollars, he reluctantly agreed to the twenty g’s.

Karen told Chuck that Rachel’s boyfriend was unstable and that he might harm Mary if she met with Sam. She thought Sam and Mary should meet in a public place, like Seneca Park, and Sam shouldn’t know what the meeting was about beforehand. Karen said she’d talk to Sam and make sure he showed.

At the last minute, Chuck talked Mary into letting him come to the meeting at the park. He had an authentic police uniform he’d bought for a costume party and felt that wearing the uniform might discourage Rachel’s unstable boyfriend from making a scene—which is why the twenty grand suddenly had to cover two killings instead of one. Jimmy Squint didn’t mind. He was in the middle of a financial drought and thankful to get whatever I could give him.

We planned for Sam’s meeting with Mary to coincide with Sam’s first sexual encounter with Karen. This was simple to arrange, since Karen controlled both the meeting with Mary and the hotel room with Sam.

Rachel and I explored all realms of her sexuality, and I found a use for the photograph I had taken of her rape fantasy several months ago, where she pretended to be tied down in her bra and panties. I drew the “K” and “V” on her cups with a marker to identify her as my property, and later on, when making the decision to rob Sam’s clients, I gave Callie the name Karen Vogel in order to match the initials.

As we got close to the big event, Sal Bonadello learned his part, and we hired some grifters to play the parts of Aiden Fry and the other camera crew members. We rehearsed in the underground parking lot Victor had purchased.

Speaking of Victor, he always goes all out with these productions. I assured him that all we had to do was build a few soundproof cells in his parking garage. But he had this wild idea of building soundproofed Lucite containers, equipping them with vacuum pumps, and fitting them to flatbed trucks! He barely got the trucks finished in time, but I never doubted he would, having worked with him successfully several times in the past.

Then, with everyone and everything in place, we decided to give Sam a proper mind fuck.

The wild card was Rachel. We had no idea how she would react to being kidnapped. I was concerned about her, so Lou (the voice Sam and Rachel would hear in their cells) kept me constantly informed as to her physical and emotional state.

I had a bit of trepidation allowing Callie and me to be placed into the Lucite containers, so I had prearranged a number of safeguards with Lou Kelly, Callie, Sal Bonadello, and even Victor. You can never be certain about the people working a heist with you, but I figured with so much money to share, we’d be able to trust each other. Plus, we had a history of working together, and that counts for a lot.

From the moment Rachel and Sam were locked in Lucite, I was able to hear everything they said and heard. The only thing I didn’t get to see was Callie getting naked for Sam. I’ve known Callie a third of her life, and I can tell you, I’m jealous that Sam managed to bang my ultimate fantasy girl, something I’ve never managed to do.

Not that it matters, and it’s not even relative to the discussion, but Callie’s a lesbian. She has a wonderful live-in relationship with a female trapeze artist in Las Vegas, so I know it wasn’t easy for her to sneak away for three months and seduce Sam Case.

Actually, it wasn’t that hard. Callie’s hopelessly in love with her girlfriend, Eva LeSage, but I expect she’d seduce a rabid grizzly bear for a billion dollars.

I know I would.

Which brings us to the present, where Sam, Rachel, and I are in our containers, and Rachel has just chosen me to live and sentenced her husband to die. I’m dressed in a business suit, pretending to be Kevin Vaughn, and Sam is pretending he doesn’t know I’m Donovan Creed.