The house, my split-level, was indeed cold, but I wasn’t, particularly. I’d known that though the electricity was on, the heat wasn’t, and that I dared not turn it on or the lights either, nor was hauling in furniture a good idea. In fact, I wasn’t even sleeping here-I was making use of a Holiday Inn just four miles away. But I had brought in a space heater and that was keeping things nice and toasty. I had thermal underwear from JC Penney and a thermos of hot chocolate filled at a 7-Eleven (coffee is for grown-ups) where I’d also purchased some plastic-wrapped sandwiches, turkey and cheese, ham and cheese.
Not a bad set-up.
I wondered what cops did, when they had to do surveillance this time of year. Maybe in a big city it wouldn’t be a big deal, sitting in a car with the engine going; but in a college town like Iowa City, and particularly on a quiet country lane like Country Vista, you would stick out like some asshole sitting in his car doing surveillance.
As far as Iowa City itself went, I didn’t stick out at all. I certainly didn’t look like a guy who’d come to town to take out a college professor. And by “take out,” I don’t mean invite to dinner-I was here to put a bullet in the brain (or heart, my option) of a supposedly fairly well-known writer called K.J. Byron. This was a contract kill, and I was the contract killer, even if I looked like just another college kid.
My hair wasn’t as long as most of the guys in this town, but it was longer than it had been, not so long ago. You see while the kids in Iowa City were going to college, I had gone to Vietnam, where I had unwittingly learned a trade. I’d been a sniper, but this job would require close-up work, which was fine. Dead is dead.