9:25P.M.
THEASSOCIATE NOW WORE JEANS AND A PULLOVER SHIRT.HE’D LEFTthe convalescent center around seven, stopping only long enough on the side of the road to change clothes. Light traffic on Highway 56 north from Woods County allowed for a leisurely pace. Darkness had enveloped only thirty minutes ago, daylight lengthening as the first day of summer approached in two weeks.
He slowed the Ford Explorer and crept into Dixie Pond, Georgia, a tiny, unincorporated community ninety miles north of Concord. It wasn’t really a town, more a convenience store, gas station, and post office—a smudge in the trees between Savannah and Augusta. He’d come in search of what the locals called Barlow’s Trailer Park, named after the elderly woman who owned and operated it. It sat on a wooded site a couple of miles off Highway 56, part of a ten-acre tract—forty-three lots rented by the month, well and septic tank hookups included.
The park’s one claim to fame came two years before when a tornado uprooted three trailers. Miraculously, no one was hurt, but the mangled metal and snapped trees made for great video on all the Augusta newscasts. That event, along with all the other relevant information, filled the file lying on the passenger seat.
He veered off the asphalt, the utility vehicle’s shocks working hard from powdery lime rock the consistency of a washboard. He threaded down the winding path between two walls of shadowy trees. Occasionally a house or trailer was betrayed by window lights. Deeper, he passed a set of nasty dumpsters, headlights exposing dogs roaming the warm night in search of food and companionship. The approaching row of forty-three mailboxes signaled the entrance to the park.
But he didn’t turn in.
Instead, he drove on and stopped in the first pocket off into the woods.
No interior cabin light betrayed his exit. He’d switched off the bulbs earlier before leaving the hospital. He stood next to the opendriver’s-side door and calmly slipped on a black denim vest, the same one he always wore, zippered pockets full of the special items he’d need.
He rolled his right wrist and checked the time, then sauntered back toward the trailer park’s entrance, confining his steps to the grassy shoulder. His eyes oscillated like a cat on the scent of nocturnal prey as he mentally began to supplement what the file contained.
Just a few window lights glowed. Only one trailer burned an outside light. Spidery antennas and satellite dishes jutted skyward, obviously no cable television lines had made it this far out. No natural gas lines either, LP tanks squatted beside most. Few external adornments, like porches or skirts, signaled not much in the way of money or permanency. According to the file many of the park’s residents were blue-collar manufacturing workers employed throughout nearby Augusta. Most needed to be at work by seven the next morning. None were noted as night owls.
His destination was Lot 23.
There, except for an occasional one-night stand, Brandon Pabon lived alone. Twenty-eight years old, Pabon supported himself solely from the weekly workers’ compensation benefits paid by Southern Republic Pulp and Paper Company. This was the third claim Pabon had pressed against three separate employers over the last ten years. On the first he received a mere $18,000. The second brought him $85,000. Now the latest was being milked for a solid six- or a possible seven-figure settlement. Already, almost $167,000 in medical bills had accumulated from chiropractors, neurologists, physical therapists, and vocational rehabilitative specialists—all from a supposedly devastating injury received when Pabon lifted a bag of cement from a wheelbarrow. The latest escalation, the one that generated tonight’s visit, concerned the severe depression Pabon now allegedly experienced.
In pleadings filed with the State Board of Workers’ Compensation, excerpts of which he’d read in the file, Pabon’s lawyer had passionately argued that the depression proximately resulted fromhis client’s “forced unemployment.” Psychiatrists and psychologists supported that assertion, their prognosis calling for prolonged hospitalization—which meant more skyrocketing of the already astronomical medical expenditures. All total bullshit, for sure, designed by a clever workers’ comp lawyer to milk the company for a massive settlement.
Thankfully, the file also reported reality.
Surveillance reports documented Pabon’s regular barroom dancing. The manual labor he performed every weekend lifting things far heavier than a bag of cement. And the fistfights he seemed to love, mostly over women. The reports also described Pabon’s hopeless addiction to heroin. Not so amazingly, none of his doctors had made any mention of the dependency. Certainly Pabon, an experienced injured worker who’d filed workers’ compensation claims before, knew enough not to volunteer it. And since the doctors he’d been sent to apparently knew drug abuse was not a “compensable injury” under Georgia’s workers’ compensation law—which meant no insurance company would automatically pay their bill for services—no danger existed of them ever asking. As far as the doctors were concerned Pabon had a back problem, caused by a “compensable on-the-job injury,” one fully covered by the employer’s workers’ compensation insurance.
Unfortunately for Brandon Pabon, he was another creature of habit. By nine o’clock nearly every night, especially on days after receiving a benefit check, he would be totally high.
Like tonight.
The Associate marched into the trailer park, turned left, and headed toward the rear of the wooded lots. Pabon’s single-wide waited dark and quiet. Never losing a step in his determined stride, he found the gloves in a vest pocket. Not the same pair used earlier at the hospital—those were in the car along with the suit he’d worn, ready for incineration when he returned to Atlanta—these were new. He stretched the squeaky latex tight, then slipped a lock pick from another pocket. The file noted that Pabon’s trailer door came equipped with only a flimsy cylinder lock and no dead bolt.
He stepped up three concrete blocks doubling as stairs.
He liked to time himself on how long it took to trip a lock. His personal best? Twelve seconds. Twenty-one were needed to open Pabon’s front door.
A little slow tonight.
He slipped inside.
A miasma of coffee, alcohol, nicotine, urine, and sour clothes greeted him. Stuff lay scattered including opened cans of pears, chili, and soup. Lots of fast-food containers. Trash. Newspapers. Even greasy auto parts. So much that he found his penlight and used the beam to thread a path back toward the bedroom.
Pabon lay sprawled on the bed, mouth open, breathing heavy. No shirt, socks, or shoes, only a ragged pair of blue jeans, unbuttoned and unzipped, crotch soaked. He surveyed the cramped cubicle. On the Formica table beside the bed lay the remnants of the night’s drug trip. None of the heroin remained, only an empty syringe.
Where were the medicine bottles?
He slid open the pocket door to the bathroom.
The tiny sink was a collage of grease, hair, dried toothpaste, and caked soap. The toilet lid stood up, its bowl muddy from a recent use without being flushed. A row of prescription medicine bottles lined the porcelain tank top. He held his breath, approached close, and studied each until finding the partially filled bottle of Valium that Pabon’s medical records said he possessed a prescription for. It had been ordered for muscle spasms, but all it really provided was a legal supply of the barbiturates that, along with heroin, Pabon’s body desperately craved.
Plastic bottle in hand, he returned to the bedroom. He tossed the pills on the sheets, and from another vest pocket found the hypodermic. It had been gathered a few days ago from a trash can in Atlanta by another associate. What it previously contained was anybody’s guess. What it now held was enough heroin to kill. And to ensure Pabon didn’t wake before the drugs took effect, he’d thoughtfully laced the depressant with Valium.
A couple of squirts. Air gone. Ready.
He set both the penlight and syringe aside, then gently grasped Pabon’s arm, prepared to react if the young man suddenly woke. He didn’t want to snap the neck—the processing criterion called for a nonviolent death—but if necessary he would. Luckily, Pabon stayed deep into his heroin-induced sleep, apparently enjoying the ride.
