APGreenwood Greenwood

Chapter 1

Friday, one week ago. Nine o’clock in the morning. West University.

“Keep the door locked, and do not open it for anybody. Do you understand me?”

When Lee Tuttle was ten years old, those were the exact words her father spoke to her every time she would be left alone at home. Both her mother and father had decided that Lee was then old enough to stay at home -- during the day -- without a baby sitter.

That was just over thirty years ago, and at the time, to Lee, it felt like a rite of passage. She was growing up. She was no longer a child, but was a girl approaching her teenage years. She wasn’t afraid to be by herself, especially living in River Oaks, one of Houston’s nicest neighborhoods and one that had their own police force. The few times the doorbell actually rang when she had been home alone back then, she’d gone to the front window, looked out and never saw anything that frightened her. There were strangers -- soliciting or spreading the gospel. The postman she recognized with a package. And on a handful of occasions, there were people she recognized as being friends of her mom.

But Lee always heeded her father’s words. She never opened the door for anybody when she was alone at home.

Since then, Lee admitted to herself that she’d always been spoiled by her parents. She went to the finest schools, wore fashionable clothes even as a teenager, and had a weekly allowance that was higher than any of her friends. Her family belonged to the country club where she took tennis and golf lessons, and where she hung out at the swimming pool with her girlfriends almost every day during the summers. On those hot days, Lee would treat her friends to lunch or soft drinks, and, because the waiters and waitresses knew her and her family’s member number, she never had to sign any tickets.

But Lee Tuttle secretly blamed her parents for her being spoiled, and as a result, for some of her regrets in her life. Because everything had come easy for Lee, she took much of what she had throughout her relatively young life for granted. Nothing had value to her, including her first marriage. She’d hurt people, including some of her friends and she definitely hurt her first husband. When she was thirty, divorced and living alone, she did a lot of self-introspection and had decided that in the future she would be a different woman.

She got a job at a boutique, working twenty-four hours a week. She found love, remarried, and unlike her first marriage, she was committed to keeping her marriage vows. She changed her last name to Patrick, lived with her husband, Bob Patrick, in a very nice home on Nottingham Street in West University. It wasn’t River Oaks, but it was a very nice neighborhood. Her home was one of the many newer ones in the neighborhood that replaced an original 1940s-era bungalow. It was two-story, stucco, had a modern kitchen, and was fairly large at 4,500 square feet.

This Friday morning, she was alone. Bob, the owner of a small oil and gas company, had, as always, left for work at half past seven, and she wasn’t due at the boutique until ten. When the doorbell rang, the words from her father that Lee Patrick had heard several times when she was a ten-year old didn’t even come to her mind for an instant. But when she went to the front door, before opening it, she did call out, “Who is it?” A man’s voice answered, “Delivery from Tiffany’s.”

Lee’s birthday was the day after tomorrow. She smiled and thought about Bob. How thoughtful he always was. Tiffany’s. She couldn’t wait to see what her husband had bought.

“Keep the door locked and don’t open it for anybody.”

Not even a consideration this day.

Lee opened the door.

Dewey Robinson was wearing clean khaki slacks and a white freshly pressed buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled down. In his left hand was a small, glossy white gift box he’d purchased at the Dollar Store yesterday evening. Lee thought that inside that box could’ve been a necklace or a bracelet. It really could have been from Tiffany’s. In Dewey’s right hand was a clipboard with what could’ve been a shipping document requiring a signature from the person who accepted the package. Tucked in his belt behind his back was a nine-millimeter caliber revolver.

Lee smiled at Dewey.

Dewey smiled back and said, “I’ll need a signature.” And he added, “But my pen’s run out of ink. Do you have a pen you could use?”

Of course, she had a pen. Somewhere. She turned, leaving Dewey Robinson at the open front door to retrieve a pen from the kitchen. She was back within thirty seconds.

But now the door was closed and person she’d believed was a delivery man from Tiffany’s was standing inside. Still in his left hand was the small, glossy white gift box, but now in his right hand was the nine-millimeter.

Dewey Robinson had never met Lee Patrick. Dewey Robinson had never killed anyone before. At first, he balked at the idea of killing a woman, but was promised that he would eventually be rewarded. He’d had questions about the assignment and was glad to learn that this target had no children. He also was told that this victim deserved to die. He didn’t know why, and was never told why.

Part of a promise that had been made to Dewey Robinson was that after completion of a fee assignments, he could go anywhere he wanted to go. California. New Mexico. Maybe Utah. He’d heard that Utah was beautiful state and that there were plenty of employment opportunities. Dewey would soon be free. It had been nine years since he’d really felt free.

Lee Patrick wasn’t afforded an opportunity to speak. Dewey Robinson had learned that giving a prospective victim a chance to talk, to beg for mercy, to perhaps try to buy their way out of what was to be their fate, did nobody any good. He’d learned that from a man he’d met in prison who’d killed before. At the time, Dewey wondered what it would be like to kill another human being. He was about to learn what that felt like.

When Lee Patrick returned with the pen, she didn’t give much thought about the stranger having moved inside her home, and she didn’t give much thought about why he’d closed the front door. In a matter of only a few seconds after she realized that the stranger was holding a gun in his right hand, Lee Patrick was dead. It happened so fast. She didn’t have time to regret that this morning she hadn’t heeded the warning her father had given to her many, many years ago.