Most Likely to Succeed: Ivy League Killers

By Blake Carver

Tom and Emily were good kids from caring homes. They did well in school and graduated from college. They are spiritually centered, loving, and kind people. They just have one hang-up together. They can’t seem to live and let live; not without exception. There are exceptions.
They believe that no one should have to worry about being molested, raped, murdered, or sold. Independently they discovered that they can act on these problems and, at some point, that they should. Executing predators is an act of mercy; mercy for the victims there would certainly be in the future. Compassion is their code.
There is no justice angle to what they do. No punishment, no vindication, no vengeance, torture, or payback. Only mercy for the future victims and for the subject himself. If the soul is so tormented or the mind so demented, why not set it free? As humanely as possible. No gratuitous, non-lethal suffering and no collateral casualties. No kids, spouses, coworkers, not even bodyguards. They single out offenders and turn them off, and it doesn’t bother them at all.
Based upon their motive and technical execution, Tom and Emily are recruited by a secret society of men and women who share their views. The Group votes life or death on candidates and distributes the names to the assets that set them free. Might sometimes does make right.
Like flipping a capsized turtle onto his feet, they simply exercise their inner obligation to choose the good and their ability to keep choosing it, one bad actor at a time. There is such a thing as a person who just needs killing. These unfortunates are slaves to their instinct to inflict unspeakable harms and they should, by any standard, be stopped.
What supports such extreme prejudice? It’s the certainty. The absolute certainty that there are those among us who by nature are so maladjusted to peaceful living, so rehabilitation resistant, that they will go on feeding upon the anguish of others as long as they live. So live they mustn’t.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626751064

Book preview

Part One

I

[The Jogger]

Tom and Emily found that more of the time than not, graceful, well-conceived killing was uncomplicated. No fancy IT component, no specialized training, little research, and no Mission Impossible stuff. The simple jobs paid as much as the harder ones so, for the work involved, parts of them sometimes felt like paid vacation. The killing was not a matter of fun at all; that was serious, respectful work but, once you’re out there, it isn’t wrong of you to enjoy the countryside.

Tom was not at all fond of running; not for its own sake. He didn’t even like walking all that much. But today was the close of a contract, and the job called for a brisk jog around a reservoir. So be it he thought; many jobs called for a lot more than that. This assignment had only required some light observation and now, today, a jog. Tom and Emily would not have been able to recognize Doug LeFevre at a distance before they sat on his home this week. But now they could pick him out of an auditorium.

It was established that on most days, though not necessarily every day, LeFevre left his house on North Teaneck Road at 5:10 and went for a jog around his local lake as the dew evaporated from the world. It gave him a tangible sense of accomplishment to be up before the sun and it guaranteed him a shower, a shave, and a coffee before it was time to get the kids on the school bus at 7:20.

If today was like most days, LeFevre would be getting ready to leave the house now. In the past week he had run in the same Crimson Tide sweatshirt with either matching grey sweatpants or a pair of black nylon running shorts. Once on the jogging path, Emily would approach him head on from the south and Tom would close the distance with him from behind. He wouldn’t be hard to catch; he was only a jogger, not a runner.

If the pace panned out, they’d converge on him at a twisted portion of the path lined with trees. As Tom and Emily came together, each could vouch for the road they’d run in the previous 5 minutes or so and, if all was clear, they could communicate this with a friendly wave and a word by phone.

Emily dropped Tom off at the parking lot entrance where LeFevre customarily entered the park. Tom could stretch out until he arrived. Meanwhile Emily drove south down to the next parking lot to begin her run towards Tom. She envisioned crossing paths with LeFevre in the wooded area but reminded herself that this detail was not crucial. Tom and Emily agreed that you couldn’t plan these things down to the very last detail or else you’d always be disappointed when things didn’t go exactly your way. Disappointment is such an ungainly distraction; your thinking stutters and it kills your ability to roll with the punches creatively. Better to enter with no hard and fast expectations and just see what develops. The great opportunities usually fall right in your lap.

At 5:21, more or less right on schedule, LeFevre entered the park by Tom. He was thinking about his 8:30 meeting with the dream team. His law firm was large and he headed a subgroup specializing in corporate criminal defense. Today was the day they would conclude strategic planning on an important anti-trust case being scrutinized by the IRS. LeFevre was always at the front of these things. He could pee on your leg and you really would think it was raining. He thought to himself, Whose idea is it anyway to have these early morning meetings before anyone has had a chance to settle themselves and enjoy a real coffee in the comfort of their own office? Give us that much before having 2 hours of banquet service ‘continental breakfast’ which no one eats anyway. It’s barbarism really.

Tom spoke in a normal tone of voice for his wireless headset to hear, ‘Bama plus black shorts today. The stereo microphones press against the temples so the device detects syllables partly from the vibration of your skull. They work so well it’s hard to say whether their primary function is to listen to music or to talk on the phone.

Emily, wearing the same Bluetooth gear, said, Understood, I have you. The headsets swoop down across the nape of the neck; invisible beneath hair or under a hoodie. Emily had both. Less than 9 minutes to the anticipated confluence now. From the north Tom allowed a respectful distance and began his light jog behind LeFevre. Emily got out of the car, slid her iPhone into the front pocket of her running pants, and began to move.

The paved path was not for bicycles and was nearly deserted because of the early hour. Emily had the luxury of taking it easy, the mark was coming to her. She simply occupied herself by controlling her heart rate and forming deep, even breaths. She was a seasoned practitioner of daily meditation and a true believer that breathing is the only discernable place where a person’s physical reality meets their spiritual self. It might have been her play to close in on LeFevre from behind but, for this day, she was content to extend her meditation to a jog. She thought to herself, Tom needs a tune-up anyway.

Tom was no pushover though. He rowed in the lightweight eight at Princeton and competed in trials for the U.S. National Team. It’s just that, with Tom, it was always tit-for-tat. I’ll run with you if…. I’ll run with you if the 2nd floor bathroom can be blue instead of lavender. I’ll bike with you if we don’t have to go to Millicent’s cocktail party on Friday. There was always some concession involved. Unless you were talking about rowing. That he would do for free, any seat, any boat, any time.

Twenty meters ahead lay the twisted part of the path. Emily slowed down to a swift walk and pulled down the hood of her sweatshirt. Seconds later LeFevre appeared in the mouth of the favored zone with Tom right behind him giving her the friendly wave. You got ‘im? He asked.

I got ‘em.

To clear Tom from her backdrop, Emily took a smooth step sideways to her right. In the same motion, she drew her suppressed Glock 26 from the pouch of her hoodie and relaxed into a comfortable weaver stance. LeFevre didn’t even look up as she fired two into his center just above the solar plexus. Tom’s fire came precisely between her shots, landing one between the man’s shoulder blades. Better overkill than underkill.

Apart from a widening of the eyes, the expression on the man’s face never changed. There was no chance. Without breaking his stride, he landed hard, face down on the asphalt. Without breaking their stride, Tom and Emily rolled him into the deep furrow that ran alongside the path, and covered him with the fall leaves already collected there.

Emily often talked about the elegant solution. Get ‘em while they’re doing something they were gonna do anyway. That way you don’t call attention to yourself by pulling the mark out of their routine. Don’t create an event, she would say, just blend into a non-event.

They pulled their headsets down around their necks and ran back to the car together. Less than 4 minutes later they arrived and had passed only one pair of joggers going the other way. Once inside the car, the iPod there reestablished its connection with the stereo and out poured Drowning, the Avicii radio edit featuring Laura V. Emily hung her arms from the top of the steering wheel for a moment and closed her eyes while Tom worked.

He slid the slides off of the pistols and removed their barrels. Holding the barrels in his left hand he used his right to peel the left surgical glove up over them, thereby containing the untouched barrels in a little rubber sack. The reassembled, barrel-less guns zipped into a handsome, cordovan-leather shaving bag which Tom then put in the front trunk. Emily already had the car in reverse as he got back in and fastened his seat belt.

On their way out of the parking lot, she pulled close alongside a park trashcan, as though it were a drive-through window. Tom reached up and dropped the barrel purse inside. As he raised his window closed, Emily slipped the clutch on first and gently pulled out into the road.

Their Hampton Inn waited 8 minutes away.

II

[Breakfast]

I saw you, clearing me from the through-and-through. Tom said while washing his hands and face in one of those his-and-hers sinks that are really more a part of the bedroom than the bathroom. He stood straight to dry himself with a hand towel and looked at her in the mirror. That was artfully done.

Safety first babe, said Emily, and you’re welcome. She smirked and cocked her head slightly to fit the second of her pearl earrings.

It was the most they’d said to each other all morning. The intense focus they’d collected upon waking was starting to dissipate now. They both re-dressed themselves a notch above business casual and prepared to go to breakfast in the lobby. Emily wore a dark, flannel pencil skirt by Vera Wang and a crème-colored, ribbed pullover topped by a big turtleneck that hung down in the front. She caught her own eyes in the mirror and reflected that she always travelled in better spirits when she looked nice. When they both looked nice. Tom put on a white Perry Ellis shirt, a gorgeous Jerry Garcia patterned tie, and slipped into his tailored, black blazer by Hugo Boss.

He tugged at his shirt cuffs beneath the blazer and asked, You set?

Waitin’ on you sweetheart. And they headed out the door and down the long corridor toward the front desk. As they walked, Emily picked a tiny string of lint off of Tom’s shoulder and said, I’m gonna be so happy to be home, I wanna finish mitering the ceiling molding for the bedrooms so I can paint and move on.

Tom said, Yeah, I might help you. I’ve decided to take the week off from work. I’m not really needed right now anyway.

In an accusatory tone Emily said, You’re not going to help me. You’re gonna go back to your damn boat. I know you are. Man, I could put a fiberglass patch on that puppy, paint it, and be done with it by sundown the same day.

You know that’s not the point honey. The point is to restore it in the same tradition it was built. You do exactly the same thing with our house.

Restore it? Tom, the thing was broke in half by some moron friend of yours. Did you even get all the pieces to glue back together again?

No, not all the pieces, some sank or floated away. I’ve had to hand cut certain patches myself. And I never met that guy before in my life, he is distinctly foe. Men like that shouldn’t be allowed to disgrace a racing shell by handling one, much less ‘rowing’ one. He curled air quotes with his fingers.

In the lobby there were mostly business travelers having breakfast, drinking coffee, reading newspapers, or watching CNN on the big screen surrounded by living room furniture. Breakfast here was not for the especially health conscious. Emily didn’t regard herself as a health nut per se, Tom did, but she would mostly avoid refined sugar where possible. And grease. And gratuitous carbs.

Once in a great while though, on occasions just such as this—on the road at the close of a contract—she would go buck-wild and indulge in one of those single-serving containers of Froot Loops or Apple Jacks. This morning it was Apple Jacks. Tom drew his first coffee of the morning from a whisping tureen and helped himself to eggs and sausage. Emily sat down with her cereal, toast, and coffee and, instead of sitting across from her, Tom moved his chair to sit 90 degrees to her left; she liked to cross her ankles on his shoes.

Fox News rolled muted across a big flat-screen overhead. Always something about money, politics, war, or natural disaster. Tom and Emily had simple proclivities; they were pro-money, apolitical, and anti-war. They ate in peace and gratitude for the muted volume.

Between bites Tom asked, Are you happy enough about driving? It’s about 6 hours I think.

Emily swallowed a small mouthful of Apple Jacks. I am, she said, besides, I’d be jealous of you driving my car.

Tom gave Emily that car for her birthday when they’d been together about two years. She loved it and he didn’t get to drive it all that much except when they raced it in autocrosses—a timed event where drivers move through a labyrinth of traffic cones as fast as their competence allows. It was the 1984 911 SC RS. A rare wide-body with a 3.0 liter engine. He wasn’t jealous of her at all; Tom wanted her to have it.

He wanted her to have something with character because she had great character and deserved it. Not one of those modern, sanitized Porsches. Emily should have something visceral and throaty, almost unruly. Something that would be a challenge to drive well except for the suitably able driver. And able she was. For fun they went to driving schools a couple of times each year and had developed a deep store of skills. If the need ever arose on the job however, they were agreed that Emily would be the designated wheel-man because it was, after all, her car.

After breakfast there was one more trip back to the room for the cases and garment bag, all of which fit neatly in the car’s little trunk, then back to the highway and back to California. As soon as they got in the car, Tom yawed the GPS unit to face himself and began pressing numerous things on the touch-sensitive screen.

What are you doing dummy? All you have to do is press ‘Home.’ Emily said, playfully annoyed.

Tom said nothing and then the GPS spoke authoritatively: Fahren Sie zum markierten route.

Deadpan she asked, Really? With her right hand she twisted the GPS unit back to where it belonged and with her left she bumped the starter. The powerplant erupted with life. How long have you been waiting to do that? You think you’re clever or something. She knew there was no Undo button but she looked for it anyway.

Pleased with himself, Tom continued to say nothing and grinned that tight-lipped smirk with the one side turned up slightly. Emily rolled her eyes and shook her head a little. As she began to negotiate the parking lot the GPS again instructed,

Rechts abbiegen an dem Lassiter Avenue.

Alright, fine, that’s fine. said Emily. She wasn’t in the dark by any means; she had been studying her German like she was supposed to—mostly Berlitz instruction on her iPhone while working on their house.

Ever since they became a couple, Emily wanted Tom to join her in some of her athletic interests. Running, biking, racquetball,…even simple hiking would have been something. Tom was an accomplished oarsman, but he was uncommonly lazy in the monotonous exercise department. So he made a deal with her: he would bike with her semi-regularly if she would pursue a foreign language or something similar. She chose German because he knew it and they might do something with it someday. Still, she would try to persuade him that rowing wasn’t the only sport in the world, and he would get so pissed if she called it a sport. He insisted that rowing was not less than craft and better understood as art.

The drive home was painless. Emily would say she loved to drive but Tom knew what that really meant; that meant she loved the rumble of a 3.0 liter, flat-six strapped to her ass. When he wasn’t driving, Tom liked to choose the music and daydream about machines to do this, and machines to do that. They were well matched travel mates; both able to snug into their seats and retreat into their own elements for a long journey. In this case, home to San Francisco.

Neither ever ruminated about the work. One reward for closing a contract was that you didn’t have to bring it home with you, or even think of it again if you didn’t want to. Naturally there were lessons learned on the job but, for the details, the less they ruminated the better. Better to return home to a blank slate and ready for something new.

Proposals for contracts only came along every four or five months anyhow. This allowed ample time for them to indulge in their particular special interests. Emily could go back to restoring their Victorian home one square foot at a time, and Tom could go back to doing whatever the hell it was he did in that mosaic of a study; fixing, building, or inventing something. Pretty reliably they even held down day jobs.

III

[Tom]

Tomascz Alan Martin came from misunderstanding, confusion, and ignorance. His birthmother Alyce was a lost and frightened 16-year old from a clean living, middle middle-class family striving to be upper middle-class. Apart from an evening of regrettable indiscriminate sex, Alyce had been pretty clean living too. She just wanted someone to want her; someone to ask her about herself, to want to know her. But all she got was a horny teenager. Her mother was sympathetic about the pregnancy and her plight, but her father was shaken with disappointment and teetered on the edge somewhere between pitiless and unforgiving.

In his upset, her father gave Alyce two choices, each with irretrievable consequences. She could stay home if she wanted to, home from school, home from everywhere, and carry the baby to term. If she chose to keep the baby, then she was out. Out of the house, into the world, and there’d be no support. Dad’s attitude was that if some boy loved her enough to get her pregnant, then let him take care of her.

On the other hand, if she would give the baby up, then she could resume her life in the eleventh grade and probably pick up enough pieces to go on to college like a normal girl. Alyce was frozen with fear. For that moment, all she could do was nothing. The moments of nothing stretched into days and, one day after another, she just tried to get through time gently. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep this child, but she could cherish him in the meantime; be good to him, and maybe he would be good too.

For the next seven and a half months, Alyce had nothing but time. She was a Mozart fan and she got a Y-splitter so she could wear one set of headphones and stretch the other set around her middle. She often wondered if he could hear okay. She assumed so. She also read a lot and so, for the baby, she read softly out loud relying mostly on the vibration to get through to him.

Once she found a children’s book from Eastern Europe about a little tiger named Tomascz. He was a runt and so had to make friends with different animals, animals other than tigers, to find belonging. Instantly Alyce knew her baby’s name and prayed that life would bless him with that feeling of belonging. She begged God, Please don’t let him be fearful (like me). And that prayer was answered.

The day he was born, Alyce had almost three hours with him before he was taken up to the pediatrics unit, never to return. Not knowing if it would make any difference, she told a nurse, His name is Tomascz. M A S C Z. Sounds like ahhshhh. And it did make a difference. Someone labeled his bassinette accordingly and the name went wherever he did.

Tomascz was a peaceful soul from the day he was born. He was quiet, didn’t cry much, and wouldn’t throw up on you if he could help it. For those reasons, getting him a foster family was effortless. But for the very same reasons, getting him adoptive parents was strangely difficult. Prospective parents were suspicious of his stillness. They feared that his quiet way might mean something was wrong with him; autism or some such.

He lived with good caring folks for 3 years before the Martins came along from Hawaii. It was love at first sight with them. They didn’t think anything was wrong with him at all. Here was a lovely boy who smiled a lot and didn’t make a terror of himself. They just reckoned he must be thoughtful; or as thoughtful as a 3-year-old could be anyhow. His still waters probably ran deep they thought. So they took him enthusiastically and never found a regret for it.

Jack and Lynn Martin each came from upper middle-class homes and would have lived upper middle-class lives themselves if it hadn’t been for Jack’s invention. By trade Jack was a physician specializing in geriatric medicine. But before that, before medical school, Jack had studied industrial design at Texas A&M and was always tinkering in his spare time.

In his mid-twenties, he made a wheelchair that could go straight even if the occupant had but one hand to move it with. It looked like any other wheelchair except that it had sort of like ski poles on either side. A person could row one pole forward and back and the chair would go in a straight line even though the other arm wasn’t contributing.

The idea came about because Jack’s elderly mother had had a stroke in her wheelchair. The damage from the stroke left her one side paralyzed and she was only able to move her chair in circles until someone finally discovered her. The telephone had been just out of her orbit the whole time.

Jack’s chair was far cheaper than motorized equivalents of the early 1980’s, but proved still too expensive for wide acceptance by hospitals and institutions. Mostly it was a hit with private consumers. It made millions of dollars despite its limited market share and Jack got to continue his great love of tinkering with machines.

Around the same time as the wheelchair windfall, Jack and Lynn learned that they would not be able to have children of their own. This was hard news but they moved on to the adoption idea fairly readily; having a family was not an experience they were willing to miss on any account.

Tom turned out to be every ounce the thoughtful, happy child he had promised to be on first inspection. While other children were stacking blocks and then smashing them down, Tom would build a pile and then leave it there on the floor as if he’d made a monument. He would arrange his dinosaurs poised for battle but he didn’t find it necessary to mash them together in chaos; the screenplay seemed to take place in his mind.

The Martin’s was a musical household. Lynn was enough of a pianist to accompany the choir at their church and Jack, despite his demanding professional life, continued to make time for his cello. They had a rich library of classical music and, though they didn’t quite know where he got it from, Tom had a conspicuous love of classical music, especially if played softly.

As a 4-year-old, Tom would beg for some music at every opportunity. First choral works, then piano sonatas, and then string quartets. His sophistication grew at a staggering pace. In his world, the international symbol for play me some music was to cup his hands over his ears and wow them in and out. Never a tantrum but always a gentle request. Everything with Tom was soft and measured. He listened to the world intently, as though waiting for a secret. But even with the benefit of Palestrina, Corelli, Handel, and Mozart, Tom still waited, listened, and waited some more.

An uncommon self-assured demeanor emerged through his first eight grades. As he grew older, he continued to listen more than he talked and that attitude led to strong work at school. At the same time, he also enjoyed a rare kind of support at home that pushed him further than most kids his age. Anytime he took an interest in something he always had two parents to enable him with reading, discussion, and related activities.

His father taught him that before we have a mind to create or invent, sometimes it’s helpful to rehearse. So in the sixth grade he helped Tom build a windtunnel in the living room from scale plans he had found somewhere. Tom then entertained himself building fleets of model rockets which he tunnel tested himself. In the seventh grade Tom built a Geiger counter and in the eighth, a Gallium Arsenide laser. There was even talk of a Wilson Cloud Chamber, though by that time the living room was getting a little crowded.

Between his work at school and stimulation at home, Tom inevitably began to grow in greater strides than his classmates. In the seventh grade he began to do his own research, unprompted, to find a high school that he would like to attend. It was not odd for the ever-thoughtful boy, but surprising nonetheless. The Martins would have been happy to have him attend locally at Kauai High School if he had wished; they certainly didn’t want him to feel sent away. But Tom had an adventurous spirit and, if he could get admitted somewhere interesting, he wanted to seek out other similarly driven students.

With stellar grades and a well-balanced extracurricular life, Tom was admitted to The Lawrenceville School a little south of Princeton, New Jersey and The Horace Mann School in the Bronx borough of New York. He wanted to be surrounded by kids who took learning at least as seriously as he did and he felt sure that a preparation at one of these places would lead him in turn to a first-rate college. Lawrenceville and Mann were both outstanding academically, that was beyond question and Tom could, on that basis alone, be happy at either one. He chose Lawrenceville because Mann was strictly a day school surrounded by concrete and asphalt, while Lawrenceville offered boarding in a lush and historic country setting.

Tom’s parents grieved a little to see him go after only 11 short years together, but he was so happy, and for all of the right reasons. They had to let ‘im run. The remainder of his eighth grade year was like one long celebration. Everyone in his life was onboard with Tom’s plans, especially his teachers of Art, English, and Music. They talked about how he was off to get a real education, meaning that his experience was going to be so diverse, so truly liberal.

When the time came at the end of the summer, his father took a few days off from work to accompany him on the transpacific and continental flights to New Jersey; Tom’s first flights anywhere since he was three. In Lawrenceville he and his father stayed the first night in a hotel and then, in the morning, they were welcomed to school by admissions staff and other officials from various areas pertinent to student life. A student aide gave them a grand tour of the colonial buildings and grounds, the classroom spaces, dormitories, and sunken garden. There was so much character and authentic American history there. It was dreamlike for a romantic like Tom. He even got assigned to one of the older, more storied dorm buildings.

In the evening, about an hour before dinner, Tom walked his father back to his rental car in the visitors’ spaces. They rapidly ran out of small talk along the way and something emotionally heavy descended upon them both; the gravity of separating. They stood there on the fine gravel for what felt like a long time, looking at their shoes. Tom thought, I hope I can do this, I know it’s worthwhile if I can. Meanwhile Jack was asking himself, Is there anything we’ve neglected to tell him? Have we set him up to succeed here? To really thrive?

Jack looked his son in the eyes, deeply, shook his hand warmly, and said Tom, do well. His eyes a little glassy with feeling.

IV

[Emily]

Emily Holbrook was an only child, though her parents had planned for three. Her mother Karen died in childbirth leaving her to be raised by her father Cal, a career police officer. At the time of her birth, it was Emily's mother who was to be the ladder-climbing career woman and bread winner. She was a prized young lawyer at a small but prominent firm in the city and her sharp skill was such that making partner someday seemed almost predictable.

Even with an only child, Cal’s was not a household meant to be supported solely by a policeman's salary. But with what choice, he did his best, and his best was better than most. He stretched his income and, wherever possible, catered to Emily’s schedule so they could be close. Compared to kids from complete nuclear families, she was still able to do all of the same things: summer camps, horseback riding, and other activities outside of school.

Cal was an affectionate and devoted father. The kind to hug every day, to show up for school plays and parent-teacher conferences, and to say I love you. He made it his business to let Emily see that she was thought about every day of her life. And she did see. He nurtured in her a lasting and durable emotional security that would do for a lifetime.

At work Cal was one of those natural leaders of