Heller and Shannon: Hunter becomes hunted

Turner home as seen in the daytime

The first thing Heller did was to strip off the an 8” length of T-Rex duct-tape from the bottom of the pizza bag and slap it across Turner’s mouth. Heller knew about personal, digital assistants like Alexa. He did not need to have Turner calling 911.

Then Heller trussed him up with a pair of disposable handcuffs AND trussed up his legs with 14 gauge, steel wire. Then he whacked him again with the TASER and put a double-wrap of duct-tape around Turner’s mouth and lower head.

Looking at Turner, Heller realized there was a problem. Turner was on his back and there was no way Heller was going to undo the handcuffs and re-cuff him behind his back. That just wasn't going to happen.

Heller pulled a lamp cord out of the wall outlet and cut the wire off where it went into the base of the lamp. Heller gave him ANOTHER whack with the TASER and then tied the wrists to the wraps of steel wire around his ankles so Turner couldn't reach up and rip the tape from his mouth. Shannon and Heller had talked about the possibility of the house being littered with "smart devices". Heller would have to take his chances with the cameras because there was no way he could find them all. But he could stop Turner for telling Alexa to get help.

Heller hit the stop-watch on his wrist and then consulted the Indestructable field-notebook taped to his wrist. He had blocked out each task that had to be done in a specific order and he had a target time of when each item needed to be completed. He wanted to be in-and-out in 20 minutes.

The first thing he did was to pick up the smartphone Turner had dropped and pop it into a Faraday pouch. The second thing he did was to cut the iWatch off of Turner's wrist and put it into the pouch with the phone. If anybody in the outside world was monitoring, it looked like their batteries had died simultaneously.

He gave himself 90 seconds to find and disable the internet connection. It took him forty seconds. He had seen the fiber-optic feed while standing on the porch. It was not a big deal to snip the cable with a pair of dykes.

Then he did a quick scout of the house to identify the offices. Apparently rich people had his-and-her office spaces, something he should have anticipated but didn’t. It slowed him down.

He piling up the lap-tops and other computer devices on the countertop next to the range when he heard Turner gasping “Alexa! Alexa!”

Damn! Turner had broken the lampcord and had scraped the tape away from his mouth. Heller whacked him again with the TASER, a solid, ten second burst.

Turner lunged at Heller and was able to catch him by his ankle and jerk his feet out from beneath him.

Turner didn't let go but was beating Heller against the floor like a rolled up towel. He was one big SOB.

Heller was used to falling. That was just one of those things that happen in construction. Footing is dicey and sometimes you tumble.

Heller rolled when Turner yanked his feet out from beneath him and was able to partially cushion his fall. Between impacts, Heller was able to pull out his Glock, and aiming down, parallel to the leg Turner was holding, was able to drill a round right through Turner's bicep. Heller had been holding the handgun "Gangstra" style so the bullet hit at the same elevation but slightly to the right of his aim-point

His ulna shattered, Turner moaned and released Heller and Heller rolled away from Turner.

Shaking his head, Heller realized that he was going to have to modify the plan he and Shannon had worked out and he had so laboriously practiced.

Heller was shaking like a leaf. He took twenty seconds to do some deep breathing to calm himself. Then he forced himself to look for the spent, brass casing that his firearm had ejected.

Then he walked over to the sound-system and found Detroit's heavy-metal station and turned it up loud. If anybody outside the house had heard the shot, maybe they would think it was WRIF.

Then Heller went to the next item on his list; searching Turner’s office for hidden data storage devices.

Heller had found two offices in his initial scouting of the house. He went back to the office that had contained the laptop that was still running.

Heller popped the covers off of all of the power outlets and the light-switch. As expected, he found several SD cards tucked behind the cover of the wall-switch for the light.. The palm-sized power screwdriver he had brought with him was able to yank the cover in less than two seconds.

Heller left the covers on the floor. He was wearing nitrile gloves and knew he wasn't leaving finger prints.

Walking through the living-room, Heller stripped several of the cushions from the furniture and dumped them beside the kitchen range. Then he pushed the kitchen chairs up, next to the piled cushions.

Heller switched the bit on his power screwdriver to a #1 Philips head and pulled the bottom-cover from the computing devices. He cut the wires with his dykes and dropped the hard-drives and Solid State Storage devices into his backpack/”Pizza delivery” bag.

One-by-one he dropped the stripped laptops on top of the cushions around the stove.

Consulting the notebook taped to his wrist, he pulled the bottle of sports-drink he had picked up from the trash barrel at the ride-share parking lot where he had parked the truck. He pulled a tumbler out of the cupboard, and holding the bottle upside-down, he loosened the cap and squeezed some water out, into the tumbler. Then he dipped his nitrile, gloved finger into the drink and made a “lip mark” on the rim of the tumbler. Then he carefully put the tumbler into the empty dishwasher, top rack, front-left corner and closed the door.

He next pulled out a bag of dust he had “lifted” from a vacuum cleaner at the job-site in Livonia and shook it all around the house but most heavily in the kitchen and around the moaning Turner. Heller was wearing gloves and a woman’s nylon stocking to flatten his features. He had also greased his face and hair to help capture hair and dandruff but it was inevitable that he would leave some tiny amount of dander behind. The best plan he could come up with was to flood the crime scene with dander from an office building where hundreds of people worked and did business.

Heller put a frying pan on the range next to where he had fillet-out the laptops. He found a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil after rummaging around the almost empty cupboards. He filled the pan to the brim and turned the burner onto its highest heat. Once ignited, the oil would boil over and ignite the cushions and gutted computing devices.

Consulting his list, he only had two more items to check off.

He checked Turner’s neck and saw a lanyard. He cut the lanyard that secured the thumb-drive to Turner and removed it.

Yelling into Turner's ear so he was sure to hear over the loud music, Heller said "This is for Dusty". Those were the only words Heller said since entering the house.

Then Heller knee-capped Turner, shooting down through his right and left lower femurs. Repositioning, Heller destroyed Turner's other elbow. He had already shot Turner and didn't think he would be in any worse trouble for shooting him three more times...providing Turner didn't die. Heller collected the spent cases, Heller put them into his fanny-pack.

Heller stuffed a 16th century, Chinese jade figurine in the door to leave it propped open. It was not his intention to murder Turner. Dead people are quickly forgotten. A former football star in a wheelchair, an athlete who cannot even wipe his own ass is much more memorable.

Ninety seconds later, Heller was loping north, across the golf course of the Simpson Ridge Country Club toward the Honda 300 he had stashed in a clump of evergreens. His path was illuminated by the newly-risen half-moon. He was four minutes behind schedule.