Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide

Chapter I I FROM THE JOURNAL OF CLIFF IVERSON
Although I don't consider myself particularly vain (except perhaps for considering myself more often than I should), I was pleased to have conceived such an expert murder, especially since I'd never previously considered committing one.

My first year at Caltech I had initially pursued a dual major of aeronautic design and English literature, which was sort of like going to Juilliard to study piano and field hockey. As a man without a penny or parent to my name, I was quickly notified that the more-than-generous scholarship I'd been awarded was to develop my budding skills at design and not for any designs I had on deathless prose.

I imagine there are a lot of people out there like me who discover they have a skill at something they like rather than love. But most of us have to earn a living, which is probably why there are any number of accomplished urologists in the world. (And if my sponsor who is reading this journal happens to be an accomplished urologist, thanks for your kindness up until this last sentence and I'll start packing my things now.)

Eventually Caltech led me to MIT, which led me to aircraft manufacturer Woltan Industries, which led me to homicide. This was not entirely MIT's fault. I don't even blame Woltan that much, except for their choice of senior executives, one being my supervisor Merrill Fiedler, who needs to die.

Please understand that by nature I oppose all senseless killing… but in Fiedler's case, murder makes perfect sense.

I have no idea if you know me personally, dear sponsor. If you don't, let me simply say my looks have been described by some as studious and by my myopic aunt as handsome, but this matters little where this journal is concerned, for on the day my relationship with McMasters began, my face was concealed by an unfashionable fedora with its brim pulled low, a wig and false beard of straggly gray hair, and a pair of MacArthur-style sunglasses, at a subway station in Midtown Manhattan. My tall frame was cushioned like a department store Santa by a long vest of padding that amply filled a trench coat four sizes larger than my own.

I maneuvered my newly cumbersome form as daintily as Oliver Hardy doing a soft-shoe with Stan Laurel, passing through the gauntlet of a turnstile and down concrete steps onto the subway's uptown platform, and discovered with satisfaction that my target was standing exactly where I'd wanted him to be: Merrill Fiedler, a crisply groomed success story in his early fifties, in town on business for Woltan's Baltimore plant, where he'd been my supervisor. He was currently thumbing a magazine by a newsstand at the south end of the platform only a few yards away from me, precisely as I'd managed to contrive. I needed Fiedler positioned on the platform where uptown trains entered the station. At the far end, the train would already be braking to a halt and might not deliver an instantly lethal blow.

I know. I'm such a nice guy.

But it was the train that would kill Fiedler, I told myself for the hundredth time, knowing this to be the shabbiest of self-deceptions. I had all the intent of a killer but not the soul. Guns, knives, poisons… these were murder weapons, all of which I'm too inexpert or squeamish to wield with any guarantee of success. But I'd also ruled out poisons and all other arms-length methods that had sprung to mind, for they seemed too calculated and detached, requiring the meticulous planning of a certifiable psychopath. Then the notion of giving Fiedler one good, hard shove had come to me. Yes, I could probably manage that, particularly after having to restrain myself from doing so for the last three years, each time Fiedler savaged another helpless employee. A shove, a push, a jostle seemed very unlike an act of murder. It was simply what might happen at the beginning of a good old-fashioned barroom brawl, before someone in authority called out, "Now-now, boys, there'll be none of that here!" One justifiable shove for all the demeaning, degrading insults and condescending sneers Fiedler flayed and spewed in all directions each workday.

The telling difference would be that this particular shove would occur while Fiedler was standing at the edge of the platform as the IRT train bulleted into the station.

It was the train that would kill Fiedler.

I had also further reasoned that shoves don't have to be registered with the authorities. One can't test-fire a shove and trace it back to its origin, there's no entry wound revealing its angle, nor does it leave telltale residue. Yes, I might leave a bruise mark, but the oversized leather gloves I was wearing would conceal the size and shape of my hands, not to mention my finger...