One Little Mistake (The Band Perry Fan Fiction)

Starting The Search

To start things off, I knew I was going to need an anonymous cell phone. My plan was to search for a hit man in or around Memphis. I drove across the state and bought a prepaid phone. A cash transaction, of course. I activated it under a false name with a Memphis number. At the same time, I bought a new laptop computer.

Over the course of that summer, I put a lot of miles on my poor Suburban. Any time I was in or around Greenville, both the cell phone and the laptop were completely powered down. In case of an eventual trace, I wanted no chance of the phone triggering a local cell tower or the laptop registering a local IP address.

I used three primary locations. I would drive 280 miles northwest to Louisville, Kentucky, 179 miles southeast to Charlotte, North Carolina or 283 miles south to Atlanta, Georgia. Only then would I power either device up. I would mix things up and never use the same city two times in a row. I would go to a different part of the city each time to hopefully shuffle up the cell towers the phone would ping off of.

The laptop was pretty much the same deal. I would use different internet cafes or hacked wireless connections each time. I would use different search engines and switch between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. I deleted the history each time. It wasn't going to matter when I was through anyway. I planned to destroy both the phone and the laptop in the end.

The search was slow and tedious, not to mention nerve racking. I tried my best not to appear nervous. Not the easiest thing to do considering what I was planning. I would find the most out of the way place in wherever I was to avoid anybody possibly seeing what was on my screen. If the place was too crowded, I would simply go somewhere else. If anybody would have seen what I was looking up, I would have probably ended up getting silver bracelets and free ride.

I created multiple alias email addresses, at least a dozen or more. All of them were different names and I didn't use any of the mainstream email providers like Yahoo or Gmail. I used off the beaten path, small time email providers only. Too much risk of a possible trace using the big boys.

I made contact with several supposed "hit men". With most of them, you could pretty much tell they were bullshit. Some just sounded fishy and others might as well have had "I'm a cop!" or "I'm a Fed!" tagged on  'em.

It took a little over a month and a half to nail down a hit man to do the deed. I was instructed to board a bus in downtown Memphis at a specific time and at a specific stop. I was told to sit in a specific seat and take a piece of paper from under the seat. I was to leave my cell number under the seat and get off at the next stop. Needless to say, I was expecting a sting at any moment. That never happened, thankfully.

On the sheet of paper I had picked up was a list of challenge words and passwords. With each call, he would give a challenge word. If I didn't reply with the corresponding password, he'd know it wasn't me. His number would never display on the caller ID either. Just Unknown Caller. This guy was definitely ex military.

We used the names "John" and "Joe" during any of our very brief conversations. The arrangement was that he would only contact me. Never the other way around. He specified certain days and at certain times. Most conversations were less than two or three minutes. If I ever missed a contact, the deal was off.

It took about three weeks and several contacts to settle on a price. With each call, "John" would ask several questions. Most times, they were repeat questions from a few conversations back, just worded differently. I have to say that his attempts to trip me up were good. He was definitely careful. He had to make sure I wasn't setting him up. I had similar thoughts and worries myself. All of this was a huge risk but the bigger risk, in my eyes, was to leave Ronnie be and have him do something to Tracy or Denise.

We settled on a fee of $50,000 in cash, all up front. I had sold several songs in recent months so I certainly had the money. Getting it without leaving a trail was going to be the next trick.

Author's note: It's been a long time coming for this update. I think I'm back on track now.