Imagine playing the game Assassin, but the target doesnât know theyâre in the game. This is the business of boutique consulting firm, Diamond Teams: detailed murder planning without bloodshed, as a teambuilding exercise for C-suite executives.
Diamond Teams' stringent vetting process ensures prospective clients aren't bent on taking a life. Enter Guy Brown. When Guyâs true intent is discovered, his murder adventure project is terminated. His target has identified him, filed a police report, and a sketch artist generates a very good likeness. When Guy launches attacks on the Diamond Teams personnel involved in the project termination, the company allows the bench warrant for Guyâs arrest for stalking to be issued. He loses his job and custody of his four-year old son, the two focuses of his life. Guy's new focus: destroying Diamond Teams by destroying the life of one of the college-age kids of the principals, with the thought it would ruin their relationships, cripple the management of Diamond Teams, the owners themselves, and ultimately, force the shutdown of the company.
When the situation is revealed to the kids, they decide to take things into their own hands and deal with Guy themselves.
Imagine playing the game Assassin, but the target doesnât know theyâre in the game. This is the business of boutique consulting firm, Diamond Teams: detailed murder planning without bloodshed, as a teambuilding exercise for C-suite executives.
Diamond Teams' stringent vetting process ensures prospective clients aren't bent on taking a life. Enter Guy Brown. When Guyâs true intent is discovered, his murder adventure project is terminated. His target has identified him, filed a police report, and a sketch artist generates a very good likeness. When Guy launches attacks on the Diamond Teams personnel involved in the project termination, the company allows the bench warrant for Guyâs arrest for stalking to be issued. He loses his job and custody of his four-year old son, the two focuses of his life. Guy's new focus: destroying Diamond Teams by destroying the life of one of the college-age kids of the principals, with the thought it would ruin their relationships, cripple the management of Diamond Teams, the owners themselves, and ultimately, force the shutdown of the company.
When the situation is revealed to the kids, they decide to take things into their own hands and deal with Guy themselves.
When I was little, Mom, Dad, my sister, brother, and I piled into the car for family outings that now seem routineânot mundane, but not special either. It was a beast of a thing, this car: a canary yellow Cadillac with brown leather interior. In those days, in our small town, the filling station would accept a personal check for a tank of gas. Even then, the carâs fuel economy was only nine miles per gallon.
We went to the moviesâa proper outing for a family of five. Our small town didnât have a movie theater, but it did seem to be teeming with pizza places. We saw 'The Muppet Movie.' I think for a while, I may have had a crush on Kermit the Frog. He seemed to have a good head on his shoulders, was well-liked, and talentedâI mean, he played the banjo, which, in my opinion, is a dying art form. And puppets with legsâcompletely blew my mind. At the time, puppets were nothing more than socks with someoneâs hand stuffed in the opening. If you saw legs, they were lying inert on a platform in front of said sock. This frog could ride a bike. Again, mind-blowing.
Two things about the movie, though: The end of the show featured 'The Magic Store' and an aptly named song. Somehow, everything was brighter, sparkled, and gleamed bigger and brighter than before. Thatâs exactly how I pictured adulthood. Someday, I would grow up, and when I got there, a doorâmaybe like a door to a soundstageâwould open, and in I would walk, and it would be The Magic Store, or something like it, but maybe, well, probably without the Muppets. But there would be pomp and great fanfare.
As an adult, though, I can tell you there is no soundstage, there is no door, there is no great entrĂ©e to life thrusting a golden halo around itself, bathing you in warmth. This is your life. You have finally arrived. Find the fainting couch with your name on it, and all good things will come to you just by the wave of your hand. If this is supposed to be what happens, it hasnât yet.
What was the second thing about the movie? Ah. Well. When my own children were small, I picked up the DVD at Target and was incredibly enthused to share this childhood memory. Kermit and the Muppets were all the same as I remembered, but the cameosâalmost every person was dead. The grim realization wasnât offset by the brilliance of The Magic Store at the end, though. It was more a reminder that I, too, am temporary. What movie would my son and daughters show their own children and be reminded of their own mortality?
Chapter 1
Kate â mid -1990s
âI have an idea,â I said. âI think itâs a great idea.â
âOh, yeah?â said my roommate.
âI think so,â I replied. âI mean, I think itâs better than most of my other alternatives. Which, letâs face it, no one is banging down the door to offer me a job.â
We were lying on top of a blanket on the roof of her car, Sarah and I, sunning ourselves about a month shy of college graduation. Her plan was to get married. My plan was unformed. I would love to say my plan was incubating, but then there would have to be some sort of seed to sprout, or a cell line to propagate, a spore, something.
âI was thinking about becoming a salad maker.â
Sarah turned her head. âYou do make a good salad, and you do love to feed people, but is âsalad makerâ even a thing?â
âSomeone told me if you can conceive it, it must exist. If I follow the logic, then there is somewhere, someone in need of a salad maker. We just havenât found each other yet.â
âHmm,â she said. âWhat else are you thinking about?â
âI could temp, work retail, wait tables. Something along those lines. The job market isnât great. Grad school isnât off the table,â I paused. âI also like the idea of murder adventures.â
She sat up abruptly, dislodging pots and potions of tan accelerator and sunscreenâgetting the ratio perfect was key to getting a good glow without a burn.
âSorry. What?â Collecting herself, she scrutinized me. âI donât understand those words you strung together.â
Every time anyone asked me about my future plans, suddenly, salad maker seemed much more plausible and palatable, no pun intended. But why not make murder adventures? Not actual blood sport, though, at least not initially. But planning a murder could be a work of art. It could be an adventure on its own. Carrying out everything but the act itself. Debriefing, just like the Blue Angels after a missionâwhat worked, what didnât, what could be done differently. Could there be a market for it? Could this be some kind of corporate team-building business? Would I do this by myself? How would I find clients? How would I find a business partner or investors? What kind of person would want to put his or her name behind a business like this? What would I call it? Did anything like murder adventures already exist?
Business plan. I needed a business plan. I also needed to be able to do research without triggering any alarm bells and setting the National Security Council, Big Brother, or the Illuminati on my trail. And I definitely wanted to stay way the heck away from the Dark Web. In my early twenties, during a visit to the Grand Canyon, I realized how small I was in the grand scheme of things, and how little help there was depending on the circumstance. When night fell, we walked back to our hotel room, and there was enough light to illuminate our way, but beyond the rail separating civilization from what was out there, I could have been in my backyard, not standing along the rim of a pitch-black pit, and one unplanned step or clumsy move against the rail made grave difference, all under the same glittering stars and velvety night sky. That was my feeling about the Dark Web. Just leave it the fuck alone. And maybe, well, maybe it might leave me alone, too.
Chapter 2
The Pitch - excerpts
Iâd like to preface this meeting by stating we are noting that weâre only holding five pitch meetings, and we are only inviting five people to our pitch meetings. You are one of the select few. Congratulations. Before we dive into the pitch, though, I want to acknowledge that what we do is highly unorthodox. If this doesnât align with your interests... thatâs fine. Youâve already signed the non-disclosure agreement. Now, letâs get to why weâre here.
Weâve seen the movies, read the books. We understand the basic anatomy of murder and death from the media we consume. You know thereâs an event horizon defined by a murder. Death is imminent. In those moments of anticipation, you feel a subtle thrill, a frisson, about whatâs going to unfold.
We watch the bad guys get caught. Thereâs always an Achillesâ heel, it seems, that Johnny Law manages to exploit. But why? What went wrong? Was some detail overlooked? Was there a failure to planâor worse, a failure to plan for the unexpected? Perfection is unattainable. We must anticipate every tiny grain of sand potentially infecting or contaminating a microchip. The moment even one grain enters that closed system, whatâs the countermeasure? If there isnât one, the plan is sub-standard. The microchip, once infected, compromised, is headed straight for the scrap heap.
In business, when we fail to achieve a desired result, we look back to root cause. We go through the motions of PDCA â Plan, Do, Check, Act. And our improvements are iterative. However, when it comes to planning a murder, we donât have the luxury of being able to workshop. Everything has to be perfect, and all contingencies have to be considered at every step in the completion of the exercise, and the ability to pivot with complete agility has to be automatic.
Who are we, and what are we proposing, and why do you want to invest? We are Diamond Teams. We are a boutique consulting firm with a solitary product on offer. We plan murders. We do not commit murders, and our clients do not commit murders. We guide our clients through every step leading to committing the murder, ending just shy of actually doing the deed. Our execution is in the detail, the planning, the procedure, the full-scale roll-out of murder without actually pulling the trigger, and finally the debrief sessions.
I have one client who, as a team-building exercise, involved his senior leadership team, and we planned the murder of the leadership team of a rival corporation. They then carried out all the steps necessary to take out their targets. Their success was measured not in lives lost but in the act of performing surveillance, social engineering, and capturing video or photographic records of the completion of the final steps in their project, and evading detection by their targets and/or the authorities.
Each member of the team knew exactly what their roles and actions were in the steps assigned to them. They also knew Plan B if anything went amiss. They rehearsed. They monitored their heart rates to minimize panic responses in risky situations, and they used this to keep cool heads during practice operations. They not only learned about their targets, but they learned about themselves. Imagine if you could recognize a panic response but then convert it into a moment of complete clarity, allowing you the chance to change gears without stopping to think through all the pros and cons of what this action or that action may be. You lose no time because ALL the thinking has been done long before this occurrence of stress.
Since the first client, all of my business has been via word of mouth. We do not advertise, but we need your investment to hire more staff and infrastructure to accommodate the demand for our services. Our profit margin to date is 80%. We have no debt at this time, but we are at a point where capital is needed in order to grow in a logical and meaningful way without sacrificing quality or any of our other Key Performance Indicators.
Can you run an organization in which you train your clients on how to commit the perfect murder and make a respectable career out of it, of course doing so while not advocating for murder and with your hands always clean? In her book, It Could Have Been Murder, E.D. Rich explores this idea. The story follows Kate, who realizes her dream job and has fun running her organization. Well, until one guy decides to not play by the book as he remains hell-bent on accomplishing his mission.
A storyâs opening is like a gate that opens into a whole new world filled with intriguing people, and itâs exactly so if done right. In It Could Have Been Murder, the opening introduces us to Kate and her college roommate, setting the scene for a shocking revelation: Kate wants to open a business to plan murder adventures for C-suite executives and their teams, providing them with much-needed teambuilding. In a nutshell, the opening is an invitingly wide-open gate that offers glimpses into the lives of the people who reside in a world Rich created for them.
And just as I begin to wonder about what can go wrong here, Guy Brown spoils everything; he bursts the bubble and plants not only doubt but also fear in Kate. Rich adequately delves into Guyâs background so that readers get to know his motive and why heâd stop at nothing to ensure his objective is met. Thanks to Guy, Kateâs worries that she might âbe called as a material witness or be a defendant in a manslaughter or work her way into being in the crosshairs of someone so angry with her or the Diamond Teams...â appear to be coming true. In other words, Guy makes the book kind of âthe hunter and the huntedâ narrative.
There is much to commend about the plot, including an engaging prologue, a well-structured beginning, the middle, and thoughtful dialogue. While I want to avoid revealing too many spoilers, the first thing that impressed me about the book was Richâs writing. The prose is straightforward and does not distract the reader. When Sam, Kate, and Chris sit down in Biloxi to discuss Guy, their level of professionalism is impressive, and you have to give credit to Guy for breaching the highly advanced, impenetrable system.
What I love about this book is that itâs truly unique, at least in my experience. While there have been similar storiesâlike the TV show How to Get Away with MurderâIt Could Have Been Murder shifts the focus to a woman and her capable team. And the ending truly impressed me, as it aligns perfectly with the bookâs title. I am confident that crime fiction readers will enjoy it.