Tom Burns paused, peering intently into the night. Not a soul was in sight although that didn't mean a lot considering that the fog was so thick he couldn't see more than a few feet. The fact was, he didn't want to see anyone -- or especially have anyone see him. Not when he was on a job.

He could hear dogs barking in the distance, but that didn't concern him. He had been promised they would be locked up, just as he had been assured that Cellular Farms would be deserted except for a security guard at the main gate. And that was a long way off.

Puffing like a jumper that had just been put through its paces, the out-of-shape, corpulent Burns, using a tiny penlight to illuminate his path, zigzagged through the trees at a respectable clip, angling toward the barn. Like everything else at the extravagant horse-training facility that sprawled over 50 very valuable acres on the New York-Connecticut line near Greenwich, the horse house was posh almost beyond belief. Roomy stalls. Engraved nameplates. Brass poles everywhere with built-in electrical outlets. It was a long way from what Burns was used to.

He slowed to catch his breath. Even though there was no sign of anyone about, Burns, gulping in the cold, damp air, commanded himself to be cautious. While he was anxious to get the job done he didn't want to take a chance that he might be spotted, not after the way he had paraded himself around the main compound earlier in the day. At the time, he couldn't help but gawk: Cellular Farms, owned by the superrich Lindemann family, was unlike any other horse farm he had ever seen. Covering the ground were Old World cobblestones, rounded, well-worn and ancient looking. The buildings themselves had undeniable European lines, not surprising since they had been imported and painstakingly re-assembled piece-by-piece. With shrubbery, a lush lawn and seasonally flowering plants the main courtyard resembled a garden, right down to its memorable centerpiece. Burns had done a doubletake when he saw that; it was a three-foot-tall statue of Buddha.

  His main fear was that while he had been acting like a tourist he might have been recognized by any of the 10 or so workers who were scampering around making preparations to transport the Cellular Farm horses to Florida for the beginning of the 1991 show-horse competition. The fact that there were so many people around worried Burns. In the eight years he had been working as a horse hit-man he had always been careful about avoiding being tied directly to a crime. He did have a reputation, of course. He wasn't called The Sandman for nothing. It was true that when he showed up at a facility otherwise healthy horses mysteriously "went to sleep," but, because he always had been prudent, there was nothing more than gossip to actually connect him to the deaths.

But he felt that this night he was pushing his luck. Even though it was nigh onto 10 o'clock and the weather was in his favor, he knew he was taking a chance. If he had his druthers, he would have waited a few days. In fact, he had argued vigorously with Marilyn Hulick about the wisdom of carrying out the execution on the very day of his visit. It didn't make sense, he had contended. All it would take was some nosy and observant groom to tie the sudden death of a very expensive horse to Burns's unexpected appearance. But the tough-looking bottle blonde who managed Cellular Farms with an iron fist had been adamant. Her words still rang in Burns's ears: "I want it done tonight," she had insisted.

"Why?" Burns had asked, perplexed. "What's the hurry?"

"Because George is out of the country," Hulick had replied, referring to George Lindemann Jr., the diminutive Olympic equestrian hopeful entrusted with running the elaborate facility. Still in his mid-twenties, Lindemann had been given the keys to the facility soon after he had graduated from Brown University by his parents, George Sr. and his wife, Frayda. "Make it go," said his father, who had amassed a fortune estimated at $600 million - $800 million by manufacturing contact lenses and mobile telephones and was then involved in natural gas.

Up to then, however, the younger Lindemann had not been able to bring the operation out of the red; Cellular Farms was losing up to a million dollars a year. Lindemann's driving ambition was to be a member of the U.S. equestrian team in the Olympics and Cellular Farms was his vehicle. As the man who called the shots, one of his decisions had been to spend $250,000 for a promising horse named Charisma, a handsome bay hunter with championship potential. But there was a problem: In the year that Lindemann had been riding Charisma, the horse had been a shockingly inconsistent performer. Instead of helping to anchor Lindemann's Olympic dreams, Charisma had proved a tremendous disappointment. That was why Burns had been called in; the horse was to be murdered and the insurance money would keep the investment from being a total loss.

Hulick had locked her brown eyes on Burns and set her jaw. "It has to be tonight," she repeated. "George is gone and tomorrow we're moving the horses to Florida. It has to be done before then."

Burns had reluctantly agreed. After all, Hulick was offering a lot of money. He would get his usual fee of 10 percent of the horse's insured value, in this case $25,000. Plus expenses, naturally. Another $10,000. If Hulick wanted him to drop everything back in Libertyville, Illinois, and fly east on a moment's notice she would have to pay for the prompt service.

Sweating despite the cold, partly because of the unaccustomed exercise and partly because he was starting to feel the effects of the half dozen drinks he had bolted down on the way to Cellular Farms, Burns quietly let himself in through the unlocked barn door. As unerringly as if he had been there a hundred times instead of just once, he went straight to the horse that Hulick had led him to earlier, ignoring the other 20 or so animals.

Outside it had been deathly still; the only noise had been the faraway barking of the dogs. Inside the barn, though, it was considerably noisier. Horses shifted restlessly in their stalls, banging loudly against the boards, and emitting explosive snorts that sounded vaguely like the barks of seals in West Coast rookeries. Burns inhaled deeply. The feral-like horse smell and the pungent odor of equine urine relaxed him, bringing back memories of happy hours spent around his aunt's stable when he had been a child, soon after his parents had been divorced and before he ran away seeking adventure and money.

Cocking his head, Burns listened intently trying to filter out the background noise to see if he could detect sounds indicating the presence of another two-legged creature. Hearing none, he slowly approached the stall marked by a brass plate engraved with the name Montash, the previous occupant.

Burns moved slowly so as not to spook Charisma, a strategy more cautionary than necessary. Show horses are accustomed to strangers being about: stablehands, grooms, veterinarians, trainers, riders, even visitors, move through barns in a steady stream at all kinds of weird hours. After a few months of that, horses learn to accept an alien presence with equanimity. This was especially true of Charisma, who was remarkably good-natured and gregarious, openly welcoming anyone who approached him.

Still, Burns moved slowly and deliberately, carefully uncoiling his "rig," a specially adapted, heavy duty electrical extension cord with alligator clips at the end where the female plug normally would have been. Holding the penlight in his teeth so his hands would be free, Burns gently stroked Charisma's forehead, whispering softly. Charisma bobbed his head and rolled a large friendly brown eye in Burns's direction, seemingly happy with the unexpected attention. Still talking quietly to the gelding, Burns attached one of the clips from his rig to Charisma's ear.

Backing slowly away, he moved to the horse's hindquarters and delicately lifted his tail. Inured by countless veterinary examinations, Charisma stood patiently when Burns attached the other clip to the flesh around his anus.

Giving Charisma a final pat, Burns hustled out of the stall and made his way quickly to a nearby brass pole where he knew from his afternoon visit there was an electrical outlet. Without hesitation, he rammed the male end of the cord into the receptacle. As he had come to learn through vast prior experience, the result was immediate; Charisma dropped as if struck by lightning. Except for the heavy thump when the high-priced animal hit the floor, there was no sound at all, not even a grunt.

One of the major advantages of electrocution, which was Burns's favorite method of execution, one he had deviated from only once and that had been six years before when he used a drug to incite a heart attack in a horse named Town Gossip, was that it was almost always undectable. Unless the killer was careless and misattached the alligator clips so they left burn marks, electrocution was undiscernible even with the most thorough autopsy. The only way to tell for sure if a horse had been deliberately killed by electrocution was for the killer or the person who hired him to confess.

Shrugging in his heavy jacket, Burns re-entered the stall, carefully stepping over the steaming pile of manure that Charisma had evacuated in death, and collected his rig. Another thing he liked about electrocution was that he was convinced it was painless. He had heard of other horse hit-men who used different methods. Fire was popular with some killers; ping-pong balls shoved up the nostrils or a plastic bag secured around the head were favored by others. But to Burns, electrocution seemed the most humane and that was important to his self-image. Burns thought of himself as a compassionate killer.