Mortal Faults

by Michael Prescott

“Well preserved?”

  “Fuck should I know? Who gives a shit?”

  Bran had that dreamy look he got sometimes. “Some of these women, they’re still plenty fuckable at fifty. You know, if they got like plastic surgery and shit.”

  Dylan was getting pissed. “You wanna fuck some Valley grandma with a nip-and-tuck job, you do it on your own time. Our job’s to go in, get it done, and be gone.”

  “Still say it would be smarter to wait.” That was Tupelo, his voice jumpy and high. “Nighttime is when shit like this goes down. Whack her in her sleep, she never knows what hit her.”

  Dylan was inclined to agree, but his orders were clear. “Boss says it’s urgent. Time-sensitive, is how he said it.”

  “This bitch has lived fifty years. She can’t live another couple hours?”

  “I don’t ask questions when it’s the boss on the phone. Neither should you. Case you forgot, we took a goddamned oath.”

  All three of them had sworn loyalty to their brothers. Included in their pledge was the duty to follow orders without hesitation or doubt.

  “It’s the mission,” Dylan added. “Okay?”

  “Fuck, yeah.” Bran sounded sleepier than before. “Let’s blip this hag and get it over with. I got things to do.”

  “Equipment check,” Dylan said.

  They ran through a checklist of their gear. Holstered to their belts were matte-black Heckler & Koch MK-23 combat pistols, the six-inch inch barrels extended with SOS-45 silencer modules that reduced the guns’ noise output by forty decibels. Each pistol was loaded with a military-style twelve-round clip holding a dozen .45 +P jacketed hollowpoints, with a thirteenth round chambered. The hollowpoints expanded on impact for maximum stopping power. Ammo pouches held spare clips.

  Sheathed to each pistol belt was an Mk III combat knife, the same knife issued to Navy SEALs. It had a six-inch stainless steel blade with a nonreflective black finish. Dylan had wetted his blade with blood only once, when he’d had to take out a security guard without making any noise. He still remembered the way the guy flopped like a landed mackerel in a pool of blood from his slit throat. It was a hoot, seeing him kick and thrash.

  All three of them wore dark blue sweatshirts and navy blue denim jeans, the pant legs tucked into their sneakers to minimize the risk of DNA transfer. Indigo provided better camouflage in the dark than jet black. Their sneakers were the same color, and the white highlights had been colored with purple felt markers so they wouldn’t show up in the shadows. Their gloves—flexible Isotoners—were black, as were the ski masks they pulled over their heads.

  For long distance communication they carried walkie-talkies, but when within sight of each other, they would communicate with hand signals like SWAT commandos. Hell, they might as well have been SWAT guys. They had the gear, the suits, the attitude. Only thing they didn’t have was a badge, and they didn’t need one.

  Dylan carried a few extras—a penlight, a lucky penny, and a small mirror on a collapsible stalk, useful for peeking around corners. He didn’t plan on using the mirror today. This was no stealth op; it was strictly wham, bam, goodbye, ma’am.

  “We good to go?” Dylan asked when the checklist was complete.

  “Yeah, we’re good.” Bran sounded bored.

  “Fuck, yes.” Tupelo was rubbing his gloved hands like a maniac.

  Dylan nodded. “Let’s get paid.”

  They got out of the van. Dylan felt his heart working hard. He wasn’t scared. This woman posed no threat. She was nobody, just some civilian to be zippered. Another day at the office, another thousand bucks in his pocket. But any hit got his juices flowing. It was a high, like doing lines of coke—not that he did that shit anymore. He’d been clean for two years come October. High on life—that’s what he was. Or on death, maybe. High on death, yeah.

  His mouth was dry under the ski mask. He licked his lips. It was a warm August afternoon fragrant with oleander and honeysuckle, and a good time for a woman to die.

  16

  “You killed your children,” Abby said slowly.

  Andrea faced her. “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “If I could answer that ...” She broke eye contact, turning away. “I’ve spent twenty years trying to understand why. The psychiatrists worked on me. I think they enjoyed it. I was a challenge. But they never figured me out. The media people all had their theories, too. There was a book—I didn’t read it. A book about me that was supposed to explain it all. But how could a book explain it when even I didn’t know?”

  Abby watched her, trying to imagine Andrea Lowry as a younger woman, a mother of small children. “You said you were famous.”

  Andrea released an incongruous little laugh. “I suppose infamous would be the right word. They called me Medea. That was the nickname they came up with, the newspaper people. You know, the woman in Greek mythology. Her husband betrayed her with another woman, so Medea killed their children. Killed them just for spite. Then she escaped in a chariot drawn by flying dragons.” She gazed moodily toward the curtained window. “Medea was luckier than I’ve been. I’ve never escaped.”

  “What happened to you after—after you ...?”

  “I shot myself.” She said it simply, without emotion. “Put a bullet in my head. Or tried to, anyway. I actually grazed my skull just behind the ear—this ear.” She pulled back a tuft of hair to expose a scar. “I would have bled to death, except the neighbors heard the gunshots and called nine-one-one. The police got me into surgery. The surgeon saved my life.” She replaced the spill of hair with an unsteady hand. “I wish he hadn’t. I should have died then.”

  The story was moving too fast. Abby wanted to slow it down. “Where did you get the gun you used?”

  “I bought it when I first moved to California. Even back then, everyone talked about crime. I was brought up in a small town in Oregon where people kept their doors unlocked. So I was scared. I never thought—never thought I would turn out to be the criminal, myself.”

  “Okay,” Abby said softly. “So, once you recovered from surgery ...?”

  “The psychiatrists started in on me. Trying to get me to remember. I didn’t, you see. Didn’t remember any of it. That evening was a total blank. Amnesia, the product of posttraumatic stress—that’s how they diagnosed it. Would have been simpler to say there are some things a person just can’t stand to face. Are you thirsty?”

  The unexpected question caught Abby up short. “I’m okay.”

  “Well, I’m thirsty. I haven’t talked so much a long time.”

  She went into the kitchen, and Abby followed, waiting while Andrea poured herself a tall glass of lemonade. The kitchen was dark and windowless. There was no sunlight in this house, and Abby now knew why.

  “Anyway,” Andrea said after a long swallow, “they said I’d had a psychotic break. I’d been in a fugue state. I hadn’t known what I was doing. Temporary insanity. Which was true, of course. It had to be true. No rational person would have done what I did. No one who was not insane ...”

  She took another gulp of lemonade. Ice clinked in the glass. Her hand was shaking.

  “But I wonder, does that absolve me of guilt? If I wasn’t myself when I did it, does that mean I’m not responsible? And if I’m not, who is? Someone must be—or something. A sin of that magnitude must have a cause. And the cause must be me or something inside me, something hidden that came into the light just that one time ...”

  “A demon,” Abby said, understanding.

  Andrea nodded, her eyes dark and sad. “We fool ourselves by thinking we’re in control of our actions. Then something like this happens, and we realize we’ve never had control. There are only urges and impulses that move us, like—like currents under the sea, like a riptide, an undertow, and they drag us where we never meant to go.”

  Abby was beginning to wish she’d asked for some lemonade. Her mouth was dry. “Were you put on trial?”

  Andrea answered with a shake of her head. “I was ruled inc
ompetent. Remanded to the custody of a mental institution. I stayed there for twelve years.” She let those words settle in the air like a sentence of doom. “And they worked with me. They got me to remember. They brought back the memory of what I did that night. Thanks to them, I can relive it whenever I like. That’s what twelve years of treatment brought me. A memory I never wanted.”

  “Unless you remember,” Abby said, “you can never move past it.”

  Andrea’s tongue clucked. “You sound just like them. You could be a psychiatrist yourself.”

  “I earned a degree in that field. Never got licensed, though.”

  “Apparently you don’t believe in licenses.”

  “I’m a free spirit.”

  “Yes, I think you are. I sensed that about you when we met. It made me envy you. I may have been a free spirit once. I can’t recall. It was so long ago.” She looked away. “It’s a lie, anyhow—what you said.”

  “What’s a lie?”

  “That by remembering, I can move past it. I can never move past it. Remembering only etches the pain deeper. It doesn’t resolve anything. It doesn’t bring closure.” Her tone was hollow. “There can never be closure.”

  “How about forgiveness?”

  “Never that, either.”

  Abby touched Andrea’s arm, a light touch, the outreach of one human being to another. “People do things in a state of psychosis that have nothing to do with their moral values or their character.”

  Andrea didn’t withdraw from the touch, but neither did she seem comforted by it. “So I shouldn’t blame myself? But I took out the gun. I loaded it. I pulled the trigger. So who gets the blame? The demon who possessed me—that’s what I’d like to think. But that demon was part of me, was in me.” Now she pulled free of Abby’s hand. “And somewhere it still is.”

  “The doctors must have felt otherwise, or they wouldn’t have released you.”

  Her shoulders lifted listlessly. “They said I was no longer a danger to myself or others. They let me go. I spent six months in a halfway house. Then I was on my own. I didn’t want to be anywhere near California. So I moved to Florida. It was about as far away as I could get. I rented a cheap place, and did some entry-level jobs. It was all right. I was almost happy at times. I would walk on the beach in the evening and feel ... almost whole.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t stay there.”

  Andrea looked at her. “So am I, really. I don’t understand it, myself. But last year I started to feel ... started to feel I had to come back. Had to be in California again. I don’t know why. There’s nothing for me here. Nothing but memories ... bad memories ...”

  “So here you are.”

  “Yes. Here I am. My parents died years ago. They left enough money for me to buy this house and pay my bills without working anymore, as long as I didn’t indulge in any extravagances. Of course, I had no desire to indulge myself. I only wanted to be left alone. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “And have you been? Left alone, I mean.”

  “Not at first. When I was in the halfway house, they would still come after me—the newspaper people, the magazine people, the TV people. They wouldn’t let me be. Most of the public had forgotten by then, but those people would never forget. To them I was an open sore, and all they could do was scratch and make me bleed.”

  “That’s why you changed your name.”

  Andrea smiled a little, in acknowledgment of this small victory, this successful deception. “Yes. I found a way. It was illegal, but ... well, I suppose you know all about that kind of thing. The name you gave me was an alias. You probably have documents to back it up, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So do I. By the time I moved to Florida, I was Andrea Lowry. No one tracked me down. No one recognized me. It was ... wonderful.”

  “One more reason to stay in the Sunshine State.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But something drew me back. Still, I've kept a low profile. No one has intruded on me or questioned my past. I did worry that the absence of any credit history would prevent me from buying this house, but I was paying cash out of the inheritance, so the seller didn't care.”

  “They wouldn't have cared, anyway,” Abby said. “A blank credit history simply means you have no record of defaults. There are no red flags. That's all they ever look for.”

  “I knew you'd be an expert on it. How many identities do you have?”

  Abby had actually lost count. “I’ve used a few,” she answered vaguely.

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Changing your identity. Becoming someone else.”

  “I guess I do.” Oddly, she’d never thought about it before.

  Andrea seemed unsurprised. “I thought I would enjoy it. I thought—this is how naïve I was—I thought it would make me free. Of course it didn't.”

  “But the reporters couldn't find you.”

  “True, I was free of them. But that wasn’t freedom. I was still the same person, only with a different name. I had the same memories, the same bad dreams—and the same good dreams, which were worse than nightmares, because they would never last, and I would wake up, and the children wouldn’t be there after all, and it wasn’t their hair I was smelling, only my pillow...”

  Abby almost reached out again, but stopped herself, knowing the gesture would be rejected. “You may not believe me,” she said, “but I think you’ve suffered enough. There’s a statute of limitations on any kind of pain, any kind of guilt.”

  Andrea’s eyes were empty. “Not this kind.”

  ***

  Scaling the old lady’s fence was no problem. There was no dog in the backyard and no indication of a security system protecting the property.

  Dylan tracked down the junction box on the rear wall of the house. The phone cable, dropping down from a utility pole in the alley, was heavy and tough to cut, which was why normally he would pry open the box to work on the wiring inside. In this case he didn’t have to. A pair of red and green telco wires extended out of the bottom of the box and snaked through the siding on the wall. Sloppy, leaving them exposed like that. Some phone company drone had been in a hurry when he did the installation.

  Dylan unsheathed his knife and sliced the wires. Now the house had no phone service, unless the woman had a cell phone.

  He pointed at Bran, wordlessly instructing him to take up a position in the yard where he could cover their avenue of escape. One thing Dylan had learned was to always keep your exit lane open.

  Bran crouched beside a leafy eucalyptus and signaled that he was ready. Dylan led Tupelo to the back door. It was locked. Not a spring latch, either. Goddamned pain-in-the-ass dead bolt. But there was a glass pane in the door, which would make things easier.

  “Wish I’d brought a glass cutter and some tape,” Dylan whispered through his mask.

  “Fuck that,” Tupelo said, and with the butt of his H & K he cracked the pane into a starburst pattern.

  The impact made no more noise than the snap of a twig. Still, Dylan was pissed.

  “I tell you to do that?” he breathed. “You wait for my goddamned order.”

  Tupelo looked away, his eyes twitching in the ski mask’s slits. “Just wanna get it done,” he mumbled.

  Dylan inspected the damage. The glass was holding together, but one stiff breeze would blow it apart. Again he wished he had some sticky tape. Could have taped over the fragments and pulled them away without a sound. As it was, he would have to push in the panel and hope the old lady wasn’t listening.

  ***

  “You haven’t told me,” Abby said, “how Reynolds fits into all this.”

  “No, I haven’t, have I?” Andrea hesitated, then made a flick of the wrist, as if dismissing some unheard counsel of caution. “I suppose I can tell you. I—”

  “Wait.” Abby held up a hand.

  From the rear of the house there was a tinkle of breaking glass.

  *** />
  The shards fell away with a touch of Dylan’s gloved hand. They hit the floor with a soft metallic clatter like the jingling of bells. He stuck his arm through the hole and groped for the dead-bolt release. In a second the door was unlocked. He pushed it open and was dismayed to hear the low, prolonged squeal of unoiled hinges.

  The old lady might have heard that, even if she’d missed the noise of the falling glass. They would have to move fast before she hightailed it out the front door.

  He entered the rear hall, leading Tupelo, their sneakers treading soundlessly on the bare wooden floor.

  ***

  Abby glanced at Andrea and saw the woman’s eyes widen in fear.

  “What’s back there?” Abby whispered.

  “Door to the backyard. There’s a glass pane in the door.”

  Down the rear hallway came a long screeee of hinges. The door, opening.

  A bad time to be unarmed. Abby’s purse, with the gun in it, was in the living room.

  But there was another gun—Andrea’s. Abby pulled open the kitchen drawer and grabbed the revolver inside.

  “This thing still loaded?” she whispered.

  Andrea nodded.

  The gun in her hand made Abby feel a little better, but not much. Getting into a shootout at close quarters wasn’t her idea of a good time. Too many things could go wrong. And as long as she and Andrea were stuck in the kitchen, the intruder had the advantage. He could corner them and finish them off from the doorway.

  Andrea had frozen. But there was no time for fear. In a tactical situation, the first thirty seconds were the most critical.

  Abby grabbed Andrea by the shoulder and hustled her into the living room. The front door beckoned, but it was too far away, and besides, there might be someone else waiting outside, hoping to pick them off if they tried to flee.

  And her purse—it, too, was out of reach.

  She pivoted toward a side hallway and took it at a run, Andrea following. There were two doors in the hall. One was shut. Before Abby could try it, Andrea gasped, “Closet.”

  The other door was ajar. Abby pushed it open and led Andrea into what was obviously the master bedroom, lit by a lamp on the night table, with a closet, a bathroom, and two curtained windows that must face the backyard.