Fixed in Fear: A Justice Novel

by T. E. Woods

  A crimson flush washed over Moustache’s face. Jim wondered if it was anger or embarrassment.

  “There’s just the two of us,” he said. “Roscoe and I figured better to contain the scene. Leave the interrogation of witnesses to you detectives.”

  Jim turned to Micki. “You get the shots you need? Okay to turn him now?”

  Micki nodded. The two of them knelt and rolled the body over.

  “He’s a kid!” Micki’s eyes looked the body up and down. “Look at his face. This is a kid. A tall one, that’s for sure. But this is a kid.”

  Jim’s stomach tightened in that way it always did whenever he saw a dead child. After nearly three decades investigating homicides, he’d grown accustomed to seeing the cruelty one adult was capable of inflicting upon another. But he’d never gotten used to seeing the tortures someone was able to wreak on a child. He looked down into the dead boy’s face. Hot-chocolate skin as smooth as satin. Long, soft eyelashes curled at the edges of closed lids. The kid wore an old Seattle SuperSonics T-shirt under his denim jacket.

  Jim’s eyes scanned the boy’s body. Two entrance wounds were visible. Streaks of blood staining the front of his shirt and jacket suggested the first bullet entered the boy’s neck, nearly tearing out his throat. The second shot…the one in the middle of the kid’s chest…would have finished him off. Jim reached for the boy’s right hand. He saw no signs of powder burns. There had been no armed confrontation. This boy was gunned down. Jim’s jaw churned in anger when he looked at the boy’s left hand. He was holding a candy bar. The kid never even got a chance to open it.

  “This boy’s too young to drive,” Micki said. “He was walking. I’m betting he’s from this neighborhood.”

  Jim heard the sorrow in her voice. He wondered if she felt the same disgust he did. He looked up to where Officer Moustache and Officer Red Hair, who’d returned from separating the witnesses, stood.

  “I want you two over by the crowd. One stays and keeps them back. Take Bruiser. He’s an ace with mob control. The other brings groups over here. Five at a time. Go!”

  Jim saw Micki lay a hand on the boy’s leg. She stroked his shin…like she was comforting him…letting him know everything was going to be just fine. Jim noted that the boy wore nylon warm-up pants and bright orange Nikes the size of canoes.

  You’re a hoopster. Aren’t you, kid?

  Officer Red Hair brought the first group of onlookers to them.

  “Any of you recognize this boy?” Jim asked.

  Three women and two men shook their heads. One woman patted her hand against her chest, clucking her tongue and muttering something about how terrible it all was. Jim asked Red Hair to bring the next group to them. He watched as four women and a very old man approached. He didn’t have time to ask them anything. Three of the women shrieked in unison as soon as they saw the dead boy’s face.

  “Lord Jesus!” A woman in what looked like hospital scrubs yelled out. “It’s Banjo!”

  “It’s Banjo!” Another woman, middle-aged, at least a hundred pounds overweight and wearing bright pink shorts despite the late-September chill, cried out at the same time. “Little Banjo Jackson! Our baby Banjo is dead!”

  A third woman said nothing at all. She dropped to her knees and started wailing.

  —

  Ninety minutes later, Jim, Micki, and Bruiser headed back to their cars. Banjo’s body was on its way to the coroner’s office. Micki’s team had arrived and collected shell casings, assorted gum wrappers, cigarette butts, and a broken beer bottle littered about the scene. Two news vans had descended, demanding interviews, which Micki and Jim declined. They were each aware of television cameras following every step they took back to their vehicles. Jimmy opened the door to let Bruiser hop in and kept his back to the media as he spoke.

  “You okay?”

  Micki held a hand to the side of her mouth, thwarting any lip reader who might use a zoom lens to capture any police comments. “It’s tough, you know? Kids.”

  Jim nodded. “Let’s get back to the station. Get this party started.”

  “Who’s calling Mort?”

  Jim hesitated. “Let’s you and I take this one, Mick. Mort’s got his hands full at home.”

  Chapter 3

  Lydia sat behind the console of her communication center and cursed. She’d spent several hundred thousand dollars on this equipment. Nearly that much again on specialized upgrades, tailored software, and a genius tech who was more interested in the challenge than the reason and knew how to build her what she wanted without asking questions. Over the years it proved to be one of her finest investments. This gear…this secured room in her basement…had allowed her to monitor police activities and interactions around the world. It granted her the ability to track her targets. For years these monitors and keyboards and relays and servers had kept her effective, invisible, and safe.

  And now, when the stakes had never been higher, her investment yielded nothing.

  Mort’s daughter had kidnapped his granddaughter. Allie, a sociopath who could charm her father as easily as she could order someone’s death, had taken six-year-old Hadley away from her family. Mort was counting on Lydia to find them.

  And she was failing him.

  It had been only a few days ago. Three? Maybe four? Lydia and Mort had been having a glass of wine on his houseboat. Mort had just wrapped up a difficult case. Lydia saw no need to discuss what she knew about Allie’s recent murderous activities. She’d been so confident Allie was gone. So certain she’d done all she could to keep Mort and his family safe from his daughter’s self-serving evil.

  And then the phone rang.

  Mort’s son, Robbie, had called. Lydia watched the color drain from Mort’s face. She’d seen fear in his eyes as he directed his son. When Mort hung up, he turned to her. The subsequent days of no sleep and constant vigilance did nothing to wipe away the memory of Mort’s words.

  “Allie’s taken Hadley.” Mort relayed Robbie’s account. Apparently Mort’s granddaughters took baths after their dinner. Hayden went first while Hadley stayed in their room and read. When Hayden got out of the tub she went to tell her sister the bathroom was free. Hadley wasn’t there. Hayden didn’t think anything of it, grabbed a robe and a brush, and went downstairs to have her mother brush her hair. Then Robbie sent Hayden back upstairs to get into her pajamas.

  That’s when Hayden found the note from her twin. It was in the pajama drawer. Hadley wrote, in sprawling red crayon, that she was off on an adventure.

  Robbie and Claire searched the house. When they couldn’t find her, they pressed Hayden. The little girl must have recognized the frenzy in her parents’ voices and told them about the phone. Allie had somehow gotten one to Hadley. Hayden found out about it, but her sister had sworn her to secrecy.

  “Allie must have made arrangements with Hadley. Convinced her to scoot out of the house.” Mort’s face was a mask of frustration. “Robbie and Claire teach the girls about stranger danger. But Allie’s their aunt. Hadley would have thought it a fun game if Allie suggested a secret run for pizza or ice cream. She has over an hour’s lead on them.”

  Lydia still lived with the dread she felt that night. Mort knew some of his daughter’s crimes. But he had no idea what Lydia had learned. Allie had ordered the death of an innocent child in order to teach the young girl’s father a lesson in obedience. Mort knew nothing of that. He also was ignorant of Lydia’s personal experience with Allie’s depravity.

  Allie had returned to Seattle after years living with one international crime lord after another. She wanted to reconnect with her family and was enraged when Mort, Robbie, and Claire had denied her access to the twins. When Lydia had refused Allie’s request to intervene on her behalf, Allie unleashed her vengeance, sending her henchman to Lydia’s door. Lydia still bore the bruises of that violent assault.

  Lydia leaned forward and entered a search request into her keyboard. Her query would require bypassing law enforcement fire walls, bu
t her equipment was up to the task. Two heartbeats later a listing of police dispatches in King County appeared on her screen. She scanned them all. Robberies, car thefts, accidents, domestic conflict…the entries revealed nothing out of the ordinary for a large metropolitan area.

  No murders reported since I checked this morning, she thought. They haven’t found Staz’s body yet.

  But Allie surely knew by now the man she’d sent to beat, subdue, and kidnap Lydia was dead. And she’d know it was by Lydia’s hand.

  I expected to hear from you again, Allie. You’re a woman who takes her revenge and I’d have been ready for you. But I wasn’t ready for this. Not this.

  Lydia had been able to track Allie’s path out of the country. According to manifestos filed with the FAA, Allie had chartered a private jet the night Hadley disappeared, leaving Seattle at 6:42 with a flight plan destined for Toronto. Two passengers: one adult, one child. But her plane touched down in Calgary. Lydia was able to access the digital log when the charter pilot checked in. His notes stated the adult passenger requested an emergency landing due to illness, but refused medical treatment upon landing. It was the last line of his report that haunted Lydia.

  Passenger left airport accompanied by minor passenger in private vehicle. This pilot returning to base.

  She remembered Mort’s frenzy when she relayed the news.

  “They could be anywhere,” he’d said. “Allie has international connections. She has a network. She could have had another plane waiting. They could be on a train or in a car. We’ve got nothing.”

  Mort was right. Allie wasn’t constrained in any way. She had an endless stream of money. Connections that spanned the globe fed by the one motivator no one could resist: fear. Allie’s pathology held her free of any moral restraint a healthy human being might have. She would stop at nothing to achieve her goals. She’d do anything, say anything, sacrifice anything to get what she wanted.

  Even her niece.

  Lydia slammed her hand against the console. She threw herself back in her chair and raked her fingers through her hair.

  And the overhead lights in her office dimmed ever so subtly.

  Lydia snapped to attention. Someone was on her property. The nearly imperceptible fade of her lights had been a signal she’d asked her electrician to install. It tripped whenever someone approached her home and was part of an overall security system that would make the Secret Service jealous.

  She wasn’t expecting anyone. She never expected anyone on the two-acre estate she’d transformed into her fortress. She leaned forward, entered another command into her keyboard, and a six-screen display appeared on her monitor, each camera recording a different aspect of her property. The tension clenching her spine relaxed as she identified the car driving up her long driveway. Lydia shut down her computer, locked her communications room, and bounded up the stairs in time to open her front door to her visitor.

  “Mort.” He looked like hell. Stubble shaded his cheeks and chin. His skin had the ashen pallor of someone surviving on caffeine and no sleep. His bloodshot eyes seemed to stare at something just a little behind her. “Come in.”

  He walked past her, more robot than human. “Anything?”

  She closed the door and followed him down the hall. This time he didn’t stop to drink in her view of Dana Passage, the islands, and the snow-capped mountains in the distance. This time he didn’t ask her how she was or how her day was going. This time he seemed to use the last bit of energy available to him to find his way to her sofa and collapse.

  Lydia would have taken twenty years off her life to be able to give him something. She sat on a chair across from him, her heart breaking at the sight of his depleted body and crushed spirit.

  “I’m tracking the credit cards I know she’s used in the past. There’s been no activity since she left the Larchmont. I captured a few photos of Hadley that Robbie and Claire had posted on Facebook. I’ve got those synched to surveillance cameras at airports and train stations both in the U.S. and internationally. My computer’s programmed to search and alert if there’s any facial recognition beyond 60 percent.”

  “Anything?” This time he didn’t bother to ask how she came to have the type of equipment most governments couldn’t afford.

  “Nothing yet. We’ll find her, Mort. We’ll bring Hadley home.”

  He didn’t seem convinced.

  “What’s on your end?” she asked.

  “The FBI’s still camped out at Robbie’s. There’s still the trap on the phone. And of course there’s the APB out on Allie.” He ran his hand across face and sighed. “But it’s all useless. Allie’s not going to call. She doesn’t want ransom. She wants Hadley.”

  She wants revenge, Lydia thought. She’s bound to destroy us all. She’ll wage her war on your family by taking Hadley. And she’ll punish me by leaving me helpless to do anything.

  “I’ll find her, Mort. I promise you. Has the FBI brought in any international agencies?”

  Mort shook his head. “They’re operating as if she’s still local.”

  “They’re what? She was in Calgary. The charter pilot dropped them off when Allie feigned illness. My God, Mort. She’s in the wind. Her connections are more European and Russian than American. Why aren’t they on it?”

  “They don’t know about Calgary. They don’t know about the jet Allie chartered.”

  “Why not for God’s sake?”

  “I can’t tell them what you’ve learned. Not without implicating you. They’d have all kinds of questions about how you were able to learn what you did. And once they got a load of your system…well, let’s say that would kick off all sorts of questions. The kind of questions that would lead to answers we don’t want known.”

  “Tell them! Tell them who I am. Tell them how I’ve come to have the hacking power I do. Tell them why I needed it. Tell them I’m The Fixer and bring Hadley home!”

  “But it won’t bring Hadley home, Liddy.” Mort spoke in a fierce whisper. “The whole damn agency will get so wrapped up in the drama of bringing you in that any search for Hadley will be shoved to the back burner.”

  Lydia realized he was right. She could see the headlines now. INTERNATIONAL ASSASSIN CAPTURED…MYTH IS REAL: THE FIXER IS CAUGHT. News stations would fixate on Lydia’s exploits and Allie would have all the time she needed to take Hadley to a place no one would ever find her.

  Until she tired of her. Until she decided the time was right to deliver her final, vengeful blow that would destroy everyone who loves that little girl.

  Lydia stood and walked down the hall. She grabbed blankets and pillows from a hall closet, came back to the living room, and set them beside the man who’d given her everything…her freedom…his trust…the hope that she could be whole again. And he expected nothing in return.

  “Sleep, Mort. Sleep here where you don’t have to be strong for anyone.”

  She didn’t have to ask him twice. His exhaustion was complete. Mort kicked off his shoes, stuffed a pillow at the end of the sofa, and laid down. By the time Lydia opened the blanket and covered him, his breath had already fallen into the deep steady cadence of slumber.

  She stood over him.

  “I’ll bring Hadley home,” she whispered. “Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs.”

  Whoever has to die.

  Every great mystery needs an Alibi

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