Catalyst

by Steve Winshel

  “I hear the crime guys coming up the drive. They’ll need an hour to poke around. Let’s go talk to your sister.”

  This time she didn’t push by but looked at Josh and waited. He held her look, then turned and went past Crevins who had been silent during the exchange. Josh had made the decision. He would not tell about Helen. He didn’t know what she would do. Maybe killing Crawford meant he and Allison would both be murdered now as punishment. Or maybe it didn’t matter and just getting her the design would make it all okay. Josh didn’t know and he couldn’t take a chance. He would have to deal later with the consequences of lying to the police. He needed to get through the next few hours, figure out a plan, and get in touch with Helen. Her first threat had been real: get the design by Friday or they would kill Allison. Josh wouldn’t doubt her again.

  * * *

  Three hours later, the house was empty of strangers. The uniformed cops left last, after the coroner took Crawford’s body out the back way through the garage. There was no yellow police ribbon like you see in the movies. This wasn’t a crime scene, it was a tragic case of self defense. Pictures were taken and Allison and Josh were asked every conceivable question. Rigas and Crevins had left a while ago, Crevins giving Josh his sympathy and his card; Rigas just giving him a long stare. Josh was anxious to be alone for a few minutes so he could get his thoughts together and decide what to do. Lying to Rigas was a commitment, now he needed to follow through. What that meant wasn’t clear, but he had to start by making sure Allison was out of danger. He would have to explain it to her.

  Josh practiced the conversation he imagined having with Allison, a habit that was starting to worry him as he began noticing how as he got older, these conversation were sometimes taking place out loud instead of just in his head. It didn’t sound so convincing as he rehearsed it, knowing it would seem absurd to Allison:

  “Allison, the man I beat to death has a partner. They want something from my work and were going to kill you because I was late giving it to them. I don’t know what the partner will do now; she’s a very scary woman. I’ve decided to try to do what she wants and not get the police involved. That’s what she told me to do.”

  Like he was telling her he was going to change the oil in the car himself instead of taking it to a mechanic. Why wouldn’t he just go to the police? Josh knew Helen was serious. Killing Crawford probably didn’t change what she wanted and more likely made her more dangerous. He had no doubt she would take the Ventrica design and follow through on her threats. She was psychotic, he saw that, but was she more attached to her equally crazy partner or her business? If it was the latter, then Josh had to continue to follow her instructions despite the horror of last night. That meant telling no one.

  There was only one way to be sure. He would follow through, deliver the Ventrica, and see what she would do. If Allison were safely away, somewhere no one could find her, he could take the chance Helen wouldn’t seek revenge and this was just business. He could always bring the police in if it spiraled out of control.

  Josh found Allison in the guest bedroom, cleaning up. The large bloodstain on the floor didn’t phase her – she was back in charge. Picking up the items that had been strewn across the room, the heard him coming down the hall and stopped what she was doing when he got to the door.

  “You really should go to the hospital.”

  Josh shook his head. His voice had come back completely and, despite the ugliness of the cut on his throat, the only real discomfort came from the ache in the back of his neck. Being lifted off your feet as Crawford had done strained every muscle in Josh’s neck and it would be days before he could fully turn his head without some pain. Allison sat on the edge of the bed and fixed him with a stare.

  “Cut the baloney. What’s going on? And don’t give me the story about not knowing the guy.” She had sympathy in her eyes, but stronger was the desire to know what the hell was going on so she could do something about it. Josh hesitated, knowing she would feel guilty when she understood she had been the target, that she was the weakness Crawford and Helen were using to get to him. Josh looked at his feet, around the room, then to the stain on the floor. His gaze settled on his sister, who shared the same piercing eyes.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” was his start. And he explained what had happened starting that night in Minneapolis earlier in the week. Allison’s eyes got wide, like she was watching a television show where something unbelievable and scary was happening. But as Josh got to the part about coming home and finding Crawford, her look narrowed. She was pissed, like Josh had been angry when he realized he was being threatened.

  “Call the police. Right now, call that detective, Crevins. Josh, goddamnit, do it now.”

  Josh shook his head. “She’d know Crawford didn’t get to you. This woman will keep coming, she’ll find a way. And if I call in the police, then she’ll know I’m never going to give her the Ventrica. The only way out is to give it to her. And I can’t do that if you’re in danger.” He said this as firmly as he could, knowing exactly what her response would be.

  “That isn’t happening. This psycho broke into your house, tried to kill me, and is threatening you. I’m sticking around and I’m gonna help you deal with this.”

  “I get it, and I appreciate it. But this isn’t open for debate – you’ll be more hindrance than help. I’m sorry. That’s it.”

  Allison saw the resolve and was not happy. She mulled how hard she wanted to push, and despite the instinct to fight, she was also very afraid.

  “Okay. I’ll go. But it needs to be somewhere not too far away so I can get back if I need to. And it has to be somewhere they can’t find me.”

  Josh knew she’d already made a decision about what she would do and was just prepping him.

  “I’ll go stay with George.” She said it with a smile, an inside joke. And it was. George was an ex-boyfriend. She’d met him years earlier during a spiritual, touchy-feely phase in her life. Josh hadn’t particularly approved, but she didn’t give him much say in the matter. She had broken up with George when he underwent a sudden and disconcerting change. After a career as a new-age seminar guru, teaching people to get in touch with their inner child and convincing companies to pay a lot of money for their executives to walk around the woods naked and build trust, he had gone on some sort of spiritual journey in the Arizona desert. That wasn’t the strange part. Instead of coming back with clues on levitation and how to squeeze more people into his weekend retreats at $5,000 a head, he returned with an epiphany. George saw the end of the world coming, and it was going to start with the government taking away everyone’s rights. He turned into a classic survivalist. A Unabomber who did yoga and Pilates. Living in a hand-made wood cabin somewhere in the Angeles Forest, he hunted for his food, grew vegetables, bathed periodically, and kept an arsenal hidden in the woods. Allison knew this because, ironically, he also kept a cell phone and every so often gave her a ring to catch up. Only in California. She wanted to go stay with this crazy guy who, for all Josh knew, would indoctrinate her into his conspiracy-theory universe and make her one of half a dozen unshaven, butter-churning hippie brides. But Josh also saw the wisdom of her solution. No one knew about George. No one would think to look there. And if they did, George would shoot them.

  Josh thought this all through quickly. Better the devil you know.

  “You sure you want to eat wood chuck burgers?” Allison didn’t think this funny. He squeezed her shoulder and said “one week. I promise..”

  They talked about what to pack and the logistics of getting there. It felt good to have a plan, if only a partial plan. What he would do once she was gone was less clear.

  They had to move fast. Allison went to a local grocery store to call George. Josh didn’t know if Helen or someone was watching them or listening in to calls. While she was gone, he packed the SUV. Food, blankets, clothes…enough for a month at least, even though he told Allison a week. The packing happened with the garage door
closed to avoid prying eyes. Allison came back, ready to leave after having had her conversation with George. She looked excited.

  Not being a very good secret agent but having seen enough episodes of The Rockford Files, Josh drove the SUV to a nearby neighborhood and had Allison follow five minutes later. They switched cars on a deserted street, Josh craning his neck in all directions to be sure they were alone. He gave Allison a quick hug and made sure she had directions. He had George’s phone number memorized. She wouldn’t come back until Josh called.

  “Careful, Josh. I mean it.” She pulled away. Josh felt the determination drain out of him as the car went around a bend in the road. What the hell did he think he was doing?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Detective Joanne Rigas had been the senior officer on the Agnes Mills case. The body in the park was nearly decapitated. No physical evidence found. No footprints, no cigar wrappers, no eyewitnesses. Nothing. Agnes was a late middle-aged housewife with no known enemies, no bizarre personal life, no sexy little outfits she put on to entertain visitors when her husband was out of town. She was a plain, unremarkable, uninteresting victim of kidnapping and murder. It pissed Rigas off. A lot of things pissed her off. Crevins pissed her off for being too nice and too slow. Her car pissed her off for leaking oil. The list was long. Agnes had been snatched while walking the dog, something she did every day at the same time of morning. Six people had seen her with the crappy little wiener dog found wandering the neighborhood later that night. No one saw her get grabbed, no one heard the dog bark, and no one saw any suspicious persons or cars in the area. People were dumb shits. You could walk up to them and poke them in the eye and they wouldn’t have the sense to blink. Rigas was pissed when Agnes’ husband Bernard blew his brains out a week later. She had thought he was hiding something, probably a bad marriage or a little something on the side, but then it was too late to find out. She had gone out to the house to see the mess, but nothing changed. No new clues waiting for her, tying his suicide to the wife’s murder. He had never been a suspect, not in her mind anyway. Husbands don’t drag their wives into the neighborhood park and then nearly slice their heads off with what must have been a strong, flexible wire like you’d find in a piano. That kind of action took lots of strength, more than Mills had. And it took guts, being so close to your victim you could smell their fear and then the stench when they evacuated their bowels with their last breath. Mills wasn’t that guy.

  It was a year ago, but Rigas was thinking about it now. The wire marks on Agnes’ neck looked an awful lot like the burn around the guy’s neck tonight, the yuppie who beat the crap out of the supposed burglar with a tennis trophy. Rigas smiled to herself – 12 years on the force, four as a beat cop, two in robbery, and six in homicide, and this was a new way for the bad guy to buy it. Her smile faded as she picked up the mug and drained the last of the Guinness and slammed it back down on the bar. Guy was lying to her, she could tell. He had seen the dead man before, but wasn’t saying so. Rigas eyed the cigarettes next to the bimbo sitting at her elbow, the kind that liked hanging out at cop bars, hoping to find a guy with a badge who would cuff ‘em while they banged ‘em. And they usually did. But the cigarettes taunted her. She’d quit six months ago and it seemed like an eternity. She could feel the thick, relaxing smoke pull deep into her lungs, calming her and clearing her head. But no – fuck it, nothing and nobody controlled her. That was her mantra, one she’d developed over the years. She pushed the thought away. She had quit and that was it. Rigas spun around on her stool and tossed a crumpled ten-dollar bill behind her for the drinks. She needed to go look at the Mills file, see if there was a connection. Pushing open the door, the bright light of a ten-o’clock Saturday morning in LA hit her hard and she flinched but didn’t stop. It was a reminder that she’d spent another Friday night working. It didn’t bother her, at least not when she didn’t think about it. As her head cleared and she looked around at the small park across the street, her eyes stopped on a mom and dad pushing a kid in a swing. One in back, pushing; the other in front, tickling the little girl’s feet every time the swing brought her forward. All three were laughing. Rigas stopped and watched for a minute. She’d never admit it to the other cops she worked with, who pretty much took her as one of the boys, or at least respected her enough to want her as a partner and someone to cover their backs. And sure, she wanted to be the first female captain in the Valley. But she also had the ache to be the mom across the street. Not that there were any candidates for the position of dad right now. She looked in the mirrored surface of the bar’s window. Rigas wore the gray light-wool pants she favored because they came up a little higher and highlighted a very slim waist. In her mind they offset the sturdy legs she always scoffed at as belonging to a sprinter. But she’d spent her childhood through high school as a gymnast and she liked the hard muscle on her small frame. Shoulder length brown hair, streaked with blonde that came from the sun and not a bottle, stayed out of her face so she didn’t have to keep brushing it back when interrogating some leering perp. But it also framed a face with high cheekbones and jaw muscles that showed when she chewed gum. Somebody had compared her to Sandra Bullock once when that stupid movie came out where the actress played a cop who had to enter a beauty pageant under cover. Rigas had scoffed but she’d also turned a couple shades of red. She’d seen the movie and she’d made the connection. It embarrassed her; it also reminded her the job was just part of who she was. She started to turn away from the reflection, feeling foolish, but stopped. As she got older, it was getting tougher to separate the image she worked hard to convey on the job – independent, competent, a good cop not just a good female cop – from the other parts. And it worried her, because she knew it would only get harder and she knew why it was this way. Growing up with three brothers, the first fifteen years were spent fending for herself and learning how to wrestle hard enough to get to play with them but not get hurt. The next fifteen years were the classic switchover; the brothers started seeing her as their responsibility to protect. Part of the whole macho image, not that she really minded. But as a teenager it made it kind of hard to date when a guy showed up at the house and her middle brother opened the door after pumping iron in the basement, veins on his arms popping and a growl in his throat. Forget about it if Dad decided to make the introductions. It did help filter out the riff-raff, though. It also helped her learn how to hold her own and not be bossed around by men her whole life. Thinking of her brothers, each with a family and one or more kids, Rigas felt a swelling in her chest.

  All this standing in the glare of the morning sun in front of a bar. She laughed to herself and made the thickening in her throat dissipate. A patrol car on some random call cut across her view as she looked at the park again. It broke her concentration and she headed to her car on the street. Her next shift started in six hours and she needed a few hours sleep before figuring out why this guy Barnes lied to her.

  * * *

  Helen left the third message in a row for Crawford. For the first time in three years, she wondered if something had gone wrong. All he had to do was kill the sister. She paced the enormous living room and walked back into her home office with a view of the mountains. Checking email for the first time since the previous evening, she saw the note from Josh and read it. So he had the design and was heading into town early. How early? Did Crawford run into him and kill him, too? That would completely screw up their plan and her boss would not be happy. But the second email from Josh explained everything. It was time-stamped 4:59 a.m. This had better be the plans, arriving by the five a.m. deadline she gave him the previous night. But there was no attachment to the email, no document with the precious blueprints that meant a couple mil in Helen’s bank account. Instead there was just a note:

  We need to meet. Crawford is dead. I have what you want. Jerry’s Deli 11:00 a.m.

  Ballsy son of a bitch, Helen thought. Crawford dead? She hadn’t seen anything on the news, so there couldn’t have been a shootout wi
th a dozen cops surrounding the place, the only way she could imagine Crawford wouldn’t have made it. What the hell had happened? She didn’t doubt the content of Josh’s message – he seemed in control, but not stupid. He wouldn’t play some ridiculous game; she had read him correctly about his sister and he wouldn’t take any chances. So Crawford was dead and he wanted to keep the deal going. Protect his sister and his own ass at any cost, she figured. There must have been an accident, or maybe Crawford had stroked out. Who knows. She examined her feelings. Helen was used to Crawford, he was comfortable and predictable for a head case. But he was just a tool for her to use. Her thoughts turned back to Josh. The girl must be alive; he couldn’t be staying this calm if not. So Crawford not only got himself killed, he failed his mission. Prick. Now she had to figure out what needed doing and do it herself. But Josh couldn’t be in control. She called his cell phone from a clean one she had picked up the night before from a lonely guy in a bar with too many whiskey sours in his belly. The message she left on his voicemail gave a different time and place for meeting. A quiet place, and a much later hour.

  * * *

  Back at the house, Josh took a breather. It gave him a chance to ask himself a question he had ignored up until now: What was Helen going to do with the Ventrica design? The obvious answer was sell it to a competitor. There were only a handful of companies that would know what to do with it, to deal with the manufacturing, marketing, and selling of a highly specialized medical device like the Ventrica. Any competitor who came out with it would clearly be guilty of having stolen it. A start-up company could make a big splash by launching with it, but the move would be suspect. Somehow it was worth a lot to someone, someone who knew how to make a lot of money from it. And Helen seemed practiced, comfortable with all this. Josh was sure he was only one in a line of people Helen and Crawford had squeezed and they weren’t afraid to kill. So the money must be huge. It still didn’t make sense.