Fatal Flaws

by Clyde Lawrence

  Once I had my course of action figured out, it took me a few more weeks to determine the logistics and actually set the plan in motion. During this time, I could only hope neither Hank nor Jodi had discovered another villain who warranted their ruthless intervention. I knew I had become powerless to influence Hank and prevent them from carrying out another act of inhumanity. As the days went by, I found myself more and more distracted by the thought that I was moving too slowly. Upon awakening each morning, my first impulse was to turn on the news to see if any mysterious homicides had occurred in or around the city of Paris, Texas. Fortunately, no such crimes were reported by the time I was ready to proceed.

  It was plain to see that in order to rid myself of my treacherous friend and his toxic cunt of a girlfriend, I would have to create another illusory scene which adequately explained both of their unanticipated exits from this world. I had considered many lethal yet plausible scenarios which could bring about their untimely demises. As anyone might guess, it was much more difficult to consider bringing about Hank’s death than it had been years ago to envision how I would rob Brandon’s life from him. It was true my esteem for Hanky-panky had been dying a slow and agonizing death for quite some time. In contrast to my bastard ex-son-in-law, however, Hank had been the Captain Kirk to my Spock, the Samuel L. Jackson to my John Travolta, and the Brad Pitt to my Edward Norton for many years. As I set about the task of designing a scheme to kill my long-time bosom buddy, I often felt like a hypocrite and an asshole. I had to keep reminding myself he was solely responsible for the choices he had made which left me with only one remaining path to choose in my own life. I was not going to lose Ryan and I was not going to forfeit my entire future, just because I had done what I felt needed to be done to protect my daughter, and because my own act of vigilante justice had inadvertently set off a chain reaction of explosive brutality against people who, in Hank’s mind, deserved mortal punishment.

  *****

  I squatted in a grove of trees at the back of Hank’s office parking lot. I knew I was adequately concealed from the road and from anyone who might unexpectedly pull into one of the unlit parking spaces reserved for his employees and business associates. I saw the outside lights come on and anticipated Jodi walking out to the parking lot any second. I knew the back part of the lot, where Jodi’s Miata was parked, would remain dimly lit and that she’d be susceptible to being accosted for a few seconds after she left the relative safety of the brightly lit parking spaces at the front of the lot. I would have a tight window of opportunity to interact with her in a clean, yet effective way and get my plan started off on the right foot.

  Wanting to be prepared for any reaction she might have, I donned the hockey mask, complete with a full face shield, that I had dug out of my attic the night before. I inwardly gave thanks to the gods of hoarding that they had made me averse to the idea of disposing of any of the shit I had acquired during the glory days of my youth. Next, I slipped my hockey gloves on my hands and waited for my best friend’s girlfriend and personal assistant to come around the corner of the building. I was fairly certain Hank would have trained her to be ready to fend off some type of mugger or rapist, and would have provided her with an appropriate weapon to wield, if needed, on her way to her vehicle. I was hoping to God that she was armed with a knife or a can of mace and not a handgun, but I kept telling myself I would just have to deal with whatever situation I was presented with. Regardless of the short-term risks involved, I needed to take this first step, which would set my plan in motion. Although I wished Hank and Jodi had not put me in this position, I knew without a doubt, my decisive response to their actions was necessary and unavoidable. Furthermore, I knew what I had planned for this particular evening was the best way to lay the groundwork for the scheme I’d devised which would neutralize the threat they had become.

  It seemed like it was taking too long for her to appear around the corner of the building, and I began having doubts. Shit! I thought. What if Hank had set up some type of surveillance system that she could utilize to scan the area before leaving the building? He’s a former special ops soldier, for shit’s sake. She could be looking at me on her monitor, which was being fed by the infrared cameras he has installed to detect shady characters encroaching on his property. Maybe she’s already called the cops and is waiting for them to arrive before she even steps out of the protective environment of the office. It was going to be pretty damn awkward trying to explain to the police how and why I happened to be there in the back of the parking lot wearing hockey gear. I was getting a bit freaked out and had almost reached the point of panic that would necessitate abandonment of my mission and urgent retreat. Not even the least of my problems was the fact that my body and my disguise were starting to work against me. As my mind played tricks on me and the needle of my built in stress meter was nearing the red line, my breathing had become rapid and the facemask of my helmet, being cooled by the ambient air, had started to fog up to the point that visibility was severely compromised.

  Fuck me! I inwardly scolded myself. I’m fucking outta here!

  I was about to bolt through the woods, away from Jodi’s parked car, when I saw her walking around the corner of the building. Foolishly, she was holding her cell phone up in front of her face as she furiously punched out characters with both thumbs on her digital keyboard. Once again, it occurred to me that although she looked pretty good on the surface, Hank had hooked up with a truly stupid and naive woman. I inwardly wondered how the hell she could be so oblivious to the obvious threats of bodily harm that went along with an unaccompanied venture by a female into a sparsely lit parking lot under the surveillance of God knows who.

  Okay then, I inwardly reassured myself. This crazy bitch is gonna make it easy! Rock and roll, hoochie coo!

  As she crossed the lot, I began moving toward her rear and then accelerating as I approached her from behind. When I was a few paces behind her, she seemed to sense the danger and lowered the phone. Both hands, however, were still engaged with the virtual keyboard as she slowly turned her head in an effort to determine the source of the rhythmic sounds of my footsteps as they approached her from behind.

  I saw her suddenly reach across her body with her right hand, assumably to reach for a weapon stowed within the left breast inside pocket of her tan suede coat.

  It was too late, however, to be an effective defensive maneuver. By the time she was able to reach her hand into the pocket, I was upon her.

  I retracted my right arm as I closed in on the last ten feet between us. As she began to turn left to lay eyes upon her attacker, I shot out my gloved hand and punched her left cheek. I didn’t want to do too much damage, so I held back on the power of the blow. With the momentum of my charge and the lack of opportunity for self-defense, I could have pretty much taken her head off with an all-out smackdown. However, I knew this would not accomplish my overall goal. Instead, I needed to disable her and leave her defenseless to my subsequent, well-designed attack. I couldn’t put her in the hospital or kill her just yet.

  As my gloved fist struck the left side of her face, her head snapped around to the right and she fell to the pavement. I knew she would be incapacitated, so I jogged on past her into the darkness, where I hesitated for a few moments to see if there turned out to be any witness of my assault. Hearing and seeing no evidence of a witness, I ran back to the dimly lit portion of the parking lot and saw she was, as expected, unconscious. I grabbed her wrists and dragged her to the side of her car opposite the side facing the road so that we’d be hidden from any passing cars.

  At this point, I straddled her limp body. I was sickened by the thought of beating up on a woman, but I knew it was a necessary part of the illusion which I needed to create. I made myself imagine the conversations that Jodi had initiated with Hank, as she worked to convince him that he could not trust me and that I would, someday, betray him. I conjured up the memory of Jodi telling me how she and Hank, if I were to ever jeopardize them, would reveal my
own previous crime. I imagined that I was in the liquor store with Hank and Jodi as they executed an innocent man and thought about the little girl who no longer had a father as a result of their actions. Despite my inherent reluctance to act on my violent impulses, these thoughts provided me with sufficient motivation to continue my assault.

  My intention was to inflict a pattern of injuries on Jodi’s body and face that would most closely resemble an act of domestic violence. I first grabbed her by the arms and violently yanked on them as if her attacker was someone who was demanding her attention and her immediate obedience. I made sure to dig my fingertips into the soft flesh of her upper arms and squeeze as if I was trying to restrain her as she struggled to get away from her abuser. I knew this would lead to a series of bruises on her arms which would be highly suggestive that she’d been manhandled by her mate. Next, I landed a number of backhand blows to her mouth, nose, and right eye. I am right-handed, and so is Hank, to these marks would suggest her assailant was punishing her with the proverbial ‘bitch slap’ blows typical of a man whose aim is to teach his woman a lesson about respect and subservience.

  It only took a few well-planned backhanded strikes to accomplish the injuries which created the appearance of abuse at the hands of a controlling and violent mate. With that task accomplished, I disengaged from Jodi’s unconscious body and picked up her phone. I quickly lifted Jodi’s limp arms to her face, where small trickles of blood were escaping her right nostril and the split on her upper lip that was ripped open by one of my vicious backhand smacks. I smeared her hands in her blood and then I placed her cell phone in her limp hand, making sure to smear a bloody thumbprint across the screen in order to give the impression that she had awakened and called Hank before losing consciousness once again. As I finished setting the scene, Jodi began moaning and seemed to be slowly regaining consciousness. I stayed in her immediate presence long enough to pull up Hanky-panky from the contact directory of her phone and hit the call button. Now that she was semi-lucid, Hank would hear her moaning and mumbling and know something had happened to her.

  After initiating the call to Hank, I grabbed her purse, sprang to my feet, and bolted across the lot back into the grove of trees from which I’d initially surveilled my victim. Letting Jodi see me would have completely destroyed my plan and would have put me on an immediate collision course with Hank, which I was not yet prepared for. I found my previous hiding spot and squatted down, so I could keep my eye on Jodi and wait for the arrival of her hero. I wanted to make sure she would be okay. I didn’t need her ruining things by unconsciously choking on her own vomit like Bon Scott, the original front man of AC/DC, so I decided to keep an eye on her until she was fully awake and functioning.

  As I kneeled down among the trees and bushes, I removed my hockey helmet and placed it, along with the gloves and Jodi’s purse, into the knapsack which I’d stowed in my makeshift cubby among the forest undergrowth. I planned to ditch the purse, which I knew to be a baby Louis Vuitton. That little number had set Hank back about two-grand. I couldn’t help but consider, for a moment, what an idiot my buddy had turned into and how much money he had habitually wasted, all for an unending progression of strange ass and hot pussy that somehow made him feel like he had accomplished the ultimate feats of masculinity. While I waited in the darkness, I considered my history with Hank as well as the mountains of respect for him that were rapidly being eroded by the rivers and winds of his narcissism. I realized he had willingly been corrupted by women, wealth, and power, and I began to mourn the loss of our friendship, as well.

  I realized at that moment that one of Hank’s critical flaws was his need to achieve his conquests over the women in his life, and this need had become more important to him than maintaining our relationship. His profound need to impress Jodi, I knew, was at the root of his most recent attack. He couldn’t settle for being loved or desired by Jodi. He had to make her worship him. He clearly felt the only way to inspire this deep level of devotion from her was to become more than just a man, so he had become some type of avenging angel. Just as he had predicted, Jodi had become more than just a lover. She had become a priestess who knelt and worshipped him as her god of vengeance and destruction.

  I had finally come to grips with the inevitable transformation Hank was going through. During moments over the previous several months when I’d spoken to him on the phone or spent one-on-one time with him, he was still very recognizable as my old buddy. Of course, we were only able to enjoy each other as long as we both avoided acknowledging the elephant in the room. This meant any conversation topics which alluded to Jodi or anything having to do with vigilante justice were strictly taboo. Over the course of our friendship, I had definitely become increasingly aware of and annoyed by his compulsive behavior and his need to continually have his ego stroked. However, were it not for his latest compulsion and his almost sociopathic willingness to commit heinous crimes, I’d probably still feel like his friendship was worthwhile. After all, his fun-loving and adventurous spirit, which I’d always been drawn to, hadn’t changed at all. It was actually heartbreaking to know he had planted the seeds of his own destruction and to know, as those seeds took root and grew, they were becoming noxious weeds which would, ultimately, choke the life out of the deepest friendship either of us had ever known.

  After a few minutes of hunkering down in the grove of trees and underbrush, I saw Jodi gradually sit up and look around. I was a long distance from her, but I could easily tell she was dazed and unsteady. She nearly fell over as she stood up. Once on her feet, she slowly turned around in a full circle.

  “Fuck!” she screamed. “Where is my fucking purse? What the fuck?”

  I saw the screen of her phone light up and, less than a second later, I heard the electronic chimes coming from it which indicated an incoming call. She turned and saw the phone on the ground and quickly bent to pick it up.

  “Hank?” She nearly yelled into the phone as she answered the call. “Hank, something happened to me. I just woke up on the ground and my face and neck really hurt.” Her speech was somewhat distorted by her swollen lips and probably a bruised and swollen tongue.

  She paused to listen to Hank’s voice on the other end of the connection.

  “I don’t know!” she cried. “I guess I was attacked! My fucking purse is gone, and my mouth feels swollen. Please come get me! It’s dark and I’m scared! What if he comes back? My purse is gone, so I can’t get in my car or back into the building!”

  Again, she listened.

  “Okay,” she whimpered. “Ten minutes! I’ll see you in ten minutes. Please hurry!”

  I did feel sorry for Jodi and couldn’t help but feel a bit of shame for having accosted her. Never had I struck a woman before, and, even though I felt like my actions were justified, I still felt like an asshole. Even though Jodi had been totally malicious to me and had done everything she could to offend and threaten me, it didn’t make it comfortable to break the rules of society which had been seared into my brain throughout my life. Specifically, boys don’t hit girls!

  I knew some very difficult tasks were headed my way and I was really going to have to become ice-cold at times to be able to do what needed to be done. I was going to have to put aside the rules of decency in order to accomplish my mission. Also, I couldn’t allow myself to think about the good aspects of Hank’s character or the great times we had together. I needed to remember he had become a serial murderer and he and Jodi had given me every reason to believe they would continue actively searching for additional victims. There was no way I could allow that to happen, regardless of how good a friend Hank had been to me over the years. Furthermore, I needed to keep focused on the fact that he had become a danger to me, my family, and my entire future.

  As I sat in the woods, waiting for Hank to arrive in the parking lot to retrieve his slightly damaged girlfriend, I reminded myself of these things. I became increasingly agitated about the situation that had been forced upon me by fate. It wa
sn’t fair that I had been put into a position, years ago, of having to protect my daughter from her violent husband. It wasn’t fair that I should have to watch my best friend lose his grip on reality and become a monster. It certainly wasn’t fair that I now found myself in the fucking woods after dark keeping watch over the shrew that I’d just attacked as I set the scene for a double homicide I would soon have to commit. But hey, whoever said life was fair? I knew fate had me trapped in my current set of circumstances and I was becoming increasingly exposed to some serious risks. I also knew, in my heart, I was doing what had to be done and there was no practical way to avoid playing the hand I’d been dealt.

  After about ten minutes, during which time Jodi had remained seated on the asphalt with her back up to the driver’s side door of her Miata, Hank pulled into the parking lot in his black Escalade. As if he was a hero cop in a predictable action movie, he gunned the engine as he entered the lot, then came to a screeching stop behind her car. He jumped out of the driver’s seat and lifted a handgun with a green laser site to a firing position. As he came around the front of his vehicle, he swept the gun back and forth, scanning the area for a human target—specifically, the target who had laid hands on his woman and stolen her property.