Fatal Flaws

by Clyde Lawrence

  I was far enough away that I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he seemed to be reassuring her he was there for her and she was going to be okay. I did hear him tell her to stay where she was as he worked his way over to her, remaining ever vigilant and seemingly ready to blow away anyone who was foolish enough to be hanging around considering a second attack. As he arrived at her side, he made a 360 degree turn and the green laser dot streaked across the side of the office, the surrounding woods, and even the abandoned industrial buildings across the street from his building. Once satisfied that no threat was imminent, he knelt next to Jodi and assessed her.

  It was too dark to see them, but I knew he would be palpating her head and neck to determine the extent of her injuries and performing a standard, basic neurologic exam on her. My instincts were proven correct when I saw him switch on a flashlight and shine it, one at a time, into her eyes to assess her pupillary response and determine that her extraocular muscles were functioning properly. Once satisfied she was stable enough to move, he helped her up and walked her to the passenger seat of the vehicle. He said something to her as he closed the door and held up the index finger of his right hand. As he began walking around the front of the large SUV, he casually reached into the right-side pocket of his jacket. As he withdrew his pistol from the pocket, I could see the laser site had been reactivated. Once again, he stretched out his right arm as if aiming at an imaginary target.

  “I know you’re out there, motherfucker,” he yelled. “I can feel you watching us.”

  I felt a chill go down my spine as he, once again, began sweeping the area before him with the laser site. Once or twice, the bright green dot appeared on the trunks and branches in my immediate vicinity and I had the irrational thought that he’d located me.

  “I don’t know where you are, but I know that you’re there!” he shouted. “Why don’t you come out, you piece of shit? I’ll put down my gun and take you on man to man.”

  “Oh brother,” I thought. “What a cliché’.” Did he really think he was Bruce Willis or Jason Statham and that the villain was going to come out of hiding so that they could have a fist fight there in the parking lot in the lights of the Escalade? Of course not, but it was a perfect time for the egomaniac that I’d come to know over the past decade and a half to appear. It was also time for him to put on a show for Jodi, so she could witness, once again, what a big, strong man he was. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d ripped his shirt off and offered to fight blindfolded. I had to fight the urge to audibly scoff.

  “Either way, motherfucker,” he continued shouting as he panned left and right in order to address anyone hiding behind the building or in the woods, “I’m going to get my hands on you and I’m going to snap your fucking neck! You’d better start running now, because I will find you and the last thing you see will be my smiling face as I look into your dying eyes, you piece of shit!”

  Having stated his intentions to avenge the injuries to and the terror experienced by his woman, he lowered the gun and replaced it into his jacket pocket. He then turned and walked to the SUV and climbed into the driver’s seat. He gunned the engine as he took off and the tires screeched as he turned in a tight circle back around to the entrance of the lot. He barely slowed as he shot out of the lot onto the street, where he really peeled out, leaving a small cloud of smoke from his spinning tires, which floated back into the parking lot as it dissipated.

  “Damn,” I muttered to myself, “someone’s running on some high-octane adrenaline.”

  I certainly understood how he must have been feeling. Jodi was a bitch, but she was his bitch. She had been violated and that made him, in turn, feel violated and, at least for the moment, helpless. As much as he wanted to help her at this point, he wanted to have her assailant within his grasp where he could punish him for his foolish transgression. I knew his agitation would serve my intentions well as I prepared to move into the next phase of my plan.

  Chapter 52

  I waited several minutes after Hank and Jodi had left the parking lot to vacate my position. The plan was going perfectly so far, and I knew I needed to be patient in order to ensure that no one would witness my presence at or around the scene of Jodi’s attack. I then walked out of the woods in the direction opposite that of Hank’s office. I had previously noted a trail which led from the street on which the office was located and the adjacent street, where there were several businesses, including a plumbing supply shop and a civil engineering firm. Neither of these was open in the evening, so I had parked my vehicle in a parking lot shared by the two commercial enterprises. That way, if someone from one of the companies stopped by for some reason, they’d assume that my car belonged to someone in the other building. Being mindful of these kinds of details gave me comfort that my plans would be less likely to be foiled by a curious or concerned citizen, who might call the cops, for instance, to investigate a strange vehicle, parked in a strange place, at a strange time. I felt like I had done a pretty good job covering my tracks so far, and I hoped I’d be able to continue to anticipate any pitfalls that might lay ahead.

  When I got back to my Lexus, I hopped in and drove to Travis High School, which was about a half mile from Hank’s house. Adjacent to the school building was the athletic complex, which included a standard 400-meter track. I’d often driven by the track in the evening and seen members of the community jogging around the well-lit track with its rubberized surface. I parked next to several other vehicles belonging, presumably, to the joggers using the track. I climbed into the back of my vehicle and changed into dark blue sweatpants, a blue and black Dallas Mavericks long sleeve t- shirt, and my black Nike running shoes with a blue swoosh. The outfit was not what would be considered a good choice for jogging at night, but I wanted to be able to approach Hank’s house without sticking out like a turd in a punchbowl.

  I hopped out of the SUV, did a series of quadricep, hamstring, and calf stretches, and jogged leisurely out of the parking lot toward the Simmons residence.

  Chapter 53

  “911. What is your emergency?” the voice asked through the receiver of the ‘burner’ phone that I had picked up at a convenience store in Rockwall.

  “Well,” I said, “I was just jogging down the road and I heard some chick calling for help. I stopped to try to figure out what was going on and I saw this woman come shooting out of the front door of a house. This big dude followed her out and grabbed her. She was screaming at him, so he smacked her and dragged her back inside. I could hear him yelling at her from inside the house and I distinctly heard him call her a stupid bitch. She screamed one more time and then nothing. This was like two minutes ago. I just got myself far enough away that he wouldn’t see me out here on the phone.”

  “Thank you for reporting this, sir. I’m going to need to get some information from you,” said the calm female voice.

  “You’d better get someone over here ASAP. He might be killing her in there,” I implored the operator with false desperation.

  “I need some basic information from you before I can send help,” she stated.

  “Oh yeah, right,'' I replied, trying to sound nervous.

  “I can see this is a cell phone, sir. Can you tell me your location?” The 911 operator inquired, maintaining her placating, businesslike demeanor.

  “I’m here in town visiting my—uh—my friend. I don’t really want anyone to know that I’m here, if you know what I mean. That’s why I have this phone. It’s not my normal cell phone—it’s —well, it’s like a prepaid phone you get at a convenience store. I can’t have anyone finding out that I’m here seeing my—uh—my friend,” I said, with my best East Texan accent and trying to sound flustered. I needed there to be a plausible reason that I wouldn’t be there waiting when the cops showed up, so I had decided to act like I was only in town to engage in an illicit affair. That way I could get the hell out of there before the cops arrived and I wouldn’t have to provide my name or any other personal details, which woul
d have ended up on their report. Letting the operator know that I was unwilling to be identified for what seemed like a believable reason would explain my absence to them, which would hopefully prevent a red flag from going up in their minds, causing them to doubt the legitimacy of my report. I definitely wanted the cops to buy into the idea that someone had witnessed Hank engaging in an act of domestic violence.

  “Sir, we are not concerned with your circumstances. However, you called 911 to report an emergency. Please provide the information I request in order for me to mobilize the appropriate resources. You believe you have witnessed an act of domestic violence—is that correct?”

  “Correct,” I said.

  “It will take a few moments for me to determine your location. In the meantime, if you were to provide me with an address, I could expedite our response,” she said.

  “Well, I see a mailbox that says ‘Simmons’ at the driveway leading up to the house with the screaming. It says 895 Rockway Drive,” I replied. “I’m outta here though. Don’t worry about calling this phone back, it’s going in the lake.”

  “I am dispatching a unit,” was the last thing I heard before powering off the phone forever. I then removed the SIM card, which I would toss into the nearest body of water along with the phone and Jodi’s purse. There would be no way for anyone to trace any of tonight’s activities back to me.

  Obviously, there was no way I was going to miss out on seeing what was about to go down between Hank, Jodi, and the cops, so I snuck along a hedge of azalea bushes that lined the borders of Hank’s front yard on the side opposite his house. As I approached the point closest to his front door that still offered good visualization of his front porch, I squeezed myself into the hedge, which was about 5 feet in cross section, and stood still and silent. The scratches and stabs of the branches that raked against my skin and attempted to impale me were a price I was more than willing to pay in order to get a front row seat to the drama that was about to unfold.

  I tried to resist the urge to fidget and adjust my position in an attempt to limit the discomfort caused by the branches around me as I awaited the arrival of the unfortunate cops who had received the report of a domestic dispute at Hank’s home. I knew they would have to deal with a confusing scene including a very upset and defensive suspected perpetrator, and a victim who was sure to swear on her life that she was, in fact, the victim of a recent violent attack at a completely different location. I knew that the pattern of her injuries would strongly suggest she had not been attacked by a mugger, but that she had received the typical blows of punishment which abusive men employ when their ungrateful and disrespectful mates talked back or accused them of their own transgressions one too many times. I suspected, ultimately, the cops would become frustrated by the fact that Jodi would refuse to press charges or even acknowledge that Hank was her attacker. They would most likely leave the premises wondering to themselves why female victims of abuse would often go so far to cover up the crimes that had been committed against them at the hands of their abusers.

  Approximately five minutes after I had hung up with the rock star 911 operator, a black Ford Explorer with low profile lights atop the roof and red and blue ‘Paris Police Department’ decals adorning the front doors pulled slowly into the U-shaped driveway in front of Hank’s house. As the policeman in the driver’s seat pulled to a stop, he lit up his blindingly bright LED lights on the roof of the vehicle. Within a minute of the arrival of the first cop car, a second, identical police SUV pulled in behind the initial one and also cranked up its lights. The strobing red, blue, and white lights lit up the front yard so brightly that I began to doubt that I’d reliably remain concealed in the hedge. I slowly began backing out from among the Azalea bushes and, once free of their invasive, grasping branches, laid down on the ground on the opposite side of the shrubbery and forced myself to remain looking downward at the grass, so that the reflection from my eyes would not be seen by anyone glancing over at the hedge. I wouldn’t be able to witness the encounter visually, but at least I could hear how the interaction went down.

  The police were obviously more concerned about what was going on inside the house than who or what might be hiding in the shrubs, so they were concentrating their attention on the front door of the house. The cops in the lead Explorer slowly exited their respective doors and strolled back to talk to the officers in the back-up vehicle. I could hear them say that they figured they had it handled, but they’d appreciate it if their colleagues would maintain their position until they knew, exactly, what they had on their hands.

  “No problem,” the driver of the second vehicle said in response. “You know where to find us if there’s a problem.”

  The initial police officers then turned and approached Hank’s front door. They saw lights were on inside the house, so they rang the doorbell. After fifteen or twenty seconds, I heard the front door open. I could imagine Hank, with a bewildered look on his face, peering into his front yard through the open door.

  “What’s going on?” he blurted out. I’d chosen my observation position well and I could easily hear the verbal interaction.

  “Sir,” the lead policeman said, “we’ve had a report of a possible situation at this address.”

  “What? What kind of report? What the hell are y’all doing in my driveway with your lights lit up? I’m no criminal! I’m a respected homeowner and you are making it look like you’re here to bust Emilio fucking Escobar! What the hell is going on?” his voice gradually rose in both intensity and volume.

  I almost cracked up, laughing out loud. I think he may have been referring to Pablo Escobar, the Columbian drug lord, but he had mixed up the first name with Emilio Estevez, the 80’s pop star. That was freakin’ classic! I couldn’t wait to tell Mandy about that little nugget of hilariousness. Also, I couldn’t have hoped for a better response to the situation from my hotheaded buddy. I knew he would be blown away by the fact that he had police vehicles—lights ablaze —in his front drive, and that he would immediately give the police a run for their money. He was the kind of guy who wasn’t going to take shit from anybody, but he didn’t realize that, at this moment, he would be incriminating himself by coming off as an asshole to the cops.

  “Sir,” the lead cop said in a calm voice, “my name is Sergeant Vasquez. We’ve had a report of a disturbance at this address. We’d like to come in and talk to you about it. Is your wife here? We’d like to talk to her as well.”

  “My wife is not here—I’m divorced!” Hank spat out. “My girlfriend is here, but she is currently indisposed. What is this about? What kind of disturbance?”

  “May we step inside, sir?” Sergeant Vasquez requested. “I’m sure we can get this all straightened out, but we’ll need to speak to both of you.”

  “I guess you can come in, but can you turn your freakin’ lights off first? You are probably scaring the shit out of my neighbors, who probably think they are living next to Charles Mason by now.”

  I couldn’t believe it. He did it again! It was as if he knew that I was out their lurking in the shadows, and he was trying to crack me up in order to make me give myself away. I could barely resist the urge to yell out, “It’s Charles Manson, you idiot!” My former best buddy was very intelligent and, despite all of the bullshit that I’d heard pouring out of his mouth over the years, he rarely misspoke like this. It was clear to me that he was nervous, despite his efforts to seem confident and self-assured.

  “We can turn our lights off if you agree to let us come in and visit with you, and if you promise to not give us a hard time,” the disciplined and practiced police sergeant said.

  The other policeman who had accompanied Vasquez to the door jogged back to the lead vehicle and turned off the blindingly bright lights and indicated to the back-up vehicle that they should do the same. All of a sudden, the night seemed extra pitch-black and I felt, once again, like I was adequately concealed. No longer fearing that my eye shine would give me away I looked up from the ground. Ev
en though I was looking through the base of the hedge, where the foliage was much less dense, I still had to look all the way through the manicured row of bushes to see into Hank’s yard and I could barely see him and Sergeant Vasquez standing on the lit porch as the other cop approached the front door.

  “How’s that?” Vasquez asked him.

  “Better,” Hank replied. “Now are you going to tell me what the hell is going on? No one from this household called with any kind of complaint and I haven’t interacted with any of my neighbors for several days. My girlfriend and I just got home, and she has had a very difficult day, to say the least. What kind of disturbance are you here to check out?”

  “Let’s just step inside, sir, and I’m sure we can figure things out,” Vasquez said.

  “Okay then,” Hank said. “Come on in.”

  They stepped inside and the door shut behind them. I supposed that the show was over for me. I didn’t want to move, though, for fear of the cops in the other car sensing my movement on the opposite side of the hedge, so I stayed hunkered down in the shadows. The front windows of the second police vehicle were open, and I could hear the two cops shooting the shit as well as the chatter coming from their police radio. After a few minutes they were hailed by Sergeant Vasquez from within the house. I could hear most of what he said as he quickly explained that they had the situation under control and that the second unit was no longer needed. The engine of the Explorer roared to life and the SUV maneuvered around the lead vehicle. Within seconds, the superfluous patrolmen exited the opposite end of the U-shaped driveway back onto Rockway Drive. As they drove away, I imagined their discussion centered less on their next official deployment and more on the anticipated location of their next jelly donut.

  I was in the clear, so I walked along the hedge out to the street and began casually jogging down the street, as if I belonged in the neighborhood. I tried to radiate a sense of normalcy in order to avoid catching the attention of any of Hank’s neighbors, several of whom I’d met before. Nothing to see here, folks. Just a local professional, home from a long day at work and getting some exercise in while the wife and kids prepared the evening meal and set the table back at home.