The Blue Wall Of Silence

by Paul Snyder

  She lifted the two barricade bars on the interior door and then opened the exterior door to her backyard and the street. She stuck her head outside. No one’s outside my house. I’ll leave the outer door open to make it appear as though I’ve escaped onto the street.

  She went back to Philip’s cabinet and then opened those doors. After unlocking and slightly opening the foyer's interior door to the house, she walked rapidly back to Philip’s locker. She stepped inside Philip’s locker and closed the doors. She steadied her heart as she hid there, readied but relaxed, looking through small peepholes she’d drilled through the door with a gold titanium drill bit.

  After grabbing a two-foot machete, she pushed a button hardwired to a distraction device that made a loud buzzing sound above the interior door inside the foyer. She sparred with Rick Weber in Forest Falls, using a machete, and they used them to chop down pine trees. With a machete, it's easier to chop down a human than a pine tree.

  She prepared to use the two-foot blade with lethal force. If two or more men come into the garage, I will stay hidden in Philip’s locker. They will think I escaped through the side door and onto the street. If one man comes in, I’ll plan an attack.

  A dark-jacketed man dressed in black pants and shoes came to her. Drawn into her safe room by the buzzer hardwired in her foyer, his walk was not unlike a carefree beachgoer’s stride. His shoulders and waist moved smoothly with his legs past Philip’s locker. His jacket's black lapels were pulled up around his neck, his head covered with a black baseball cap, shading his face. He looked through the side door and out onto the street. Meghan sized up the man. There’s something amateurish about the way he carries his pistol. What is it? It’s the gangster grip Rick Weber warned me against using.

  “I shall fear not as I walk through this house,” he muttered to himself while returning to the foyer.

  He’s alone… Attack! She tapped the inside of the locker with the long blade of her machete.

  “Who’s in there?” He spun around and faced Philip’s cabinet. “Come out of there.” He demanded.

  She mulled it over for a moment. Don’t come out until the doors are close enough to smash him. He stopped. Then he turned around to go back into the house. What’s he doing? No! Don’t go back into the house. I knew you were a tool. Good, he’s turned around. Now, he’s looking at Philip’s locker, summing up the benefits of finding someone, then subtracting the costs of being hammered by me.

  Moments later, he stepped forward, and when he came close to the doors, she pushed on the doors with all her might. She sprung out of the locker and punched his chest harder. It looked like he might just step backward, but he tripped and fell and dropped his black handgun.

  The pistol bounced, hard, making a loud clicking sound and sliding across the smooth gray concrete, spinning and grinding to a sudden halt, near the garage door, ten feet from her. “Don’t move,” she commanded. She stood above him, waiting for his next move, switching the machete from hand to hand, ready to chop against his body from either side.

  “Just don’t use that thing on me.” He stayed on the ground, looking around the garage for a few moments and then focusing on the exterior door as though he wanted to escape to the street. “Calm down. I’ll cooperate with you.”

  Something clicked in her mind. He said the word cooperate with eloquence as though he has a history of cooperating with the police. He’s tall, muscular, but a cheap gadget from the cop-shop toolbox. He’s fresh out of jail on work release or community service like Tom Clayton.

  She wanted him to slide on his belly in silence to the workbench where she had zip ties to restrain him, and he seemed to be cooperative. I need to restrict his vision, so he won’t see me handcuffing him with the zip ties. “Roll over on your stomach and move your hands behind your back.”

  He jumped to his feet, laughed, and dove for the gun. She wondered if he had seen her flight as she lunged forward. The machete cut through the air. When the machete’s forward speed was spent, its steel blade pointed downward, gaining new strength in its fall, and at the last second, she made a tiny move ahead and smashed the edge of the blade across the knuckles of his hand grasping the gun.

  She fell flat on her chest as the gun dropped to the ground, with three of his chopped off fingers. The garage floor was splashed with blood as he bent over sideways. She stood up and grabbed her machete by the blade, and knocked him in the head with the handle. He fell to the ground with blood spilling from his head and hand.

  Leaving him unconscious, she barricaded the doors. He needs a doctor to sew his fingers back on. It was stupid for him to resist me. He came onto my property. I’m in charge, not him. “What a tool,” she whispered with a delightful smile. Now he has no choice but to lay there unconscious in a pool of blood. “I’ll call you Shark Bait because now you’re just chum for the sharks off the San Gabriel River jetties.”

  To protect herself from Shark Bait’s blood, she put on a pair of blue disposable gloves and then placed his little chopped off fingers looking like Vienna sausages in a clean paper towel and clear sandwich bag. She felt nauseated and wanted a drink. She handcuffed him with zip ties, took a sip of bottled water, then applied tourniquets to stop the bleeding, bandaged his hand and head, and duct-taped his legs.

  After gaging his mouth, she dry-heaved several times while rolling him up in a grey poly tarp. Her stomach ached while sliding his body under wooden shelves in the workbench. For now, he would just have to stay there, a bloody bag of chum.

  She could still feel the warm blood on his clothing. It was everywhere on the floor near the gun. She shuddered at getting sicker and vomiting. She prepared a small wastepaper basket. After chopping up more bodies, I’ll throw up here. She pressed the foyer's buzzer, none of the captors came to take Shark Bait to the hospital. Shark Bait will have to get his fingers sewn back on later.

  Ten minutes later, after polishing the floor, blood also came off Shark Bait’s Ruger 9mm pistol with sanitary wipes. After examining the Commander 9mm barrel for lint and dust that may have gathered from nonuse, she was satisfied the handgun was clean and serviceable. After depressing the magazine release and checking the clip and chamber, she was pensive, not disturbed or angry. There’s ten and one. She went back to the interior door, talking to herself. “Now, you have a gun and a bargaining chip. Shark Bait’s an inadequate individual who has failed at everything he’s ever done in life, and now he needs me to live.”

  She pressed the buzzer repeatedly, and when someone came to the door, she suddenly realized that she was afraid for her friends, not herself, but she softly whispered, “if you remember your Stockholm and Lima syndromes, everyone will be fine.”

  “Where’s our man?” A voice shouted through the door.

  “He’s bleeding to death and needs a ride to the hospital unless you want me to dump him in the ocean for shark bait.”

  “Let us into the garage now.”

  “I have been sympathizing with your situation. I feel compassion for your hardship, pity for your sorrow.” She smiled at her sweet little lies while hoping to assess the captor's intent. “I gave you every chance to surrender. But you refused. Now you have a dying man, bleeding all over the place. His blood is on your hands. Did you ever take the time to consider how bad this could get for you?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Evacuate my house now.” She hesitated at length and then added. “I will leave the garage door, leading to the street, open so that you can take your man to the hospital. He needs a doctor to sew his fingers back onto his hand, fast. You will cripple him for life if you don’t do as I say now.”

  “Not without the money.”

  “Your man will go into shock and bleed to death by the time you get the money into a car.”

  “I’m not leaving without the money.”

  “I don’t care about money.”

  “Good, now we talk.”

  “What’s your name.”

  “Bill.”

/>   “Bill, you had a force of four armed men and were holding five hostages.” Bill’s an inadequate man who has failed at everything he’s ever done. “Now, you’re down to a force of three armed men, right.”

  “What do you want?”

  There was no room for error. I wanted to release them as a group without involving the authorities. But now, with the hostages in play, I must first create a Stockholm syndrome where the hostages care about the captors, causing a Lima syndrome where the captors will inversely care about the hostages, all with a refusal to cooperate with the authorities.

  She turned away from the interior door. Her bargaining chip, Shark Bait, was motionless in his tarp. After Rick’s training in Forest Falls, Shark Bait was proof she had alternatives to deadly force, but she wouldn’t shrink back from using it.

  She sought to convey a sense of empathy. “We’ll get through this together, just fine, but in return, you must prove to me that you do care about the safety of the hostages and follow my instructions. I have this all planned out, with both your safety and the hostages' safety in mind. I want all the hostages, except Andrew, sequestered in separate bedrooms upstairs. Hold Andrew in my bedroom. Put the love birds, Tom and Julie, in a different room, but keep the love birds together in the same room. Place Philip and Dan in their own rooms. Secondly, I want two of your men to take your wounded man to the hospital for medical attention. They can claim they got hurt with a chainsaw or machete or something while doing landscape work.”

  “There’s too much money for me to carry by myself.” Bill objected. “I’ll give you one man for the hospital run. I want to see you upstairs after they leave for the hospital.”

  “Fine, Bill, you win. Prove to me that you can get everyone upstairs in separate rooms. Send only one man to me with his weapons. If I find him downstairs without a weapon or with anyone else, there will be hell and high water. You’ll have the devil to pay.” She was persuasive with him but refused to let her guard down. Things could go south in a second. “Hurry up, Bill. You’ll find no pleasure in your man’s bleeding to death.”

  She removed the barricade bar when someone arrived. “Place all your weapons on the floor. And step three feet back.” She opened the interior door. He glanced down at her confiscated Commander 9mm pistol. He had a smooth face, blond hair, and broad shoulders, and he was wearing a black windbreaker, fully zipped up. “Stay where you are.” She picked up his Ruger handgun. It was similar to the one she swiped from Shark Bait, and a homicidal inner voice cut through her. If he’s a decent man, he’ll think I’m fearless. And if he isn’t, it’ll be too late. I’ll use deadly force.

  With both Ruger handguns pointed at him, he looked impressed by her, and she liked what she saw. “Come into the garage.” He entered the room. “I understand why you are leaving. You must save the life of your friend who is bleeding to death. But is there anything else I could have done to make things easier on you?”

  “No.”

  She barricaded the interior door. “You had every chance to surrender, and, still, you refused. I didn’t kill your friend, and I don’t want to kill you, but is there anything I could have done to improve the situation, causing you to leave my house so unpleasantly.”

  “No, where’s my friend?” He harbored a suspicion, and his voice was deep and troubled. “We made a mistake. I’m sorry. Give me my friend and I will take him to the hospital. I will tell the doctor he got hurt working on a tree in the backyard. And we will say nothing to anyone about this.”

  “The body is in the gray tarp under the workbench.” She pointed her guns at a pile of hand tools. “Grab those scissors on the bench, and you can cut it free.”

  He searched her eyes for a quick moment. “I’ll take him to the hospital fast.”

  She hoped the tremor in his voice was from his fear of her. He identified himself as some objector to violence, but how would he react if Shark Bait died? She had a Ruger in each hand and planned to empty twenty bullets into him if he screwed up. As he opened the tarp, Shark Bait moved slightly, and then a moment later, he rolled around to his side.

  After standing by the workbench, he glared at her. “You chopped my fingers off.”

  “Shut up, Shark Bait.” She was surprised to hear his words echo in her thoughts. His red blood, not mine, stains his black jacket and jeans. Your chopped-up fingers must hurt as they move beneath the white gaze I taped on your hand. Shark Bait blew hard on the stubs of his fingers as though he were trying to blow out the fire on birthday candles. She pointed a pistol at the floor. “Pick up your fingertips in the baggie.”

  With his good hand, he picked up his fingertips and mumbled, “why me.”

  “I gave you every chance to surrender.” His face was bloodstained and bruised from where she smacked him in the head with the machete handle. “I put that butterfly stitch band-aid on your forehead and pinched the skin together really tight, so there will be no scaring. But you’ll still need stitches at the hospital. Now out of gratefulness that I let you live and cleaned up your wounds, you will give me the police officers' names who gave you the jamming equipment.”

  “It was Jennifer and Steve Davis.” He shook his head in shame, and his friend seemed surprised that he so openly told the truth.

  “Jennifer and Steve are upstairs. And what kind of weapons do they have.”

  “Just Steve Davis is upstairs, Jennifer is down the street, waiting for us in her police car.”

  “How is Steve dressed.”

  “Just Steve and Wendel are upstairs. They have two shotguns, knives, and they are strapped with pistols. Steve is wearing a black baseball cap. We did what you asked. Now you have to promise you won’t tell the police or the FBI or anyone about us and let us go to St. Mary’s Hospital.”

  “I’ll throw your guns in the ocean and keep my mouth shut about you, and so will everyone else in my house. Thanks, and you may go now.” She carefully watched them walk out of her garage and out onto the street.

  31

  During his five tours in Iraq, Temple had seen many home invasions. The sight of each one evoked revolting emotions. Today’s attack on Meghan was no different. Temple directed his full attention to what he’d just seen. Steve Davis and three men went into Meghan’s backyard. They were dressed in black, carrying toolboxes and shotguns, and invading Meghan’s home. No one had the right to do this. Steve Davis will never do it again. But, I can’t stop him. If I move now, all I’ll have is RICO charges against Steve when I need the Kodiak town founder's name from Jennifer.

  He agonized through the crisis and forced himself to be patient and wait for Jennifer to arrive. But Meghan was in danger, and it made Temple a nervous wreck. Don’t crack under pressure. One person can’t change the world. You’ll always be hated for some decision you’ve made.

  Jim spun in his seat, looking in all directions on Ocean Avenue. A car rolled up to Meghan’s house. Another man closed in. Temple regarded him with somber curiosity. He’s not dressed in black, so he’s not a member of Steve’s crew. He’s a part of something different.

  Distinguished-looking, middle-aged, the man stepped from a brown Mercedes sedan and strolled with a familiar cadence. Casually dressed in blue jeans and a gray cotton shirt, he used a key to go straight into Philip’s house. He’s the man who was watching Meghan with the binoculars from the breakwater. The fisherman, the man who reminds me of hurricane swells and playing on the beach with Snickers after meeting Tom Clayton.

  Thirty minutes after the fisherman went into Philip’s house, two of the invaders came out of Meghan’s garage, one with a bandaged hand. They jumped into a car and drove off.

  32

  Meghan welcomed Rick Weber into her safe room. After Rick’s cell phone received a text that Philip had lost his Wi-Fi connection, Rick rushed to Philip’s house. Rick gave her body armor and teased her about what he’d heard with a long-range audio amplifier. Rick’s remark suggested she was fearless, and while Rick was awed by what she had done, she remained i
ncensed by the loss of her peaceful home.

  She put on the bulletproof vest, wanting only to drive the last two men off her property. “I cut a deal with those cheap cop-shop tools after they cooperated with me. So, what do I do next?”

  Rick indicated with a nod that he would advise her. “You repeatedly offered the captors a chance to surrender.”

  She nodded. “At every point, I let them know I was too busy to do anything but accept their surrender.”

  Rick’s expression grew stilled and serious. “You have made it known to the captors that they are inadequate individuals, who have failed at everything they’ve ever done, and that they need you to succeed in leaving your home.”

  She stood tall, held her head high. “They believe I’m their lifeline to a safe exit.”

  “You’ve created Stockholm and Lima syndromes?”

  “In the beginning, both sides, the captors and hostages, didn’t know each other. But by now, they should be, somewhat, caring for each other. I’ve created a perfect environment for Stockholm and Lima syndromes to flourish.” She paced the garage while talking through her ideas. “I had the captors sequester the hostages in separate rooms for their safety, except for the two love birds, Tom and Julie.” She spoke with a note of jealousy because Tom had made her feel so lonely lately. “I told them to put Tom and Julie in the same room.” She crossed her arms. “I’ve given them no deadlines. There are two men left, and they are upstairs with Andrew.”

  “Your opening for them to escape your home, earlier, was in the garage, the side door, going out to the street. They left through it, and that worked perfectly.” After discussing the ups and downs that led them to this point, Rick spoke with a more optimistic outlook. “What’s your plan for a forced breakout upstairs.”

  “They want Andrew’s money behind my walk-in closet. They have an on-duty police officer waiting down the street in her police car. Her name is Jennifer Davis. She’s the Seal Beach Police Detective who disapproves of me, and the wife of Steve Davis, who is with Wendel, upstairs.” She looked to Rick with an intense expression. “I’ll convince Steve and Wendel to escape off the balcony before Detective Davis gets here.”