by Paul Snyder
“If they hurt Andrew, I’ll fire down from Philip’s rooftop, with a high powered rifle, through your bedroom windows. Never block my shot. Always attempt to draw them into my sights so I can get a clean shot and hug the wall by your bedroom door or the balcony sliding glass door. Once you hear your bedroom window break from my rifle rounds, fall to the ground away from Andrew as you fire into them.”
She grabbed the Commander 9mm handguns she’d confiscated from the cop-shop tools she’d sent to the hospital. “I’ll go upstairs now.” The plan was all so perfectly arranged, and the smaller details, they knew so well from the training in Forest Falls. Her success with the first two men made her smile at the thought of kicking the last two tools off her balcony. “Good luck.”
“Good luck.” Rick replied.
“And good riddance.” She spun around, her weapons leveled at the interior door at the end of the garage. She raced up the staircase, propelling herself through the house, throwing every thought of failure out her mind while walking in the direction of Steve and Wendel with both her Ruger pistols ready to fire.
She stopped, and anger welled in her mind. Where are they? Where’s the man in the black baseball cap? They should be waiting for me in the center hallway. Maybe they’re in my bedroom with hostages. They better not be hiding from me.
The double doors of her bedroom were pulled open. She walked into her room and then greeted Steve Davis with his black baseball cap. He wore a black windbreaker and stood there with a black shotgun. Andrew’s safe, under the watchful eye of Wendel, who is also dressed in black. Like their police department, special weapons and tactics playbook says, dress up in identical black clothing for shock value. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. You wish I was shocked. I’m far from shocked. I’m kicking your stupid asses off my balcony.
She followed Wendel deeper into her bedroom, faced the balcony, and then looked out to the blue Pacific Ocean. With the power lines cut, there was no electricity. The light was dim. Still, sunlight streamed through the windows, facing Philip’s rooftop patio, where Rick waited with his rifle. She stared at Steve Davis. What do you want? I don’t have all day…
Steve held up a hand, and then with a look of apology, put his shotgun down on her bed. With a wired black computer mouse, Steve left-clicked on the forward button on his laptop. “This is a video of you placing the sheets of drywall on the carpet near your bathroom floor. Those are six big suitcase-sized packages of cash. I’ll fast forward now. There you are, replacing the wall, and here we are, entering the room this afternoon. The point of this is that the video proves the money is still behind your closet.”
He was so kind about it that she smiled in return. “I came up here to help you…” Jump off my balcony and run for your life. She paused for a long moment. “In any way possible.” She wanted to say jump off my balcony and run for your life. But the words never reached her mouth. Steve Davis turned to her in surprise. She should have said what was on her mind. Steve Davis knew what she wanted to say. Everyone in the room did. It wasn’t a secret or something she could hide.
“Go ahead.” Steve grabbed his shotgun and pointed it at Andrew, and then glanced at Wendel. “Put down your shotgun, Wendel, and get the drywall screw gun out of the toolbox and take down the wall and get the money.”
Wendel frowned as though he didn’t want to do the work. “I’ll only take a moment.”
It was strange how she wanted to ask Wendel questions as though her own Stockholm syndrome strategy had somehow backfired on her and inadvertently influenced her feelings for Wendel. Bill’s name is really Steve. Is your name really Wendel? Do you have family and friends you love? Does someone cook your favorite food for you? Do you always wear black when you want to kill people? In the privacy of her bedroom, they had suddenly become partners in crime, Wendel’s offense, armed home invasion, and her crime, grand larceny. But soon, it would all come to an end.
Soon, her mistaken journey through this underworld of police misconduct would be all finished so she could go back to her former life of surfing, building parks, and making children’s cartoon colored dreams come true. I almost forgot to point my Rugers at Steve. She smiled at Andrew, aiming both her pistols more intently at Steve’s face.
“Thank you for your help, Meghan,” Steve was playing nice now. “I would have been relaxing at home a long time ago if it weren’t for all your hard work.”
“If they defunded the police department last year, none of us would be doing any of this hard work.”
Steve smiled then, and she could see the humor in his eyes that she hadn’t imagined. “You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you would have followed my instructions earlier.” His face flushed with pride in the filtered light of her bedroom.
She gave him a nod. “You’re right. I’m in terrible need of your mansplaining. You’ve been nothing but perfect guests in my beach house.” She tossed her hair back and laughed. “I’m so sorry for my rudeness. But you can’t trust anyone.” She smiled at her memories of negotiating victoriously. “I was too busy doing my yoga exercises to listen to your advice.” After her sarcasm, she was curious, seeing the change on his face. There was a sudden stillness in his face but a visible tension in his jawline. “Now, I feel like such a jerk for thinking that you’re nothing but a tool who has failed at everything you’ve ever done. And, now, you need me to succeed.”
Steve grinned at the confession and walked to the closet. “You’re right. There are some crazy people, not just in Orange County. But right here in this house with you. Anyway, I’m delighted I got a chance to meet you and see your change in attitude.”
She studied her options in managing Steve. After I pull the trigger on my pistol and put a bullet in your head, I’ll be delighted to see your change in attitude. I’ll be happy to do that later. She restrained an excessive desire for vengeance for a few reasons. Steve may be a master of controlled chaos. Jennifer’s waiting down the street in her police car, and Andrew’s vulnerable.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you take that wall down.” Steve shouted into the walk-in closet. “Okay, Wendel.” Steve held a firm hand on his shotgun while Wendel stacked the last shelf on top of an organized pile of white shelving. “Looks like Wendel only has a few more drywall screws, and we’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“Leaving so soon? Ahh… come on, you could have a change of heart. Stay awhile. I was just starting to have fun.” She held her pistols on Steve and Wendel, and Steve smiled as she stepped back to the wall so that Rick Weber could get a clean shot from Philip’s roof next door. Five minutes later, all the drywall had been stacked neatly by the bathroom door. Wendel walked into the room behind her closet, inviting Steve to join him.
Steve pushed Andrew inside first. After they went into the room behind her closet, she set off to show Steve how the money had been stacked, neatly, in two rows, three bales high. With her pistols on Steve and Wendel’s backs, she went into her walk-in closet. But when she got there, the money was gone.
“That’s odd.” Steve kneeled to the floor. “There are deep scratch marks in the wood flooring.”
Wendel got down on his knees. “You’re right. I can see the scratches go under the wall and into the bedroom behind Meghan’s where Tom and Julie are tied up.”
Meghan pointed to the deep scruff-trails from the heavy gauge wire. “The fencing wire held together hundred-pound bales of cash. They were stacked three high. The weight of the top bales, pushing down on the bottom bales, scratched the wood flooring. The money had been there. It looks like someone beat you to it.” She secured and protected the cash to prove herself worthy of Andrew’s conservatorship, but her real interest was the grand larceny charge that had just been erased from her life, gone, forever, like the money.
Steve and Wendel looked mystified. “Wendel, replace the drywall and the shelves. Make it look like we were never here.” Steve turned back to her. “Did you ask someone to move the cash.”
“No.” She stared at where the money had been. She asked Rick to remove the money, but he never confirmed or denied it. “Why don’t you think that Jennifer would have broken in through the wall on the other side and removed the money. My people wouldn’t have known about your cameras and would have come in the same way we did.”
“Maybe or maybe not.”
To pull Steve back into range of Rick’s rifle, next door, Meghan shuffled back out of her walk-in closet and into her bedroom with her handguns pointed at Steve and Wendel. “Anyone who can discover the broadcast of your Wi-Fi cameras could have seen the money. How many others in your team know about the Wi-Fi cameras?”
“Just one,” Steve replied, stepping into her bedroom.
“Check with him, and forget about me,” she demanded. “Remember, there were six bales, weighing a hundred pounds each, escaping with that much cash, undetected by anyone in my house or on the street, would have been an impossible task, especially for one man.”
“Wendel,” Steve asked. “Replace the drywall, and then get Tom Clayton in here.”
Stunned by Steve’s request, Wendel seemed to have developed a degree of sympathy for Tom. Meghan smiled at the hope of a Lima syndrome working in Wendel. The more he cared about the hostages, the better for their safety. And after the drywall and shelving had been replaced, Wendel picked up his shotgun and left the room for Tom Clayton.
For the Stockholm syndrome to work, the lovebirds, Tom and Julie, were supposed to stay together, but in a different place from the other hostages. More importantly, crucially, there must be no previous relationship between hostages and captors for a real Stockholm syndrome to exist. Why does Tom know Steve? What was the basis for their previous relationship?
She knew Tom filed false police reports for Detective Davis at the Seal Beach Police Department. But he did it under duress and had no desire to cooperate with the police. So why does Tom Clayton know Steve, and when did their previous relationship start? They can’t have a prior connection for a real Stockholm syndrome to exist. Even so, if they do have a past, Stockholm and Lima syndromes may still work.
A moment later, Tom stepped into the room wearing a seedy-looking blue windbreaker. With his long hair in a sorrowful ponytail, his tone was civil. “I finished my community service for Detective Davis last week.” Tom was exhausted with dark circles under his eyes. “My record is clean. I apologized to Meghan for filing the false felony, sexual offense, and assault crimes. I haven’t talked with you since last week. So what do you want?”
Steve kept a smile plastered on his face. “You broke into Meghan’s house and placed the Wi-Fi spy cameras in Meghan’s bedroom and her walk-in closet.”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell them about the installation of the spy cameras?”
“No.”
“The filing of false police reports is a felony.” Steve retorted in cold sarcasm. “With your kind of record, you could go to prison for a long time. Why would you tell Meghan about the filing of the false police reports for Detective Davis but not the installing the spy cameras for me?”
“Detective Davis coerced me into filing those false reports at the Seal Beach Police Department. I did it under duress. My agreement with you was consensual, and I was well compensated. I respect you for that. Me and Julie, we go out to eat at Ruby’s Diner all the time with the money that you paid me. I’d never step on your toes, not in a million years. You have to believe that. I won’t let you believe anything else. It’s not true. That’s why I kept the installation of the spy cams confidential.”
“When I call your phone number, it goes straight to voice mail. You haven’t been answering my calls. Where have you been keeping yourself lately?”
“I’ve been here with Julie every day,” Tom was openly honest. “I love her, and she’s asked me to live with her. We’ve been talking about marriage. There’s no reason for you to be constantly questioning me. I want to move on with my life.”
“You may go back to your room.” After Wendel left to return Tom to Julie, Steve reached down in the toolbox, turned off the radio frequency jammer, and made a call on his cell phone. “The money is gone,” Steve spoke into his phone, then paused for a moment when Wendel returned. “Right, I’ll ask her.” Steve ended the phone call, and then he flipped a switch and reactivated the radio frequency jammer. “You went off the grid a few days ago and then returned with the white Lamborghini. Where did you go?”
Meghan pointed her pistols at Steve’s face and Wendel’s chest. “There’s a ladder outside my balcony that you can use to step down to the beach. I will give you twenty minutes before I untie everyone. I will tell them not to cooperate with any local or federal law enforcement. We expected the money to be here, and it’s not. It’s a simple mistake. I made a mistake spending the hundred dollar bill at Marina Grocery. You made a mistake being here. We both made mistakes, and we’ll let bygones be bygones and start over fresh… okay.” She pointed her guns at Steve and Wendel and began stepping back to the bedroom door so Rick could find Wendel in his sights.
She was halfway there when Steve hit Andrew over the head with his shotgun. She looked up at Steve with a broad smile as Andrew fell to the ground. “That’ll be the last thing you do. You should never have…” She stopped speaking when Wendel aimed his shotgun at the right side of Steve’s chest.
Wendel pulled the trigger once, the report distinguishable from a myriad of sounds on the beach. The noise shook the room. Blood filled Steve’s shirt, his lips pressed into a tight grimace. He briefly covered the red hole in his chest with one hand. With a bitter smile, he backed into the wall with a stony expression, frowning.
Meghan could only watch as she kept both her pistols on Wendel. There’s the Lima syndrome. Wendel did care about Andrew. Steve’s death proved it. Steve slumped his shoulders and then looked at her with a vacant expression. Steve’s a victim of the Lima syndrome I created in Wendel.
It turned out to be a prophetic thought as Steve hit the ground. Wendel placed his shotgun on the floor and then reached into Steve’s pants pocket. Wendel glanced up at Meghan. “I’m in the display and brightness settings on Steve’s iPhone. I just set the auto-lock on never. Now Steve’s iPhone is unlocked. Steve’s most recent call with Jennifer is in the recents. It’s the evidence you need proving Jennifer’s on her way to kill every one of you. Now, you’ll let me escape like you offered Steve.” Wendel gave the iPhone to Meghan and then jumped off the balcony and ran across the beach.
Gale force winds blew seagulls and heavy rainfall through the air around Wendel, and as he disappeared in the dark distance, she saw the chaos closing to an end. She glanced down at Andrew, and his blue eyes were confident. “Rise and shine.”
Andrew stood and signed to her. “Give me a gun.”
“That’s not fair.” Resistance welled up in her, and Andrew’s eyes were now demanding. She laughed with a deep chuckle. “I robbed them of their weapons so I could shoot them with their own guns.” She assumed a pose that was sexy. “It was like taking candy from a baby.”
“How come you get to shoot everyone?” Andrew signed.
“You want to shoot someone?”
Andrew nodded.
“You can have one gun. I’ve been alone by myself in the garage, fighting for our lives. It’s an enormous responsibility. If anything ever happened to us…” Her voice trailed off as she gave Andrew a pistol. She wondered why she was so prideful. I don’t need to brag. I just need to know I created Stockholm and Lima syndromes while fighting against the worst people in the world. And I won. I made my own choices, created my own destiny. Now I deserve a beautiful life with Andrew and his friends.
Andrew signed. “Move fast.”
When Rick Weber entered from the balcony, the nightmare had come to an end. Andrew was ecstatic, and the sense of victory was overwhelming when Philip entered the room moments later. They found everything spotless and in order, except for Steve’s dead body. “Steve play
ed a video.” Meghan took off her body armor and pointed to Steve Davis’ laptop computer. “It’s on this thumb drive, and this is Steve’s unlocked cell phone.”
“Let me have the thumb drive,” Rick needed no further explanation. “Give Philip the cell phone to give to Jim Temple.”
She found Philip lounging in her bedroom doorway, watching her, spellbound. She gave the cell phone to Philip, feeling extraordinary in the presence of Rick Weber and Philip Winston, the men who mentored Andrew’s real estate fortunes, and now her life too. “Steve’s cell phone has records of calls made to Jennifer while Steve held us, hostage, at gunpoint. It’s proof of police corruption.”
While in Forest Falls, Rick trained her, later Philip built her safe room. Now Philip was in her home with Rick, the man who, only a week ago, was just a total stranger, and yet there was something about him, now, that made her want to stay with him forever.
She was drawn to Rick and frightened. But, it wasn’t Rick who scared her, but herself, tapering down from all the terror. And now that it was finished, she needed a small window of time to catch her breath and emerge from the aftermath feeling good, not sick.
Rick seemed to sense her discomfort. “A brown speedboat will be waiting for us at the end of the Alamitos Bay breakwater to take us to Catalina Island. Jim Temple is in his FBI rental car down the street. We think Temple’s waiting for Jennifer to arrive. Jennifer’s the key to all this. Philip will stay here and help Temple and the Seal Beach Police and the Coroner sort through all this.” Rick told Meghan. “Just you and Andrew with me. The three of us alone. Let’s get out of here.”
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