Fixed in Fear

by T. E. Woods

  Lydia locked the door to her room behind her. She took off her trousers and sweater, hung them in the hotel closet, and pulled out a carry-on suitcase. It contained one outfit that would be worn one time. A costume for a character in a private one-act play.

  Lydia pulled out a tapestry makeup kit and set it on the counter. She washed her face, leaving a clean canvas to paint her mask. Her hands reached for the contact case, and in less than ten seconds her blue eyes changed to brown. Next the foundation, eye makeup, powders, and lotions that would darken her pale skin to a warm glow suggesting a recent sunny vacation. When it was time to dress, Lydia stepped out of her panties into a new pair, padded in the abdomen and hips to suggest a six-month pregnancy. The dress she pulled over her head was formfitting, yet demure. A navy blue knit perfect for the cooling temperatures of Boston in late September.

  Lydia tucked her auburn hair into a tight mesh cap and lifted a wig out of its zippered case. A few brushstrokes later she stepped into black leather walking shoes with sensible rubber soles and crossed over to the suite’s full-length mirror to survey her creation. Lydia Corriger had vanished. In her place stood a healthy, wholesome soon-to-be mother with the coloring of a classic ginger. Even though it had been months since she’d donned her last disguise, it had taken less than ten minutes to make the transformation.

  Muscle memory.

  She pulled out one last item: an oversized leather purse. There was no need to review its contents. Lydia had stocked and double-checked it before she left Olympia. Phone, credit card, family photos, even the mints and lip gloss belonged to Natalie Braverman. According to the driver’s license tucked into a worn-just-enough brown canvas wallet, Natalie was a thirty-three-year-old resident of Morristown, New Jersey. There was an envelope in the purse holding the reservation for a midsize rental car.

  Lydia settled a long and loose scarf over her head, totally covering her now-red hair and obscuring the sides of her face. She draped her raincoat over her arm and held her purse across her apparently pregnant belly. She kept her head down as she walked to the elevator. If a hallway camera captured her image, any reviewer would assume Lydia was headed downstairs for yet another breakout session. She was pleased to find the elevator empty. She pulled off the scarf, fluffed her hair, slipped the raincoat over her shoulders, lifted her head high, and walked across the lobby as Natalie Braverman. She stepped into the first taxi in the queue and asked the driver to take her to Logan International Airport.

  Lydia made sure the clerk at the rental counter would remember Natalie Braverman as a soft-spoken woman who asked her if she had children. She was curious what labor was really like and whispered she was dreading the experience. The clerk promised she’d make it through just fine and upgraded Natalie to a full-sized sedan at no extra charge.

  “Enjoy it while you can, sweetie.” The clerk’s name tag identified her as Sally. “Won’t be long till you’re all minivans, car seats, and juice boxes.”

  Lydia pulled out of the airport rental agency and headed north on Interstate 95. Traffic was light. The road was smooth. Boston faded into the distance as the highway made its way past miles of strip malls and abandoned factories, housing developments and open fields. Two hours later the cadence replayed itself, this time in reverse. Fields became suburbs, which in turn blended into a parade of roadside eateries and gas stations leading into Portland, Maine. She found her exit and turned left off the interstate toward Westbrook, Maine.

  It won’t be long now, Eddie.

  She drove her rented Accord down Main Street and wondered how the gentle souls in this lovely village would react once they learned they’d been hosting a man who, seven years earlier, callously murdered Dennis Chait, a brilliant engineer, entrepreneur, and new father. A man who embezzled nearly ten million dollars from someone he called his best friend, leaving the dead man’s widow and infant son penniless. Soon enough, she thought. No one will have to wonder what ever happened to Eddie Dirkin.

  It was nearly eight o’clock when Lydia parked her car across from the long driveway leading to Eddie’s house. Towering aspens lined either side of the road, turning the country lane into a golden hallway shimmering in the last rays of the setting autumn sun. Though the property was situated less than a mile from the center of town, the dense trees provided a sense of remoteness. Lydia watched the driveway leading to Eddie’s riverfront house. She’d wait until it was likely Eddie had gone to bed. She wanted him to know she was there only when she was standing over him. When it would be too late for him to react.

  She turned off the engine, settled back against the leather upholstery, and watched a hawk land in a tall sycamore next to an open field. Eddie had chosen a lovely spot to hide. And Dennis Chait’s money was paying for it all.

  His car was in the driveway. A four-year-old Subaru that Lydia knew was registered to William Smith, Eddie’s alias. A sensible car. Built for Maine winters. Nothing flashy. Nothing drawing attention. Her search of Maine licensing revealed Eddie had purchased the car for nine thousand dollars cash seven months ago.

  Mort drives the same model car, she thought. Cops and killers. Interesting target market. She pushed the thought of Mort from her mind and checked the contents of her purse. Everything she needed was inside.

  The front door to Eddie’s house opened. A man walked out. It was too far for Lydia to clearly identify him. There was a lightness in his step, and he played with his car keys, tossing them up and catching them, as he walked to the Subaru. Lydia scooted down in her seat when she saw the headlights pop on and the car come down the drive. She was able to get a good look at the driver when he paused to look both ways before turning his car toward town.

  Eddie Dirkin was going for a drive.

  She waited until he was several car lengths ahead of her before she started her own car and followed him into Westbrook. Despite the lack of traffic, Eddie kept his car just under the speed limit. You’ve gotten smarter, haven’t you, Eddie? You’re learning to live an underground life. Do nothing to draw the attention of anyone who might have reason to check your identity. Not even so much as a speeding ticket.

  Lydia stayed fifty yards behind Eddie’s car, mirroring his turn onto Main Street just before the traffic light turned red. She saw him pull into the parking lot of Shaw’s grocery store and followed him, parking her Accord two lanes down from his Subaru. She waited until he was inside the store before she left her car.

  She pushed her shopping cart with the ambled ease of someone looking for just a few items on her grocery list. She selected a can of pears and two loaves of bread. She politely declined the offer of a cheese sample from the woman behind the deli counter, but tossed a jar of honey mustard into her cart. She crossed the store using the wide back area, glancing down each aisle she passed. She saw him in the frozen foods section. He was bending over an open freezer, sifting through the products. Lydia shifted the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder, turned her cart down the aisle, and came up beside him. She feigned interest in the myriad of frozen entrees, considering first a family-sized lasagna before shifting her hand to an icy box of beef Stroganoff.

  You’ve been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list for nearly four years, Eddie. And here you are with a stack of frozen hamburger patties in your hands.

  Eddie glanced over his shoulder, saw her, and straightened. Lydia got a taste of the Eddie Dirkin charm as he turned to her and gave her a megawatt smile. Lydia returned his smile, and Eddie lowered his gaze. He saw her pregnant bulge and his eyes instantly lost their playfulness. He turned back to choosing his dinner.

  You’ve assessed me in a heartbeat, haven’t you? I’m neither threat nor promise. A familiar heat climbed up her spine. You think you have the upper hand. You can discount me and walk away. Go home to your house on the river and have your dinner. Is that what you’re thinking, Eddie?

  Dirkin tossed a bag of frozen ravioli with marinara sauce into his red plastic basket and continued down the aisle. Lydia followed him. Th
eir paths crossed again in the paper supply aisle. Eddie was choosing his toilet paper. He tossed Lydia a dismissive smirk as she reached for a package and brushed her arm against his.

  You stupid fool. The weight of the gun in her purse heralded her power. This is death standing next to you. Death. Yet you brush me off like a piece of lint. Would you be this casually reckless in your interaction with me if you knew what I had planned for you?

  Eddie walked away, this time with more determination in his step. Again, Lydia followed him.

  She wondered if Dennis had had time to beg for his life before his best friend shot him twice in the neck and once in the shoulder.

  The gun. An insistent thought screamed inside Lydia’s skull. Follow him. Wait for your moment. Then reach into your purse, pull out the gun, and kill him.

  Lydia kept her eyes on Eddie. She thought of Dennis Chait and his widow. She wondered what kind of man Dennis’s son, Billy, would grow into. How much had he suffered being raised by a grieving, overworked mother? How long would he carry the bitterness of having been robbed of a father?

  Settle this. Make it right. Follow him home. Take the gun and bring justice.

  Her hand trembled. She pressed her arm against her purse and felt the outline of the Beretta’s grip.

  Help them. Spare Ann Louise and Billy the pain of justice denied.

  Lydia watched Eddie unload his selections onto the checkout conveyor belt and breathed in her sovereignty. Her back straightened. Her shoulders squared.

  She watched him leave, balancing two heavy paper bags in his arms. Lydia walked away from her cart and out the door. She saw him load his purchases into the back of his Subaru as she walked toward her car. She tracked his taillights as he pulled out of the lot, making the turn that would take him back to the sanctuary he’d created for himself. She got in her car, started the ignition, and gripped the steering wheel.

  I will end this all tonight. I will make this right.

  She sat in the parking lot of Shaw’s grocery for a full minute, allowing the images of Ann Louise and her son to flood her with authority. Her pulse quickened and an appealing strength settled in her limbs.

  Lydia Corriger would never be the victim again.

  The Fixer would be her champion.

  A vision of Mort intruded, only to be replaced by a flash of her own backyard. She saw the wide expanse of lawn dotted with bird feeders and lined on either side with giant Douglas firs. The Olympic Mountains in the distance across the deep green waters of Dana Passage.

  Then she saw her patients. The blessed refuge of her office. She lifted a hand to touch her cheek, but instead felt the warm fingertips of Paul Bauer, her occasional lover who stood ready to be so much more if she’d only let him.

  Her eyes filled with tears of rage. She pushed the images of her new life to the recesses of her awareness. No melancholy of hearth and home would serve her now. She bowed her head and willed the supremacy of justice to fill her again.

  Then she reached into her purse, pushed the Beretta aside, and pulled out her phone. Her hand wavered in rebuttal as she attached a small digitizing microphone and punched in three numbers. The response was immediate.

  “Nine-one-one. What is the location of your emergency?”

  Lydia gave them Eddie’s address. The technology of her digitizer allowed the dispatcher to hear a husky male voice.

  “And what is the nature of your emergency?” the dispatcher asked.

  “You’ll find Edward Dirkin there. He’s a fugitive wanted for homicide in Minnesota. Killed his best friend and walked away from the courtroom four years ago.”

  Lydia ended the call before the dispatcher could ask another question. She fumbled as she shoved her phone back into her purse. She shifted the Accord into gear, turned left onto the road that would take her back to Boston, and tried to quiet the damning thoughts inside her own mind.

  Chapter 6

  Mort called out to the kayaker approaching off his starboard side. “I’ve got an extra Guinness here if you’re interested.”

  Agatha Skurnik, his eighty-three-year old neighbor in Mort’s Lake Union floating enclave, gave two hard pulls on her oar, twisted her hips, and glided to a stop parallel with her own houseboat. “I just finished a two-hour paddle. A beer sounds about as perfect as those guys in the commercials want me to believe.” She tied her kayak to her back dock and hoisted herself up and onto her deck. “Give me five minutes to wash my hands and pull a comb through this mop and I’ll be right over.”

  Mort leaned back in his lawn chair and surveyed the Monday evening activity on the lake. The air was warm, and the low rays of the setting sun cast ribbons of gold across the water. A fellow wearing a weathered Seahawks cap waved as he rowed past in a small bathtub of a boat. Mort didn’t know his name, but the guy passed his house often about this time of day, and the two of them always acknowledged the other. That was one of the things Mort liked about houseboat living. Folks were polite and helpful if you needed them, but for the most part everybody kept to themselves—satisfied with a relationship based on passing nods and smiles and the occasional comment about the weather. He considered how different it was when he lived in the house he and Edie bought just after they were married. We stayed there almost thirty years, he thought. The whole neighborhood raised one another’s kids. Knew each other’s business. He thought about how it was the perfect place for that time in his life. But with Edie dead three years now and Robbie married with two daughters of his own, the big house didn’t seem right for the current chapter of Mort’s life. It was true he bought the houseboat on impulse, and there was a time he wasn’t certain he’d last a month on the water. But he’d been here nearly a year, and it was feeling more and more like home. He turned and smiled as one of the main reasons his floating life felt so comfortable crossed the boardwalk separating their houses and stepped onto his boat.

  “Stay there,” Agatha commanded. “You need another?”

  Mort held up his bottle. “Just sat down. Haven’t taken my first sip.”

  “Well, hang on. I’ll raid your fridge and join you.” Agatha was back on Mort’s deck in less than a minute, Guinness in hand. He liked how she took care of herself. He never had to worry about serving or tending Agatha. She settled her lean and tanned body into the chair next to him and clinked her bottle against his.

  “To another day in paradise.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Mort took a long sip. “You been busy?”

  Agatha kept her eyes on the water as she answered. “Same old. Met the crew down at Bindy’s for breakfast. You’ll be happy to know Cissy Callaway sold her first book. New author, small house, but still. That first sale’s something you always remember.”

  Agatha retired at age eighty after a long and acclaimed career as a literary agent. She represented authors across a variety of genres, some of whose names even Mort recognized. Edie had always been the reader in the family, and Mort knew she’d get a kick out of his attempts to discuss the world of books with his accomplished neighbor. Though no longer actively negotiating for her client list, Agatha kept her hand in the business by mentoring young agents. Her only criteria were that they be serious about finding and nurturing talent and that they be women. She once told Mort the best thing about retirement was she no longer had to play the role of deferential less-than to the men who called the shots in the old boys’ network of major publishing. She met the three women she called her “crew” for breakfast twice a week. While Mort knew nothing about what it meant to be an agent, he was certain the women she mentored were well served by his brilliant and no-nonsense neighbor and friend.

  “Well, good for Cissy,” he said.

  “Then I put in my time down at Crestwood.” Agatha referred to her volunteer reading gig at a nearby elementary school. “Came home, got to work sanding that front deck. I got about a third of it done.” She pointed to the railings on Mort’s boat. “Wouldn’t hurt you to get busy on your own, mister. Houseboat’s not li
ke a land house. You can’t let maintenance slip by. The water’s beautiful, but it’s harsh.”

  Mort took another sip and promised to get right on it.

  “I mean it, Mort. If you expect me to come drag your sorry sack of a self out of the water when your boat’s rotted away beneath you, you’re a poor judge of my character. And I don’t need you to be driving down my property values by being moored next to a decrepit eyesore.”

  Mort chuckled. “Do an inspection, Aggie. My boat’s a prime example of floating workmanship. You wouldn’t let me have it any other way.”

  Agatha raised a teasing eyebrow. “And you don’t want to see what happens if I need to remind you twice.”

  “No, ma’am. I do not.” They sat in silence for a few minutes, gazing at the water and enjoying their beer.

  “You have fun on your paddle?” Mort asked.

  Agatha nodded. “Nothing lovelier than an early evening in September here in Seattle. The sun is warm. The air is dry. It’s our payoff for months of never-ending drizzle, I guess. I planned on a short float, but it was too delicious to call it a day.”

  Mort looked up into a cloudless sky. “It’s a beauty, that’s for sure. Enjoy it while it lasts, because the rain will come soon enough. Always does.”

  Agatha turned a gentle gaze toward him. “You speaking literally or metaphorically?”

  Mort inhaled long and slow. “Both, probably. I’m trying real hard to stay here, you know? In this moment. Remind myself everything’s fine if I can just stay focused on this time, these people, this task.” He reached over and patted the strong, age-marked hand of his neighbor. “Like right now. I’m here, on the lake. With you. This beer. These ducks.” He pointed to a spot in the water. “That jumping fish. There’s no rain here. Not now.”