Fixed in Fear

by T. E. Woods

  “You don’t mind I stay while you get what you come for, do you?” she asked. “And what’s holding Auggie up? Why he can’t come get what he needs hisself?”

  Mort stepped over a stack of Penthouse magazines and around two heaps of clothes. He was headed for the one closet in the room.

  “Mr. Apuzzo’s been detained,” Rita explained. She pointed to the food-encrusted plate on the pillow of Auggie’s unmade bed. A half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black was propped in the blankets. “You might want to clean that up. I’m afraid by the time Mr. Apuzzo gets back you might get that rat problem you spoke about earlier.”

  “In other words, he’s going up the river.” Jeannie clicked her tongue in disgust. Then she reached into the pocket of the blue gingham apron she wore, pulled out a fresh cigarette, and lit it off the butt of the one she was finishing. It bobbed in her mouth as she spoke. “And I guess I’m stuck for the two months’ back rent he ain’t never gonna be able to pay. Am I right?” Jeannie ground her spent cigarette into one of Auggie’s many ashtrays.

  “I’ll have his PO get in touch with you. He can fill you in on the details. You have it?” Rita called out to Mort.

  Mort shoved aside a heavy winter parka hanging from the closet’s rod. He saw the green suitcase Auggie told him would be there. He moved that out of the way, and there was the Planters peanuts can Auggie described. Mort reached down to retrieve it and felt something wobble inside. He brought it over to Rita, peeled off the yellow plastic top, and pulled out the contents.

  “That ain’t dope.” Jeannie sounded like somebody let her down. “What the hell. Since when’s a cop and her sidekick sent on a mission to pick up an ex-con’s cellphone?”

  Mort handed the phone to Rita with a smile. Rita pulled out an evidence bag and sealed the phone inside.

  “Thanks, Jeannie.” Mort peeled off his gloves and offered his hand to the manager. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “That’s it?” Jeannie asked, still disappointed. “That’s all you want? You’re not gonna toss the place? There’s dope here. I just know it.”

  “I’ll make sure to have Mr. Apuzzo’s PO call you tomorrow.” Rita shook the woman’s hand before heading toward the door. “Have a good evening.”

  They left the frustrated woman standing in Auggie’s apartment, spitting cigarette ash and complaining about the mess some people live with.

  “Back to the station?” Rita asked as they buckled up in Mort’s Subaru.

  Before Mort could answer, his own cellphone rang. He glanced at the clock as he turned the key in the ignition. It was nearly eight thirty. If it was Lydia again, he’d have to call back. There was no way he wanted to have a conversation about Allie with Rita in the car. But the screen showed it wasn’t Lydia.

  “Hey, buddy. What’s up?”

  “Mort, can you come to my place. Now?” Larry’s voice came over the car’s speakers. He sounded shaken.

  “Everything okay?” Mort glanced over to Rita.

  “No. No, everything’s most decidedly not okay. I don’t know what to make of this.”

  “Make of what?” Mort asked.

  Larry didn’t answer.

  “Larry? What’s wrong?” Mort knew his friend was never at a loss for words.

  “Carlton’s papers. I found something. Helen. Carlton…” Larry’s voice trailed off, as if he didn’t know what to say next.

  “What is it, buddy?” Mort pressed.

  “Just get over here, Mort. Right now, please. Maybe you can make sense of this.”

  “Of what?”

  Again several seconds passed before Larry spoke.

  “Nothing is as it seems, Mort. Nothing at all.”

  Chapter 31

  It was nearly midnight and Mort still hadn’t called. Lydia was worried. And she was helpless to do anything other than wait. She couldn’t call the police station. She wasn’t family. No one there would tell her what might be going on that kept Mort from getting back to her. She couldn’t reach out to Jimmy or Micki without raising suspicion as to why she needed to know where Mort was on a Friday night. Mort’s son was out, too. Robbie knew Mort had asked Lydia to let Allie stay with her when she returned at the end of last year. If Lydia called Robbie, he’d know she was involved once again, and she didn’t want to open that particular Pandora’s box. That was Mort’s story to tell. There was nothing to do but trust him. He’d call when he could.

  If he could.

  An unthinkable possibility nagged at her. Had Allie already carried through on her threat? Had she become so enraged when Lydia hadn’t called her earlier in the evening that she’d impulsively acted out her promise to turn both Mort and Lydia in if they didn’t comply with her wishes?

  Was Mort in jail right now? She couldn’t bear the thought of him losing everything he’d worked his entire life for because of her.

  Lydia went to her office on the lower level of her home. She sat at the keyboard of her communication system and in less than a minute linked into the central dispatch of the Seattle PD. She watched her screen for ten minutes as it revealed every call coming in and going out of the main law enforcement facility sixty miles north of where she sat. Squads were dispatched to respond to six domestic skirmishes, three auto wrecks with injuries, and four reports of drunk and disorderly at various bars around the city. There was nothing to indicate anything out of the norm was happening.

  There was no chatter about its chief of homicide being arrested.

  Lydia laid her hand across her cellphone as it sat on her desk and willed it to ring.

  Call me, Mort. Tell me what you want me to do.

  She felt the pulsing throb of her emotions rising. She needed to act. She understood the necessity to hold her instinctive urges in check. Her best course was to proceed intentionally. Effectively. She closed her eyes and tried to reassure herself with a pleasant scene of eagles soaring over her back deck on a cool autumn’s evening, but images of Allie laughing as her father was placed in handcuffs kept intruding. She opened her eyes and went back to her keyboard. It took a little more than thirty seconds to break through the firewall, but her tension lowered a notch when she was able to call up the electronic duty roster of all Seattle law enforcement personnel. She scanned down the alphabetical list and found him. Mort Grant was coded 10-7B. She clicked to another screen to translate the police jargon. Out of service, personal.

  What did that mean? Mort being off duty made sense. It was late. The weekend had officially started. She knew he was working the mass murders in Enumclaw, but even Mort had to sleep. Yet he had made the point of not listing himself off duty, he held himself merely out of service.

  He coded it personal. Was everything all right with Hayden and Hadley? She forced herself to at least pretend she wasn’t worried and pushed back from her desk. Mort was involved with something that prevented him from calling. That’s all.

  I should go to bed. There’s nothing for me to do until he contacts me.

  Lydia tucked her cellphone into her sports bra and left her office. She climbed the stairs, went into the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee to automatically begin brewing at six the next morning, then went to her living room to check the locks on the front door.

  The lights inside her home dimmed almost imperceptibly for half a second.

  Someone had just entered her property. For an instant she thought it was Mort. Relief flooded over her and she began to inhale a cleansing breath of peace. But her relief was erased before her next heartbeat as she realized Mort wouldn’t have driven an hour south without calling her first.

  She stood in the middle of the living room and did a 360-degree visual scan, reminding herself the placement of various weapons around the room. She shoved an ottoman next to the wall, clearing a space for movement if she needed it.

  Then she turned out the living room lights and moved to the kitchen.

  Lydia stood next to her stove and did another quick scan. She’d remember where the weapons were no mat
ter how chaotic a situation may turn. She pulled the butcher block holding her cutting and carving knives from the center island and placed it in the pantry. It was always the last step in every defensive drill she practiced. Remove possible weapons an intruder might happen across. Lydia knew where her guns and Tasers were. That would be enough.

  She turned out the kitchen lights, crossed to the entryway, pulled her Beretta—always with its silencer attached—from the console, wedged her back into a dark corner across from the front door, and waited.

  She heard the crunch of gravel. Slow and unbroken. Not footsteps. She heard no engine. Saw no headlights flashing in through the black night. She kept her attention focused on the large window at the front of the house. The sound grew closer. A gliding bulk of shadow neared the house.

  It was a car. Coasting in. No engine. No lights.

  Whoever was coming knew they wouldn’t be welcomed.

  Lydia moved silently into her darkened kitchen, staying in the center of the room to deny whoever was outside any hint of interior movement. She stopped at the specific point she’d practiced many times during her personal defense drills. Fifteen feet between her and the front door, with an equal amount of space between where she stood and the window over the kitchen sink. A third line of fifteen feet existed between her and the large wall of glass overlooking her back patio. Whichever entrance the intruder chose, he or she would need to take several steps before reaching her.

  Plenty of time to fire off a round or two.

  There was movement in front of the kitchen window. Left to right. She held herself steady, Beretta in hand, and waited. No other figures crossed.

  One intruder.

  Seconds later she heard a scraping coming from the general vicinity of her garage. Lydia realized she was vulnerable. She hadn’t yet locked the automatic door for the night. While the mechanism made forcing the garage door open more difficult, it wouldn’t discourage someone the way a strong lock would. She focused every sense to the right wall of her kitchen, the one separating it from the garage. Sure enough, in less than a minute, she heard the creaking grind of her garage door being manually raised.

  Whoever was coming was now one step closer.

  A familiar calm settled over her. Where some might be panicked or at the very least frightened, Lydia slipped into this situation as easily as she might a favorite pair of slippers. She knew what to do. She’d been forced to develop strategies for protecting herself before she learned her ABC’s. She hadn’t been good at it as a young child. She still bore the scars to remind her what that vulnerability cost her.

  But she got better. She practiced and drilled and practiced some more and she got better.

  Like Russell Wilson in the remaining seconds of a tied-up playoff game, she knew what to do when it all came down to one moment. Lydia crossed swiftly to the left side of her kitchen and crouched behind the center island. It was wrapped on three sides with solid slabs of marble. No matter what kind of firepower the intruder was bringing, the stone buffer would serve her well.

  She heard the heavy door between the kitchen and garage being shaken. She couldn’t see the doorknob, but she heard the metallic jingle of someone on the other side testing it.

  She trained her Beretta to the level of that knob. Whoever stepped in would get a gut shot. Bad enough to stop any forward movement, but not lethal. Lydia wanted whoever this was alive.

  She had some questions to ask.

  The jiggling stopped. For ninety seconds all Lydia could hear was the hum of her refrigerator and the strong and steady pulsing of her own heartbeat.

  BOOM!

  The front door crashed down to her slate entryway floor with an explosion of splintered cedar and tempered glass. Lydia spun, flattened herself to the floor, and trained her weapon toward the hall. She glimpsed the shadow of one large man with broad shoulders outlined in the low moonlight. He stood in the darkened space and looked around, like a vengeful giant trying to decide which village hut to stomp first.

  Lydia fired a shot to the man’s left thigh. He stumbled forward but didn’t collapse. She belly-crawled behind the island, eager to put the stone barrier between them once again.

  The man lumbered into the living room. In what little light filtered through the large windows, Lydia recognized him. Allie’s driver. The big man who had driven Allie here to Lydia’s house. Was that only last night? The same man she’d seen carrying packages into Allie’s villa earlier that afternoon. Allie had told him to take the evening off. What had she called him? That’s right. Staz. Lydia brought herself up just high enough to peer over the island. The wounded man dragged his left leg as he turned toward the fireplace, his back to Lydia.

  A semiautomatic Magnum in his right hand.

  Lydia leveled her own weapon at the hand that held his. She waited until Staz turned back around, giving her a larger target with the side of his biceps. She fired one round.

  A spray of blood marked her accuracy. The man didn’t yell. He didn’t even moan.

  And he didn’t drop his weapon.

  Instead, he turned toward her. His head leaned forward as though he was trying to locate the source of the bullets that had ripped into him.

  Why aren’t you firing? she wondered. Even if you can’t see me, you’d hit something.

  Staz stumbled closer, still silent. He hesitated for a moment. He’d seen her. It was then he dropped his weapon and lunged.

  Lydia expected him to drop to the floor. Instead he reached over the island, grabbed a handful of Lydia’s hair, and yanked her up. Her forehead cracked against the cold marble counter of the island as he dragged her up and over the top. She felt a warm trickle of blood spill from the corner of her mouth. Lydia wrapped her left hand around her assailant’s wrist and held on to the Beretta with her right. When he’d pulled her body onto the counter, she slammed a powerful kick to the intruder’s chest.

  Staz’s grip didn’t weaken at all.

  He threw her to the floor in front of him and lifted his right leg, aiming to stomp on her ankle. Lydia shifted to the left, swung her right arm, and fired two rounds straight into Staz’s chest.

  The giant man loomed over her. Again, Lydia fired. He reached for her, his face twisted into a mask of determined rage. Lydia fired another again, this time into the big man’s throat. A bloody rain, hot as life, spilled down on her.

  She rolled to her left just in time to avoid being crushed as the colossus invader finally fell.

  Lydia lay still and breathed. She kept her hand wrapped around her Beretta and her eyes trained toward the front door. If Staz had, indeed, brought backup, the steady spit of muffled gunfire would surely bring them. A full five minutes later she knew he’d come alone. She pulled herself up off the floor, turned on the overhead kitchen light, and got a full illuminated view of the giant lying in a pool of blood on her kitchen floor. The behemoth was dead. She turned to assess the full extent of his havoc.

  Staz had ripped the hinges off her front door when he kicked it in. She had three or four sheets of plywood in the garage—leftovers from a potting shed project she’d undertaken last spring. She could secure the entry until she was able to arrange for a new door to be installed.

  Lydia stepped out into her driveway and stood next to the bronze Mercedes she knew Allie had secured through the Larchmont. The cabin of the car was empty. She opened the trunk. Yards of rope, two woolen blankets, an ax, and three rolls of duct tape were inside.

  Quite the change from the toy store bags earlier. I guess I don’t have to wonder what you had in mind for me, do I, Staz?

  Lydia closed the trunk and listened. It was nearly a quarter mile to the end of her driveway and over a thousand yards to the nearest neighbor. Her gunshots had been quieted by the silencer. But she had to be certain no one had heard the crash of that front door. The clouds were low that night, helping to deaden any sound. Her hair teased across her face, ruffled by a cool but gentle breeze. The pines and cedars whispered. The owl she knew
hunted her property hooted its awareness of her presence. No human sounds interrupted the tranquillity of an autumn night in the woods. No headlights pierced between the trees.

  She went back inside and turned on the living room lights.

  I’ll lose this rug, she thought as she traced Staz’s path of blood. Most of it’s on the hardwood and tile. I can clean that up. She’d have to clean the walls and appliances, too.

  Lydia stood over Staz’s body. She bent over, braced her back against the island for leverage, and flipped him over. His lifeless eyes were open, staring blindly up to the ceiling. Lydia searched the pockets of his sports jacket, looking for identification. She was about to reach for the inside pocket when she heard a familiar buzz coming from his trousers. Lydia pulled out Staz’s cellphone. She didn’t recognize the model. The screen was larger than any she’d seen and there was no logo announcing its manufacturer. She held it in her hand, felt the buzzing against her palm, and read the caller ID: CZARINA.

  Lydia pressed the button to accept the call.

  “Staz, have you accomplished your goal? Press one for yes, two for no.”

  Allie’s voice. But why the need for code? Could Allie’s man not speak? Is that why he was so eerily quiet after she’d shot him? Lydia pressed 1 and waited to see what would come next.

  “Is she alive?”

  Lydia pressed 1 again.

  “Good work, Staz.” Allie sounded pleased. “Is she hurt?”

  Lydia wondered what answer might get her the most information. She decided to go with 1.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but I must say I’m not surprised. I told you to expect a fight from her. Does she require medical attention?” This time Allie sounded irritated. Like she hadn’t planned on needing to call the Larchmont to arrange for an oh-so-discreet physician to be delivered to her villa.

  2.

  “Have you secured her?”

  1.

  “Very good.” Allie’s tone was back to pleasant condescension. “Now put me on speaker and hold the phone for the good Dr. Corriger to hear.”