by C Thomas Cox
"Oh, God," I mumbled. "Please, God. Please no!" I looked at Charlie through the waterfall of tears that rolled out of my eyes. His bloodshot eyes and tomato-red face reminded me of a victim in a horror film. Unfortunately, this was real life.
I wasn't sure which one of the women Half-Ear had shot, but it didn't matter. I was certain he was in the process of hunting down the other.
Chapter Seventy-Six
I craned my neck in an attempt to see the top of the staircase, but my angle prevented me from doing so. I expected I'd hear the second shot sound in short order, after which Half-Ear would race down, gun drawn and finger on the trigger.
After what felt like five minutes, however, I didn't hear a second shot. All I heard was the random pitter-patter of footsteps that sounded like they were wandering in and out of each of the house's rooms.
Since I was so focused on the action taking place upstairs, the sudden tapping on the window that's centered on the top half of the exterior basement door nearly caused my heart to burst out of my chest. I jerked my head toward the sound and watched as Liz, from outside, inserted a key into the door's deadbolt. She unlocked it, turned the knob, tiptoed inside, and closed the door behind her.
She dashed over and yanked the tape from over my mouth. I cringed. "Sorry," she said. I turned my head toward her and, before I had a chance to say anything, she lurched back. "What happened to your ear?" she whispered.
I ignored the question. We'd have plenty of time to discuss my cosmetic surgery options if we made it out alive. "What'd he do to you and Claire? Is she okay? Where is he?"
"I'm not sure," she said as she untied first my arms and then my legs. "When we didn't find anyone on the first floor, we split up."
"Oh, no," I muttered.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing. Let's just get out of here." I knew, at that moment, that I'd never see Claire again. But I couldn't let my sorrow prevent Liz and Charlie from escaping. I couldn't live if their blood was on my hands.
Once Liz unbound me, she did the same for Charlie. She then helped us both to our feet -- Charlie because the drugs were still running through his system, and me because the throbbing in my head and ear wrecked my sense of balance.
Liz waved us toward the exterior door. Her sense of urgency grew as the upstairs footsteps sounded as though they were approaching the basement staircase, but Charlie and I lagged behind. "Hurry," she whispered.
She grabbed Charlie's arm and tugged, and I did the best I could to follow. I needed to escape...for Charlie and for Liz. I couldn't leave Charlie without a parent, and I couldn't leave Liz without anyone on whom she could rely.
As Liz began to turn the doorknob, however, the three of us froze when Half-Ear shouted, "Don't move!"
He raced down the steps and aimed his gun at us. "Get on the floor...now!" We all fell to our knees.
"Good. Now I'm going to kill the three of you, starting with the girl." He trained the muzzle on Liz. "But first, James, I want you to know that your lovely wife -- the one you've been trying to protect from me -- didn't even care enough about you to attend your going away party." I furrowed my brow. "Since I flattened her car tires, I didn't expect her to come. But Elizabeth, here, was obviously resourceful enough to hitch a ride from the man whose dead body's on the floor upstairs. It's a shame Claire was too scared to join the party." I turned from his diabolical grin to the blank look on Liz's face. Was it true? Was Liz the only one who came to save me? Who was the man Half-Ear shot down? A boyfriend of Liz's, perhaps? And would Half-Ear hunt down Claire after the three of us were dead?
I considered leaping at Half-Ear before he ended Liz's life. But would it do any good? He was ten feet away, and there's no way I could reach him in time. Instead, I closed my eyes and prayed for a miracle.
While I was in the midst of asking God to save the three of us, a shot rang out. My prayers were in vain. I had again failed someone I loved.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Just after the shot sounded, I heard footfalls pounding the stairs. I opened my eyes, expecting to see Half-Ear, after disposing of Liz, racing to the top to fend off someone else -- a neighbor who heard the gunshots, perhaps? Instead, I saw the one person I never expected to see. Claire was racing down the steps, hunting rifle in hand. Beneath her, Half-Ear's body lay lifeless on the floor.
I glanced to my right to confirm what I hoped was true -- that Claire shot him before he had the opportunity to shoot Liz. She had! Charlie was alive as well.
Claire threw the rifle to the floor and, maneuvering around Half-Ear, dashed toward me. I forced myself to my feet and threw my arms around her. "Oh, my Claire! I thought you were gone!"
She rested her head against my chest, and I was sure she could hear the pounding of my heart. "Jimmy," she said. "I'm so sorry I didn't believe you. He is real."
I kissed the top of her head. "It doesn't matter anymore...I love you, darling." I held her tighter than ever before.
"I'm sorry, too," Charlie said after Claire and I finally released each other.
"And I'm sorry for not telling you the truth." I replied. I embraced him.
Liz stood up. "Regardless, it's over now," she said as she wrapped her arms around the two of us. I wasn't so sure. Although blood seeped out of a hole in Half-Ear's back, his memory would likely haunt us forever. I prayed that I was the only one who would suffer from PTSD as a result.
"This is all my fault," I eventually said. "I deserved everything Half-Ear threw at me, but he shouldn't have involved any of you."
"Remember," Claire said. "You're a new man." She kissed my cheek.
I appreciated the gesture, but something else drew my focus. The last word in her sentence -- man -- reminded me that the body of a man whom Half-Ear shot was lying on the floor upstairs. "Who drove you here?" I asked, unsure if I wanted to know the answer.
"Gene." I gaped in disbelief. "He told me about your fight...that you might not want to see him. But when I suggested that my four tires might have been sliced by someone trying to hurt you, he rushed right over."
"Wait," I said. I tried to force back the tears that were welling in my eyes. "Why'd he come into the house?"
"He said he couldn't let anyone hurt his best bud."
I held my hands over my face, dropped to my knees, and bawled. Even though Gene wanted my wife, in his final act he decided that our friendship was more important.
While Claire did her best to comfort me, Liz phoned the police. Within minutes, they arrived at our house which, they said, was the most gruesome crime scene in Dairy Township's history.
Chapter Seventy-Eight
I spent a few days at the hospital recovering from both the bruise that bashing my head against the concrete floor caused and the damage that Half-Ear's shot inflicted on my ear. Although my ear would never again be whole, the cosmetic surgeon on call was able to at least round and smooth its bottom so that I'd be less likely to frighten trick-or-treaters. The ability to hear out of my left ear, however, would never return.
Charlie shared my semi-private hospital room for the first night. Blood tests convinced his doctor that the drug Half-Ear used to disorient him was nothing more than an overdose of a strong antihistamine. After the hospital released him, he stayed at our house for a night before returning to his wife and kids.
During my second day in the hospital, I decided to ask Claire the one question that'd been on my mind ever since she shot Half-Ear. "How'd you get your gun...and when did you learn to shoot?"
"Gene," she said. The sound of his name no longer fanned the flames of jealousy inside my heart. "I asked him for the gun in case you were right about Half-Ear."
"What?" I asked, perplexed. "You thought I might've been right?"
"I wasn't sure," she said. "I thought you were probably wrong...your story, after all, seemed pretty crazy." She was right. "But the more I thought about how adamant you were, the more I realized I needed to be able to protect myself...and you...if necessary."
She shrugged. "Besides," she said, "you were kidnapped by a deranged serial killer. What if I needed to pop a cap in his ass?"
I smiled.
"Don't worry anymore," she said. "Get some rest."
She curled up in the chair beside me and, within minutes, drifted off.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
The cops waited until an hour after Claire and I arrived home before descending on us. Claire had already answered a few of their questions in the hallway outside my hospital room, but she convinced them to leave me alone until I was discharged. Since she spent the two nights I was in the hospital in the uncomfortable chair beside my bed, neither of us had been to the house since the murders. We were glad to see that the police -- and a dedicated crew – had cleaned up the crime scene before we arrived.
Liz supervised the cleanup effort during my hospital stay -- Claire joked that Liz was intent on finding a hunky officer -- and Liz was the one who ushered the cops into the kitchen to talk with Claire and me.
Sergeant Woelper leaned on the counter, while a detective that Woelper introduced only as Smith sat at the table. "Although Ms. Cariot and your son have provided their own statements, I'll still need to ask you a number of questions."
"Sure, Detective." Claire said. "Whatever you need."
"Before we get to that point, however, I'd like to fill you in on some information we've obtained regarding Anh Linh." He withdrew a notebook from his briefcase.
"Who?" I interrupted.
He cocked his head, as if to say, Who do you think I'm talking about?
"Oh, sorry." I said. "Him." Claire massaged the flesh between my shoulder blades. It was hard to believe that the man who took me prisoner had a name other than Half-Ear.
"Sometime after his father was shot during the Vietnam war, an American family adopted him and brought him to the states. He spent at least his teenage years here, as we found records of him attending a public high school near Sandusky, Ohio. We also found that he spent a short time in a juvenile detention center after he threw a baseball at an Army veteran during an Independence Day parade.” Smith flipped to the notebook’s second page.
"After he graduated, he bounced between jobs in the retail industry, but he never seemed to hold on to one for more than a couple years. He couldn't hold onto a girlfriend, either. The two former love interests who we questioned cited his extreme emotional dependence on them as the reason they broke up.
"Not only did Anh change jobs frequently...he changed apartments just as often. It seemed like each job brought a new home, and he lived in locations ranging from San Diego, California to Naples, Florida. His adoptive parents maintained their residence in his childhood home. As far as we can tell, however, he never returned to Ohio.
"We tried to track them down for questioning, but they both passed away five years ago."
"Have you found a motive yet?" Liz asked as she wandered into the kitchen.
Claire and I glanced at her, hoping the daggers our eyes shot would remind her that my secret sin was the cause of Linh's actions. She didn’t, however, retract her question.
Smith said, "Nothing. Seems completely random." He shook his head. "Maybe Mr. Richmond reminded him of someone...perhaps of a man who did him some harm long ago." He took a sip from the glass of water Liz placed in front of him. "Memories...even repressed ones...tend to linger. Based on my experience, the unfavorable memories that hang around cause a significant chunk of crime." He scratched his chin. "Takes an awfully strong person to live with an aggressive memory."
"I'm sure," Claire said.
I, on the other hand, was speechless. In order to protect me, Liz had kept the truth secret. She must've kept Charlie quiet, too. And Claire went along with their plan. Although I wasn't sure I agreed with their approach, I couldn't ask for a more faithful family.
"I'd like to note one other item before I ask questions," he said. "The day after the incident occurred, a Mrs. Samson came in with Patrick, her twelve-year-old son." I glanced at Claire, but her expression was as blank as mine. Neither of us knew the Samsons.
The detective continued. "'Patrick has something to say,' Mrs. Samson said. 'And we think it might be related to the shootings.'
"I recognized them immediately, for Patrick was the one who had previously claimed that he saw Mr. Richmond beat the dog to death. I escorted them into my office and closed the door." He took another sip of water. "After Patrick built up his courage, he said, through his tears, that a Vietnamese man -- a man missing the lower part of his left ear -- had paid him fifty dollars to say that he saw Mr. Richmond kill his dog. In reality, however, Patrick hadn't even biked past your house."
As soon as he finished, my world regained the clarity that Half-Ear…Anh, that is…stole. Although his appearance triggered episodes that I thought I’d left in the past, I wasn’t living in a world devoid of truth…of real experiences. Instead, I suffered from occasional episodes that were either a reflection of the fear he instilled inside me, or a reminder of a past that was best left behind.
Chapter Eighty
Detective Smith and Sergeant Woelper bombarded Claire and I with questions for about an hour -- none of which led them close to the truth about Anh Linh's motivation. “We’ll have an officer drive by your house every hour or so,” Woelper said when they'd finished. “At least for the next few days. Although we’re confident Linh acted alone, it’ll at least give you folks some piece of mind.”
“Appreciate it, Sergeant,” Claire said just before she closed and deadbolted the door.
Claire and I followed Liz into the kitchen, where a round roast was bubbling in the crockpot. “Smells wonderful, Liz,” I said.
As we dug in, a palpable somberness fell over the room. Sure, Half-Ear was no longer a threat. But recalling his murder, coupled with the image of Gene’s body lying in the living room, crushed any hope of celebration.
***
The next day, the three of us arrived at the funeral parlor as soon as the ten o’clock viewing began. Gene’s ex-wife, daughter, and brother were the only ones in the visitation room.
Claire and I knew the ex-wife and daughter, and we introduced ourselves to the brother. We told all three how sorry we were for Gene's passing.
“Did you ever find out why that madman was after you?” Helen -- the ex-wife -- asked.
“Nope,” I said without hesitation.
After all the trouble lies had caused me in the past, I couldn’t believe that I had to lie again. And this untruth, unlike my others, would never end. I could never tell anyone else what really happened.
The tears in their eyes of the three of them -- plus the pain on the faces of the others who soon wandered into the room -- rekindled the feelings of guilt that had previously plagued me. Guilt that originally made me feel as though I’d never be able to kill Ahn Linh myself. And an additional helping of guilt that resulted from initiating the string of events that ultimately led to Gene’s death.
***
That evening we attended the second viewing, and the following morning we suffered through the funeral. “Do you feel alright?” Claire whispered as we sat in the seventh pew of the sanctuary.
I ground my molars together. “Sure, honey. I’m fine.”
But, of course, I wasn’t fine at all. Instead of fine, a new feeling welled up within me. A feeling different than the fear and guilt that had plagued me for so long. A feeling unlike the confusion that my PTSD had thrust upon me.
I was now angry. Angry at Ahn Linh for killing Gene, of course. But that anger took a backseat to rage I felt whenever I pictured Claire pulling the trigger of the gun that took Linh's life.
As I recalled the gruesome scene, I couldn't help thinking of Ahn as the little boy who watched as I shot down his innocent father. Instead of seeing Claire murder the adult man who nearly took out my whole family, I imagined Claire's bullet piercing the back of the little boy and taking his life.
My mind knew, of course, that the fury that I felt towar
d Claire was misplaced. She was, after all, taking the only action that could protect her family. My mind...my reason...was unable to compete with the anger that stirred inside my heart. And, after remaining silent during the trip home from the funeral, my rage erupted in a way I never thought possible.
Chapter Eighty-One
"You sure you're okay?" Claire asked as I stomped toward the doors leading to back patio.
I nodded my head and continued forward, every muscle in my body tense. I needed to regain control of my emotion...of my logic...before we spoke again.
Before I reached the door, however, I felt Claire's hand on my shoulder. "Jimmy, what's wrong?" she asked.
I couldn't keep my feelings locked inside any longer. "You!" I screamed as I spun around. "You're what's wrong!"
She took a step back and held her hands up as if to protect herself from me. Even in the midst of my explosion, however, I knew I'd never hit her.
Instead, I picked up a dining room chair and hurled it at China cabinet. The cabinet's glass shattered, sending shards raining upon the table and rug. Several of the plates that Claire had inherited from her mother crashed to the floor. "I should've protected that boy...protected Ahn Linh. I ruined his life. I murdered his only parent...and you went and killed him."
I fell to my knees and threw my hands over my face as I realized that the anger that I'd begun to feel toward Claire wasn't at all what I had initially perceived. I wept as I realized that, instead of loathing Claire, I despised myself for what I'd done to Ahn and his family. I'd never fully dealt with the rage that my own actions triggered.
"I'm so sorry, Claire," I mumbled through my tears. "It's all my fault. Everything's my fault." She rested her hand on my head. "God...I'll never be able to make things right."