Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

All three of them had sworn loyalty to their brothers. Included in their pledge was the duty to follow orders without hesitation or doubt.

“It’s the mission,” Dylan added. “Okay?”

“Fuck, yeah.” Bran sounded sleepier than before. “Let’s blip this hag and get it over with. I got things to do.”

“Equipment check,” Dylan said.

They ran through a checklist of their gear. Holstered to their belts were matte-black Heckler amp; Koch MK-23 combat pistols, the six-inch inch barrels extended with SOS-45 silencer modules that reduced the guns’ noise output by forty decibels. Each pistol was loaded with a military-style twelve-round clip holding a dozen. 45 +P jacketed hollowpoints, with a thirteenth round chambered. The hollowpoints expanded on impact for maximum stopping power. Ammo pouches held spare clips.

Sheathed to each pistol belt was an Mk III combat knife, the same knife issued to Navy SEALs. It had a six-inch stainless steel blade with a nonreflective black finish. Dylan had wetted his blade with blood only once, when he’d had to take out a security guard without making any noise. He still remembered the way the guy flopped like a landed mackerel in a pool of blood from his slit throat. It was a hoot, seeing him kick and thrash.

All three of them wore dark blue sweatshirts and navy blue denim jeans, the pant legs tucked into their sneakers to minimize the risk of DNA transfer. Indigo provided better camouflage in the dark than jet black. Their sneakers were the same color, and the white highlights had been colored with purple felt markers so they wouldn’t show up in the shadows. Their gloves-flexible Isotoners-were black, as were the ski masks they pulled over their heads.

For long distance communication they carried walkie-talkies, but when within sight of each other, they would communicate with hand signals like SWAT commandos. Hell, they might as well have been SWAT guys. They had the gear, the suits, the attitude. Only thing they didn’t have was a badge, and they didn’t need one.

Dylan carried a few extras-a penlight, a lucky penny, and a small mirror on a collapsible stalk, useful for peeking around corners. He didn’t plan on using the mirror today. This was no stealth op; it was strictly wham, bam, goodbye, ma’am.

“We good to go?” Dylan asked when the checklist was complete.

“Yeah, we’re good.” Bran sounded bored.

“Fuck, yes.” Tupelo was rubbing his gloved hands like a maniac.

Dylan nodded. “Let’s get paid.”

They got out of the van. Dylan felt his heart working hard. He wasn’t scared. This woman posed no threat. She was nobody, just some civilian to be zippered. Another day at the office, another thousand bucks in his pocket. But any hit got his juices flowing. It was a high, like doing lines of coke-not that he did that shit anymore. He’d been clean for two years come October. High on life-that’s what he was. Or on death, maybe. High on death, yeah.

His mouth was dry under the ski mask. He licked his lips. It was a warm August afternoon fragrant with oleander and honeysuckle, and a good time for a woman to die.

“You killed your children,” Abby said slowly.

Andrea faced her. “I did.”

“Why?”

“If I could answer that…” She broke eye contact, turning away. “I’ve spent twenty years trying to understand why. The psychiatrists worked on me. I think they enjoyed it. I was a challenge. But they never figured me out. The media people all had their theories, too. There was a book-I didn’t read it. A book about me that was supposed to explain it all. But how could a book explain it when even I didn’t know?”

Abby watched her, trying to imagine Andrea Lowry as a younger woman, a mother of small children. “You said you were famous.”

Andrea released an incongruous little laugh. “I suppose infamous would be the right word. They called me Medea. That was the nickname they came up with, the newspaper people. You know, the woman in Greek mythology. Her husband betrayed her with another woman, so Medea killed their children. Killed them just for spite. Then she escaped in a chariot drawn by flying dragons.” She gazed moodily toward the curtained window. “Medea was luckier than I’ve been. I’ve never escaped.”

“What happened to you after-after you…?”

“I shot myself.” She said it simply, without emotion. “Put a bullet in my head. Or tried to, anyway. I actually grazed my skull just behind the ear-this ear.” She pulled back a tuft of hair to expose a scar. “I would have bled to death, except the neighbors heard the gunshots and called nine-one-one. The police got me into surgery. The surgeon saved my life.” She replaced the spill of hair with an unsteady hand. “I wish he hadn’t. I should have died then.”

The story was moving too fast. Abby wanted to slow it down. “Where did you get the gun you used?”

“I bought it when I first moved to California. Even back then, everyone talked about crime. I was brought up in a small town in Oregon where people kept their doors unlocked. So I was scared. I never thought-never thought I would turn out to be the criminal, myself.”

“Okay,” Abby said softly. “So, once you recovered from surgery

…?”

“The psychiatrists started in on me. Trying to get me to remember. I didn’t, you see. Didn’t remember any of it. That evening was a total blank. Amnesia, the product of posttraumatic stress-that’s how they diagnosed it. Would have been simpler to say there are some things a person just can’t stand to face. Are you thirsty?”

The unexpected question caught Abby up short. “I’m okay.”

“Well, I’m thirsty. I haven’t talked so much a long time.”

She went into the kitchen, and Abby followed, waiting while Andrea poured herself a tall glass of lemonade. The kitchen was dark and windowless. There was no sunlight in this house, and Abby now knew why.

“Anyway,” Andrea said after a long swallow, “they said I’d had a psychotic break. I’d been in a fugue state. I hadn’t known what I was doing. Temporary insanity. Which was true, of course. It had to be true. No rational person would have done what I did. No one who was not insane…”

She took another gulp of lemonade. Ice clinked in the glass. Her hand was shaking.

“But I wonder, does that absolve me of guilt? If I wasn’t myself when I did it, does that mean I’m not responsible? And if I’m not, who is? Someone must be-or something. A sin of that magnitude must have a cause. And the cause must be me or something inside me, something hidden that came into the light just that one time…”

“A demon,” Abby said, understanding.

Andrea nodded, her eyes dark and sad. “We fool ourselves by thinking we’re in control of our actions. Then something like this happens, and we realize we’ve never had control. There are only urges and impulses that move us, like-like currents under the sea, like a riptide, an undertow, and they drag us where we never meant to go.”

Abby was beginning to wish she’d asked for some lemonade. Her mouth was dry. “Were you put on trial?”

Andrea answered with a shake of her head. “I was ruled incompetent. Remanded to the custody of a mental institution. I stayed there for twelve years.” She let those words settle in the air like a sentence of doom. “And they worked with me. They got me to remember. They brought back the memory of what I did that night. Thanks to them, I can relive it whenever I like. That’s what twelve years of treatment brought me. A memory I never wanted.”

“Unless you remember,” Abby said, “you can never move past it.”

Andrea’s tongue clucked. “You sound just like them. You could be a psychiatrist yourself.”