Catalyst

by Steve Winshel

  He looked up at Helen.

  “Say nothing to anyone. Not the police, not your sister, not anyone. If you do, the next pictures won’t be G-rated and you won’t like what’s in them. I’ll get back in touch soon to tell you what we want. Disobey me, and Allison dies. So will you.”

  Her smile was still there, but it wasn’t dazzling anymore. It was thin. She was calm, not distracted. Helen held his gaze as she scooped up the pictures. As she stood and turned her back to Josh, he stared at her from the same angle as on the plane. That seemed a very long time ago. She left the room without another word. Josh had said nothing yet. When the door clicked shut, it felt very cold in the room and he started shaking.

  Chapter Two

  The man in the picture was Crawford. He was parked at the Arrivals terminal for the Northwest flight carrying Helen back to Los Angeles Tuesday night. Crawford sat in the passenger’s seat of the late-model Lexus so when the airport cop came around to tell him to move along he could shrug and say he didn’t have the keys. The cop eyeballed him and tapped his wrist before moving on. But he turned around on his motorcycle as he pulled away; unaware of this reflexive act of self-protection Crawford stirred in most people.

  Crawford wasn’t so much thin as he was angular. His muscles beneath the neatly pressed and creased suit were taut and sinewy, but his movements were languid. Like a snake, loose and fluid until provoked, he could suddenly tighten. Once locked on, Crawford was unshakable.

  Now he was loose. He took off the hat once again and smoothed the thin hair back over his head. The growing bald spot in the front may have been due to the hat, but more likely it was genes. They say your hair pattern comes from your mother’s father. Crawford would never know, since Grampa died at the age of forty-three and the baldness never had a chance to set in. Crawford’s mother gave birth when she was fifteen, the result of a liaison between the pretty young high-schooler in rural North Dakota and an equally innocent black boy one year her junior at a neighboring school. The tryst was just an experiment, two kids fooling around and stepping over the line, but the broken jaw and compound leg fractures caused by an axe handle his mother suffered at the hands of the enraged Grandfather-to-be were not innocent. It was a miracle Crawford was not miscarried then, nor any of the innumerable other times his mother was beaten and sodomized by her father in their one-parent home.

  Crawford’s mother was a mouse, quietly raising him in fear under the same roof she grew up in. When he was six and his grandfather seemed to temporarily lose interest in taking out his rage on Crawford’s mother, they moved to a nearby town. The calm didn’t last long. Crawford had clear memories of hiding in the closet when Grampa came for a visit carrying a belt or maybe a stick he had picked up in the yard. After his grandfather stormed out of the house, Crawford would quietly run the bath or get bandages, occasionally dialing 911. He had bumps on his head from the rare times when there was no time to hide and Grampa backhanded him out of the way to get to his mother.

  Crawford felt sorry for her, pity more than love. She fed him, clothed him, kept an eye on his school grades, and never hit him. When he was twelve years old and taller than her, he went to visit his grandfather. Two years had passed since the last time Grampa had come by. It was a three-mile walk. Crawford strolled along the side of the two-lane road, looking at the trees and hearing the birds call. His mind was on nothing. The screen door to his grandfather’s house was half open, the hallway dimly lit. Crawford went up the three steps on the porch with flaking paint, ignored since the time his mother had moved away. Through the screen door he heard a radio playing. He went in, down the short hallway and into the kitchen. Grampa was sitting on a hard plastic chair, a sharp pencil and piece of paper on the foldout metal four-top kitchen table. Crawford’s sneakers squeaked going across the linoleum. His grandfather, in his early forties, looked much older – being angry and miserable had lined his face, but had not lessened the ropey strength of the muscles in his forearms and shoulders. The paper in front of him was half-filled with scribbling. Crawford didn’t know if it was a grocery list, last will and testament, or political diatribe. Grampa put down the pencil and looked up.

  “Hey, shithead. Don’t you knock before you come in? ‘specially after not seeing your grandfather in more than two years?”

  This was said not with anger, but as a jovial, almost glad-to-see-you hale. Crawford walked the last few steps to the end of the table nearest him and kept going. He swung around the table to his left – his Grampa’s right – and as he took two more steps toward his grandfather he picked up the pencil. Looking the smiling man directly in the eyes, Crawford plunged the pencil into his neck just below the jaw line. The older man’s eyes looked surprised for just a minute, the mouth still open in mock greeting. Crawford held the pencil near the eraser, the rest of it deep inside his grandfather’s neck. Crawford did not let go. There was no blood yet. Grampa stiffened, then worked his jaw open and shut. No sounds came out. Crawford waited, then pulled the pencil out. A gusher shot from the perfect hole in his grandfather’s neck, past Crawford’s head and onto the grease-crusted range behind him. A fine spray coming off the main torrent of blood covered the left side of Crawford’s face. Crawford leaned in to his grandfather, putting his face close to his nose, almost touching. The blood no longer gushed from the wound, but pumped out like a hose, each beat of the heart pushing the blood out in a pulsing rhythm. Crawford watched for several seconds, each beat of the dying man’s heart coming a little further apart. The only sound now was a soft gurgling from the open lips. His grandfather’s eyes began to glaze over.

  Crawford turned and walked out. He still held the pencil. He never saw his mother again.

  * * *

  Allison Barnes flopped onto the bed in the large guest room, spread-eagle on the antique cover. Her petite frame barely made a dent, stray strands of thick brown hair still sticking to her face from the light sheen of sweat. It was very much like Josh’s face, but pretty in a way that made the men at work sneak an extra glance at her during meetings even when she wasn’t the one standing and delivering a PowerPoint presentation. Three hours in the sun helping the gardeners replant the strip along the west side of the house and clearing the brush from the wooded back yard had drained her. The gardeners liked it when she was out there pulling roots and hauling branches. Even though she was just visiting her brother, it had been three months and they preferred her over the stay-at-home moms in the neighborhood who strolled outside every so often and pointed vaguely and said “fix that.” They didn’t know she was going through a cleansing ritual, trying to regain control over her life by taking on arduous but clearly defined tasks she could start and finish. They could see the muscles in her back working as she pulled weeds and dragged branches to the bottom of the driveway. The divorce left her feeling vulnerable, ineffectual, unattractive. She almost hadn’t seen it happening, so gradual was the decline. When she finally realized she was sad and angry all the time and had no sense of what to do about it, she looked around and understood it wasn’t about her. Working in the yard, cooking, cleaning every nook and cranny of her brother’s house – she had no love for those activities, but they were a start at getting her control back. In a little while she’d be ready to take on what she considered more meaningful tasks. When she left her job to get herself together, she left behind a creative group at the advertising agency who counted on her leadership and decisiveness to make them one of the most successful teams ever to work there. She would get back to that, to the life she had worked hard to build that rewarded her for who she was. But right now she just needed a safe haven to feel good about herself again. And big brother’s place was it. Allison closed her eyes for just a little nap, smiling at the good feeling that came with being exhausted, done with a job, and not waiting to be harangued by a manipulative manic-depressive emotional con artist. She dozed off with the phrase “divorce papers,” floating in her head.

  * * *

  Helen stepped throug
h the automatic sliding glass doors from the baggage claim area holding a small overnight case. Her trip to Minneapolis did not require more than a single change of clothes and she did not need to wait for bags. She’d even managed to get a nice long shower in before the flight, the memory of her visit to Josh’s hotel room bringing a smile to her lips. The sex had been more than adequate, but the real thrill came when she pulled the rug out from under him. The smile broadened. She spied Crawford and the silver Lexus immediately in the late evening quiet of LAX. She gave her head a small shake as she saw the motorcycle cop drive off and turn around for a last look at Crawford. Helen had met him three years earlier. She had been killing time at a bar in downtown D.C. on a trip similar to Minneapolis. That was early in her career and she didn’t have the rhythm or timing quite down. Crawford had been sitting at the far end of the bar, nursing a mixed drink in a tall glass, staring at nothing. Helen’s target was not yet there – her research showed he usually stopped by for a quick beer after work before heading home to the wife and three kids, one in college and two more getting ready. Purely for the adrenaline rush, Helen went over to the odd, tall man in the out-of-date suit. She pulled out a cigarette and leaned toward him, her hip against his stool.

  “Got a light?”

  He turned to Helen and flicked a match she hadn’t seen he was holding. The flame moved up to the cigarette between her lips, but Helen’s eyes sought his stare instead. He had yellow irises, something she had never seen outside of a B horror movie. She was fascinated, and scared, and that excited her. Crawford didn’t smile, didn’t respond in any way, even when Helen blew a small waft of smoke into the yellow eyes. The match was still in front of her, and Helen noticed it had burned down to his fingers. Still, he did not move. The flame was extinguished when it could find no oxygen between Crawford’s tightly pinched fingers. A faint odor of singed flesh reached Helen’s nose. She put her hand on his exposed wrist.

  “Thanks.”

  His skin wasn’t cold; nor was it warm. It felt like a mannequin’s arm. Helen was used to a flicker of excitement in a man’s eyes, a tingle showing their blood was running a little faster, their heart beating a little harder. She could feel the same way – sex was a favorite hobby of hers – but the connection for her was always distant, different from the one the men felt. They were objects, means to an end, whereas they all thought they were about to fall in love or have a wild, roller-coaster affair. She got none of this from Crawford.

  She dropped her hand and moved back down to the far end of the bar, where a middle-aged man with a just-loosened tie, slight paunch, and receding hairline was getting settled on a stool. Time to work. She ordered a chocolate martini.

  Fifteen minutes later, Helen was still sitting at the bar, but the man, who for a fleeting moment thought he was about to have the luckiest night of his life, was not. He had stumbled out in a fog, trying to find his car keys and his sanity. Helen put another cigarette to her lips and before she could reach for her lighter a flame lit the end. She felt a shiver before she looked up. Crawford stared at her. She was sure he had been too far away to hear her talking to the client. But the look in his yellow eyes held knowledge. He had heard her pitch. Her excitement was tinged by fear, and she liked that.

  She smiled at Crawford. Broad, genuine, warm. As she cupped his hand to light the cigarette in the breezeless bar, she held his gaze. In a throaty, almost sexy whisper:

  “There’s a .22 caliber Beretta in my left hand and it’s pointed at your balls. You don’t want to interfere with my business.”

  Crawford didn’t blink. Helen detected no movement from him, only the sudden slight discomfort of something sharp below the third rib on the left side of her chest. She looked down with her eyes only and saw a thin knife. “Stiletto” went through her mind, though she had never seen one before. Crawford’s expression had not changed in the twenty seconds that had passed since she first put the cigarette to her lips.

  Helen’s smile broadened.

  “Let’s talk,” less throaty now. And a beautiful partnership was about to begin.

  * * *

  Helen slid into the passenger seat. In the few seconds it had taken her to cross the wide expanse of cement from the terminal to the car, Crawford had opened the door and walked around the front to the driver’s side. She had almost not seen him do this, a trait that still amazed her after three years. She thought of Crawford as a ghost in some ways. He seemed to simply appear in a new place, transported in the blink of an eye. This had been a handy trait more than once.

  Crawford frequently drove. It gave Helen time to think. It also helped logistically; Crawford drove the way he moved. He was silent, efficient, and he found openings where no one else saw them. Crawford’s skills of anticipation were uncanny. Perhaps people unwittingly got out of his way, too, sensing something the way the cop did. Maybe Crawford could get a second career as a chauffeur if his current situation didn’t work out. Helen smiled to herself at this thought. His current situation was working out pretty well.

  Crawford did not ask how Minneapolis had gone. In fact, he only knew where Helen had been because he needed her arrival flight information so he could pick her up. He assumed it went well. It always did. The parts of his work that were meaningful to Crawford would come later. Taking the picture of the sister at the grocery store was a taste. So was going right up to her at the house and asking about the roof line under the pretext that he and the little woman were considering buying a home one street over. Helen was good at making people feel comfortable. It balanced the hint of fear Crawford saw in people’s eyes when he looked directly at them. That fear burgeoned when the right time came. And that was the sustenance that fed Crawford. She was good enough at her end of the job that Crawford’s real skills were infrequently needed. And therefore it was all the sweeter for him when they were. Maybe this time, he thought.

  “Tomorrow night,” Helen shared. “He needs a while to stew. I can tell he thinks he can stay in control, so we’ll soften him up. I already got it rolling.” Crawford didn’t ask for details.

  They headed out of the airport on Century Blvd. to the 405 Freeway North and began the heavily trafficked drive toward the San Fernando Valley, the cars bumper to bumper despite the late hour.

  Chapter Three

  Usually Josh knew exactly what to do. It’s what allowed him to jump from job to job and maintain the credibility that was his reputation – he came across as a clear-headed leader in whatever company he joined, one who thrived on change and made tough decisions when he had to. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. What the hell had just happened? He thought about the couple of hours he’d spent with Helen. She was confident, so her aggressiveness wasn’t a surprise in the bar or in bed. They’d talked about a lot of things, though nothing personal. Not about their lives, sticking mostly with telling stories and flirting. He knew nothing about her, but had felt connected enough for a few hours to be as entertained by her company as by the sex. That made her an equal, not some bimbo bar pick-up. So, what the hell had happened? His little sister’s life – mid-30s but still his little sister – had just been threatened, not to mention his own. The thought of Allison in danger brought a sharp pain in his chest. The idea of losing someone he cared about, one of the few people he cared deeply about, was terrifying. When Jenna had died, just months before they were going to get married, it had been like he had run into a brick wall. More than ten years had passed and he had dealt with the loss. But he understood something in him had shifted then. Jenna had been the first woman to make him feel safe, to feel he could let his guard down. The first to make him think he could stay in one place and seriously consider the whole home and hearth thing he had avoided into his early 30s. He couldn’t handle the idea of feeling anything remotely like that sense of loss if his sister were ever hurt.

  His instinct had been to strike out when Helen had shown him the pictures, something animalistic that fit the setting and his nakedness. But reason told him to be afr
aid first. And he had no idea what this was about. The confusion was almost as difficult as the fear. Was this even a real threat? Should he call the police? And why the hell would anyone threaten him? Helen had been explicit – tell no one. But what if he waited and missed a chance for her to be caught by the authorities? Josh knew he didn’t even have a story to tell the police that would make sense. “A beautiful woman came on to me, then threatened to kill my sister. She wouldn’t tell me why, but said she’d get back to me.” Made him sound like an idiot. But he couldn’t sit still, waiting for this crazy woman to get in touch. The indecision pained him and made him angry. He had to do something. At the very least he had to call home and make sure Allison was okay.

  Josh dialed the number. But as the phone rang, he realized he couldn’t just blurt everything out. It would scare his sister, who wasn’t so easily shaken but would be stunned by this or think Josh had lost his marbles. Worse, even with his head spinning he knew he had to follow Helen’s warning and not tell anyone. If the threat were real, then she or her partner was watching the house. If the cops suddenly showed up or Allison bolted, they would know he had warned her. The phone continued to ring.

  “Hey, dude!” An MBA, ten years as a successful businesswoman, an IQ higher than the number of channels piped in by the local cable television provider, and Allison answered the phone with “hey, dude…” She had been living at his house for a few months and he was glad to have her around. The place had never been cleaner. He knew it was just an outlet, a therapy while she healed, but he was happy to benefit from it. Josh usually kept things bachelor-clean; good enough if you didn’t look too closely. He had stopped being domestic shortly after Jenna had died. The idea of keeping up the house with all the Martha Stewart-like touches Jenna did so naturally, from the landscape to remodeling rooms Josh never thought twice about, was more than he could bear.