by Rob Ashman
The years of abuse had made Jess ill. Nothing you could see, nothing you could fix with a bandage or a plaster, she was damaged in her head. The only way she could deal with the horror of what was happening was to detach herself from the situation, disassociate herself from the abuse. This was her defence mechanism, which enabled her to live an outwardly normal life.
For the young Jess, she had no option: while Daddy was abusing her, he left Jo alone. This created a deep and violent psychosis in Jess which was always going to boil over one day, it just needed a suitable trigger. It needed the blue touch paper lighting, and that happened with an unexpected visit.
Jess was in the army, stationed in Florida. One Saturday afternoon there was a knock on the door and there stood her mom and dad.
‘Hi, how are you, honey?’ Jess’s mouth fell open. It was the first words she’d heard from her mother in over ten years. She delivered them as if she’d seen her last week at the mall. Jess was stunned and unable to speak.
‘Me and your mom have something to tell you,’ said her dad. Jess was still mute. ‘She’s back, Jess. Isn’t that great? Your mom’s come back. We couldn’t wait to tell you the good news.’
Tears ran down Jess’s face as she tried to get her head around what was going on. She stumbled backwards and sat on the sofa, completely numb.
Her parents followed her into the one-bed, service-issue apartment. ‘Honey, there’s no need to cry,’ said her mom. ‘We’re so happy, and we wanted to tell you.’
‘Isn’t it great,’ said her dad. Jess said nothing.
He knelt beside Jess and put one hand on her knee while holding her mom’s hand with the other. ‘Everything is okay now honey, Mom and I are together again.’ They both smiled the smile of schoolyard sweethearts.
Jess raised her head to meet his gaze. ‘If you don’t leave, I’ll kill you both.’
‘Hey now, just hang on a minute,’ said her dad, recoiling back and jumping to his feet. ‘I know your mom made a mistake and things were difficult for a while, but there’s no need for any of that nonsense.’
With that Jess leapt forward, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him against the wall. ‘Difficult? Difficult? Get out now or I will kill you both.’ She hissed every word.
He broke her grip and held his neck coughing. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he spluttered. Her mom went to help, patting him on the back.
‘Get out!’ Jess screamed and bundled both of them out of the door. She slammed it shut. All the years of abuse and he’s the one not having any of that fucking nonsense. Something snapped in her head and Mechanic was born.
From that day forward, it became Jo’s turn to look after Jess.
‘Triggers,’ Jo though as she waited in her underground bunker. ‘My whole life is ruled by triggers.’
She recounted the events leading to this latest crisis. Mom going completely yaya with that drug-ridden asshole was the trigger for Dad becoming a sexual sadist. The abuse he heaped onto her sister was the trigger that created Mechanic. And the most inappropriate casual visit ever conceived provided the trigger for twenty-one murders, if you count the two soldiers. Quite an escalation.
When her sister snapped the last time, Jo had been in the right place to rescue her. It was pure chance she worked with Galbraith, and it was pure chance she got included in the investigation. Then there was the total meltdown moment when she realized it was her sister who was doing the killi
Jess’s psychotic attacks were uncontrollable. Jo had to get her sister out of the situation, which she did. It cost Galbraith his life, but so be it. The three years which followed were an uphill battle of mind-bending drugs, counselling, and round-the-clock care. She moved Jess into her place in Virginia to support her through the attacks. Jess made steady progress and got better, moving back to Florida as Olivia Dunn, the unremarkable woman who looked after the pools and the netting at the country clubs.
Then there was the final trigger, which brought them all to this.
A simple death in the family.
The illness took her mother quickly, as is often the case with stomach cancer. Her mom and dad had been back together as if nothing had happened, and then she was gone again. Her father was distraught and went off the rails. He went ballistic because only Jo attended the funeral. Jess was determined not to go and had done her disappearing act after leaving the army.
She kept in close contact with Jo and one day Dad showed up at Jo’s place when she wasn’t in – but Jess was. Jess was paying her sister a rare visit to show how much progress she’d made with her recuperation. Dad was drunk, and when faced with Jess, couldn’t tell the difference. She didn’t want to raise any alarms, so pretended to be Jo.
He poured his heart out to her. How he missed his wife and how she was the only thing he had to live for.
Jess was devastated. Despite that woman tearing their family apart, despite the years of hurt and anguish, despite the beatings and wilful abuse, Dad still put that fucking woman on a pedestal. She just sat there and took it. He left, and they hadn’t seen him since.
Jess returned to Florida. The trauma of their chance encounter was too much and something inside her head snapped. Unknown to Jo, the final trigger had been pulled. Mechanic was once again in charge.
Bassano gunned the engine and spun his tyres on the wet road. His radio crackled into life. He reached over and turned it off, he had her in his sights now and needed full concentration. Mechanic dodged between the cars as rain bounced off the road. She joined the main street and headed downtown. Bassano mounted the sidewalk and swung into the flow of traffic. He sounded his horn and gesticulated to the other motorists driving in the right direction down the one-way system. Bassano threw the car back and forth across the lanes to avoid the vehicles heading straight for him. His view of Mechanic was constantly being obscured. She was still running hard between the oncoming cars.
Despite the early hour, the congestion was bad and Bassano made slow progress against the tide of angry motorists. Then she was gone. Bassano swung the nose of his Buick at the roadside and stopped. He leapt out of his car, flashing his badge at anyone who was looking and jumped onto the roof scanning the way ahead.
‘Shit! He spat the word as he punched the air. Then he saw her veering off onto a side road again, still running at the same pace as when the chase started. Bassano jumped back into his car, relieved that he hadn’t attempted to pursue her on foot. He pulled back into the honking, abusive flow of traffic and tore after her, turning down the same side road, and into a built-up industrial area. In the distance he could see Mechanic on the sidewalk about sixty yards ahead of him, bent over with her hands on her knees sucking air into her burning lungs.
He slowed down and tried to blend into the traffic, but it was no use. Her head flicked up, she spotted him and she was away again.
The Buick heaved forward and sped around the slower cars, accelerating straight for Mechanic. At least he was travelling in the same direction as the other motorists this time. She changed direction and darted down a backstreet about twenty yards to her right. Once in the alleyway she cursed and tried to backtrack but Bassano was already at the top of the road. He slammed the steering wheel to the left and pulled hard on the handbrake. This swung the back end of the car around, blocking Mechanic in.
Mechanic looked around. It was a dead end between two high-rise buildings and a high back wall. The entire alleyway was no more than thirty feet long and featureless, no trash bins she could use, no windows to smash through, no fire escapes she could reach. There was nothing, just an empty, plain, three-walled box with the open side blocked by Bassano in his car.
Mechanic evaluated the situation and cursed again. She collected her thoughts and slowed her breathing. She was facing Bassano, about twenty feet from his car at the entrance to the road. She heard the sound of the passenger window being buzzed down.
‘Stay where you are,’ he called. ‘Back up against the far wall.’
Mechanic stood m
otionless and said nothing. In the absence of any other options, it was time to play games. Bassano repeated his order through the open window. ‘Back against the wall.’
‘Make your fucking mind up,’ Mechanic replied. ‘Either I stay where I am or I back up against the wall. I can’t do both.’ She was openly mocking him.
Bassano detected the playful tone in her voice and it unnerved him. ‘Don’t be fucking smart, you’re going nowhere. Now, back against the wall. Now!’ He slid across the bench seat. The sodium glow from the street lighting struck his face as he moved inside the car.
‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Detective Bassano,’ Mechanic asked crouching to get a better view.
The words pierced him to the core. How the fuck did she know that?
‘You know I don’t have a shooter or I would have blown your face off,’ she said, ‘and you know I don’t have a knife or I’d have carved my name in you by now. So why don’t you stop hiding in that car and face me … man to woman, so to speak. What are you afraid of?’ Mechanic took a couple of exaggerated steps towards the car.
Bassano blinked in disbelief and drew his gun with his right hand. ‘Back up against the wall or I’ll put a bullet in you.’ He made sure the nose of the .38 was visible.
This was rattling him.
‘What, shoot an unarmed woman? Detective, that would look so bad.’ Her voice cut right through him as she took another swaggering step forward. ‘If you won’t come out, I’ll have to come in and get you,’ she said in a childlike sing-song voice, accompanied by her best psycho smile.
Bassano forgot all his training as the rising panic gripped him
He thrust his gun further out through the window, threatening her. It pointed straight at Mechanic’s head – she was now no more than eight feet from the car. She could see his face illuminated by the light from the dashboard and recognized the look of fear in his eyes. She had been here before and she knew this game well.
‘I’m coming to get you,’ she chanted and took another step closer to the car, waving her hands in the air as if conducting imaginary music. Bassano’s right arm shot out of the car window, brandishing the gun at Mechanic.
‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ he shouted.
But it was too late she had already made her move. The game was almost over.
She lunged at his outstretched hand, grabbed the gun and yanked his arm further out of the car. In the same movement she stepped in close, pulling it across her body, and clamped the gun against her right hip. Her left hand slammed through the open window into Bassano’s shoulder, sending him careering forward out of his seat. His head smashed into the windshield with such force that the screen deformed into a cobweb of tiny fractures.
The reflex of being grabbed meant Bassano let off a round and the shell spun into the empty alleyway. It ricocheted off red brickwork sending fragments of mortar into the night. The muzzle flashed white against the dark and burned a black mark in Mechanic’s sweatshirt. The retort from the shot resonated off the walls.
Mechanic brought Bassano back to the upright position in his seat and then shoved him forward again, crashing his face into the windshield with a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage. The screen was now distended outwards from the impact. Bassano’s fingers went into spasm once more and another round embedded itself into the far wall.
Blood spattered across the inside of the windshield and bits of tissue tore away from Bassano’s face as the shattered glass embedded itself. Mechanic brought him back to a seated position and once again smashed him forward into the dashboard. His fingers failed to spasm this time.
With Bassano forced forward and his head wedged between the screen and the dashboard, Mechanic twisted his arm. Then she drove it up in an arc until his elbow struck the upper sill of the door. The sweep continued and Bassano’s arm snapped against the joint with the sound of firewood being broken against a wall. The violence and speed of the movement lifted him from his seat as his arm broke in two, only the remnants of connective tissue and tendons holding it loosely together.
His grip on the gun gave way, sending it looping onto the roof of the car.
Blood sprayed into the air as the splintering bone exited the ripped flesh of Bassano’s inner arm. The ragged ends of torn arteries pumped plumes of blood into the night. She released her grip on his wrist and shoulder and ducked away to avoid the cascading blood from the almost severed arm.
Bassano slumped back to his seat his eyes closed, a river of crimson streaming down onto his shirt, his face cut to ribbons. His upper right arm was propped on the window ledge with the forearm hanging down the outside of the door. Blood was pooling beneath the car as his heart pumped it from his body and onto the ground. Mechanic put her hood up, reclaimed the gun from the top of the car, and walked away.
Lucas was by now in his own car driving out of the deserted station. He knew where Jo was and he knew where Mechanic was heading. ‘No damn transport, everyone on roadblocks and where the hell is Bassano?’ He cursed under his breath. ‘Do I have to do everything my fucking self?’
Unbeknown to Lucas, as the minutes ticked by, and the rain washed the blood under the car, the answer to his last question was unfortunately yes.
47
Lucas hurtled through a set of traffic lights still cursing but this time it was directed at no one but himself. Why had he fallen for it again? After all this time, Mechanic had set a trap and he had plunged headlong into it.
It had hit him like a freight train: the only reason he’d thought Jo Sells was two hundred and fifty miles away was because Mechanic had told him she was. The silent treatment in the interview room and then getting an attorney were delaying tactics to make them think she had got right away.
But the fact was that when they were together in Mechanic’s apartment they’d had precious little time to concoct an elaborate plan. The primary objective must have been to get Jo out of there fast and for Mechanic to get arrested in her place. They needed a strategy which was simple but effective and could be achieved with little preparation.
Lucas surmised that Jo must have taken Mechanic’s vehicle and escaped from the property just before the police broke into the flat. He also concluded that, if the two hundred and fifty miles was just another of Mechanic’s misdirections, Jo was probably hiding out somewhere close waiting for Mechanic to join her. Then the two of them would disappear forever.
The rendezvous would need to be somewhere familiar and capable of keeping Mechanic’s vehicle and Jo Sells out of sight. It would also have to be within striking distance of the station. Mechanic was on foot and wouldn’t risk public transport. So the question bugging Lucas, even more than his own gullibility, was where could that be? And the answer he came up with was Brightwood Country Club.
Brightwood was around eight miles from the station and could easily hide Jo and the vehicle in its sprawling grounds. Mechanic knew it well and someone with her level of fitness could be there in less than an hour. That was where Lucas had placed his bet and that was where he was heading. He pulled away from the lights still cursing himself.
There was however a significant flaw in Lucas’s plan of attack. With everyone out looking for Mechanic there were no patrol vehicles available so he was stuck with his own car which had no radio. He was frustrated at not being able to get hold of Bassano, and left a message with the station controller to give Bassano the instruction to meet him at Brightwood.
It wasn’t long before the club came into view, the exterior lit up in all its glory. Lucas pulled up outside the locked gates and hit the intercom button. It buzzed in irritation. No one answered. He buzzed again. The white box remained silent.
He waited, then a voice crackled into the night air. ‘Yeah.’
‘This is Lieutenant Ed Lucas. Can you let me in please? It’s an emergency.’
‘What sort of an emergency?’
‘I am not at liberty to share that with you, but can you please open the gates.’
�
�Well, no actually,’ said the white box. ‘Any crank could come here and say they are a Lieutenant. So no, you can’t come in.’ The truth of the matter was the HBO movie was just getting to the good part, so no he couldn’t come in.
Lucas was not in the mood for this and objected to being called a crank. ‘Open the fucking gates or I will get your ass fired. This is a police matter and you are obstructing a police officer in his duties which is a criminal offence.’
‘If this is a police matter, then you’ll have a badge. I’ll come down to the gates, you can show it to me and then I’ll let you in,’ the voice said, resigning himself to the fact that he’d now miss the good bits.
‘But I need to get in now,’ said Lucas. This time there was no response.
Lucas waited, and he waited, and waited. No one came. He buzzed the intercom several times more but nothing happened. He stomped off, left his car at the gate, and walked the perimeter wall looking for an alternative way in. It was dark and the grass verge was soft from the rain. The wall was about ten feet high, much too high for Lucas to scale, and anyway he didn’t relish his chances with the drop the other side.
After thirty feet, the wall stopped and was replaced with a wooden fence lined with poplar trees. Lucas crouched down and leaned his shoulder into the wooden panels. They were loose and he worked his way along until he found one which gave way under his weight. He crouched down and shoved hard against the fence. Two of the panels broke away creating a gap big enough for Lucas to squeeze through.
On the other side, he took stock of his surroundings and waited for the late arrival of the security guard. He could just see the headlines in the morning: Police Lieutenant Caught in Break-In Scandal. He forced it from his mind and tried to focus.
Ahead was the ostentatious grey stone building where the conference facilities, gym and restaurants were housed. To his left was the driveway leading to the grand reception and far off in the distance Lucas could make out the golf clubhouse. The guard still failed to show up so Lucas circled around the back of the main house looking for service buildings and maintenance sheds. As he rounded the corner, a huge pool area stretched out on front of him, with cabanas and loungers awaiting the arrival of the day’s more sedate members. Lucas could see three outbuildings about two hundred yards away at the back of the estate. Keeping to the perimeter of the grounds, he tracked towards them.
