Too Close to Home

She cut the power at the very instant the trimmer blades were getting the message. I felt them start to move, but before the blades could begin their back-and-forth cycle, they stopped. The ends of my fingers were now pinched even more than they’d been before, but I was pretty sure they were still connected to the rest of me.

“What the-” said Mortie. He clicked on the trigger a couple of times, then whirled around and saw the source of the problem.

“You bitch!” he said, his voice full of rage. He dropped the trimmer back onto my lap and moved in on Ellen, who was still down on her knees by the wall, looking terrified.

“Leave her alone!” I shouted. “Stop!”

That was when Drew Lockus ran into the shed.

He was wielding a shovel in his hands, one of the tools I kept in the back of the pickup, and as he closed in on Mortie he swung it like a baseball bat into the side of his head.

The shovel blade rang out like a tuning fork.

Mortie went down in an instant, collapsing over the lawn mower that had had the cord ripped out of it that afternoon.

“Drew!” I said. “God, Drew!”

I thought maybe Mortie would try to get up, at the very least twitch a bit. But he wasn’t doing anything. From where I sat, he didn’t even appear to be breathing.

Drew stood over him, looking a bit dumbfounded, like maybe he couldn’t believe what he’d just done, that Mortie wasn’t making any sort of objection to what had just happened to him.

“Jesus,” Drew said slowly, not taking his eyes off Mortie.

“Drew!” I said. “There’s another one, in the house!”

That woke him up. As he took his eyes off Mortie, the dark-haired one appeared at the shed door, a handful of pages in his hand. Although he had the stocking pulled down over his face, he was able to see instantly that things had taken, from his perspective, a turn for the worse.

He dropped the pages and bolted. Drew grabbed for the shovel he’d used to whack Mortie in the head, but as he turned, the blade of the shovel caught in the handle of the lawn mower and was yanked out of his hand. He stumbled, then reached down to grab for it again, but by that time the other guy had disappeared into the night.

Drew ran after him anyway.

I started squirming frantically. I twisted and wriggled my trapped fingers and managed to get them out of the teeth of the trimmer. Now I had to try to free myself from the tape.

At the same time, I was trying to free my left hand from the chair. Whichever one I could free first, I’d use to release the other.

But now Ellen was on her feet and moved into position in front of me. The fingers of her duct-taped hands were free, and she used them to pick away at the tape on the hedge trimmer. Even though it was now unplugged from the wall, she seemed afraid it would somehow magically start up. I felt possessed by the same illogical fear.

Drew reappeared a few seconds later. “I couldn’t catch him,” he said, out of breath. “He got in his car and took off.”

Ellen freed my hand from the trimmer and I reached up to gently peel the tape away from her mouth. “Oh, Jim, oh my God,” she said.

Drew helped both of us get freed of the tape. I threw my arms around Ellen, held her a moment, and with one hand reached over and patted Drew on the shoulder.

“I came to fix the mower,” he said.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The first thing I did was make sure Ellen wasn’t hurt. When I told her I was going to phone for an ambulance, she said she didn’t need one. She was shaken up, yes, but not physically injured. She was more concerned for me. My hand was unhurt, but I’d taken a blow to the head. Not something I was going to trouble 911 with.

“I was going to pull down the lane,” Drew explained, “but there was a car blocking the end of it. I thought maybe that was the cop you said would be there, but it didn’t look like a cop car to me. So I just left my car on the shoulder up there, walked in, and I saw that other guy, the one that got away, he was walking this lady here across the yard, all tied up, and I knew something funny was going on.”

“This is Drew,” I said to Ellen, realizing there hadn’t actually been a moment for formal introductions. “The new guy, who worked with me today. Drew, this is my wife, Ellen.”

They shook hands, then Ellen simply threw her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said, trembling.

Drew, his head on Ellen’s shoulder, looked down at Mortie. Blood from his head had soaked through his stocking mask and was dripping all over the lawn mower.

He said, “I think I killed him.”

Ellen took her arms from around Drew and looked at the man. “God, I hope so,” she said.

“No,” Drew said slowly. “That wouldn’t be good.”

I knelt down next to Mortie, tentatively worked my finger under the bottom of the blood-soaked stocking pulled down over his head, and peeled it off. I let it drop on the mower, put my head closer to Mortie’s. His eyes were open but vacant, and I couldn’t detect any breathing.

“Honey,” I said, “you still better call an ambulance. I think he’s dead, but we need to make the call.”