CHAPTER ELEVEN
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The house was a maze. Turned out the front room, airy and wickery, was a 'front' for a couple of hoarders. Every hall was lined with boxes and stacks of papers or clothes or just things: from plush stuffed animals to dead stuffed animals; lamps, chairs, toasters; bath towels, radios, breadboxes; old PCs, albums and garden tools.
Shawn tripped over a low-lying broom and went sprawling. "Dammit!"
Up ahead they could hear Harry Fisher shouting about something, and he seemed to be getting angrier.
Lassiter yanked Shawn to his feet and gave him a funny look; he started to speak and Shawn yelled, "If you say 'together we can make it to the end of the line!' I will bitch-slap you!"
Lassiter hissed, "Be quiet!" and caught up with Juliet, who was trying to keep low and guess where their target was. All the crap in the hallway muffled noises, distorted any real impression about where the Fishers were, whether they were even together, and exactly how insane Harry was.
"How did you know?" she whispered to him. "That Pat was the lover?"
"Because no way was it Harry. And the way she asked if Phyllis was a suspect? She looked guilty. Dammit, I need my Glock!"
"Look around," she said grimly. "There's probably one buried here somewhere." She straightened up, hearing Shawn behind them. "We have to figure out where they are and whether Pat is on his side or not."
Shawn was on his feet, and he advanced slightly before them. "The hall goes to the right and there are three doors, two south, one straight ahead."
"Get back, Spencer. You're not bulletproof."
"Neither are you, Lassie-frass." Still, he knew enough to let Juliet go ahead. "So what's the story here anyway? You think this woman killed the professor to be with his widow?"
"Maybe she just wanted out of this creepy house," Juliet suggested. "Now stop talking." She paused before the first door, motioning the others to be silent.
But the sounds came from upstairs, and among them was Pat clearly saying, "Harry, no!"
The three of them scrambled to find a staircase; Lassiter was the first one to get there. "Carlton!" Juliet yelled, "you have to let me lead!"
"Habit," he said hastily, "but if you want to loan me your gun, I'll take it."
"Forget it." As the only active-duty cop on the premises, she wasn't letting anyone else take command of this situation. The paperwork to justify it alone would kill her.
She went up the stairs—also lined with crap; here it was socks and books and vases—and the men followed. Harry's shouts were louder, accompanied by other sounds, as if he were throwing things around (she hoped none of them included Pat) or knocking them over. Footsteps, too. He was in a hurry.
Pat's voice came again, this time fainter. Was she further away, or merely weaker? Had he hurt her?
"The attic," Shawn urged. "Find a staircase to the attic."
"It won't be a staircase." Lassiter looked up at the ceiling of the second floor hallway and was the first to spot the rope dangling from the trapdoor. He yanked it down, Juliet ready to shoot anything which came out of the opening, and from above they heard Harry clearly.
"You come up that ladder and I'll blow your head off. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
"Harry, stop it!" The sound which followed was a crash and a thud, but then Harry cursed, and Pat could be heard to gasp.
"Dammit, woman, why'd you go and do that!"
After a few moments of silence from above, Juliet yelled, "Drop your weapon! Release your wife and come down here or I will come up there after you!"
In response, an old oscillating fan dropped down from the opening, careening off the trap door and striking the wall before breaking into pieces.
"Seriously? A fan?" Lassiter snapped.
The next thing to come out was a billiard ball, and it hit Juliet in the leg. "Dammit! Stop that crap!" she yelled.
Then, of all things, a karaoke machine. It smashed onto the floor and Juliet couldn't help it; she laughed. This was all so crazy. "Sorry, Shawn," she managed.
Shawn was puzzled. "What? What? Why is no one making sense to me today?"
Before anyone could answer—and that included Lassiter, who was grinning at the smashed machine—he said with excitement, "Never mind—I'll distract Harry. Listen close!" He took off down the hallway to the opposite end of the house, and Juliet had no idea what he was doing but it was pointless to try to stop him.
Now a plate came whizzing down from the attic and shattered against the ladder; a broken slice struck Lassiter's forehead and drew blood. He cursed.
"You okay?" she asked anxiously as he wiped blood on his sleeve.
"I was hurt worse at Starbuck's this morning," he scoffed. "Paper cuts from sugar packets are a bitch. Plus this woman wearing a Law & Order: SVU t-shirt kept asking if she could kiss it and make it better."
Juliet frowned. "That's my job now." To prove it, and because it made more sense than most anything else right now, she darted in close and kissed him briefly. "More later."
He laughed, and now they heard the noises from the direction Shawn had gone. Upstairs, Harry had heard it too: sounded like something hitting glass, and then it was clearly something hitting glass.
"What the hell?" Harry bellowed. "Don't you break my attic window glass, you moron!"
Too late: glass breaking was a uniquely identifiable sound, and as soon as Harry thundered in that direction, Juliet scrambled up the ladder, Lassiter right behind her.
She caught a glimpse of Harry near the small and now broken window at the west end of the attic just as something flew in and past his head. "Damn you!" Harry yelled.
Which meant Shawn was down in the yard pegging things at the far windows. Good boy, she thought, breathless as she took cover behind yet more haphazard boxes and appliances and piles of aging and dusty rubbish.
Lassiter knocked something askew and Harry realized he'd failed to stop their access, turning back to glare in their general direction.
"Where's Pat?" Juliet shouted.
From the east end came a muffled sound. Pat was alive, and presumably not a threat to them.
But Harry was a threat to Shawn: he raised his rifle and aimed it downward out the window.
"Not a good idea!" Lassiter said loudly. "Cops are on the way!"
Harry fired anyway, and then reloaded rapidly and fired toward the trapdoor access. A box exploded near Juliet's head, covering her in bits of paper and dust.
Sounds came from downstairs now—Shawn back inside? —and Lassiter was moving behind her, whispering about trying to get to Pat. She whispered back for him to stay put, but Lassiter was as likely to listen to her in this setting as Shawn would be. Damn her for having stubborn men in her life.
Harry disappeared behind a partition. It was at least six feet long, and stood next to boxes stacked higher, albeit irregularly, than his height. That stack ran the length of the attic's width. It meant that if he moved quietly, he and his rifle could be anywhere in a twenty-foot long area, and left Juliet exposed from the west assuming he could see her where she crouched. And she had to assume he could.
Inching in the direction Lassiter had headed, if only to put more boxes between her and Harry, she was able to get behind enough hoarded junk to feel a little more secure.
"Carlton, stop!" she whispered furiously. He was about to make the leap to the corner where Pat might be, and it would mean being visible to Harry for a good ten feet.
He paused, studied her location, and clearly was doing the math.
Juliet called out, "Harry! What did you do to Pat?"
Harry bellowed, "Never you mind about Pat! She's my wife! She's my responsibility! And you are STILL IN MY HOUSE!"
"You're shooting at police officers!" Lassiter shouted back. "We call that probable cause!"
"I wasn't shooting before you came in!"
"We were invited in!" Juliet tried to pinpoint where Harry stood but it was impossible to be sure.
"We're like vampires!" Shawn joined in, on the trap door ladder, head below floor level. "Once you invite us in and start shooting at us, we don't leave!"
"I didn't start shooting until I threw you out! And who the hell are you?" *CRACK* went the rifle, splintering the edge of the trap door opening, and Shawn yelped like a little girl.
Of course, Juliet thought, that wasn't an unreasonable response, and more importantly, she had a better idea of Harry's position. "Get down, bright eyes!" she snapped, and heard Shawn's hiss of annoyance.
Lassiter inched closer to the gap, and Shawn, defying all logic, climbed rapidly up the ladder and threw himself into the cluttered space behind Juliet. Appropriately, this motion combined with the rifle's next *CRACK* caused a towering pile of rugs to collapse on him, knocking him sideways and effectively pinning him in place. Good, she thought, that'll keep him grounded.
Now she just had to worry about Lassiter.
Distraction time. "Harry! Why are you doing this? We only want to talk to your wife."
"Hell no! It won't just be a talk! You don't need three people just to talk to one woman!"
"The third person doesn't count!"
"Thanks a lot, Jules!" Shawn yelled from under the rugs.
"This is about the murder of Jim Napoli," Lassiter tried. "It has nothing to do with you, or it didn't until you started shooting."
"I barely know who that is!"
"Then why in the hell are you shooting?" Lassiter yelled. "Are you insane?"
*CRACK* went the rifle, and somewhere above Juliet, a dark and dusty painting of a bowl of fruit took a major hit.
"Call me insane again and you'll be eating THAT!"
"Crap on a cracker," muttered Lassiter. More loudly, he added, "It's just a conversation! If Pat didn't kill Napoli, she gets to come back home and clean your house while you sit in jail for attempted murder of a police officer!"
"And a psychic!" Shawn interjected, still muffled.
"Pat didn't kill anyone and I should shoot you for saying so!"
From Pat's dark corner came her wavering voice. "Actually, Harry, I meant to tell you about that."
*CRACK* and there went a dressmaker's mannequin. Shot in the heart, it tumbled to the floor and kicked up a cloud of dust.
"Harsh," Lassiter commented, and Juliet didn't know whether to laugh or shoot.
"I'm sorry, Harry! I just needed some peace! Jim wanted Phyllis to sell the house and move to a condo and I couldn't let her go!"
Unimpressed, Harry roared, "What the hell do you need peace for?"
Pat made some mumbling sound of despair.
"Enough!" Lassiter's tone was of the cut-through-titanium variety. Juliet had sort of missed that the past two months. "You will drop that rifle and show yourself and you will do it right now!"
Harry, from a different position behind his wall, shot directly toward Lassiter, and Juliet had had enough: she rose and fired her weapon at the spot where Harry ought to be. Noise and dust, but no hit. Crap, crap, crap!
Lassiter muttered, "Stay back. Then shoot as soon as I go and you can see him."
In the next half second she envisioned what was going to happen: he was going to make himself visible, Harry would reveal himself long enough to shoot, and while Lassiter was going down, she would have her chance to take Harry out.
"He'll shoot you first, Carlton!"
"Not if you're fast enough." He grinned, but she wasn't amused.
Lassiter was willing to take this risk for her, and at relatively close range, with Fisher's big-ass rifle, there was no doubt in her mind it could well be fatal.
He added urgently, "If it's a bust, tell Grenovich it was worth it. I love you, Juliet." He started to get up.
Well, screw that.
Juliet shoved at Lassiter hard, sending him off balance and causing some boxes to tumble forward, but effectively keeping him out of Harry's line of sight.
Harry fired wildly at the boxes, exposing his exact position, and that's when she stood up and shot the homicidal son of a bitch. He went down hard, rifle falling away, more boxes and stacks of paper and fabric tumbling all around him.
She glared down at Lassiter. "I love you too, but you'll have to tell Grenovich your own damn self." She stomped across the room to retrieve and cuff Harry Fisher.
Muffled by the rugs which held him down, Shawn yelled, "Well, that explains everything except Bonnie Tyler!"
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