Protector (36 page)
Authors: Laurel Dewey
Tags: #Police Procedural, #Denver (Colo.), #Mystery & Detective, #Psychic ability, #Women detectives, #Crime, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Children of murder victims, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural, #Espionage
Weyler was silent as he studied Jane’s somewhat dejected body. “You want to know what I find amazing, Jane?”
“What?”
“How our fulcrum, the thing we hold onto and that gets us through the day and night . . . how that thing often becomes our identity and is the one thing that can destroy us in the end.”
The unannounced trip to visit her father went against her character. Whether she was going to his house or to the hospital, Jane always planned the visit days in advance. She needed time to get properly numbed in order to endure her father’s wrath. But there she was sitting in her car outside the nursing home front door, sucking the nicotine out of every cigarette she had left in her pack. That familiar knot began to pull tighter in her stomach as she neared his open door. Cautiously, she moved forward and stood in the doorway. Her father was fast asleep in his bed with the television, tuned to Court TV, on mute. She stayed still and observed him. His head was awkwardly bent to the side and his mouth slightly parted. A prickly growth of beard covered his usually clean-shaven face. The razor-sharp buzz haircut was a little unkempt. His complexion was sallow and his cheeks slightly sunken. For the first time in her life, Jane felt a sliver of superiority in his presence. As quickly as she felt it, however, she wondered if the whole thing was some sort of trick and that he would suddenly awaken, bolt from the bed and attack her. It was that last thought that kept her positioned in the doorway.
“He’s been sleeping on and off all day.” Jane quickly turned to find Zoe, the head nurse, walking up to her. “It’s not one of his better days,” Zoe whispered to Jane, stealing a peek at Dale Perry’s slumbering body.
“Okay,” Jane whispered, “give him a message for me. I have to go away on business and I might be gone for a while. Tell him that—”
The clanging sound of a metal tray hitting the ground echoed through the hallway, startling Jane and rousing Dale.
“I guess you can tell him yourself,” Zoe said turning to Dale. “Hello, Mr. Perry. Look who’s here to see you!”
Zoe walked away, leaving Jane in the doorway. Dale squinted toward Jane.
“You gonna stay in the doorway?” Dale slurred in an acid tongue. Jane moved forward, stopping several feet from his bedside. “What in the hell are you doing here? If you want money, you’re shit out of luck.” Jane remained silent, standing stoically. Dale turned and watched the muted program on Court TV. “You pick up that stuff from the workshop like I asked you and give it to the boys at DH?”
“Yes.”
Dale turned to Jane. “You didn’t fuck with anything in that workshop, did you?”
Jane noticed his evil eye staring back at her, but somehow it didn’t affect her. She felt a swell of indignity well up inside of her. “Why would I fuck with anything in there?” As the words came out, she realized how strong and unafraid they sounded.
Dale analyzed Jane. He tried to penetrate her being but his failing health made it difficult. “Don’t use that asshole attitude on me. You know what it’ll get you.”
Jane moved closer to Dale’s bed. “Why don’t you tell me what it will get me?”
“You think you can fuck with me now. Is that what you came here to do?”
“No.”
Dale checked out Jane’s body language and realized she was not her usual fearful self. A slow smile, laced with a sneer, melted onto his lips. “I’ll be in your head ’til the day you die.” Dale waited for the words to sink in and watch his daughter’s reaction. Jane stayed solid for a few seconds and then he could feel her beginning to doubt herself. “God, you’re so easy,” he said with a delirious glint in his eye.
Jane felt herself slipping. “I’m going away,” she blurted.
“Oh, yeah? Where?”
“It’s confidential.”
“Confidential?” Dale said with a heavy dose of mockery. “Well, let’s see. It has something to do with that Lawrence double murder.”
“Why would you say that?”
“The guys at DH keep me up to date with what’s goin’ on. You gotta hit the road after what went down two nights ago.” Jane stiffened. She had no idea that Dale knew about Martha’s murder. “You know, in all my years on the force, I never fucked up as bad as you did two nights ago.” Jane couldn’t argue with Dale’s comment. She had been telling herself the same thing ever since it happened. “So, the Department is sending you away for a while.” Dale surmised. “Or, maybe not just you. Maybe they’re shoving the kid onto you. Yeah, that’s how it works. That’s how it always works.”
Jane wasn’t sure where she had lost control of the conversation but she knew that if she didn’t get out soon, Dale would read her like an open book. “I have to go—”
“They’re sending you away to some shithole small town,” Dale declared with that same devious look in his eye. “They got you a house and they’re giving you cash and they told you to ‘blend in’ for as long as it takes. What they didn’t tell you is that you’re walking into a fuckin’ land mine.”
Jane studied Dale’s face. “What are you talking about?” “It’s gotten too messy. The whole Department will not be taken down because of your fuckup. Decisions had to be made.” Dale’s tone was succinct and brutal. “You take the two lambs and you sacrifice them for the good of the others.”
Jane felt a shiver radiate down her spine. “That’s not it at all.”
“Don’t be a fuckin’ idiot, Jane. You mark my words. Something will go wrong. And you’ll be all alone in some backwater town with no backup. Just you and that kid and the one who will finish the job.”
Jane let Dale’s words filter through her system. “What if I don’t let that happen?”
“You think you got what it takes? You think you have the guts to point a loaded gun at someone and pull the trigger? Or would you rather just lay down and get the shit kicked out of you until you die?” Dale’s eyes dissolved into a hateful glare. “Am I the only one who knows the answer to that question?”
Chapter 16
Sleep was hard to come by the night before Jane’s departure. No matter how much she tried to bar Dale’s voice from her head, his words continually reverberated until she thought she’d go mad. “That’s how it always works,” he told her, referring to DH’s relocation decision. What did he mean “always works?” Jane wondered. Was she really walking into a trap? Did DH have some hidden, sinister protocol for dealing with unruly cops? If so, who was behind it? Was it Sergeant Weyler? As much as Jane didn’t want to pin Weyler with a secret agenda, she couldn’t help but consider the possibility that he had some nefarious motive that Jane wasn’t yet aware of. Behind that dapper, PBS-loving exterior could lurk a darker side. Jane recounted all the “connections” Weyler talked about—“connections with higher-ups” in the Department, “connections” with the DA’s office. Just exactly who were these high-powered connections?
The more Jane pondered Weyler’s behavior, the more questions she had. How was he able to pull off an overnight visit for a juvenile victim at the crime scene? That was strictly off the books. How did Weyler know exactly where to find Jane when he located her at the firing range? Was she that predictable in her comings and goings or was he having her followed? And then there was that pager he gave Jane outside of the firing range. He specifically told Jane that she was only allowed to contact him once she was in Peachville. Was that so only Weyler could feed her the information he chose to give her? And of course, his order not to tell anyone about where she was going. How convenient, she thought. She and the kid could end up dead and no one would know for weeks or possibly months. It could all be a string of innocent occurrences or it could be important clues that led to a fatal conclusion.
These were the troubling thoughts that haunted her throughout the night. And the more Jane fell into a pit of fear, the more her father’s voice dominated.
“You think you have the guts to point a loaded gun at someone and pull the trigger?”
That was the one that stung. Jane’s protective nature was ingrained into her being. It was not just something she did—it was who she was. She would protect someone at all costs, even if that meant dying in the process. But still, she hesitated long ago when she could have pulled the trigger. She let herself be tricked and paid a heavy price. Jane wanted to believe she had what it took to finish the job. She needed a guarantee that she could stand across from another human being and end their life in one millisecond. And if the person across from her ended up being Sergeant Weyler, Jane worried that she would repeat the identical outcome from years ago. If she allowed that to happen, it would end with her death. And after her demise, Emily would follow.
That sobering realization left her wide awake into the early morning hours. She stared at the radio next to her bed and turned it on, scanning the dial until she heard Tony Mooney’s enigmatic voice. He was becoming a bad habit for Jane but something kept drawing her back to him.
“Welcome back to the second hour of the show. To all my soldiers of the star-soaked skies, doesn’t it feel like déjà vu all over again?” Jane turned her head on the pillow and stared at the radio. “We’re talking tonight about that giant web of unexplained interconnectedness that powers this solar system—that intricate and yet soul-specific generator that unites each of us with another. It’s real, my friends. Oh, yes. It’s very real. Your rational mind tells you it doesn’t exist but your heart—which is your true mind—convinces you of its truth . . . It’s the engine that drives our lives and dictates our evolution with another soul.” Jane rolled over on her side, facing the radio. Mooney leaned closer to the microphone. “It’s the unexplained bond between twins or a mother and her child. Like two hearts beating as one; two minds linked. Thoughts and realities, tightly interwoven like threads across the universe. We all experience it one time or another in our lives. It may only be for a brief moment or it can span a lifetime, but we all have the opportunity to dive into the pool of shared consciousness . . .”
Jane awakened at dawn. Filters of pink-tinged light radiated like fingers across her bedroom window. She turned to the right, expecting to see her clock but immediately felt disoriented. Jane lay on top of the covers and was catty-corner on the bed, her head resting in the bottom left corner of the mattress. Somehow in the night, she deduced, she must have gotten up and fallen back on top of the bed. The radio played low in the background, still on the same station that featured Tony Mooney’s nightly program. Jane lifted her head. She felt drugged. It was worse than a hangover; she felt as if she’d run a marathon all night long.
Jane sat up and stared at the carpeting. Strewn across the floor were the stacks of legal-sized notepads, files of the Stover case and the newspapers that she’d stuffed into her bag for the trip. Her first nerve-wracking thought was that somebody had broken into the house during the night. Grabbing her Glock, Jane carefully made her way down the hallway and checked the front door. It was locked securely from the inside. Looking around the living room, nothing was askew. An icy quiver crept up her spine as she returned to her bedroom and stared at the chaotic splay of coveted case information. Setting the Glock on the bureau, she knelt down and collected the newspapers, files and notepads, replacing them in her duffel bag. Looking over to the side, just under the bed, she saw the corner of a yellow legal notepad. She pulled it toward her and felt an odd sense of recollection. A blur of images suddenly raced before her eyes. There was a flash of blinding light followed by the blistering outline of a Glock followed by the millisecond likeness of a wolf’s face. Jane shook her head backward and the visions ceased. She thought the insanity was over—a lingering side effect of booze-fueled binges. But she was stone cold sober and the same bizarre, unrelated visual imprints had returned. Jane paged through the yellow notepad until she came upon the unexplained rudimentary drawing of the wolf’s face and the two words, WOLF FACE, all in capitals. She still didn’t remember drawing it—a fact that continued to disturb her. It was the last entry in the notepad. At least, it was to her knowledge. Jane turned the page. There, filling the next lined page was another crude drawing. This one depicted the palm of someone’s left hand. Imprinted across the palm were numbers.
Jane stood up and held the notepad up to the mirror, revealing
10-24-99
. It seemed to obviously be a date but it held no significance to Jane. She stared at the drawing, realizing again that she was the elementary artist. Staring back at the floor, Jane surmised that she unexplainably awoke, rummaged through her bag and for some unknown reason, drew a picture of a hand with a backward date before collapsing on top of her bed. Cautiously, she checked out the remaining pages of the notepad and found them blank. “Oh, God,” Jane whispered. “Please make it stop.”
10-24-99
. It seemed to obviously be a date but it held no significance to Jane. She stared at the drawing, realizing again that she was the elementary artist. Staring back at the floor, Jane surmised that she unexplainably awoke, rummaged through her bag and for some unknown reason, drew a picture of a hand with a backward date before collapsing on top of her bed. Cautiously, she checked out the remaining pages of the notepad and found them blank. “Oh, God,” Jane whispered. “Please make it stop.”
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