Protector (2 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
“No. That’s not true,” David responded unconvincingly.
“It is true! You fantasized about what it would feel like to be accepted by people who lived on the edge. You got off on that fantasy. And then, that fantasy became real.”
David covered his face again. “Maybe. Maybe I did.”
“Well, you picked a helluva time to live out your fantasy!” Patricia lunged toward her husband, leaned down and forcefully pulled his hands away from his face. “When the connection was made,” she continued with a slow, angry cadence, “between the two of you and they saw the kind of close relationship you had, did you ever once consider the implications of what could happen? How it would affect us? Or Emily?” At the sound of her name, Emily crawled onto the stairway landing, staying in the darkness so her parents could not see her. Patricia spoke quietly, but there was a penetrating punctuation to each syllable. “The minute you found out what was going on, you should have walked away.”
“I know . . .” David replied in a weak voice. “But, I couldn’t.”
“Jesus!” Patricia pulled away from her husband. “How fucked up were you?”
“Oh, shit, Patty!” David’s voice raised several octaves as he nervously got up and walked across the room. “I may have been a little drunk, but I wasn’t fucked up!” David brushed back his thick brown hair with his hand. It was then that he realized his hand was shaking. His eyes fell to the floor and he spoke in a hushed voice, holding back tears. “Things were said and the more we talked, the more the trust began to build between the two of us. And then . . . I just wanted to help.”
“David, how could you throw everything away that you know is right and true and decent for a relationship that could destroy us?”
“I would never consciously do anything to hurt you or Emily!”
“You don’t think you hurt us when drink a fifth and have to stay in bed all day because you can’t cope? Because you can’t be the man you’re supposed to be?”
“That’s a low blow, Patty.”
“No, David. That’s the truth,” Patricia said tersely.
David searched for the right words. “We’re going to be okay—”
“Are you crazy?” Patricia exploded. “Didn’t you read this?” She shoved the letter in David’s face.
David slid away toward the staircase. “I don’t want to read it again!”
“No, you don’t want to see what you’ve done to us! Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist and maybe it’ll go away! Well, this is not going to go away! But I am and I’m taking Emily with me!”
Emily’s throat tightened. She watched her mother angrily shove the letter into an open wooden slot that protruded from the rear of the hallway desk. Patricia slammed the slot shut, leaving a slim corner of the notepaper exposed.
“Oh, Jesus, Patty,” David begged. “Don’t do this.”
“No more, David! Emily and I should have never come back from Moab! I should have kept driving and put as much distance between us as possible! I will not put my daughter through hell because you wanted your fifteen minutes of fame! I’m packing our bags and taking Emily to my sister in Cheyenne.”
“You can’t take her away from me! She’s my daughter, too! I love her!”
“Maybe you should have thought about that months ago.”
“For God’s sake—” David stopped in his tracks as he looked up the staircase and saw Emily hiding in the shadows. “Oh, God, sweetheart. Go back to bed.”
Emily stepped from the shadows. “Why are we going away again, Mommy?”
Patricia moved toward the staircase. “Emily, go back to your bedroom.” Her tone was precise and laced with agitation. “I’ll be up to talk to you.”
Emily started to turn when she stopped and looked down at her parents. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too. Go on!” Patricia said.
Emily looked at her father’s eyes; they were sad and pitiful. It was the same look she saw when he drank himself into a stupor and stared into nothingness. A sense of helplessness welled up inside the child. “I love you, Daddy,” she whispered.
David put his fingers to his lips, kissed them and blew the kiss toward Emily. “I love you too, sweet pea.”
Emily paused, freezing the moment in her memory, then walked back into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. The sound of her parents’ voices were muffled, but still peppered with rage. Her head was filled with the dreaded thought of leaving the only home she had ever known. She nervously paced around her room as the Starlight Starbright projector light cast celestial shapes across her face and body. Emily wanted desperately to feel safe from the world and all the awful possibilities. She quickly grabbed the projector along with the navy blue vinyl carrying case and toted it into her tiny bedroom closet. Closing the door, she situated herself on the floor of the closet, partially covered by the hanging clothes. She tried to get comfortable, and then remembered the mass of oversized pillows on her bed. Wriggling out from under the clothing, she opened the door and made her way in the semi-darkness. Emily dragged two large pillows off the bed and started back when she heard the front 10:00 p.m. in bright red neon. Pressing her ear to her bedroom door, she heard the sound of another male voice—a voice she didn’t recognize.
Although she couldn’t make out any specific words, the tone sounded like a friendly conversation between her mother and father and the unknown voice. Emily thought she heard the word “accident,” coming from the mysterious guest. She hadn’t heard any crash of metal echoing from Franklin Street. But then again, her parents’ fervent voices could have drowned out the collision.
For a brief second, she wondered if it was A.J.’s dad. Ten long days ago, A.J. had suddenly moved away with her parents with no warning. The only explanation her mother offered was that A.J.’s father got a job offer in California and had to leave quickly or he would lose the opportunity. As her mother told her this story, Emily could tell it was a lie and wondered to herself why A.J. didn’t want to be her friend anymore. It seemed odd to her; less than one month before, the two families enjoyed a Sunday picnic in Washington Park. One of the photos from that day of Emily and her parents was proudly propped up against her clock. It was a beaming portrait of family bliss that belied the truth.
The conversation downstairs sputtered out as Emily plotted the sound of single footsteps walking across the living room floor, heading toward the kitchen. She heard the kitchen door close—a familiar reverberation that always echoed up into her bedroom. She waited, hugging the two large pillows close to her chest. Less than a minute later, Emily heard the sound of the kitchen door opening and an abrupt raised pitch of voices. If that was A.J.’s father, he suddenly didn’t sound very happy. Emily pulled away from the door. She figured that whatever was happening downstairs was better left to her parents and that her mother would tell her a dressed up version of the truth the next morning.
She plopped the oversized pillows on the closet floor, closed the door and buried her body under the cushioned mass. It was like a soft cocoon that cradled and hid her from the outside world. She turned on the Starlight Starbright projector and the glimmering stars began their orbital ballet. Every crevice of her closet was painted with twinkling lights and murky galaxies. Emily peered out from between the pillows, captivated by the celestial dance. With another flick of a switch, the soft, melodic tones of “Nessun Dorma,” interwoven with the sounds of crashing waves and a gentle wind, drifted into the air.
The voices downstairs became louder. But Emily stayed focused on the brilliant constellations that rotated across the closet walls and ceiling. She could feel her heart pounding harder and harder.
That’s the last thing Emily remembered.
Chapter 2
Detective Jane Perry woke up with a start. For a second, she had no idea where she was. Her breathing was fast and labored, as though she’d just run a marathon. Jane closed her eyes and let out a loud grunt. Catching her breath, she stared at the ceiling in a slight daze. “Fuck,” was all she could utter in a raspy whisper.
She’d had the same bloody nightmare again. But it was different this time. There was something else; something incongruous to the usual pattern of violence. But that something else was ominously intangible to Jane. It was as though she could damn near taste it and smell the scent of danger but her rational mind couldn’t define it. Whatever this was, it felt patently real, as if it had already happened. She’d always accepted her sixth sense—gut intuitiveness that some cops coined “The Blue Sense.” But that only came into play after exhaustive logical reasoning. Now it appeared that her intuitive mind was morphing into a chaotic, precognitive monster that hid between the shadows of her conscious mind. Jane tried to chalk up this tender sense of doom to her five-day booze binge. But she’d hit the bottle hard many times and never felt the queasy uneasiness that was beginning to take on a life of its own. The thought crossed her mind that she was finally losing it. After 35 years of barely holding it together, she feared she might be unraveling. That fear alone jolted her back to her senses as she lay alone in her bed staring into the void.
Jane coughed deeply—the kind of gut cough that comes from over 20 years of chain smoking. She reached over to the bedside table feeling for a pack of cigarettes. The table, just like the rest of the house, was a mess—the tactile consequence of her binge. A dozen empty cigarette packs, three drained bottles of Jack Daniels and a thick coating of ashes from the overturned ashtray littered the small table. Coming up empty-handed, she leaned over to the other side of the bed where another table sat askew from the wall. Opening the drawer, Jane found a full pack of Marlboros and a lighter. Her gut-wrenching cough continued as she peeled off the wrapping, jerked a cigarette out of the pack and lit up. She sucked the nicotine into her lungs like a seasoned pro. As the smoke peeled out of her mouth, she examined her bandaged left hand.
The emergency room doctor said the burn could have been worse and told her to apply the silver ointment twice a day to speed the healing. That was ten days ago and she’d plastered her hand with four coatings of the stuff before she gave up on it. Jane would be hard pressed to find the ointment underneath the debris that cluttered her bedroom. Dirty clothes intertwined with empty take-out cartons. A neat stack of beer stained yellow legal pads covered with writing sat on a pile of The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News newspapers. In the ten days since “the incident,” as it became known at Denver Headquarters, she and her partner, Detective Chris Crawley, made the front page of both papers seven times. One photo of her in the Rocky was the same mug on her ID badge. There she was with that sullen, pissed off expression. In contrast, Chris’ adjacent front-page photo with his sweep of blond hair and narrow, ruddy cheeks, made him look like an altar boy. Subsequent stories on the pair featured a large photo from the disastrous press conference that left more questions unanswered about the explosion. It also left the public wondering if Denver Homicide was as inept as the media portrayed them.
To say the incident haunted Jane Perry was putting it mildly. It was one thing for her to replay the whole thing in her mind second by second and ask herself what she could have done differently. But it was quite another to relive the disjointed images over and over again every night in her dreams. Sitting in the patrol car with Chris. Checking her watch. Chris calling the undercover cops on his cell phone and getting Stover’s ETA. Seeing the Range Rover coming down the street. Observing Bill Stover, his wife Yvonne and their ten-year-old daughter Amy wave toward Jane as they pulled into their driveway. Feeling that instant between the silence and the chaos. Seeing the hood of the SUV explode in a burst of flames amidst the yellow smoke of the C-4 explosive. And then racing toward the burning car and finding Bill and Yvonne slumped across the dashboard and Amy with her hands pressed against the glass, screaming. Trying to open the back door and finding it locked. Then punching her fist against the glass to try and break it as the flames shot around the SUV from the hood. Feeling the icy burn across her left hand as Chris held her back from the car and smelling the melting paint and metal and flesh. Then staring at Amy’s fixated eyes as the life drained out of them. It was that last moment that always shot Jane out of the nightmare and back into her life of hell. And it was just another reason to get loaded.
Jane took a long drag on her cigarette and coughed hard enough to pop a lung. She reached for the empty Jack Daniels bottle in hopes of finding a trickle of liquid relief. No luck. She tossed the bottle across the room and looked at the clock. 8:15. “Shit!” Jane exclaimed as she threw back the covers and struggled to her feet. Clenching the cigarette between her lips, she pressed the palm of her good hand to her forehead in hopes of pushing back the pounding pressure. A helluva way to start her first day back. She had 45 minutes to get dressed, collect her paperwork, fight the morning traffic to DH and be seated in Sergeant Weyler’s office.
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