Storming Heaven (5 page)

And how long ago had that been? An hour? Two?

The comforting glow of the clock on her night-stand and the gentle creaking of her house as the immense logs dried and settled were gone. Everything was gone. There was no blue-white glow from the snowdrifts beneath her window, no light filtering in from under the door. Just a dizzying blackness.

Jennifer felt another surge of heat overtake her and she rolled on her side, clenching her teeth and struggling to not throw up.

The memories returned slowly, retracing themselves in her mind over and over again until she could see faceless black-and-white outlines moving purposefully across the background of her home. She could feel the strong arms holding her and the adrenaline-surge panic as her air was cut off by a hand damp with perspiration.

It didn’t take long for the outlines to sharpen and collect color and sound. The pale woman with
dark eyes kneeling in front of her. The shadows crisscrossing her father’s face as he raised the gun to his wife’s head. The crack of the pistol and the strangely insignificant jerk of her mother’s head before she fell, doll-like, to the ground.

No. It couldn’t have happened. It was just bad dreams. She must have been coming down with a bug before the race and the effort and dehydration had played tricks on her in her sleep.

She reached out for the lamp beside her bed, but her hand just hung uselessly in the empty air, confirming what she already knew but hadn’t been able to fully face. She wasn’t in her room. She had no idea where she was.

She tried to stifle it, but the long mournful cry still escaped as she tried to stem the tide of memories projecting themselves onto the darkness that surrounded her.

Her father’s image appeared a few feet away, pressing the barrel of the gun under his chin and speaking his final, meaningless words to her. Then her mind replayed the sting of the syringe as it broke her skin and turned the room to quivering mush and then finally to nothing. She felt a tear make its way across the bridge of her nose and down her cheek. Then another. And another. Once she started to cry, her sobbing just grew in intensity, melding with her nausea and leaving her choking and coughing uncontrollably.

She went on like that until the muscles in her stomach and sides exhausted themselves and her mind decided it had had enough and let her drift off into unconsciousness.

When she awoke again, her head still hurt and her throat was painfully dry, but the nausea was gone. The image of her parents’ death began creeping back into her mind, but she pushed it off into the emotional numbness that was quickly overtaking her.

“Hello?”

Her voice was little more than a harsh whisper, but it seemed impossibly loud in the darkness and silence that surrounded her.

She waited for some reply, some indication that she wasn’t completely alone in the world, but there was nothing.

She cleared her throat painfully. “Is anyone there?”

Louder this time, but still weak. She sounded like a frightened little girl, even to herself.

She sat up slowly and swung her feet onto the cold floor. The blood rushed from her head and she had to bend forward at the waist for a moment to keep from passing out. After a few seconds, she raised her head and slid off the bed.

She tried to crawl but the bruises and cuts on her knees were too painful against the hard floor and she was forced to turn over and slide on her butt until her back reached a wall.

Feeling along it, she finally came to the smooth wood of a doorjamb. She used the doorknob to steady herself and struggled to her feet. It took only a few moments to find the light switch.

She covered her eyes with one hand and flipped the switch with the other. The flare of light worked its way between her fingers as she pulled them slowly away from her face.

When she finally opened her eyes, she fell against the wall and screamed.

A black-clad woman sat motionless in a chair less than a foot from where Jennifer had slept. The woman’s head turned slowly toward her as Jennifer backed into the far corner of the room and sank to the floor. The brief surge of adrenaline overloaded her weakened system and her breath came in short, useless gasps as the woman stood and moved across the room.

The pounding of her heart seemed to be robbing her of her strength. Her arms felt impossibly heavy as she raised them in front of her face.

The woman paused and looked down at her, then opened the door and disappeared through it without a word.

Jennifer listened to the latch on the door click shut as she crumpled to her side on the hard tile and struggled to even out her breathing.

It had been the same woman. The one who had driven her parents crazy. The one who had drugged her.

Why had she been sitting there in the darkness? Why hadn’t she answered?

Jennifer crawled sobbing toward the door and flipped the light switch. It was better that way, she thought as the darkness closed in on her. Better to see nothing.

“Y
OU ALL RIGHT?
” M
ARK
B
EAMON
Y
ELLED.
The brand-new window at the front of his office had gone almost completely opaque with white paint. A smear the size of the painter’s back was transparent enough to allow him to see the collapsed scaffold and two slightly dazed construction workers on the other side.

Beamon crossed his office and stood in the open door. The men involved in this latest of a recent string of construction disasters looked more or less unharmed. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true of the two freshly painted PCs and three freshly painted FBI agents that had been sitting a little too close.

He sighed quietly, remembering that it was now
his
job to get the Three Stooges Contracting Company to pay up for the damaged computers and business suits.

He pointed at Chet Michaels and reminded himself that he’d been bucking to get into management for years. In the future, he’d be more careful what he wished for.

“I’ve got the new stuff on the Davis case,” Michaels said, walking carefully across the paint-splattered floor with a large box in his hands and a blue folder under his arm. “I take it you’re ready?”

Beamon settled back into his chair as one of the
painters attacked the floor in front of his office with a mop. “Yeah. Have a seat.”

The young agent dropped the box next to his chair and flipped the file folder open on his lap. “We got the initial background stuff on the Davises.”

“And?”

“They’re actually not Jennifer’s real parents. She was adopted.”

“Shit, really?” Beamon snapped his fingers. “That’s it, then. Reason number three, subcategory one.”

“Huh?”

“Come on, Chet, we talked about this yesterday. What’s reason number three for kidnapping someone?”

“Uh, ransom?”

Beamon frowned. “That’s reason one. Try again.”

“Oh, wait a minute. It’s ‘cause you want the girl.”

“Or whoever. And
why
do you want the girl?”

“Uh, I thought that one was ‘cause you were divorced and didn’t get custody.”

“Precisely. Adoption’s just a variation on that theme. Find the biological parents and you find the girl.” Beamon lifted his mug in a salute to his own deductive genius and took a sip of the hot coffee.

“We already found the parents, Mark. They’re dead. Died in a fire years ago.”

Beamon tried not to let his disappointment show. “Oh. Back to Jennifer, then.”

Michaels flipped a page in the file. “So far, we’re not finding any real problems at the Davises.
The neighbors and friends we’ve talked to have told us that Jennifer was pretty well adjusted and that there were no significant problems in her relationship with her parents. She’s an excellent student, athletic, and well liked—if not exactly popular. As you mentioned, she’s a little alternative. Oh, and a pretty good mountain bike racer.”

Beamon tapped his front teeth with the nail of his index finger. “The maid told me that maybe Jennifer’s mother wasn’t crazy about her boyfriend. Was she putting pressure on Jennifer to get rid of him? Love tends to rank right up there with money as a motive for murder.”

“Don’t think so in this case, Mark. I did get that Mrs. Davis would have liked her to get together with their best friends’ son, but that had been going on for a long time and I think she probably knew it was never going to go anywhere.”

Beamon interrupted him. “Why not? What makes you say that?”

“I met the kid—Billy’s his name. Not a match made in heaven, believe me.”

Beamon remained silent, prompting him to continue.

“I went through Jennifer’s room with a fine-toothed comb, Mark. She listens to Naked Raygun, reads Kerouac and Burroughs. Rebuilds suspension forks. This guy her mother liked for her was dumb as a post. Pure generic high school football player.”

Beamon gave a short laugh and shook his head. “God, you make me feel old, Chet. I have absolutely no idea what you just said.”

“Would you care for a translation?”

Beamon held up his hand. “How about I just take your word for it. What about the boyfriend she
did
like?”

“Jamie Dolan. Haven’t talked to him yet; I’m going this afternoon. Preliminarily, though, he doesn’t look great as a suspect. He’s a drummer in a band and was apparently playing that night. I think there are going to be a lot of witnesses nailing him down between way before ten
P.M
. ‘til about three
A.M. I
don’t think there was any way he could have sneaked out between sets, but maybe he could have slipped out of his house early in the morning. I’ll know more later.”

Beamon looked across his office at the man smearing paint around on his window with a rag. “I have to wonder about that. The Davises were attacked in the living room in the same clothes they’d been seen in at dinner, right? He’d have had to roust them out of bed, get them to put on their clothes, and bring them downstairs before he shot them. Maybe he’s that clever, I don’t know. Does he have access to a gun?”

“No gun registered to his mother, but who knows?”

“What about the Davises?”

“No gun registered and none of their friends we talked to know of any.”

“Shit,” ‘Beamon said, tapping out a complex rhythm on his desk with his knuckles. “You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you, Chet? Physical evidence?”

“So far, we don’t have anything in the way of prints or fibers and the autopsy report’s still pending.
Didn’t get anything from phone records. There was no sign of forced entry or robbery. Oh, and Jennifer had a credit card. Last used …” He flipped a couple of pages in the folder. “Middle of last month. We’re watching for any new usage.”

Beamon leaned across his desk. “What’s in the box?”

“Oh, we finally got into the Davises’ safe.” He dropped the folder and hefted the box onto his lap.

“So, what have we won?”

Michaels grabbed a red velvet bag with a ribbon tied around the top and let it dangle from his hand. “A bag of gold and diamond jewelry. Good for evening, or feeding a thousand homeless people for a month.”

“Commie.”

The young agent affected a hurt expression and dropped the bag on Beamon’s desk. “Passports for all three of them, roughly four thousand dollars in cash, a few stock certificates, Mr. Davis’s college transcript, the financial statements of the corporation that owns Mr. Davis’s car dealerships …”

“How do those look? Maybe he was borrowing from the wrong sort?”

“They look pretty strong, actually. Of course they could be bogus.”

Beamon screwed up his face. “Maybe. But why keep fakes in your own safe? Partners?”

Michaels shook his head. “He owned the whole thing, one hundred percent.”

“Uh-huh. Go on.”

“Lessee. Birth certificates for all three, and a copy of the Davises’ irrevocable trust.”

“What’s that say?”

“We’ve got a lawyer going over it, but I read a lot of these when I was an accountant. It pretty much says that Jennifer gets it all. She’s got to attain a certain age and there are provisions for her living and school expenses until that time, as well as some other stuff, but that’s the gist of it.”

“What if she dies?”

“The whole estate turns into a charitable foundation. No specific charities or people are named.”

Beamon leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. He sat there for almost a minute, with Michaels watching his face carefully.

“I don’t know, Chet. I keep coming back to Jennifer and Jamie. We’ve got a young couple in love, a mother who doesn’t like the boyfriend, and a pretty favorable trust here. What time are you leaving to meet with this kid?”

“Around noon. I’m going to the high school to talk to him and all her friends.”

“Set Jamie up for the first interview. I assume you don’t mind if I join you.”

“Not at all.”

B
EAMON GAZED DEJECTEDLY AT THE LOW-
slung yellow brick building as Michaels eased into a parking space next to an overflowing bike rack.

If memory served, the seventies was not one of the most economically sound periods in American history. And if that was true, it must be one of the great mysteries why all public buildings looked like they were built during that decade.

“… So this kid’s pretty bright …”

The flat roof of the school had gotten piled with snow and Beamon watched a tall black man walk carefully to the edge and begin to stab at a particularly large cornice with a shovel.

“Mark! Are you listening to me?”

Beamon pressed the release on his seatbelt and let it snap back toward the door. “Sorry, Chet. I was somewhere else. What were you saying?”

“Jamie Dolan. He’s seventeen, a senior this year. Extremely intelligent—fifteen eighty on his SATs …”

“Is that good?”

“Uh, yeah. To put it in perspective, eight hundred is average. Sixteen hundred’s perfect.” “Uh huh.”

“So anyway, Jamie’s parents split up when he was ten. Apparently his father had a drinking problem and was pretty abusive. Now Jamie lives with
his mother in a trailer park about ten miles from here. He works at a local video club to help make ends meet. His mother’s a waitress.”