Protector. Part 2

Ron d.i.c.kson, one of the evidence technicians, stood behind a metal security grating, signing out one of the detectives from burglary. The place was unusually still and silent. Ron wasn't the kind of fellow Jane would have talked to outside the office. Maybe it was because Ron was very obviously a Pentecostal Christian. Or perhaps it was because he always had a smile on his face and something positive to share with Jane. He'd brag about one of his three kids winning a league soccer tournament or that he collected more money than anyone else at Headquarters for D.A.R.E., a group he held in high esteem. Jane wondered at times how he made it through life so trusting and somewhat gullible. He worked amongst the blood and the drugs and the obscene photographs and he somehow remained cheerful. When Jane finally asked him one day how he did it, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "It's a G.o.d thing!"

Jane leaned against the door and took a long drag on her cigarette. She figured that Chris had headed back upstairs or out to the double homicide. The detective from burglary walked to the elevator and disappeared behind the large steel doors.

"Detective Perry?" said Ron, his cheerful voice bringing Jane out of her slight daze. "I sure don't mind if you smoke but if they find you down here with that cigarette, I'll be in a world of trouble." He pulled out a large coffee can with a handmade note taped across it that read "PUT YOUR b.u.t.t IN HERE." Jane reluctantly sidled over to Ron and took one last long drag before plopping it into the can. Ron was wearing a perfectly pressed pair of chinos to go along with his perfectly pressed navy polo s.h.i.+rt. On the s.h.i.+rt was a discreet b.u.t.ton that said, "D.A.R.E. to keep kids off DRUGS." Jane imagined Ron's ivory-skinned wife dutifully pressing his pants and s.h.i.+rts, affixing either his D.A.R.E. or "Proud Soccer Parent" b.u.t.ton onto his s.h.i.+rt and sending him off to work with a gentle kiss. When Jane was around Ron, she always felt very loud, very crude and very lost. "I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but welcome back!" Ron said with an honest smile.

Jane tried her best to twist her lips into what could pa.s.s for a smile. "Thanks, Ron." She dropped her leather satchel against the counter. When Ron spoke to you, he always looked you straight in the eye, no jittery s.h.i.+fting back and forth. It was a sign to Jane that he was honest and speaking from the heart.

"Are you feeling alright, Detective Perry?"

Jane could have said a million smart-a.s.s answers, but between feeling the need to censor her vocabulary with him and still stinging from Weyler's suspension, she decided to settle on the truth. "No, Ron. I'm not feeling alright."

"Is it your hand? If it is, my wife makes an herbal salve that works wonders."

"The hand's fine. I just have a lot on my mind."

Ron hesitated. "I hope you don't think I'm too forward but when I heard about what happened to you and Detective Crawley and that poor family, I asked our faith circle to include you in their prayers. My wife and I also prayed for you."

Jane leaned on the steel counter and turned to Ron. "What did you ask for?"

"We prayed that you would be protected, and for G.o.d to give you direction."

Jane's eyes trailed off to the side. "You think G.o.d heard your prayers?"

"Yes, ma'am. And I know in my heart He will give you the answers you need very soon." Ron placed the palm of his hand over Jane's bandaged hand. "He works in mysterious ways, Detective Perry." Jane stood still, taken aback by Ron's bold gesture. His clear, blue eyes seemed to look right through her. It might have been the end result of her five-day drinking binge but she felt as though Ron knew things about her that she buried long ago. The elevator doors opened and two detectives from a.s.sault emerged, chatting loudly and carrying bags of evidence. "Excuse me," Ron said, gently withdrawing his hand and attending to the detectives.

Jane grabbed her leather satchel and moved aside. Her head spun with various forms of strategy that would convince Weyler to put her back on the board without having to endure hours of psych counseling. This kind of deep thinking required tobacco, however. She headed back into the stairwell and lit up a cigarette. Leaning on the railing, she lost herself in thought. Jane heard the big steel door open from the lobby entrance and the patronizing voice of Martha Durrett. It was hard for Jane to concentrate on her thoughts while Martha was chattering. The 47-year-old worked for the Department of Social Services and was a constant thorn in Jane's side. Part of it was Martha's voice, a strident and annoying one. It was hard enough to stomach her voice when one was feeling normal but it was especially brutal with a hangover. Martha had a habit of clipping her words with the precision of a sharp knife as she moved through the world as though she owned it.

"Come along, dear," Jane heard Martha say in that ever-condescending tone. "It's just two quick flights up. Come, come!" Jane shook her head in disgust at Martha's schoolteacher manner. She didn't know who she was talking to but she felt sorry for them. The stream of smoke from her cigarette drifted up from the bas.e.m.e.nt. Like a human smoke alarm, it didn't take Martha long to blare. "Is someone there?" Martha leaned over the railing. Silence. "I say, is someone down there?" Martha sounded more agitated. Silence. "Wait right here," Martha said to her hushed companion. Jane heard the sound of Martha's sensible rubber soled shoes scuffing across the floor and tramping down the stairs until she lit on the landing above where Jane stood. "Ah-hah!" Martha dug her fists into her wide hips and drew herself up to her full five-foot frame. She looked down at Jane with a scowl and a chiding "Tch, tch, tch" with her tongue. "Detective Perry. You know smoking is forbidden inside all Denver County and City buildings! Put that awful thing out before you set off the sprinklers!"

Jane leaned back against the wall, took a long, exaggerated drag off her cigarette and let the smoke slowly curl from her lips in a continuous ribbon. "You know, Martha, standing there like you are in that light, I can't decide whether you look more like Napoleon or Hitler. Either way, f.u.c.k off!"

Martha quickly looked up the stairs and then bounded halfway down toward Jane. "Detective Perry!" Martha said in a hushed tone, "curb your language! I have a young child up there!"

"Does she realize what a complete a.s.shole you are?" "Detective Perry! I will not say it again! Please refrain from-" Martha's attention was drawn upward as the child peered over the railing, her brown hair hanging softly in midair. Jane looked up at the girl and moved away from the wall to get a better view. "Emily," Martha chided. "Step back. I'll be right there."

Emily Lawrence started to retreat when Jane spoke up. "Hey, Emily! Don't listen to her! Run like h.e.l.l and don't look back!"

Emily stared at Jane in stunned fascination. Martha grabbed Jane by her elbow and brusquely took her aside, out of Emily's view. "Detective Perry, you are very much out of line!"

Jane replied in the same clipped manner. "Get your hand off me, Martha, or I'll knock you on your-" Jane peered around Martha. Emily stood on the landing above her. In her left hand, she clutched onto her navy blue vinyl case that held the Starlight Starbright projector. Jane felt an unnerving jolt of recognition. There was something vaguely familiar about the kid-strangely familiar.

"That's it!" Martha announced. "I'm reporting you to your sergeant." Martha spun on her sensible shoes and walked up several steps toward Emily. "You are foul-mouthed and inappropriate!" Martha exclaimed, speaking over her shoulder to Jane. But Jane didn't hear a word of it; she was still trying to shake the odd feeling churning her gut. It was as if a memory suddenly surfaced without any lucid connection. "Come along, Emily!" Martha barked at Emily. Martha was halfway up the second set of stairs, issuing orders to Emily but the kid didn't move. She stared undaunted at Jane.

Jane leaned against the wall. She wanted to say something to the child but . . . what? She figured a mild caveat might be appropriate. "Hey, kid," Jane said in a half-whisper. "Don't let her jerk you around."

"Emily!" Martha beckoned from one flight above. "Come up here now!"

Emily stood for one more long second staring at Jane before she made her way back up the stairs and into Martha's waiting hand.

Jane waited as the echoing clip-clop of Martha and Emily's footsteps climbed the stairs. A dull sound of steel against steel penetrated the stairwell when Martha opened the door leading onto the third floor and let it slam shut. Standing in the sudden silence, she tried to contend with the elusive sense that something extraordinary was happening. She felt detached from her body but also filled with a palpable sensation that she knew more than she consciously realized. Given that she'd been blitzed on booze and blacked out many times over the last five days, she worried her current state might precede a complete breakdown. The thought of losing her mind forced the need of nicotine to suffocate the sharp edges. Jane took a long drag on her cigarette. The smoke caressed her throat and penetrated her lungs. She closed her eyes to drink in the sweet anesthesia. But suddenly, a disjointed series of stark images flashed in front of her. There was an outstretched Glock, a flash of blinding light and the genuine sensation that someone was desperately grabbing her right hand. Startled, Jane opened her eyes expecting to see someone holding on to her. But she stood alone.

"s.h.i.+t," Jane muttered under her breath. The walls closed in on her. She had to get out of the stairwell. Jane wanted more than anything to run upstairs, sit at her desk and focus . . . focus on anything mundane that would force the booze-induced images out of her head. Her ego quickly took hold when she remembered her suspension. Jane wasn't about to go upstairs and negotiate with Weyler. A psych counsel now might prove her worst fears. She would do what she always did: bury the trauma and move forward. If she talked to Weyler, she had to be tactful. However, tact was not something Jane had mastered in her 35 years. Tact, as she was fond of saying, was for people who didn't have the b.a.l.l.s to speak the truth. She grabbed her leather satchel, pinched what was left of her cigarette between her lips and plodded up the stairs with purpose. Jane had no idea what she was going to say to Weyler but she figured the right words would spill out at the precise moment. She was so deep in thought as she climbed the steps toward the third floor door that she didn't hear the loud voice of a woman yelling on the other side of the door. She flicked her cigarette b.u.t.t to the floor, smashed it with the toe of her boot and swung open the door.

The grating pitch of the Mexican woman she'd seen earlier in the elevator with the scared little girl greeted her. The woman held on to her daughter with one hand and used the other to gesture excitedly toward several of the detectives from a.s.sault. She spoke rapidly and hysterically in Spanish, adding a sentence here and there in English. "You don't know!" screamed the woman, during an interlude of English. "He hurt my baby! My baby girl!!!"

As determined as Jane was to get to Weyler's office, she couldn't help but take in the scene. Down the hall, twenty feet away, stood Martha, her hand tightly clasped around Emily's wrist. Several detectives and police personnel poked their heads out of their offices. Even Weyler looked outside his office door to catch the action.

Jane started to move around the woman when out of the corner of her eye, she saw two officers escorting a slightly built Mexican man in his mid-twenties down the hallway. He wore a stained T-s.h.i.+rt, baggy tan pants and sported endless tattoos that flowed from his wrist to his neck. Even though he was cuffed from behind, he walked with an arrogant, c.o.c.ksure swagger and held his head high.

Jane was about two feet from the screaming woman and in direct line with the approaching suspect when it happened. The woman caught sight of the fellow and, in one desperate stroke, withdrew a Glock from a pa.s.sing patrol officer's holster and pointed it at the Mexican suspect in cuffs. "No!" the woman screamed as she stood firm, both hands clasped around the gun and holding it outstretched toward the suspect.

Jane turned toward the woman and took a quick step back, within arm's reach of the weapon. Every officer on the floor reached for their firearm. Martha pulled Emily down onto the carpet and s.h.i.+elded the child's head with her body.

Weyler moved forward into the hallway and yelled toward the officers, "Stand down! Stand down!" Everyone took a step back except for Jane. Her eyes were locked onto the woman, who by now was shaking and choking back tears. As strong as the woman was trying to look, every fiber of her being was seized in terror. Jane carefully took her eyes off the woman and slid her glance toward the suspect who was frozen between the two officers not more than fifteen feet away. "Ma'am?" said Weyler quietly, his voice cutting through the tension. "Put down the gun."

"No!" she screamed in her thick accent. "You don't know what he did to my baby! No father should do those things to his little girl!"

The suspect smirked, sticking his chin defiantly in the air. "You lying b.i.t.c.h!"

The woman moved her finger onto the trigger. Everyone in the hallway stiffened. "I don't lie!" the woman screamed as her daughter buried her head in her mother's hip. "You broke her! She's just a baby!"

"Ma'am, please," Weyler insisted. "Put down the gun. Let's talk about this."

"No talk!" the woman yelled defiantly, her eyes burning holes toward the suspect. Jane drew her attention back to the woman and stepped toward her. The woman kept her eyes forward. "Don't you try nothing!" she screamed at Jane.

"I'm not gonna do anything," Jane said, an eerie calm to her voice. "I'm on your side."

"Don't you play no game with me!"

"I am not playing games. I'm serious. I want to help you."

"How you help me?"

"Well, for starters, you've never shot a gun before, have you?"

"No," the woman said, her throat choked with emotion.

"That's okay," Jane said offhandedly. "You've got the right idea. You just don't have the right control. I need to move closer so I can give you some pointers, okay?"

"Don't you try nothing!" the woman yelled.

"I'm not gonna stop you," Jane said, almost insulted. "You want to do this right, or do you want to make a mess? Relax." Jane slid her body next to the woman so that she could see down the barrel of the extended pistol. "You gotta stop shaking. Take a good, deep breath." The woman drew in her lungs. "Now, let it out slowly," Jane counseled. The woman followed suit, letting out a long stream of air. "Good. You're not shaking as much. Okay, there's several ways you can do this." Jane directed her attention toward the suspect. "You can aim for his head," Jane gently placed her index finger under the woman's wrists and slightly moved the gun sight in line with the suspect's forehead. "That'd be a sweet shot. However, we're about fifteen feet away and even the best cop could miss. Your second option is to bring the gun down here." Jane gently directed the woman's aim to the suspect's groin. "That's a tempting shot. You hit the mark dead on and he never hurts anyone else like that again. But, tempting as it is, we're still fifteen feet away and there's a good chance you'll miss. So there's option three." Jane directed the pistol at the suspect's chest. "That's what we call a 'center punch' and it always works. You fire a magnum plug right there and you solve your problem in less than a second." Jane turned to the woman. "I'd go with option three if I were you."

The woman thought for a second, then nodded. "Okay," she said calmly.

"Now, before you plug him, I need to know if you have a safe place for your daughter to stay."

The woman furrowed her eyebrows as if irritated by the question. "What?"

"Is there a safe place for the kid to live? A family member you trust? Preferably not one on his side of the family. A sister? A brother?"

"She live with me!"

"Well, of course, I'll do everything I can in court to make that happen."

"What you saying?" The woman started shaking.

"Relax! It's going to be okay. It's just that after you kill the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h, I'm going to have to arrest you and take your daughter away from you."

The woman started to cry. "What? You can't! She need me."

"I know. But that's why I need to know about a trusted family member who can look after her-"

"How long?"

"I don't know. Conservatively, probably six months to ten years."

"Ten years!"

"I'm just throwing out numbers. I don't know for sure. Hey, I don't make these rules. If it were up to me, I'd say shoot the a.s.shole and I'd buy you dinner. But I'm not in charge. So, again, have you got anyone you can trust with your kid?"

The woman started shaking violently and sobbing. "No! I can't let her be away from me. She need me now!"

Jane let out a long breath of air coupled with a sigh. "Well then . . . you better not shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It'll just get too complicated."

For the first time, the woman took her eyes off the suspect and looked at Jane, tears streaming down her face. They stared at each other for what seemed like eternity until Jane moved closer to the woman's ear and whispered, "I'm sorry."

The woman lowered the pistol. Jane carefully slipped it out of the woman's sweat-soaked hands and gave it back to the patrol officer. She turned to Weyler. He didn't say a word-he just stared at her with a look that bordered somewhere between apprehension and disbelief. Jane picked up her leather satchel and walked to the elevator, punching the "down" b.u.t.ton with the side of her fist.

Everyone turned their attention to the woman. Everyone, that is, except for Emily, who watched Jane enter the elevator and disappear behind the steel doors.

Chapter 5.

It was just after 10:15 a.m. when Jane sped out of the DH parking garage. As she rounded her Mustang onto 14th Street and curved around the Civic Center, she noted that it had taken just over an hour for her life to fall apart.

Jane saw the look on Weyler's face after she disarmed the Mexican woman. She noted how he appeared genuinely guarded by her actions, as if it was something only a nutcase would do.

Nothing made sense to Jane anymore. When she woke up that morning, she had a plan. She always had a plan. It may have been a little blurry due to the alcohol burn off, but there still was a plan. Jane figured she had three or four legal-sized yellow pads filled with angles, motives, wild theories and other sundry notations regarding the death of Bill Stover, his wife and daughter. Every time Jane awoke from that blistering nightmare filled with fire and Amy's dying eyes, she'd jot something down on one of those pads. When she'd reread her scribble in the morning, sometimes she could only make out a word here and there.

One thing was for sure, if this was the work of the Texas mob, it went against their usual pattern. Then again, it was hard to pin a hard-and-fast MO on a group that was still an unknown to law enforcement. In the end, Jane had only her gut intuition that had never failed her. After all, it was her gut intuition that told her that Mexican woman was up to something. That same gut intuition told her the Stovers' death was not entirely the work of the Texas mafia. There was something or someone else. She could feel it.

She could also feel that numinous nudge creeping up on her-that sensation that she was balancing on a slim blade between sanity and illumination. She thought back to the Mexican woman and the outstretched Glock. Twice before that morning, the image of an outstretched Glock flashed like flint in front of her eyes. But there was something attached to the jarring, disturbing image-a swath of navy blue and bright lights. And that sharp tug on her sleeve; the tug she physically felt in the stairwell.

Jane pulled in front of her house just past 10:25. It was six hours before RooBar, her nightly watering hole in the center of Cherry Creek, opened for business. She hadn't been there in a few days, preferring to get a load on at home. But most drunks like the comfort of a familiar bar and RooBar fit the bill for Jane. There was never a chance of running into fellow cops since they were more partial to the gritty downtown taverns. And it didn't hurt that RooBar was located about a mile from her house.

She sat in her car and stared into the void. A gentle breeze slipped through the car bringing with it the sweet smell of lilacs that were coming into full bloom. Jane started out of her car when she felt the concentrated beat of her pounding head. She cradled her forehead in her hands, attempting to press the pain back into her body. That eerie disconnect began to surface again but this time she fought hard to drown it. An old cop adage crossed her mind; a saying that was bandied around the Department when joking about borderline loonies: "They're not crazy enough to check into the nut house, but they can see the front door from where they're standing!" At that moment, Jane could clearly see that door.

Standing on the front porch, Jane stared at the collection of rolled up newspapers, along with clumps of wind-blown leaves, dandelion fuzz and the ma.s.s of cobwebs. If her dad could see the mess, he'd have something to say about it. "Clean up your f.u.c.kin' mess," is what he'd say. Jane quickly shut off his voice. It was bad enough that she was going to have to visit his house at 6:00 that night. She didn't need to have that voice inside of her head just yet.

Once inside the house, Jane quickly poured herself two shots of Jack Daniels, downing them one after the other. Within minutes, the ache in her head became bearable. Jane opened the living room windows to release the pent-up stench of beer, rotting leftovers and other debris. She moved with purpose around the living room and worked her way into the kitchen, collecting discarded beer and whiskey bottles, cardboard take-out boxes and chucked them into a large garbage bag. As always, the repet.i.tious movement put her into a kind of Zen state. Once there, her focus was on whatever memory chose to rear its ugly head. To drag her out of this trance was pointless. She was thrust back in time to a place that was as real as when it happened. The smells and sounds were as acute as when the misery was fresh. It had gotten so bad lately that anything could trigger the memories. To be back in the moment again-this time as a witness to the vicious beating-was like reliving the trauma anew. Every time she emerged from the memory, she felt that she was missing a piece of herself. Post-traumatic stress disorder. That's what the psych counselors at DH called it. But Jane balked at the label. For her, it was just another tight fitting box that somebody wanted to force her into.

Suddenly, another memory snuck up on Jane. It wasn't the usual one that haunted her soul. She's twelve. She and her father, Dale, are in the living room watching To Tell The Truth on the TV with the tobacco-stained screen. They sit apart, Jane on the sofa and her father in his recliner, puffing on his cigarette and knocking back his fifth whiskey of the night. It's not just a television show; it's a study in human personality traits. It's two people lying and one telling the truth.

"Watch the f.u.c.ker on the left," her father says pointing at the screen with the lit end of his cigarette. "See how he licked his lips when Kitty Carlisle asked him that question about how long he's been in business? That's nerves. It's a simple question. And there! Watch! Did you see that? The f.u.c.ker looked to the left for a second. He's not telling the truth. Neither is the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the middle. It's the one on the right. The one on the f.u.c.kin' right!" he yells toward the screen.

Young Jane leans forward, elbows embedded into her thighs, studying the television screen and waiting patiently for the subtle nuances that pinpoint those who lie from those who don't. She is learning at the foot of the master. Her father lights another cigarette off the one that's about to go out. It's time to find out who is telling the truth. Finally, the man on the right stands up and her father lunges forward. "I told you! The G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.ker on the right!"

He never missed an episode of To Tell the Truth and he always picked the right guy.

As quickly as that memory clicked into Jane's head, it was over. She was in her bedroom and all the scattered debris was in the trash bag. She stood silently for a moment and felt the numbness wash over her.

Jane left the house at 4:30 to beat the traffic out to her dad's place. Before leaving, she changed the bandage on her burned hand and coated it with the burn gel. It was a good hour's drive to her dad's house and she had to pick up the beer. She knew Mike would drag his heels after work. The only thing that guaranteed her brother's appearance at their father's house was a cold, six-pack of Corona. Call it bait to the trap.

At thirty years old, Mike was five years younger than Jane, but he acted more like twenty years her junior. He had a reticence to his step and a soft, una.s.suming voice that spoke volumes to anyone who was perceptive. Mike had shuffled from one construction job to another, always cutting out when the boss got too demanding. No matter how often Jane encouraged Mike and told him to stand up to whomever was bothering him, Mike never followed through. She was his older sister but she was really his mother and she treated him as such.

The traffic going east on I-70 toward Tower Road was surprisingly light for a Monday night. By the time Jane drove past the Denver International Airport exit, there were only a few other cars sharing the highway with her. By this point of the drive, the scenery became desolate and isolated. Flat, dry plains stretched into the distance until they met the cloudless sky. There was a starkness and emptiness to the area, even back twenty years ago when Jane called it home. Turning off on Tower Road, Jane gunned the Mustang down a lonely ribbon of road dotted by rural electric light poles, precariously balancing the never ending miles of electric lines that looped one after the other. The soulful voice of Gladys Knight singing "Midnight Train to Georgia" blared from the Mustang. Jane drove on Tower for several miles, almost to the line that separated Denver City and County from Adams County, and turned right onto a dirt road. She pa.s.sed several old homes before turning left into the gravel drive, past the black mailbox that said "DALE PERRY" in stark white block letters.

Her father's bleached, single-story white house stood on the left side of the wide driveway, shaded by a ring of weeping willows. Directly ahead of the driveway was a narrow, wooden building with small windows that served as her father's workshop. When he wasn't knocking back booze or hunched over the kitchen table perusing photographs of mutilated bodies, you could find him inside the workshop. It was a place where he could clean his guns and listen to eight tracks of Tony Bennett, Nancy Sinatra and Dean Martin. Jane brought the Mustang to a halt ten feet from the workshop and turned off the engine. It was 5:30-a good forty-five minutes before Mike would wander down the road in his beat-up pickup truck. Forty-five minutes to be alone in a place she despised.

Jane got out of the car, grabbing the Corona from the front seat. She stared at the workshop. Her pulse quickened and that familiar rage welled up inside of her. She canva.s.sed the squares of dusty windows and finally the tin roof, searching for "the mark." Through the filtering rays of the setting sun, she found it-a hole just big enough for a .38 bullet to exit.

Her dad bought the house and the weed-filled acre it sat on for $25,000 in the early sixties. That was back when Denver detectives weren't given city parameters in which they had to reside. There was a small circle of neighbors who lived nearby in this desolate corner of Denver County. As Jane liked to put it when she was growing up, you were close enough to the neighbors to ask for help, but far enough away so they couldn't hear you scream. Dale Perry didn't care if his wife had to drive over 30 miles one way to pick up a quart of milk or that his son and daughter had to wake up an hour and a half early each morning to make the long journey into school. In Dale's world, he was king and the human beings who were unlucky enough to exist in his shadow were told to do whatever he said and then shut up.

Jane entered the house, letting the screen door slam shut. Everything was in a kind of suspended animation-a visual portrait of the moments leading up to the heart attack. There was the half-washed pan in the sink. The dishcloth on the floor. The half drunk whiskey teetering on the arm of the recliner. The littered ashtray filled with cigarette b.u.t.ts. The three-week-old newspaper, opened to the "Crime Blotter." For Jane, it was like visiting a crime scene, except this victim unfortunately didn't die. There was an uneasy silence in the room that lay heavy in the air. Jane turned on the TV, flipped over to the Denver early evening news report and adjusted the volume so it was just loud enough to create background chatter.

Checking out the hall closet, Jane found stacks of cardboard boxes filled with the remnants of homicide notes, photos, and volumes of crime scene textbooks. It was the stuff of her childhood. She popped the lid off one box and uncovered a neatly arranged selection of old homicide manuals. Hoisting the box off the stack, she took it into the kitchen and set it on the tiled sideboard near the sink. The homicide manuals covered everything from crime scene surveillance to protecting the integrity of evidence. Interspersed between the dry text were pages of black-and-white crime scene photos, depicting gunshot wounds, stabbings, hangings and the occasional decapitation.

Jane lit a cigarette. As she lifted a large manual out of the box, several dozen color Polaroid photos slid out from the book and spread across the kitchen floor. The photos showed in great detail the dead, decomposing bodies of a husband and wife in bed. The husband had shot the wife and then turned the gun on himself. They'd been dead for three weeks in the middle of July before someone found them. When Dale Perry arrived on the scene, a bedroom taken over by thousands of c.o.c.kroaches and maggots greeted him. They were everywhere-on the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the bed and inside of each black, bloodied and bloated victim. The roaches had made a permanent trail inside the head of the husband, entering through his eyes and nose and exiting through his mouth and the hole where the bullet entered. It was all there in each grisly close-up, down to the trace markings of excrement left by a roach on the woman's wedding ring. The photos were twenty-one years old, but they were as disturbing as the first time Jane saw them. Instantly, it triggered the memory.

She's in the same kitchen with the same furniture, except she's fourteen years old. She's seated at the kitchen table under the piercing overhead lamp she half-jokingly referred to as "the third degree bulb." Her brother, nine years old, is seated next to her. Her father sits across from her. The Polaroid photos of the roach-covered bodies are strewn across the table. It's February and there's an icy chill in the air. Pellets of hail mixed with snow bounce off the kitchen window in a steady rat-a-tat-tat. Jane is serving her father and Mike dinner, doling out macaroni and cheese onto mustard yellow plates. Her father's cigarette dangles precariously from his lips, heavy ash hanging from the tip. He examines the crime photos as Mike grimaces at the gruesome images.

"I don't feel good," Mike says with a soft whine.

"What the h.e.l.l's wrong with you?" Dale says, eyes still examining the Polaroids.

"My tummy hurts," Mike says, sitting back in his chair.

"There's nothing wrong with you!" Dale says brusquely. "Eat your food!"