Protector. Part 44

"No, I'm not, Emily. I've been dead since I was 14 years old. You'll just make my demise a reality for everyone else. Lower the gun, Emily. Go on," Emily gradually lowered the Glock in line with Jane's chest. She stared back at Jane, who returned her glance, expressionless and with no emotion. "Go on." Jane said quietly.

Emily slid her finger onto the trigger. She looked deep into Jane's eyes. "You really didn't know about him, did you?" Her voice was strangled with emotion.

"It doesn't matter now," Jane whispered. "Pull the trigger, Emily."

Emily brushed her finger against the trigger, tears streaming down her face. "I can't!" She lowered the Glock, letting it drop to the floor. Emily bowed her head, sobbing uncontrollably.

Jane sat on the bed. She didn't say a word or move a muscle as Emily fell to the floor, her chest heaving with each gut-wrenching cry. After several minutes, Emily calmed down. Jane leaned over, retrieved the Glock and set it back on the bedside table. Emily stood up, wiping her tears. Jane handed her a handful of tissues, which she took without acknowledgment.

"What are you gonna do?" Emily asked.

Between learning that Chris was the murderer and having a gun pointed in her face, Jane was still partially spinning in an altered reality. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" Emily replied, both surprised and angry.

"This is all hitting me at once. I've got to figure out a way to alert Weyler without making him think I'm crazy."

"But I know Chris was the man in my bedroom!" Emily yelled.

"I believe you!"

"So what's the problem?"

"Oh, Emily, it's egos and politics-"

"What?"

"Just give me a second." Jane grabbed a cigarette from the bedside table, lit up and began pacing around the room.

"What if you don't figure it out in time? What's gonna happen when he shows up and finds me?"

"Chris doesn't know where we are! I didn't let anything slip when I called him."

Emily's eyes widened in fear. "You talked to him while we've lived here?"

"I wasn't calling him! I was calling another guy. Chris just happened to-"

"I can't believe you did that!"

"He doesn't know where we are!"

Emily began to shake. "Yes, he does!"

"How does he know?"

"I don't know. But he does!" Emily began to get hysterical. She tore out of the bedroom and started down the hallway toward the front door.

"Emily! Where are you going?" Jane ran after her.

"I've got to get out of here! He's gonna find me!" Emily was half out of her mind. She started into her bedroom. "No, I can't go in there! He can see me through the window!" Emily shot back up the hallway.

"Emily! n.o.body's watching you! Calm down!" Jane tried to grab on to Emily, but she moved too fast.

"He's watching me!" Emily screamed hysterically as her eyes fearfully scanned Main Street before she retreated back into the hallway.

"Emily!" Jane yelled back, trying to verbally knock the child out of her growing frenzy. "Chris is not here!"

"Stop lying to me!" Emily yelled in a state of panic.

"I'm not lying!" Jane shouted back in full voice.

"If you're not lying, then tell me where A.J. is right now!" Jane was taken aback by the sudden subject s.h.i.+ft. "Where is she?" Emily yelled, tears welling in her eyes.

Jane looked at Emily. "She's dead. So are her parents."

For several seconds, Emily looked completely calm. "He killed them, too?" Emily whispered. She looked up at Jane, her eyes wild with terror. "He killed them, too!"

Emily beat her fists against the hallway wall with such force that she cut open the skin on the side of her hands. "No!" she screamed hysterically, losing control.

Jane clenched her cigarette between her lips. She tried pulling Emily away from the wall in an effort to protect the child from harming herself. But Emily's primal fear was impossible to restrain. "Emily! Stop it! You're bleeding!"

Emily kicked the walls while still beating them with her fists. b.l.o.o.d.y imprints from her skin covered the wall. She shook her head violently, screaming at the top of her lungs. "No! No!"

Jane grabbed Emily and turned her around so she couldn't injure herself. The child continued to flail her body in a deranged motion. Jane took one look at Emily and did the first thing that came to her mind. She laid a swift, open-handed slap across Emily's cheek. Emily fell to the floor in stunned silence. Gradually, the child touched her left cheek and looked up at Jane in disbelief. Jane felt sick. "Emily . . . You gave me no choice."

Emily started to cry. "You hit me."

Jane leaned toward the child, "Emily, I-"

Emily slapped Jane's arm as she struggled to her feet. "Get away from me!" She smacked Jane's arm again, this time with more force. "I hate you! I hate you!" She ran down the hall into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Jane stood paralyzed in the shadows of the hallway. Every nightmare she ever had was coming true. She took a long drag on her cigarette. As alone as she felt at that moment, she suddenly realized that somebody was watching her. She looked up. There standing at the front door with its front pane smashed out, were Kathy and Heather. It didn't take Jane much time to figure out how long they had been observing her; their incriminating expressions of disgust answered that question.

Jane moved toward the front door. Kathy and Heather took a step backward off the front porch, but still held their ground. Jane flung open the door. "What is it?"

"We wanted to come by and see how Emily was doing," Kathy said, her voice low and modulated.

Jane turned to Heather. "Is that right?"

Heather took another step back, hiding partly behind her mother's body.

"We want to invite her to watch the July fourth parade with us," Kathy said, measuring every word with care.

Jane took a resentful step toward Kathy. "She is no longer allowed to be anywhere near your sick, f.u.c.ked up daughter. Do I make myself clear?"

Kathy's steely eyes contracted. "Oh, yes. Very clear." Kathy turned to Heather. "Let's go."

Jane slammed the door shut. She watched as they walked down the front path. Kathy stopped for a moment, lingering on the sidewalk as she stole a glance toward the right front window. When she saw that Jane was observing her actions, Kathy took Heather by the hand and walked down the street. Jane turned toward Emily's closed bedroom door. "Emily?"

"Go away! Leave me alone!" Emily screamed at Jane from inside the room.

Jane debated whether to pursue a conversation with the kid and apologize for slapping her. But she figured it was best to let Emily calm down. Jane walked into the living room, standing with her back to the front windows. After several minutes, she heard a distinctive click from inside of Emily's bedroom. She turned and realized Emily had just locked her door. Jane stared at the doork.n.o.b, distressed that Emily felt the need to lock her door.

Jane headed for the kitchen and sat at the table, burying her head in her hands. The full impact of Chris' involvement began to hit her hard. Anger melted into betrayal and then merged into disgust. The enormity of the situation overwhelmed her. The man whom she had called a partner, both on and off the job, was responsible for the murder of two innocent people. The second that thought crossed Jane's mind, she realized that if he killed the Lawrences, he was also the killer of Martha Durrett. Furthermore, it was reasonable to a.s.sume that Chris was also involved in the SUV explosion that took out the Stover family.

Jane puffed on her dying cigarette as a fountain of memories flashed in front of her. There was that fateful night outside the Stover's house. She recalled Chris' edgy behavior. Jane had disregarded his att.i.tude that night, chalking it up to his usual surly demeanor. But in retrospect, she realized there was more to it. Within the folds of his words, there was a sense of urgency. A desire to dominate. A need to coordinate a deadly deal and not get caught. She broke the memory down minute by minute and then second by second. Stover and his family took off for ice cream in their SUV, surrounded by two police flank cars.

"What an a.s.shole! He really wants to sign his own death certificate!" Chris remarked in a self-satisfied tone as the final flank vehicle drove past their observation car.

Jane remembered looking at Chris and seeing beads of sweat drift across his forehead. At the time, she thought nothing of it. But now it started to fit together.

Chris grabbed his cell phone, speaking in the same c.o.c.ky cadence. "Yeah, it's me. I can't believe Stover was so stupid! He drives off with his family for ice cream so he can get thirty minutes in the outside world! Thirty f.u.c.king minutes! It looks all clear from here but hurry up!"

That's when it hit Jane. All this time, she thought he was talking to an officer in one of the flank vehicles. But now the words had a different flavor. Was it possible, Jane wondered, that he was talking to a lackey who was hidden in the darkness near the Stover's house?

A lackey who was in place-C-4 bomb in hand-and waiting for Chris' call and coded language, telling him that he had thirty minutes to set up the explosive.

The more Jane tossed the notion in her head, the more it fell into place. The cops had done a thorough sweep of Stover's residence and come up clean for any explosive devices. The crude, military C-4 bomb that was placed in the darkened recesses of the Stovers' driveway that night was most likely detonated from just outside the Stovers' house. Jane had always struggled with the idea that the perp who set up the bomb in the driveway must have had the guts of a front line soldier to brazenly walk into the shadows when two cops were seated across the street. But perhaps it didn't take a lot of nerve when you had a Denver Police Detective calling you and giving you the green light while he covered your a.s.s. The thirty minute window of time gave the minion enough time to set up the explosive, while Chris engaged Jane in conversation, purposely directing her attention away from the action taking place on the driveway. When Jane could not get the lid off of her coffee thermos, Chris jumped on that unexpected opportunity to further distract Jane from witnessing anything.

The deadly link between the Stover and Lawrence families was still vague to Jane. Was Chris on Bill Stover's list of Denver's influential and powerful? Was he tied in with the Texas mob? Did one of the mob's cronies tip off Chris' tight connection with the mafia to Bill Stover? And then did Bill spill the whole story to David Lawrence?

The letter. Did Bill Stover decide to write everything out in that letter as an informal affidavit of what he knew and then hand it to David? Was that letter an insurance policy that David kept from Patricia until he broke down that evening and showed it to her? When Patricia read the letter and understood the gravity of the situation-of their sideways involvement-that could have fueled her vitriolic outburst, simply from the realization that her family's life was in grave danger.

Jane's mind raced as she recalled Emily's words when the child recalled her mother's frightened appeal to David Lawrence and her resentment over his "bad decisions." Perhaps his worst decision was agreeing to go to bat for Bill Stover just in case anything happened to him. From what Jane could deduce, David was the quintessential, self-conscious technical geek who had a secret longing to live life on the edge. He could feel important because he possessed the pivotal, written proof that law enforcement was desperate to acquire.

Jane considered the possibility that Stover may have mentioned Chris' involvement with the mob in the letter. She realized it was a leap on her part but maybe . . . maybe it was the inked proof. Somehow, the personal relations.h.i.+p between David and Bill became apparent to the Texas mob who were obviously concerned enough about this affiliation to alert their number one gopher, Chris, to the situation. Did Chris make grand a.s.sumptions due to his paranoia and conclude that Bill was talking to David about Chris' involvement? It was doubtful that Stover described Chris' physical appearance in his doomed letter since Chris was obviously welcomed into the Lawrence home that fateful evening. Jane figured Chris probably put on his choirboy smile, uttered the words "ma'am" and "sir" in a cordial way to endear himself and then used the ruse of an accident down the street to get into their house.

Once inside, it only took several minutes for Chris to observe the house, discreetly place himself out of eyesight in the kitchen and quickly change into gloves, shoe covers and a mask-all of which, Jane presumed, he stashed in his jacket pocket. It was pure Chris, she surmised: cunning, smart and efficient. Jane could easily picture Chris' subsequent quick attack homicidal maneuvers-all learned and perfected during his stint in the Marines and his subsequent law enforcement training. Jane knew that Chris would leave nothing to chance. She surmised it was for this reason he used two different knives during the murders and was careful to never cross contaminate the blades. His plan, Jane figured, was to make the homicides look as if two different people committed the crime. Jane remembered standing in the Lawrence living room with Sergeant Weyler during her first visit to the house. After Weyler went over everything-from the chaotic living room with its destroyed furniture and pristine pile of undisturbed cocaine to the meticulous way in which each victim met their death-Jane recollected how she called the whole scene "premeditated manipulation." Looking back, Jane realized she was right on target. Who better to know what cops would look for than another highly trained cop? Brilliant evil, she thought.

Jane considered the five ounce pile of cocaine at the Lawrence crime scene. Her comment that it was planted amidst the turmoil was dead on. "Cocaine," Jane said out loud. She suddenly realized that the amount of cocaine found at the scene was just under the amount of c.o.ke missing from the evidence room. Chris' voice radiated in Jane's head. It was the conversation they shared when she secretly called the lab and got an earful from Chris about Ron d.i.c.kson's suspension.

"With the amount of c.o.ke Ron took," Chris told Jane, "Bra.s.s figures he's been dipping into the powder since May!"

That's where Chris slipped up. Chris probably stole the c.o.ke from a K-Pak evidence bag in early May in preparation for the Lawrence murder and eventual cover-up. No doubt Chris used his altar boy sweetness to con Ron into leaving him alone in the property room long enough to steal the drugs and reseal the K-Pak bag. But when Chris was telling the story to Jane on the phone, how could he or anyone possibly know that the cocaine went missing around a certain date since there had been no audit of the evidence lab for over one year.

Jane wondered if Chris was planning to set up Ron from the beginning. As a detective, Chris was always projecting five steps in front of the case, factoring the variables and coming up with enough possible scenarios to fill several crime novels. He left nothing to chance; he played on people's character weaknesses and took advantage of every plausible "in" that he could find. Jane flashed onto the scene at the hospital, after Emily fell off the roof. When Chris saw Ron walk into the emergency room with his injured hand and shaken demeanor, he jumped on the opportunity like a cougar on fresh kill. He had to. He was desperate.

Jane rapidly put two and two together regarding that fateful evening. He thought he had killed Jane under the blanket on the couch, not Martha Durrett. As far as Chris knew when he went off s.h.i.+ft that evening, Jane was still guarding Emily. He was never aware of her fight with Emily and eventual departure from the scene. Suddenly, the cryptic "PAYBACK" note that was plunged into Martha's eye made sense. On some level, Chris felt that Jane knew more about the murders than she was disclosing. That's why Chris bugged the living room to eavesdrop on their conversation. He was convinced that Emily was sharing pertinent information with Jane and so, in his twisted mind, he had no choice but to kill her. No wonder Chris looked so surprised to see Jane when he reached the hospital. Once again, Chris' words echoed in Jane's head. He was speaking to her at the hospital, doing his version of consoling her after learning that Martha Durrett was killed.

"s.h.i.+t happens," Chris said to Jane. "At least the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h couldn't find the kid and had to take off. Don't blame yourself for this huge mistake." But in retrospect, Jane realized that Chris misspoke. At that point, Weyler had not debriefed anybody about the crime scene. More importantly, Jane was the only one who had spoken to Emily and knew that the intruder on the roof suddenly left when he couldn't find the kid.

As Jane began to see everything with clearer eyes, she took into account Chris' appearance over the past months. His wardrobe had become increasingly slovenly. His breath had taken on an acrid odor. His eyes looked dark and puffy, as if he had been on a five-day bender. Jane concluded that her own drunken demeanor prevented her from attaching any significance to Chris' disintegrating appearance. And then there was his att.i.tude: restless, anxious, overly talkative, intensely paranoid, an obsessive interest in rough s.e.xual activity, all juxtaposed against a false sense of confidence and raw power. Jane sat back in shock; it was almost exactly like Bill Stover's behavior during his last few months. She felt the floor drop away from her.

"Meth?" Jane said out loud.

Could it be? Could meth be one of the fateful connections between Chris and Stover? True, it was difficult to be a high-functioning meth addict and a cop without other cops catching on. Chris' often erratic behavior could easily be chalked up to severe stress and a driving desire to catch the crook and close the case. But it was also true that meth addicts have zero stress tolerance. Then again, Chris had a lot of things going for him, including his keen intelligence and profound understanding of the criminal psyche. Who better understands the way a criminal thinks than another criminal?

Jane recalled a comment she made to Weyler. "There's a thin line between the mind of a cop and the mind of a criminal. Do you have any idea how often they are one in the same? And how they hide it so well?" At the time, she was referring to her father. But now, those words were meant for Chris. Just like Dale Perry, Chris walked a tightrope between light and dark, dipping his toe more frequently into the black sludge and emerging a little more sullied each time. Jane understood the seductive call of the darkness-the sultry whispers and tempting promises of power and prestige that it held.

When you cut a deal with demons, you do whatever it takes to execute your contract. You steal evidence, like that silver cigarette case. Jane surmised that was accomplished when Chris was briefly alone at the scene after being sent out to get food for Jane and Emily's stay at the Lawrence house.

You frame homeless b.u.ms who you probably know from hanging with the degenerates of society. That would explain why the b.u.m kept looking at Chris and saying that he looked familiar.

You concoct stories of stalkers leaving messages on your voice mail tape at Headquarters that threaten to take out the kid. That was just another back pocket insurance policy so Chris could say "I told you so" when the kid turned up dead.

You attempt to break into the lead detective's house to find out if she left any notes behind that might clue you in to where the Department sent her. Jane briefly took solace in that she never gave Chris a key to her house.

You lie about your whereabouts. The more Jane charted the timing of events, the more she realized that Chris was never anywhere near Lake Dillon with his boat; that was just a ploy to throw off DH. "And what about that d.a.m.n boat?" Jane thought.

Ultimately, for Jane, the final questions came down to "Who benefits?" and "Why risk your career on a murderous rampage?" Did Chris benefit from their deaths? Or did someone else benefit who Chris feared? Was Chris acting on his own volition or was there more to it? The final connection murky in Jane's mind. But the loose puzzle pieces were joining together to form a psychotic portrait of a man who was h.e.l.l-bent on destroying everything that was good and decent. A burning rage gripped Jane. She grabbed a small vase filled with plastic flowers and flung it against the wall, shattering the gla.s.s across the kitchen table. "G.o.dd.a.m.n you!" she shouted, her voice cracking in pain.

One way or the other, Jane knew she had to alert Weyler and carefully manipulate the situation so that no one was tipped off. Jane walked into the living room. She stopped near Emily's closed bedroom door. Jane started for the door when she suddenly heard her name. She turned in the direction of the voice. It was m.u.f.fled and anxious. In an instant, Jane raced down the hallway to her bedroom, as the voice grew louder. She stormed into her bedroom just as the male voice clipped off quickly. Jane eyed the blinking red light on her beeper that sat on the bedside table. She grabbed it and nervously hit the play b.u.t.ton.

"Jane Perry? This is Jeff. Lisa's brother? Look, I did some digging like you asked. I followed the protection trail. That Weyler guy you mentioned is not involved. But it is clear that a Detective Christopher Crawley has been offering illegal police protection to the immigrant businesses downtown. He gets paid off in goods and services. Something about a boat and other stuff. From what I can sort out, Crawley edged in on businesses that were already paying protection to the Texas mob. They could have killed him and Crawley knows that, but the mob decided to keep him in their back pocket. He does things for them. Jobs . . . Intimidation . . . Whatever they ask. Maybe even murder. The business people downtown are terrified of him. I tried to track him down but he suddenly left town this morning. Mentioned something to one of the shop owners about having to pay back somebody-" With that, the sixty second tape cut off.

Payback. Jane's adrenalin hit the roof. She grabbed her shoulder holster, snapped it across her body and shoved in her Glock pistol. Tearing open her f.a.n.n.y pack, she quickly pulled out two extra clips and secured them in her front pockets. She threw on her leather jacket to conceal the gun and started down the hallway when she stopped and quickly ran back into the bedroom. Flinging open the closet door, she grabbed her duffel bag and emptied the contents onto the floor. She rummaged through the a.s.sorted items until she located the square, thin, black leather container that held her police badge. Jane hid the badge in her back pocket and ran down the hallway toward Emily's bedroom door.

She tried the door. Still locked. "Emily!" Jane shouted, pounding on the door. "Unlock this door! Let me in!"

An eerie silence fell around Jane. Something was very wrong. She backed up several feet and kicked the door with her cowboy boot, sending splinters of wood flying across the floor. With one final devastating kick, directly onto the doork.n.o.b, the door flew open.

Emily was gone. Her pajamas lay in a heap on the floor. Her jeans, boots and s.h.i.+rt were missing from the chair where she'd left them. Jane turned. A gust of wind blew in through the narrow front window. The window screen had been punched through and tossed onto the front lawn.

"Oh, G.o.d, don't do this!" Jane shouted as she spun around and ran out the front door.

Chapter 28.

Jane skidded to a halt outside the house on the front pathway, quickly observing the scene. From what she could tell, it looked as if two separate footprints-one belonging to Emily and one clearly belonging to an adult-left indentations in the dewy gra.s.s and tracked away from the house, heading down Main Street toward town. The sidewalk was quickly filling up with parade watchers. Orange cones and wooden barricades lined the periphery, preventing people from walking into the street. Half a block up toward the highway, Jane saw a crowd of parade partic.i.p.ants busily getting into line in preparation for their procession down Main.

Jane looked up in a nearby tree and saw a city worker adjusting a patriotic flag. "Hey! Did you just see a little girl being grabbed out of that window over there?"

"Uh-huh," he said, casually.

"Did you notice where the kid and the guy were headed?"

"Guy? There was no guy."

"She was alone?"

"No. That woman . . . what's her name? She works at the real estate office . . ."

"Kathy?"