Protector (64 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
Moving slowly so as not to awaken Jane, Emily slipped out from under the covers. She looked around the floor for her slippers. Jane stirred, turned her body toward the bedside table and went back to sleep. Emily peered across the room to the corner chair and spotted her pink slippers hidden underneath it. She tiptoed across the floor. In kneeling down to collect her slippers, she brushed her hand against Jane’s leather satchel. She looked at the satchel as something caught her eye.
It was one word: child. The word was part of a larger headline from one of the many newspaper clippings Jane had shoved into the satchel the previous night. Emily tried to unfold the newspaper to see it more clearly, but it was stuck too tightly into the satchel. Emily slid the satchel toward her. She lifted the article in question out of the satchel and read the headline:
DENVER NEIGHBORHOOD STILL IN SHOCK OVER FAMILY’S MURDER—TEN-YEAR-OLD CHILD AMONG VICTIMS
Emily first thought the article was about her parents, but realized that the accompanying photo did not match her neighborhood. The photo showed a middle-aged woman standing on a street with the Stover’s house diffused in the background. Emily read the caption under the photo:
“This is just tragic,” Gilpin Street resident, Ellen Del Alba sadly told reporters. “I didn’t know the little girl very well, but she seemed like such an adorable child.”
Emily looked at the house in the background. It looked just like . . .
But, it couldn’t be. Emily set the clipping aside and pulled out the next one.
CAR BOMB KILLS FAMILY OF THREE IN THEIR DRIVEWAY
This story featured a photograph that showed the scene the morning after the attack. The photo showed Jane standing near the yellow crime scene tape, her left hand freshly bandaged. Nearby was the green and white Gilpin Street sign. Emily stared at the photo of what was left of the charred Range Rover. She studied the driveway with its distinctive manicured cedars. It started to look far too familiar.
Emily pulled out another newspaper clipping. Her eyes filled with terror and she began to shake uncontrollably. She worked her way up to a standing position, never letting go of the newspaper clipping.
The scuffling sound awoke Jane. Still half asleep, all Jane could see was Emily’s back and that the child was looking down at something. “Hey . . .” Jane said quietly.
Emily spun around, gasping in fright. She hid the newspaper clipping behind her back and regarded Jane with a look of abject fear mixed with contempt.
Jane quickly surveyed the scene. The crime scene photos , she said to herself. “Oh, Jesus. You saw the photos?”
Emily was breathing so hard, she could hardly speak. “Yes.”
“You weren’t supposed to ever see those,” Jane said, flipping back the bed covers. “Here, let me—”
“Get away from me!” Emily shouted, nearly choking on her words.
Jane sat on the bed, perplexed by Emily’s behavior. “Emily?”
Emily backed up several steps to the wall, never taking her eyes off of Jane. She inched toward the bedside table, keeping a healthy distance between herself and Jane. “I don’t understand! You promised me. But you . . . lied to me,” Emily nervously stuttered.
Jane sat frozen on the bed. Something was very wrong. “Emily,” Jane said calmly, as though she was talking a sniper down from a tall building, “what is it?”
“I was wrong! You don’t want to protect me . . . You want to kill me!”
“Kill you? Emily—”
“Don’t lie to me!” Emily screamed. “You knew him all this time!”
“I knew who?”
“The man in my bedroom!” Emily screamed. With that, she revealed the newspaper clipping that was hidden behind her back. “The man in my bedroom!”
It was the front page of the Rocky Mountain News. It was a photo of Jane. Right next to a photo of Chris.
It didn’t immediately register with Jane. “Chris?” She let his name sink into her consciousness. “Chris was the man in your bedroom? Are you sure?”
“You knew!” Emily screamed.
“No, I didn’t!” Jane uttered in a state of shock, glancing away from Emily. “Oh, my God,” was all she could say. “Emily, I—”
Jane turned back, just in time to see the newspaper clipping fall to ground. Emily lunged forward, grabbed Jane’s Glock pistol on the bedside table and moved back against the wall. The child pointed the gun, two-handed at Jane. “You’re not gonna kill me like you killed my mommy and daddy.”
Jane felt a strange calmness come over her. It was the same, eerie, centered feeling she always got when her life was in danger. “Emily. Put the gun down.”
“No!”
“I didn’t kill your mommy and daddy. You know that.”
“It says in the paper that he’s your ‘partner.’ I know what that means! It means you do things together!”
“We didn’t—” Jane stopped. “I didn’t take part in any of this.”
“Liar!” Emily screamed, aiming the gun toward Jane’s head.
“Look me in the eye, Emily. I am not lying to you. I did not know Chris was the man in your bedroom until you told me!”
“How could you not know? He’s your partner! Partners know everything about each other!”
“No, Emily. That’s not always true.”
“How could you not see all the bad in his eyes? Didn’t you look?”
Jane was asking herself the same question. She shook her head in frustration. “I can’t answer that question.”
“I trusted you. I believed in you.”
“You still can, Emily.”
“No! I can’t!” Emily screamed, fighting back tears.
Silence washed over them, interrupted by Emily’s gasps of air. “So, this is the way it’s gonna end?” Jane carefully asked. “Okay. So be it. You know, Emily, I could tell you that if you kill me, they’ll put you in jail. But that’s not true. When the police ask why you shot me, tell them you were positive that your life was in danger and that you had no choice. They’ll believe you. They’ll believe you because you are a good, decent, innocent person and I’m pretty much the opposite. You talk to Sergeant Weyler about Chris, okay?” Jane reasoned that Weyler wasn’t involved in the corruption. “He’ll take care of it for you. And when all the dust settles, you’ll go to your aunt and uncle’s house in Cheyenne where you can live happily ever after. At night, you can rest easy, knowing that I’m dead and that Chris is on death row for what he did. Right now, all I ask is that when you shoot me, use only one bullet. I’d rather you didn’t have to unload a clip of ammo. You’ve got enough gruesome memories, you don’t need more. Just lower the gun a little bit so it’s square with my chest. That’s called a ‘center punch’ and it always works. You’ve got one shot and if you aim for the head . . . well, even good cops miss that one. So, lower the gun, pull the trigger and then get out of here.”
Emily stood paralyzed, her finger dancing across the trigger. Jane’s words echoed loudly in her head. “You’re trying to confuse me.”
“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! Nobody’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 shift. “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. Bloody 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.”
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