Redemption (38 page)

Jane was perplexed. The idea of allowing someone else to go about their life without her stellar judgment seemed patently careless. And what did Kit mean by “in order to make their lives right”? Jane stiffened. “What if something happens?”

“Something always
happens
, Jane.”

“I’m talking something bad.”

“What’s considered bad to you, may not be bad to someone else. Bad is objective.”

“I’m talking
death
. Death is not objective.”

“In the end, Jane, it’s all objective. My intention was never to be rescued by you. You’re my ally. And besides, did you ever consider that, perhaps, our partnership exists so that
I
can rescue
you
?”

 

 

Jane jogged down the quiet back road behind the Cabins. “Rescue
me
?” she thought, her feet beating out a syncopated rhythm on the wet pavement. What an odd thing to say. She crested the far hill and passed the line of trees where Shane Golden had posted Charlotte’s missing child flyers. The heavy rain had warped the posters, turning Charlotte’s smiling face into a distorted visage. Jane stopped in front of one of the posters to catch her breath. She found herself fixating on the kid’s face. She recalled a psychic DH had brought in years before to help locate a missing boy. The woman’s eyes glazed over as she disappeared into the black-and-white photo of the child. She told everyone present that a part of her left the room and melted into the soul of the little boy. The tears that rolled down the psychic’s cheeks signaled to Jane that she felt the boy was dead. Two days later, they found the torso of the boy buried in a sewage pond.

Jane stared into the weather-warped photograph of Charlotte in an attempt to feel into the girl’s soul. “Where are you, Charlotte?” Jane whispered. Her meditative moment was interrupted by the approaching sound of an SUV. Jane quickly resumed her run. However, the SUV slowed to a crawl as it came within spitting distance. Jane glanced over and saw Clinton at the wheel, rolling down the electric window on the passenger side. He looked as if he’d spent the night in his clothes and partied until the wee hours of the morning.

“Damn, Jane! I never took you for being an exercise freak!” Jane continued to jog as Clinton rolled next to her. She hoped her
silence would speak volumes, but the guy was as dense as the overgelled lumps of uncombed hair that lay against his thick skull. “I did a little investigative research on you,” Clinton said, his voice sounding like he swallowed a box of nails. “You’re not working at Denver Headquarters anymore!
J.P.I.
? Isn’t that what you call your new business?” Jane maintained her steady jog and silent loathing. “So, why are you involved in finding our little Miss Charlotte?”

Jane gathered her best acting skills. “I told you, I have no interest in her.”

“Then how come you slowed down yesterday near the mile-marker where they picked up Fagin?”

Jane’s ire boiled inside. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. All I know is what I heard on the news last night. They said the kid went missing over the Thanksgiving holiday. So she’s obviously a freakin’ runaway who happens to chose holidays for her spontaneous getaways. No mystery there!”

“Don’t you think there’s a helluva difference between thirty-six hours and,” Clinton checked his commando-style wristwatch, “going on 140 hours?” Jane shook her head with a blasé attitude. “Happy New Year to Jane Perry!” With that, Clinton purposely burned rubber, spitting gravel toward Jane, and sped down the lonely back road.

Jane turned and headed back to the Cabins. As she padded down the road, she reflected on her improvisational accounting of Charlotte’s whereabouts to Clinton. The connection she quickly made up about Charlotte going missing on a holiday weekend and now during the Christmas break sparked her interest. Perhaps, she mused, this unexpected declaration was a plausible angle to follow.

Once back at the cabin, Jane discussed the idea with Kit. But it was clear that Kit did not care so much as to how or where Charlotte disappeared. Rather, Kit maintained that Lou had her and that Jane should focus on finding him. Period. It went against the way Jane worked. You started your quest for the suspect in an ocean, not a fishbowl. If you focused on one man, you might ignore the true predator or the accomplices. However, to draw in
Kit and tackle the Lou Peters angle, Jane explained what occurred at Rachel Hartly’s house the day before. Kit’s reaction mirrored Sergeant Weyler’s: Rachel was covering for Lou or helping hide Charlotte on the premises. In her typical reactive mode, Kit insisted they journey to Hartly’s house to investigate. It took Jane a few minutes to explain that any such exploratory trip to Hartly’s house would need to be well thought out to avoid being discovered.

Jane showered and changed into a pair of black jeans and a tawny turtleneck. While Kit got ready in the bathroom, Jane fell back on her bed and stretched in an attempt to reduce the pain in her lower back. She thought back on the string of phone calls to her cell and the whispered “Let me help you” before the setup at the Stop ’n’ Save
.
The calls had stopped, which signaled to Jane that the caller had gotten whatever she wanted out of the ruse. But that begged the question, what did the caller want? Was it a bait and switch? Occupy Jane’s attention long enough to momentarily take her focus away from where the real action was? Jane considered all the options, but she kept coming up with more unanswered questions.

Her restless spirit sent her mind traveling in vicious circles, making it impossible to ease the tension in her lower back. Frustrated, she rolled over and stared briefly at the photo of Lou and the campers at Pico Blanco. Her eye was always first drawn to the two somber girls in the front row before meandering to the left side of the photo and fixating on Mary Bartosh. Unfortunately, this band of kids could no more talk to Jane than the weather-beaten, back-road poster of Charlotte Walker.

Jane glanced at the stack of metaphysical books Kit had scattered on the floor between their beds. Jane spotted several books on the power of gemstones, the tarot, numerology, and astrology. One book titled, “The Beginner’s Guide to Astrology” attracted her attention. She found her January 11 birth date and read all about the highs and lows of Capricorns. Jane skimmed until she found a paragraph on the struggles all Capricorns must endure. As she read the descriptive text, she couldn’t believe its amazing
accuracy. Kit opened the bathroom door with a hurried flourish. Jane thought she had tossed the book down fast enough to avoid being discovered, but the action only drew more attention to her.

“What’s this?” Kit said with a twinkle in her eye. “Did I catch you reading one of my books?”

Jane sat on the edge of the bed, wincing in slight discomfort from her back pain. “I was bored. It was there. No big deal. Ready?” She got up and grabbed her jacket.

“Does your back hurt?”

“It’s felt better.” Jane collected the stack of newspapers she’d stolen from Rachel’s recycling box.

“You know, you should really try walking backward in circles. I can’t tell how it relieves low back pain.”

Jane shook her head in bemusement as she secured her Glock in her shoulder holster, snapping it across her turtleneck.

After a quick breakfast at The Circle 9 Diner, Jane drove by
The Sierra Star
newspaper offices. The New Year’s holiday and closed offices afforded her the opportunity to fly under the radar with her plan. Luckily, Clinton and his big black SUV were nowhere to be seen. Driving around the back of the newspaper’s offices, Jane located a large trash bin that read, NEWSPAPERS ONLY. She withdrew the stack of ten newspapers she had stolen from Rachel’s house and instructed Kit to get out of the car.

“I’m going in the bin. You rattle off the various dates on these papers and I’ll see if I can find them.”

Kit’s expression turned to an excited, almost mischievous one. Finally, she was getting to take part in the investigation. Although she had no idea how it was all connected. After twenty minutes, Jane was only able to unearth and match five of the ten newspapers. She hoisted her aching body out of the bin and laid the four papers on the hood of her Mustang along with their matching counterparts. Jane located the first mystery cut-out page and then flipped through the matching intact paper. The missing section was an ad for Henderson Chevrolet, “Your Friendly, Neighborhood Dealership.” A portly man wearing a cowboy hat pointed his
finger at the camera. Above him, the ad said: COME TO HENDERSON CHEVROLET AND YOU CAN SAVE YOURSELF $2,500 ON A BRAND, SPANKING NEW CAR!

Jane analyzed the ad but couldn’t make any connection. She turned the page to see what was printed on the back of the page but just found a photo of a pumpkin. She tore out the ad and placed it inside the missing square from the stripped paper.

Locating the next missing section, Jane found a smaller announcement that read: IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO SIGN UP FOR THE FALL TOUR OF YOSEMITE. Again, nothing of note was on the opposite side of the page.

The next section was found in the “About Town” pullout. It read: SING! SING! SING! IT’S ALL YOU WANT TO DO AND THE CHORAL CHORALE NEEDS YOUR VOICE FOR OUR HOLIDAY PAGEANT!

None of it made sense to Jane. It seemed like a random process, and yet each section had been meticulously cut out with scissors. She searched for a pattern that joined each section together, but nothing sprung to mind.

The next one was an ad for wrinkle cream: WITH TRUE VANISH EYE CREAM, WHAT WILL YOU SEE WHEN YOU LOOK IN THE MIRROR THE NEXT TIME?

Finally, there was a service ad that dealt with tax issues: YOU MAY REDEEM YOUR SELF-EMPLOYMENT TAX EXEMPTION BY FOLLOWING THESE STEPS.

Jane shook her head, feeling more frustrated than when she started.

“Maybe it’s a complicated code?” Kit offered.

“We’re not in Paris and this ain’t
The Da Vinci Code
, Kit.”

“Well, it has to have some
meaning
.”

Jane agreed, but right now the jumbled sections were just a bleary mishmash. She stared up into the morning sky. The sun slipped between two passing clouds, delivering a warm bath of heat onto her face. “I look for patterns, Kit,” Jane said, leaning against the Mustang and digging out her pack of American Spirits. “If I’m going to tag this kidnapping on Lou, I need to start
seeing the established patterns that he used when he kidnapped and killed Ashlee.”

“There was no sign of him at Rachel’s house?”

“No. There was the guesthouse, but so what?”

“When he kidnapped my Ashlee, he didn’t stay with her the entire time. That was the way he covered for himself. He went to work, then he’d drive to Pico Blanco, check on her, wait until she woke up from the Valium, torture her, and then dose her up with another pill so she’d fall asleep. Then he’d get on his motorcycle and come back to the house.
That’s
his pattern.”

Jane lit a cigarette and took a drag. “But what about the kind of kid he goes for? Fourteen, right? Doesn’t that fit in with his ‘Power of Fourteen’ idea? And if he’s doing all this because his mother raped him at age fourteen and he chooses girls who remind him of his mother—brunettes and hazel eyes—Charlotte’s just got the hazel eyes. If we’re going to look for patterns, the pattern has to follow through to be valid.” Kit nodded. “Something’s always bothered me. I can’t understand why Lou chose you when he was looking for a place to live. Why does a rabid, Fundamentalist Christian agree to have a landlord who is delightfully Bohemian and decidedly off-center?”

Kit smiled as she propped her bottom on the Mustang’s hood. “I’ve wondered that myself. He said he was looking for some place quiet and my little retreat in Jade Cove fit the bill. He liked to hear God’s sounds—the rushing creek, the crickets—”

“But before he lived with you, didn’t you say he lived with one family after another from the Lamb of God Congregation?”

“Yes, but he was nineteen. I think he probably wanted to strike out on his own—”

“And have a landlord who read the tarot, studied astrology, smoked pot, and painted zaftig models like your drugged out friend Genevieve?”

“She wasn’t drugged! A little pot. Maybe a few downers to take off the edge—”

“You know what I mean. You would be the last person he’d want to be around.”

“Maybe he looked on me as a Christian challenge! Someone he could convert. He was forever bugging Genevieve! Slipping little notes in her purse about how Jesus was watching her. Think about it. If he were able to convert a pagan like myself, he’d probably score big points with Bartosh. And trust me, he wanted to be seen as a good person in the eyes of Dr. John Bartosh. Actually, I think what Lou really wanted was for Bartosh to treat him like a son. Lou never knew his father. He told me that his mother conceived him on one of her many one-night stands. He never had any sense of identity, so he was always searching outside of himself for someone who could give him that.”

“And Bartosh gave him an identity?”

“Yes. It’s like you said about Charlotte and her AWOL father. It
does
make an impact on a child when there’s no dad around. Lou wanted a strong, male presence in his life and Bartosh fit that need perfectly. He was stern but loving in his own peculiar way to Lou. And while I can’t prove it, I know that Bartosh saw something in Lou.”

“Saw what?” Jane asked, taking another two drags on her cigarette.

“The son he never had? That’s an assumption, but they have a strong bond. Hell, Bartosh visited Lou in prison. He stood up for him in court. He was determined to defend Lou throughout everything. I’d look at Bartosh in court and there was this blind belief in Lou that overrode any measure of common sense. Lou conned everyone in the name of Jesus. At first, Lou was drawn to the Lamb of God Congregation because they took him in off the street and made him feel safe for the first time in his life. But he quickly used his good looks and charisma to endear himself to the Church members. And those naïve bastards fell for it. They treated him like a tiny God.” Kit shifted her body on the hood of the Mustang. “You know, part of me wonders if Bartosh wants to pass the torch to Lou.”