Revelations

Table of Contents

 

 

 

To my husband David.
It’s no secret that I love you deeply.

 

And to my mother, Priscilla, who is now with me in Spirit.

My gratitude goes out to Lieutenant Wayne Weyler of the
Mesa County Sheriff’s Department in Grand Junction,
Colorado who helped with research and story accuracy.

 

Thanks to the transformative work of Bert Hellinger and his
book
Acknowledging What Is
, which was the impetus for the
subject matter in this book.

 

To Jan Rupp, for her friendship and invaluable understanding
of the family constellation.

 

To Carol Craven, for always catching the light to grab the
perfect shot.

 

Kudos to Peter Miller for helping make the Jane Perry series
a success.

 

As always, many thanks to Lou Aronica for his dogged
determination and belief in Jane Perry. Without you, none of
this would be possible.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies
we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough
to disarm all hostility.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.

—Ludwig Börne

 

 

When we try to avoid what is unpleasant, sinful, and confron-
tational, we lose precisely what we wanted to keep, namely our
life, dignity, freedom, and greatness. Only he who confronts
the dark forces and accepts their existence is connected to his
roots and the sources of his strength.

—Bert Hellinger

Jordan Copeland ran like a monster through the rainsoaked woods, chased only by his demons.

The darkness fell in on him—and within him—as he fought the choking sensation in his throat. It was just like forty-one years ago. But this time…
this time
, it was deeper, darker and more profound.

Sweat beads bled into the fat raindrops that covered his long, oilcloth, olive green duster. The full moon traversed between the clouds, emitting fleeting glimpses of the world around him—a stand of trees, the rushing, unforgiving river, his log cabin on stilts. Nearly out of breath, he took temporary shelter under a leafless oak.

That’s when he smelled it.
Death
—sudden, stark, shattering and without dignity. Death, with vacant eyes staring back, the silver cord cut between the worlds.

Jordan crouched down against the tree trunk, burying his head in his chest. The hard rain heightened the sharp, pervasive, oiled odor of his duster. Lifting his head toward the heavens, his wide-set blue eyes and elongated forehead felt the brunt of the icy pellets. His grey beard was laced with mud and rain that quickly hardened into frosty threads. The roar within was deafening. He clamped his large, calloused hands over his ears, as the syncopated beat of his racing heart pounded in his head.
Not again
, he thought
. God… not again
.

The pressure around his throat increased. Forty-one years ago, he had youth on his side. He could run harder and longer. But now, his fifty-nine-year-old body was broken by a life unraveled. If he didn’t keep running, he knew he’d black out. Jordan felt the walls of his narrow world caving in. The sound of the rushing river thirty feet away, drifted into the distance.

He pressed his hands harder against his ears. For a moment, he heard nothing—just sweet silence and peace. Then, a second later, a stabbing pain sliced across his heart. He pulled his hands
from his ears and pressed them against his chest, bracing himself against the oak tree’s trunk. The relentless storm sent waves of freezing rain across the inky landscape, raising the water of the thunderous river. The pressure around his throat increased until each breath became a life or death fight.
Run
, he thought.
Run hard and escape
. Yes, it was the same detached terror from forty-one years ago. He was able to sprint like a champion then, but it didn’t do him any good. The end result was still a life of suffering and loneliness.

The storm subsided. Jordan sucked in a deep breath, the primal grip on his throat suddenly releasing. The knife-like pain in his chest mellowed to a dull throb. He could handle that, he figured, as he glanced down to his chest. The moonlight swept across his hands, revealing crimson streaks of blood.
But from what? From where?
Jordan regarded his oversized hands, as if they belonged to another. It made no sense.
Dear God
. It was happening again. But this time…this time, the terror was carving into his gut.
Think, dammit, think
. But as hard as he thought, he couldn’t remember how he’d arrived at this spot—under the oak tree, dying for breath, and bleeding.

The demons moved closer, their claws whipping toward him like the lines of the fly fishermen that stalked the river’s edge. Rising to his towering height, Jordan’s eyes flared into a wild gaze. His wet, tangled salt-and-pepper mane slapped against the soaked duster. Spinning from one side to the other, Jordan exposed a warrior’s sword that only he could see. The rage inside flared into a conflagration as he slashed and cut the demonic tentacles that coiled around him.
They won’t win this time
. A generous sweep of his blade slaughtered the last of the fiends and sent them back into the underworld.

Jordan turned toward the still echoing sound. The taste of death prickled on his tongue—bitter and sour.

They were coming for him and he was cornered. Hunted
like a rabid dog, Jordan wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Taking a step backward, he misjudged the embankment and plunged down the muddy, clay-laden slope. His ravaged body absorbed every rock and fallen tree while the pain consumed him. He was back on the cement floor of the jail cell forty-one years ago, getting the shit beaten out of him by the guards. “Fucking killer!” they screamed with a brutal punch to his face. “Child killer!” they grunted with each kick to his kidneys.

A high-pitched squeal shot into the night air as Jordan’s body hurtled toward the water’s edge.

“Jane?”

Jane Perry stood staring outside the office window. The spring rain swept across the Denver landscape as the somber grey dusk enveloped the city. It was a fitting backdrop to the jarring statement she was still attempting to grasp. Jane wrapped one arm around her chest, her fist balled. Chewing the thumbnail of her other hand, she felt the syncopated pounding of her heart. The rain fell with renewed fury as her world narrowed and darkened.

“Jane…why don’t you sit down?”

The doctor’s voice sounded as though it was filtered through a wall instead of a few feet away.
Breathe
, Jane thought. But breathing was dangerous. Sucking in too much life might burn it up too fast. Everything would need to be measured from now on.
Jesus Christ, what a way to live
.

She turned toward the doctor, still in suspended animation and noted that the woman had a look of finely tuned compassion on her face. Jane wondered how many years it had taken to hone that visage so that patients would feel safer in her presence. Even with the news, Jane’s cynicism was still alive. “So,
what’s the protocol?” she asked, in the same tenor she used when entering a crime scene.

“I’d like to do another cone biopsy,” the doctor responded flatly.

“I thought you already determined it to be…”

“The pathology suggests a possible Grade II cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. It looks to be confined to the basal third of the epithelium…”

The words swam through Jane’s head like sharks during a feeding frenzy. Each multisyllabic word gnashed into the other, creating a chaotic drone. She knew she’d get a second opinion, but this
was
the second opinion.

“Suggests?” Jane interrupted with an edge to her voice. “Is it or isn’t it cancer?”

“There appear to be premalignant dysplastic changes but there are also abnormalities in the biopsy that are inconclusive…”

The sharks resumed their multisyllabic feast.
It’s fucking insane,
Jane thought. Life had been going along at a nice, uneventful pace for over a year. She was now
Sergeant
Detective Perry, sharing duties with her former boss, Sergeant Morgan Weyler. They were an odd, yet highly effective team; Jane with her gruff, penetrating approach and Weyler with his eloquent, restrained demeanor. Together, they’d solved a few high-profile Denver homicide cases, washing away the tragic stain that had dogged the Department two years ago. After nearly four decades of shallow breathing, Jane had finally been able to exhale.

Now that old voice in her head started spouting the mantra again—
Life is a struggle and then you die
. All the books she’d read in the last fifteen months on everything from Buddhism and the mind/body connection to esoteric meditation and higher consciousness were a waste of time. Faith and trust were incomprehensible now. It was easy to have faith and trust when life was chugging along at a happy pace. Now,
right now
, when she needed them most, Jane’s abject fear devoured them whole.

“So, we do another cone biopsy and then what?” Jane asked.

“It all depends on what that biopsy concludes. Typically, if
it confirms severe cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, there’s an eighty- to eighty-five percent chance that it’s a squamous cell carcinoma…”

“
English
, dammit!” Jane insisted, her patience wearing thin.

“We can do a few things,” the doctor related, undaunted by Jane’s tone. “We usually perform a loop electrical excision procedure and conisation in which the inner lining of the cervix is removed and examined…”

“
Electrocution
?” Jane asked, shifting her weight uncomfortably in her cowboy boots. “That sounds medieval.”

“It’s basic protocol. The pathology will determine what stage we’re looking at. Early stages may involve radiation and/or a hysterectomy.”

Jane noted a cold, rather calculated delivery of her options. She was reminded of the unemotional banter standing across from medical examiners over the years, as they rattled off a perfunctory list of data that led to the death of the poor son-of-a-bitch filleted open on the metal table between them. It was one thing, Jane considered, to discuss a dead man’s outcome in a detached manner, but to use the same cadence with someone who still had a pulse felt insensate to Jane. “Isn’t a hysterectomy a bit aggressive?”

“Cervical cancer is aggressive, Jane.” The doctor glanced at Jane’s open file on her desk. “I know the idea of a hysterectomy at the age of thirty-seven can be difficult to wrap one’s mind around, but the fact that you can’t conceive a child anyway… takes a bit of the concern out of it.”

Right
, Jane thought.
Wasn’t using my uterus anyway, so what the hell
? She slid into the single chair opposite the desk and felt the butt of her Glock bite into her side as she dug her elbow into the arm of the chair and dragged her fingers through her shoulder length brown hair. Her leather jacket issued a soft
crick
as she sat back and looked the doctor straight in the eye. “I don’t get it. I think I’ve made some significant changes in my life.
I’m eating better…sort of…I took up running two years ago. I even completed a three-month yoga course that my boss signed me up for.” Jane still had a penchant for calling Weyler her boss even though they were now on equal footing. “Good God, I’ve been sober for fifteen months and nine days. Doesn’t that count for something?” Jane instantly realized that it was both absurd and desperate to think you earned points and dodged death for choosing sobriety.