The Protector

by Danielle L Davis

  “I can’t get a signal.” Theresa held up her cell phone. “I’m going to radio it in if I can’t get a signal outside.” She headed for the door. “Be right back.”

  I lifted the ottoman lid and found a tattered blanket and a one-eyed scruffy teddy bear—the ones I’d seen before. I gave both to Janey. She snatched them and snuggled with the bear. She stuck a corner of the blanket in her mouth and chewed it.

  I stepped over to Camp and knelt. “You want to tell me what you know?” The teddy bear zoomed past my head. I jumped up and spun to see Janey sitting up in the chair, body rigid, glaring at me. Her face had changed. It was harder and more angular.

  “Get away from him.” The raspy voice sounded male—and older.

  “Who are you?” I glanced at the door.

  “This is a family matter. You need to leave, or I’ll take care of you, too.”

  “Too? Did you do something to Fran?”

  He laughed. “Sweet, sweet, Fran.”

  Camp tried to roll over. “Todd, please stop!”

  Todd? How many people lived inside the poor woman’s head?

  “Well, did you hurt Fran?”

  Todd stood. “I’d never hurt Fran. I protected her.”

  “Stay where you are!”

  He crept toward me, wobbling in the heels. He stumbled but regained his balance. “That damn Rebecca!”

  Todd removed the heels and threw them across the room, knocking over a vase. He was closer to the door than I was.

  “I protect my family.” He moved like a cheetah stalking its prey.

  Camp struggled and kicked. “Todd! Stop. Don’t do anything. Please!”

  Todd looked at Camp and scowled. “Look at you—lying there like a wrangled calf waiting to be branded.” He laughed viciously. “You’re weak. I’m in control now. You didn’t protect the girls.” He edged closer to me. “Don’t worry. I will.”

  Rebecca had alters coming and going. I felt outnumbered.

  Theresa, where are you?

  “Did you kill Judge Franklin?”

  Keep him talking.

  Todd snorted. “That’s not your concern, cop bitch!”

  “What about Ann Baker?”

  “Detective Valentine, stop!” Camp said. “Just go.”

  “Did you try to kill Detective Bernard, me, and my sister?”

  Todd smiled eerily, and his eyes widened—lots of white showed around dilated pupils.

  Where the hell was Theresa?

  “Why did you—”

  Todd leapt across the room and hit me like a linebacker. We fell over something. He growled, eyes wild. I punched him in the face, but my aim was off. It didn’t faze him. He swung, and I twisted to the side. The punch grazed my shoulder. I shoved him off.

  As he tumbled away, I rolled over and knelt, about to stand. He hopped up, breathing hard. He pushed me down with his foot. I fell to the floor. He stood, bent over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath, grinning.

  I lifted my leg and brought the heel of my boot down on his bare toes. He yelped and clutched his foot, hopping until he fell to the floor.

  I kept my eyes on him and removed my cuffs from my belt. “On your stomach.”

  He didn’t budge. I grabbed his wrist and twisted it behind his back.

  He narrowed his eyes, and screamed, “Get. Off. Me,” while I cuffed him.

  Camp, pale and wide-eyed, had rolled to the edge of the room during the fight.

  Coward.

  Theresa opened the door and scanned the trashed room and the bodies on the floor. “Well, shoot. I always miss the fun. You okay, Syd? You’re going to have a black eye tomorrow.”

  “I’m fine.” I touched my eye and winced. “What took you so damn long?”

  I wanted to hit her as well.

  “It wasn’t that long. It’s been less than five minutes.”

  I looked at my watch. She was right.

  Crap.

  I peeked outside. The Prius and Fiesta were in the driveway, but no Psych Unit. “ETA on the Psych Unit?”

  “A few minutes. What happened in here?”

  I caught her up as best I could, then reached down and grabbed Camp’s arm. “Help me get him on the sofa.”

  I was done messing around with these people—I wanted answers and now. The recorder had been knocked over in the fight. I picked it up and sat it on the table.

  “That’s ‘him?’” Theresa pointed at Todd.

  “Right. Camp knew about him. That’s why he tried to get rid of us. Right, Camp?”

  “No idea what you’re talking about.” He wrestled with the cuffs. “Get these off me.”

  “Not gonna happen. You don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, let me enlighten you. You knew about Rebecca, Janey, and Todd. And you knew Todd was violent.”

  “So?” He shrugged, still struggling with the cuffs.

  “You had information you should’ve shared with us.”

  “I warned you. I told you to leave, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “Earlier, I asked you about Fran’s appointment with her doctor.” I gazed at him. “Remember that?”

  He stared, wary. “Yes.”

  I stared him down. Everyone who I ever saw drive the cars in the driveway was here, except Fran. “The doctor Fran had an appointment with today is a psychiatrist, right?”

  “So, what?”

  “Fran did come home from her appointment today.” I glanced at Todd, then knelt in front of him. “Fran? Fran look at me.”

  No response.

  “Leave her alone!” Camp shouted. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  Someone knocked on the door and Theresa opened it. Two men from the Psych Unit. Finally. They took Fran. I hoped she’d get the help she needed. Camp rode in the back seat of our car with Theresa.

  He had a lot of explaining to do.

  Patricia was the first person I wanted to speak to once we returned to the station. She was led into Interrogation.

  “We brought Mark Camp in for questioning.” I watched her reaction closely.

  Her head snapped around. “What did he do?”

  “You tell me.”

  No more games.

  “I don’t know. When can I go home?”

  “You need to level with me.”

  Her shoulders slumped in defeat, and she groaned. “What do you want to know?”

  “We’ve been over this before.” I was still watching her closely. “We have Fran.”

  She gasped. “What? Fran didn’t do anything wrong. She’s a good person.”

  “Yeah.” I leaned on the table. “Maybe Fran didn’t do anything, but Todd did.”

  Her eyes bulged. “Oh my God. You know?”

  “Now, are you going to tell me where you were that Monday night?”

  She nodded. “Fran called me. She didn’t know where she was.”

  “Where did she call from?”

  “Montgomery’s parking lot. She said she was across the street from Walgreens. She could see it from her car. I knew where she was, but I didn’t know what Todd had done. I suspected something bad happened.”

  “Did you see something like that happen to Fran before?”

  “A few times, I saw her switch to Janey. The little girl.”

  “What was going on at the time?”

  “We were meeting Mark for lunch one day and Fran saw the judge, the one who was killed. She wouldn’t leave the car. I had to get Mark and he dealt with it.”

  “How did you know he was the judge who was killed?”

  “Because he died that night. I saw his face on the news and remembered how Fran reacted.” She put her head in her hands. “I didn’t know what to do to help her.”

  She started to cry.

  “What about Rebecca? And Todd?”

  She was sniffling now. “I saw Todd several times when I went to their house, but he always went away almost as soon as he saw me.”

  “And Rebecca?”

  “There were a f
ew times when I thought she was Fran. It was soon after we were reunited. Rebecca pretended to be Fran. She tricked me. I knew something was off, but I didn’t know about Rebecca, so I thought she was Fran. Rebecca’s a slut. She was after Montgomery, but he didn’t know it. She had to have him because I had him. I guess Todd didn’t like the fact she was whoring around.”

  “You were willing to take the blame for what you thought Fran might have done to Mr. Harrington. Why?”

  “It’s all my fault.”

  Okay. Here we go.

  “What’s your fault?”

  “I was adopted, and she was left in the Franklins’ foster home—with their son Cecil. The bastard abused her. I didn’t protect my sister.”

  “You were a child yourself.”

  “Yes, but I left her with him.” Her eyes were dry and hard. “I should’ve misbehaved, so my adoptive family would have given me back. But ...” Her lip quivered, and she tucked it in her mouth. “I hated living with the Franklins. I wanted out, so I saved myself and left Fran behind.”

  “That wasn’t your fault.” There was more to it. “Tell me the real reason you feel so guilty.”

  She stared at the wall, eyes glazed. “Mark told me Todd had been coming out more and he was afraid of losing Fran—to Todd.”

  “Who called you that night from Mr. Harrington’s parking lot?”

  “Fran did. She had Mark’s phone by mistake and he had hers. I drove her car to their house and Mark came later. He was crazy out of his mind. He loves her so much.”

  “Why was Ann Baker killed?”

  “For her job. Mark wanted a promotion, but she got the job instead. He went ballistic. I think Todd killed Ann Baker—for Fran. They wanted the promotion for the money to adopt or pay for a surrogate.”

  “And Judge Franklin?”

  She looked away. “The day after the judge was killed Mark told me Todd was out of control. He had done something and took off after Mark helped him cover it up. I’m guessing Rebecca was hanging out at a bar and picked up the judge. Todd must have emerged and killed the judge in revenge for all the years of abuse.”

  Todd must’ve come after me after he ditched Camp. It could’ve been coincidental that I was in the parking lot when he rode by Starbucks. How else could he have known where I was? If he was busy torturing Franklin, he wouldn’t have been able to tail me, too. The attack at Chili’s was another story. I didn’t know what it was yet, and I probably never would.

  “Beatrice Menifee had a little boy. Who killed her?”

  Patricia hesitated before answering, maybe to make things clear in her head. “Probably Todd. Mark told Fran about Beatrice leaving her son alone while she partied. That was what she did before CPS got involved. Fran and Mark didn’t think it was fair someone was lucky enough to have a child but refused to take care of him properly.”

  “How much do you think Mark knew?”

  A hell of a lot, was my guess, but I wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “Most of it. He had to help Fran get home sometimes. She’d switch and not know what was going on after she switched back—like she did in Montgomery’s parking lot.” She pursed her lips, shaking her head. “You’ll never get him to say he helped her though.”

  Yeah. Except for Menifee, everything Camp and Todd did had been to protect Fran. Menifee was killed because she wasn’t as good a mother as she could’ve been.

  Feeling old, tired, and dirty, I climbed to my feet and left the room. Everybody in this filthy mess was a victim. Nobody was going to win here.

  Epilogue

  It was a hot spring day two weeks later and we were having another family barbecue at Mom and Dad’s. I lay in a hammock, watching my family buzz around, preparing the meal and socializing. Josh honked the horn as he rode on a bike with training wheels. I bought it for him that day. Lizards scurried around the yard and hummingbirds zipped through the garden.

  I reviewed the case in my head.

  Camp and Patricia had to bear some responsibility, but most of it went to Judge Franklin. After hours of therapy, the court-appointed psychiatrist told us Fran’s dissociative identity disorder was caused by the severe abuse she received as a child.

  The previous week, I had given Tenley the information for my brother-in-law’s financial advisor. Tenley told me he’d begun therapy and parenting classes. He stopped getting high and used some of the Lotto winnings to enroll in a graphic design course. Once he completed his reunification services, he would be in a better position to win custody of Jamie. It turned out his wife, Veronica, was all for it. He’d been so wrong about her.

  Hey, maybe something good would come from all this misery. Maybe.

  I wore a black eye and bruises for a few days. Bernie made a full recovery and had returned to work two weeks after his attack. He was back to being his usual doughnut-eating, pain-in-the-ass self. He coughed up the twenty dollars because I won the bet we made regarding Rebecca being Fran. Although we were both right and wrong about that. I still didn’t know what happened between him and Khrystal, but I’d find out eventually. I’d wheedle it out of him—or her.

  As for my love life, I planned to have dinner at some stage with Brad—the TGI Friday’s guy with the condo in Laguna Beach.

  We raised a search warrant and found a red motorcycle, a baseball bat, a Scrabble game, and boots in a locked storage shed behind the Camps’ garage. The boots and the baseball bat held traces of blood belonging to Judge Franklin and Ann Baker, proving “Todd” had committed all the murders and the attacks.

  The reason Patricia’s print was on one of the tiles in Harrington’s pocket was that she had played Scrabble with Mark and Fran at their home. Some of the other Scrabble tiles left at the scenes had her prints also, as well as those at the Camps’ place. Several appeared to be wiped clean, though. Others had smudged prints.

  Fran and Mark had paid cash to get Fran’s car repaired after Todd used it to run down Menifee. Rebecca had purchased the motorcycle with money Mark and Fran had been saving to adopt a child, which was why the promotion became so important to them. Rebecca had called Cynthia to harass her, just for fun. We never found Baker’s missing earring or her Rolex.

  We also discovered two Ziploc bags containing Scrabble tiles in the storage shed. The letters were “O,” “E,” “T,” and “C.”

  Together, with the letters we already had, they spelled “PROTECT THE CHILDREN.”

  Yeah, I get that.

  Thank you for reading The Protector! I hope you enjoyed it. To stay informed about my books and other news, sign up for my Readers’ Group at:

  https://danielleleneedavis.com

  Also by Danielle L. Davis

  The Protector

  Criminal Negligence

  Mega Dead

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to offer my thanks to my copyeditor and proofreader, Kerry J. Donovan and Nicole O’Brien. They’ve been a tremendous help to me in improving my books.

  Kerry can be reached at http://kerryjdonovan.com

  Nicole can be reached at Word Ballet Editing.

  www.wordballet.com

  nicole@wordballet.com

  About the Author

  Danielle lives in Southern California with her family. She enjoys photography, reading, and writing stories. She’s currently working on another book in the Sydney Valentine Mystery series.