Tangled

by Uc Amalu, Jr

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Jay stepped through the doors of Café Cino and into a

  bustling hive of activity. Waitresses were running from

  one side of the room to the other carrying orders and the

  air was alive with the humming of dozens of

  conversations. Sounds of a radio station were echoing

  softly from six or so, small speakers, which were mounted

  sporadically on the walls of the café. Jay wondered why

  they even bothered having the sound system in place; it

  didn’t appear that anyone was even listening to it above

  the droning of their own voices.

  Cino’s light mocha coloured walls always amused Jay, to

  him it felt like the owners were trying to give the patrons

  the perception that they were inside one giant

  muggacino. The large white tables and sofa chairs only

  added to the inner coffee experience by looking like over-

  grown marshmallows. It was a novel idea, though not

  quite to Jay’s taste. He walked deeper into the café and

  scanned the tables for Paula. All he could see were

  yuppies, uni students and bookworms, sitting at their

  regular tables with textbooks and loose papers spread

  out in front of them. Most looked to be deep in thought

  or in the throws of an assignment, the rest were on

  mobile phones, sipping their latte’s.

  “Bloody Yuppie-Ville,” Jay scoffed to himself before

  taking a seat on a comfy marsh-mallow at the main

  servery counter.

  A petite waitress approached Jay and took out her order

  book. “Can I get you any-thing, Sir?” Her slow drawl

  annoyed Jay, almost as much as the surroundings.

  “Where’s, Joany?” He spat at her.

  “It’s her day off today,” the waitress droned back at him.

  “Damn it!” he scanned the chalkboard menu above her for

  a few minutes and then said, “I’ll have bacon and eggs

  with a round of toast and a white, unsweetened coffee.”

  The waitress rolled her eyes at him, shifted her weight

  from one foot to the other and said, “Latte, cappuccino,

  long, short, decaffeinated, strong, weak, in a cup, mug or

  a glass?” She grinned at him.

  His expression blank, Jay leaned in closer to the young

  woman and replied, “I just want a normal bloody coffee in

  a normal bloody mug with no sugar and lotsa milk! Is

  that so hard?” He rubbed his hands over his face and then

  added. “I want bacon that comes from a pig and eggs that

  come from a hen…”

  “Sure. You want wholegrain, multigrain, brown or white

  toast?” Her grin was now broadening to a full-blown

  smile.

  Jay knew she was toying with him now and he was

  amused that she was able to give as good as she got.

  “I just want toast… You figure it out!”

  The waitress smirked cheekily at him and slid an order

  number across the counter to him. “You gonna eat right

  here or you want a table?”

  “I’m meeting someone,” Jay answered, grabbing the

  number from her. “So I’ll be moving to a table very soon.”

  “No problem, I’ll bring it over when it’s done.” She began

  to walk away and then turned back to him. “Any sauce?”

  Jay threw his hands into the air in defeat and just shook

  his head. No wonder he never comes here much any

  more. With the table number in his hand he stood up and

  walked around the corner of the counter. His eyes spotted

  Paula sitting at a large corner booth towards the back of

  the café, he walked over and slid into the chair opposite

  her.

  “Next time ya wanna meet somewhere, Paula, make it

  somewhere that normal people inhabit!” He looked

  around and eyed his surroundings some more. “These

  people belong on Pluto or something.”

  Paula laughed and patted Jay on the hand. “Nice to see

  you too Jayy.” She pulled her hand back and rested it on

  top of the file in front of her. It was roughly half an inch

  thick and a few pieces of paper were poking out the side

  of the cardboard jacket they were tucked inside of.

  “So that’s the juice eh?” Jay asked, nodding his head

  towards the file beneath her hands.

  “Boy, you don’t mess around with pleasantries do you?”

  “Pleasantries are for pleasant people Paula, and I am not

  one of them.” He sat back deeper in his chair and allowed

  the waitress to place his coffee on the table. He looked up

  at her and asked, “How’s the feed going? Will it be much

  longer or are ya still chasin’ the pig around the kitchen?”

  The waitress eyed him, her sense of hu-mour almost as

  free as Jay’s. “I’m sure it won’t be too much longer, Sir. I

  believe they were still harvesting the wheat to make your

  toast.” With that, she spun on her heel and marched

  away.

  “She got you there, Jayy…” Paula broke into another fit of

  laughter.

  Jay smiled to himself and picked up his coffee. “So what

  did ya find for me?” He ignored Paula’s comment.

  “Anything worth writing home about or just a few nit-

  picky, tid-bits?”

  “You got a real work of art here, my friend. I don’t know

  what this woman has done to make you check her out but

  I am guessing she wouldn’t want too many people

  knowing about this stuff.” She flipped open the file and

  pulled the first sheet of paper out and handed it to Jay.

  He snatched it anxiously and scanned it line by line.

  “She’s had a pretty rough trot growing up, by the look of

  this.”

  Paula enlightened him. “Her mother, Carol Mavis Stockton

  (Nee Beetson) left her and her father when she was just

  three. I guess most kids could learn to cope with that, but

  not when your father is an abusive alcoholic.”

  “Abusive?” Jay asked. “How so?”

  “Physically and sexually. I’d be only guessing here, but I’d

  say there was some psychological abuse in there too.

  Usually is in those sort of circumstances. Started around

  age seven, from what I can gather.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Her emergency room reports. Every time she went to the

  hospital for treatment, the Doctor’s were meant to phone

  welfare. Normal procedure when they think a child has

  been abused. But somehow, they always managed to

  forget to make the call.”

  Jay remained silent. His face sullen.

  “At least three times she was admitted with vaginal

  bleeding and in 1967 she had a broken arm. That’s only

  the beginning, she was also seen over the years for

  numerous cracked ribs, a dislocated jaw and other

  general bruising and abrasions, countless urine

  infections and in 1973 she was admitted again with severe

  abdominal pain and internal bleeding. It turned out she

  had an ectopic pregnancy and had to undergo surgery.”

  “Jesus!” whispered Jay. His heart sank. Ben had told him

  about her abusive childhood and ectopic pregnancy, but

  he never imagined the hell she must have gone through


  at the hands of her drunken father. All those fractures and

  cases of vaginal bleeding, he couldn’t believe that she was

  being abused and the hospital did nothing to report it.

  This was definitely a case of another one slipping through

  the cracks. Although Jay was no doctor, he knew that

  when a seven-year-old child has broken bones and

  vaginal bleeding, the cause can’t be natural.

  “Where did her mother go?” He finally asked.

  “Seems she couldn’t handle the father or his abuse so

  she left the daughter with him and skipped out to her

  parents place in Harten. Apparently she was emotionally

  and mentally unstable.”

  “You’d have to be, to leave a kid with a menace like that,

  wouldn’t ya?” Jay replied in more of a statement than a

  question.

  “Well the father, Arthur, was a labourer and was prone to

  violent tempers and outbursts. I suppose Carol just

  couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Yeah, I can understand that…‛ Jay stopped and thought.

  ‚But why not take the kid with her?”

  Paula shook her head and continued on with the brief

  family history. “Anna Louise Jameson was born Anna

  Stockton on May 17th 1960. After her mother left, her

  father dragged her around the countryside before settling

  Bayside. Her schooling was erratic at best, but child

  services could never catch up with Arthur and Anna

  because they moved so frequently.”

  “Why did they move so much?”

  “I guess Arthur moved to where ever the work was. He

  picked up the odd labouring job on building sites.”

  “What about the mother, did she have any further contact

  with them?”

  Paula sifted through her papers and read a line here and

  there to fill in the blanks for Jay. “Carol died of bone

  cancer in 1981, while living with her parents and Arthur

  was murdered in 1973.”

  “What? Murdered?” Jay’s ears pricked up. He leaned

  forward just as the waitress returned to his table with his

  food.

  “Here we are, Sir. Enjoy.” She slid the plate under his nose,

  sat a knife and fork beside it and left.

  Jay completely ignored the waitress and just stared,

  wide eyed at Paula. “What do you mean murdered? Are

  you sure?”

  His memory was trying to recall what Ben had told him

  that night at Bluey’s. He was sure he had told him that her

  father had abandoned her when she was thirteen!

  Something was definitely amiss, either Ben was lying, or,

  and more to Jay’s way of thinking, Anna was. It was

  clearer than ever now why Anna had been so evasive with

  Ben regarding this case. She had her own secrets to

  protect and getting caught in the middle of a serial

  murder investigation was not a good way to keep the

  skeletons locked in the closet.

  “Sure as I can be. I’ve got his death certificate, cause of

  death, autopsy report, case file notes from the murder…”

  “Okay, I get the picture,” sighed Jay, picking up his knife

  and fork and pushing his bacon around the plate. He

  suddenly didn’t feel terribly hungry anymore. “So who did

  it and what happened?”

  “Are you ready for this?” Paula asked, her excitement hard

  to miss.

  “Shoot,” Jay blurted out, clanging his fork against the

  china plate and wishing he could have a cigarette.

  “Anna Louise Stockton,” Paula began reading from the file

  in front of her, “was arrested on March twenty-fourth 1973

  for fatally stabbing her father, Arthur Robert Stockton. She

  was taken into child custody. Anna was tried for

  manslaughter in May, 1973 and was acquitted on the

  basis of self defense. She was, however, detained until her

  eighteenth birthday at Grimshore Girls Home in Bayside.”

  Jay’s mouth fell open. He reached over and snatched the

  papers from Paula, eager to read the particulars for

  himself. “You’re shitting me?”

  “I certainly am not,” said Paula before clicking her tongue

  loudly.

  Jay’s eyes skipped over the papers, be-fore burying his

  head in his hands. He thought hard about everything he

  had just read. Anna sure was no Miss Innocent, but

  anyone could see from what he had read and from what

  Paula had told him, that she was a victim of abuse and

  abandonment. She had nothing to be ashamed of. She

  killed a man yes, but it was kill or be killed by the sound

  of things. To some degree it made sense to him that

  Anna would want to keep her past hidden, but from her

  husband? It just didn’t add up for Jay, why would she

  even marry a cop if she wanted to keep her criminal past

  quiet? It was a pretty big gamble, thinking he would never

  find out.

  “No wonder she has been playing cat and mouse with us,”

  he blurted out, more to himself than to Paula.

  “Should I read on?” Paula pushed Jay.

  Lifting his coffee to his lips, he sent her a simple nod.

  “Upon her discharge from Grimshore Girls Home in 1978,

  Anna Stockton applied to legally change her name to

  Anna Louise Jameson. She gained employment at various

  convenience stores around Bayside before returning to

  school where she completed her year eleven and twelve

  equivalency test.”

  “So she tried to make a go of things then?”

  “Seems so,” she replied. “I can see why you wanted this

  kept hush, hush though. Why didn’t you tell me she was

  Ben’s wife Jay?”

  “I dunno,” he started. “I didn’t want to make a big deal of

  it, because of that reason I guess. Is that all you got in

  your bag of goodies there, Paula?”

  “Far from it, I’m afraid. Although I’m sure you know this

  part,” she read on with some mundane details. “In Sep

  1981 she married Benjamin James Payne, a Showsdale

  City Police Officer. From Feb 2000 until August 2004 she

  studied and gained her Diploma in Counselling. She

  legally separated from her husband in Jan 2007. She

  currently runs her own Counselling Centre in Showsdale.”

  “Yeah, at least there are no surprises there.”

  Her life after Grimshore appeared clean enough, Jay was

  impressed at her drive and determination. She rose out of

  the hell she had been born into and made something of

  herself. Jay knew that was no easy thing to accomplish.

  The more he heard, the more he was convinced that Anna

  was just secretive and had no role in the murder

  investigation. He was thinking that in this particular case,

  it might be better to let sleeping dogs lay. Ben had

  poured his heart out to him just a few nights ago and

  now here he was digging up the dirt on his ex-wife. It

  would crush Ben if he knew all the sordid details. Jay

  was overcome with a rush of guilt. What had started out

  as a fishing expedition to show Anna for who she was,

  had somehow turned into something very different. He no

  longer wanted to run to Ben an
d shove this information

  under his nose.

  “Her adult criminal history is pretty bland, nothing but a

  few parking tickets and a drink driving offence in 2005,”

  Paula soldiered on with her findings.

  “So her adult life was pretty dull,” said Jay. “I’d expect

  that, after all, she was married to a cop by then.”

  Apart from the murder, which by now he was

  sympathetically justifying to himself, Anna was quite

  clean. In some way he felt disappointed, yet in another

  way relief was washing over him in waves.

  “Jay,” Paula pulled one last document from her folder

  and held it to her chest. “ I found this document after I’d

  done the background search. I don’t know how, but she

  managed to cover her tracks well and I almost missed it.

  It was just a pure stroke of luck that I even discovered

  this.” She handed it across to Jay and then quietly said,

  “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that all Juvenile files

  are sealed and this information never fell into your lap.”

  The pair sat silently for a moment.

  “This is going to rock your world, Jay.”

  He accepted the document from her, his eyes fixed

  intensely on hers before pulling them down to the paper

  he now held in his hands. He read the paper slowly, trying

  to fully compre-hend what he was seeing. His gaze darted

  back to Paula, almost begging her to tell him that he

  wasn’t really seeing what his eyes were telling him he was

  seeing. “Is this right? There’s no mistake?”

  “I checked and double checked Jay, it’s all correct I’m

  afraid.”

  “Paula, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… You’re the

  best damn dirt hound I’ve ever met!” Jay scooped all the

  paperwork up and shoved it back into the file. He swilled

  down the last of his coffee, grabbed a piece of toast from

  his plate of uneaten bacon and eggs, squeezed Paula on

  the shoulder and rose from his seat. “This is just between

  us right?” He asked, waving the file at her.

  “You got it,” she answered.

  Jay threw a twenty-dollar note on the table and said,

  “Thanks Paula, you’re the best.” He then raced out of Café

  Cino, and headed straight for the Station House.