Phish NET Stalkings

by Denise Robbins

  “Jane, honey, please put down the gun. See, I’m lowering mine.” He did. He let the gun drop to his side.

  He was moving. The bad man was moving. And he called her Jane, not Cleo. He said he was Cooper. Cooper?

  “Jane?”

  Jane squeezed her eyes shut then opened them again, cleared her memory and her vision. Cooper. It was Cooper. Oh. My. Gosh! She was about to shoot him. Almost did! With great care, she lifted her finger off the trigger and lowered the weapon to her side.

  The rush of air that left Cooper’s lungs almost made her laugh. Instead, she turned on him. “Are you nuts? I could have killed you. I was a hair trigger away from killing you.”

  A throat clearing stopped her shouting and she turned her attention to the other person in the room. “Who are you?”

  Ahem. “I’m Jack. We met the other night at Billy’s.”

  Heat flushed her cheeks as she realized Jack had been there that night she met Cooper and went home with him. Great! Had Cooper shared the details? A chuckle escaped her lips before she clamped them shut. If he had shared the sexual forays he would have been more embarrassed than she.

  “Jack.” Jane inclined her head then turned her blazing gaze back to Cooper. “Well? What are you doing here? Are you crazy? I almost shot your nuts off.”

  “You weren’t aiming at my balls. You were dead on aim for my heart and I have nooo doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that you know how to shoot that gun. We’re here because we’re the police. It’s our job to be here. Remember?”

  Of course, she remembered. It had just slipped her mind for a moment. A very long moment when she held her CZ aimed at his chest and thought he was going to kill her, but not before she shot him.

  “We need to make certain there is no one else in the building.”

  “I don’t think he’s here anymore. I haven’t heard anything but you guys coming in the door.”

  “To be safe, we’ll check it out.” Jack started back out of the room.

  “You stay put,” Cooper commanded. “Get back down where you were and stay hidden with your gun ready until we give the all clear. Got it?”

  “But—”

  The hard glare that shot from his steel blue eyes rolled the rest of Jane’s protest back on her tongue. She tucked her lips together in a thin line, turned and dropped to her knees. She slid beneath the bench, gun ready.

  Cooper nodded once and left to follow his partner.

  When they returned, they called an all clear out before they entered the little back room. Cooper came in ahead of Jack and offered his hand to her, helping her to her feet.

  “Do you have a license for that weapon?” he asked her as she laid the gun on the workbench and straightened her clothing.

  She stared at him, dumbfounded. Her mouth open and ready to answer, no words came out. Instead, anger seared through her. Shutting her mouth, she reached under the counter, tugged her purse up, and set it on top. She reached inside, found her wallet, and after opening it, pulled out the little piece of paper issued by the police department.

  “There. Satisfied?” she asked with the venom of a snake dripping from her words. Why were they questioning her? She wasn’t the bad guy.

  “Why aren’t you chasing the criminal who broke in here and trashed the place? Did you see what he did?”

  Jack got off his radio with the dispatcher. “We saw it. You didn’t happen to get a look at the guy, did you?”

  “No,” she said on a sigh then reached up and rubbed her head. “He clobbered me before I could see anything, do anything.”

  “What?” Cooper spun around and started pawing at her head. “Where? Where did he hit you? Are you okay? Do you want an ambulance?”

  Jane glanced up from beneath Cooper’s mauling touch and caught the slight quirk of Jack’s lips.

  “I’m fine.” She shoved at his hands. “Nothing a little ice won’t fix up.”

  He took a step back, watched her with sharp, intense eyes. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” She smiled, offered him some reassurance.

  “Tell us what happened,” he requested over the sounds of sirens.

  “I’ll go out and meet the squad car, tell them what we need.” Jack made his exit.

  More like a quick retreat, Jane thought. Not that she blamed him.

  Coop nodded and turned his attention back to her. “Go ahead.”

  Jane glanced down, clasped her hands together, and stiffened. She saw his badge. The police badge on his hips. Her pulse started to race and her lungs constricted, a vice squeezing her ribcage.

  “Jane, I’m waiting.”

  His gruff voice pulled her back from the anxiety. She looked up at him steady, but distant eyes. This was not her lover. This was an officer of the law. A bad man.

  Shoving her shoulders back and focusing on his face, not his badge, she relayed the past events to Police Chief Chance. “I entered the building, set some stuff in the back room here and then went to the alarm.” She walked to the alarm box on the wall, replaying the event in her mind as well as her words.

  “Don’t touch it,” he warned. “We’ll want the techs to dust for prints.”

  “After punching in two numbers, I realized I hadn’t heard the noise of the alarm system and that the system lights were off. Which meant the alarm wasn’t armed. I reached around to hit the light switch to the front of the store.” She moved to the threshold of the storefront. “And saw this. Who would do this?” Jane walked farther into the display area of the shop. Conditioner oozed out of their bottles and onto tables and shelves. Aerosol cans of sage and lavender had been squashed like bugs under a large foot. Then she saw the glass trees of life. Hand blown balls in various colors that used to hang in the windows and reflect light and color were now broken and shattered—dead on the littered bamboo floor.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “That’s one of my questions,” Cooper said from behind her, right behind her. He stood so close she could feel the heat radiate off him and engulf her. She wanted to turn in his arms and be held by him. Longed to feel his warmth wrapped around her and make her feel safe. But she couldn’t, she told herself with a mental shake of her head and stepped away from him.

  “After I saw the mess,” she said and walked past him again, “I turned to go back to the alarm. That’s when a hand clamped over my mouth. I started to fall, flung out my arms—”

  “That must have been when you hit the silent alarm. Good thinking.”

  “It was more luck than anything.”

  “Keep going,” he urged.

  “Then something smashed against my head. Pain. That’s all I remember until I came to and called 9-1-1. Then you found me.”

  “You called 9-1-1?”

  She inclined her head. “I got my 9-millimeter and my phone and called.”

  “What the hell were you doing here by yourself?” He hadn’t intended for the question to come out so sharp, but hadn’t he just warned her not to go out at night alone.

  “I had to drop off some supplies before tomorrow. We’re showcasing our new line of lip-gloss.”

  Lip-gloss? She almost got herself killed over lip-gloss? What the hell was wrong with her?

  “Well, now you’re going home because this is a crime scene.”

  “What?” she asked, her voice pitching higher. “No. I have to clean this mess up and get the shop ready for business.”

  “Damn it, Jane! Look around you. The place is a disaster. It will take a plow to get all this mess out, you’ve got a broken pane in the front bow window, and the cash register is busted.”

  “But…” She trailed off, tears pooling in her brown eyes. He reached for her and Jane took a step in retreat, holding her arms up in defense. “I’m fine.”

  She wasn’t fine, but she obviously didn’t want comfort either. At least not from him. He recalled the stricken look of fear, anger, and determination on her pale face as she held a gun aimed at his heart.

  He had seen that lo
ok once before. On a little girl’s dirt and tear-streaked face. A ten-year old victim of a pedophile. It had taken him a couple of days to get to the right chat room where a man apparently advertised his videos to select friends for a fee of him doing little girls. With the use of the right phrases, and suggestions as to other online sites he had visited, plus the dropping of a few well-known perverts’ names, it had taken five more days to get the man to trust him. Once the guy showed him a live video stream, he had been able to identify his IP address and then the address to where he held three little girls and one boy. His stomach roiled at the images he had seen on screen, and of what else the monster might do to defenseless children.

  That night, he and the other members of his CAT team raided the abandoned warehouse. He opened the door to one of the makeshift cells and came face-to-face with Carrie, a ten-year old girl wielding a weapon almost as big as her arm. The gun was so heavy her arms and hands shook, but her eyes had been steady and hard. Determination and fear oozed from her pores. He remembered wanting to run in, scoop up the little girl and reassure her that she was safe, that he was a good guy. But he knew he couldn’t. Instead, he had to talk and coax her to put down the weapon. In the end, Carrie wouldn’t let him touch her, wrap a blanket of warmth and comfort around her, but she did let a female agent take her out and get her secured and checked over by a female EMT.

  He couldn’t force his care and concern on Carrie, and he wouldn’t with Jane. “I’ll get one of the officers to take you home,” he said and started to turn away.

  “I’ve got my car.”

  His shoulders lifted and fell on a weighted sigh. “I’ll have one of my men follow you home and make sure you get safely inside.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Look around you, Jane. Do you see anything stolen?” He answered his own question with a shake of his head. “No. There isn’t anything missing. The cash register, although busted up, still has cash in it. This was not a burglary for the sake of money and goods. This was a lot of destruction, and it was personal.”

  He spun back around, took two short strides to her and came within a breath of touching her. “This was personal. Whoever did this took out their rage on Not-so-plain-Jane’s, Jane, or one of your workers.”

  He saw realization dawn on her as her eyes grew wider. “Is it you, Jane? Does someone have a grudge against you? Did you let an employee go recently?”

  She shook her head. A small whimper escaped the back of her throat and Cooper wondered if he hit on something. “Who, Jane?”

  “No. No one. I haven’t fired anyone. Marion, the manager has been with me practically from the beginning. She was my first hire when I realized I could no longer keep up with the demand of making the product and running a small storefront boutique.”

  She shoved the hair back from her face, blew out a breath. “No one. No one’s been fired or laid off, or put on a leave of absence.”

  “Anyone quit? Maybe they got fed up with the lack of pay, the poor work hours, the non-existent growth potential.”

  “No!” Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “No one has quit. We pay very well. We even pay for education, and there is growth. We have a whole headquarters with any number of jobs available less than fifteen miles from here.” She pointed in the direction of her office.

  “Then, who are the bad men, Jane?” He asked the question in a low, even voice and waited.

  She had been surprised before, but now she looked thunderstruck. Her eyes flew open wide and her mouth opened to speak. She held her arms tight against her chest. She was protecting herself, he thought. From who?

  “Let me help you,” he offered.

  “No. Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She blinked and shook her head. “Bad men. What bad men? The only bad man is the one who broke in here and destroyed my shop and all our hard work.”

  “Fuck this place, Jane. I’ll get a cleaning crew and some handymen and it will be as good as new. Don’t lie to me. Tell me what’s going on. I can help. I’m one of the good guys. Remember?”

  He showed her the badge and instantly knew he had made a mistake. He had lost her. She stepped back, held her hands out in front of her.

  “Don’t. I’m leaving. Just…just let me know when I can open up again so I can let the staff know. Thank you.”

  She rushed past him and he let her go, but not without making certain one of his officers followed her home and giving him firm instructions to verify the inside of her house was secure before returning.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  By the time Officer Rush left her house, Jane was wound so tight she was afraid that one touch and she would splinter into a thousand pieces. She had almost shot a man, not just any man, but Cooper. “A police officer,” she reminded herself.

  “Shit! What kind of fool was I to ever get involved, however brief, with a cop?” She arched her neck back let her head loll on her shoulders and tugged at her hair. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  He had seemed so sincere when he offered to help her in his quiet yet forceful tone.

  “No.” She straightened and shook her head. “No. It was better that I didn’t tell him, better that I kept my mouth shut.”

  She had only told one person in her life her real identity. One person she trusted with her life. She couldn’t afford to tell anyone else. If her mother’s killer, her granny’s killer found her, she would just as surely be dead.

  Jane sat on the edge of her bed, put her head in her hands and exhaled. After all these years, she had never figured out why they had to find her. She had only been eight at the time her mother was killed. She hadn’t seen anything. Not really.

  Flashes of the gold badges between slits in the closet door flickered at the edges of her mind. A deep voice and then a younger one. She shook her head. She hadn’t seen anything. She had however, seen more of the men who took Granny Pearl’s life. Had they been the same men as the ones who killed her mother?

  After all these years, why would they be after her?

  No. She refused to believe it. Granny had set everything up the right way. The paper trail for Cleopatra Jane West had died the day her mother was murdered. She became Jane C. Smith. Until Granny Pearl’s death. Then she had been reborn under the name of Jane C. East. East was the last name of Granny Pearl’s first husband. She had the birth certificate, passport, driver’s license, social security card, and deed to her house to prove it.

  With the help of her Granny, she had buried Cleopatra West so deep that no one could resurrect her.

  Jane took that certainty to bed with her and wrapped it around her like a blanket of safety.

  The nightmare began as soon as her head hit the pillow and her eyes drifted shut. “Where’s the girl?” the bad man demanded with his backhand while his partner talked on the phone.

  Jane’s eyes widened as her heart pounded against her chest like a drummer strummed a drum roll. This was about her. After all this time, someone still searched for her. Why?

  The man talking on the phone spun as the other man raised his fist. Her eyes rounded in shock. Hooked to the waistband of his khaki waistband was a badge. A gold, shiny, police badge.

  “A cop,” she whispered.

  Panic constricted her chest, a vice-like grip squeezing the breath out of her. The edges of her vision blurred before she swallowed the lump of terror and forced herself to breathe through her nose. Short, shallow inhales and exhales. When air flowed freely through her lungs again, she blinked and squinted, looking past the badge of the man who swore to protect and serve, not to beat and torture.

  Jane stirred in her sleep, kicking the covers as she fought to see. She strained to see, trying to get a clearer image of the tattoo. A tattoo! On the inside of the man’s forearm, his right arm, the one he held the phone up to his ear with was a tattoo. The tattoo of a hawk, mid-flight, with something in its beak, but she couldn’t tell what it was. She really didn’t want to see, but she had to know.

  She s
truggled for purchase against the side of the house, wanting to get closer, but she knew she couldn’t. If she could just see…

  Then she saw it! In the hawk’s beak, it held a tarantula, with eight bristly legs and a stack of red eyes. She tilted her head, strained to see and realized that inside the eyes were not pupils, but initials.

  The bigger man pivoted in her direction. Jane released her white-knuckled grip on the window frame and dropped to her knees. Loud, heavy footsteps pounded against the wooden floor. Oh, shit!

  “Run Jane!”

  Jane was startled out of her nightmare with a cry of anguish and frustration. Sweat trickled in rivulets down her back, tickling her spine as she sat up in bed. She shoved at hair matted to her damp forehead, pulled her knees up to her chest, and rested her head against her knees.

  “Granny,” she breathed.

  What had she dreamed? Eyes. Red eyes. Hawk. Tarantula. A shiver skittered up Jane’s spine and her shoulders shuddered. “Gross.”

  Arms wrapped around her pulled up legs. She closed her eyelids and tried to recall the image. “A hawk with its wings half open as if coming in for a landing or just taking off.” She squeezed her eyes tighter, bringing the picture in her mind closer, clearer.

  “A spider. No, not just any spider. A tarantula with eight hairy legs. And red eyes,” she said in triumph, snapping her head up.

  “That’s got to mean something. How many men could have that tattoo?” How could she find out?

  Jane jumped out of bed, padded barefoot downstairs to the living room and, tucking a blanket around her bare legs as she sat on the sofa, pulled the laptop onto her lap and started looking up tattoo parlors. She checked the time in the lower right hand corner of the screen. She couldn’t exactly go visit the tattoo parlors at three-thirty in the morning, but it seemed like a good idea to make a list of a few in the area and ask around about how to identify a tattoo.

  Hmm. Maybe she should try to sketch out what the thing looked like. She gave an involuntary shudder. Then she would have more to show the tattoo artists.