The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries)

by Melissa F. Olson

  “Well, for starters, how well did you know him? What was he like?”

  “Well, Jason was maybe eight or ten years older then me,” she said slowly, thinking over her words. “They moved in – him and Sarah, I mean – when I was in high school, and I kind of had a crush on Jason.” She leaned over and picked up a twig in her front yard, rolling it in her fingers. “Not like, in a teenage seductress way or anything, I just thought he was cute.” She shrugged. “I went off to college, art school, and I forgot all about him. Then I was home the summer-” she paused, calculating, “the summer after graduation, trying to figure out my next step, and he was in the process of leaving Sarah.”

  “What do you mean, in the process?” I asked.

  She twirled the twig a final time, then dug her thumbnail in, peeling a long line down the bark. “I mean, he moved out, then he would come back and be hanging around. He was really indecisive.”

  “About leaving his wife?”

  She nodded. “He wanted to, but didn’t have the guts. And then he would get his courage up and go, and then get overwhelmed or whatever and come back. Like that.” Delilah blushed, a pretty rose-pink. “And, well, on one of the last nights he was around here, my parents were out of town. I helped him carry this big writing desk out to his car, and we started talking, and, you know, one thing led to another.”

  My eyes flicked involuntarily to the baby monitor. She caught it and laughed. “No, no. This was a different mistake entirely. The best mistake of my life. Besides, the thing with Jason was a long time ago. I was 22, and stupid.”

  “What did you guys talk about?”

  She peeled another layer of bark off the twig, rolling it into a ball between her fingers and tossing it away. “Jason was...Jason was strange. We slept together, and then he just started talking, while we were still in bed, like he’d slept with me just so he could have a temporary therapist.” Her nose wrinkled. “He talked about how he loved Sarah but he couldn’t stand his life with her. And Nate, well-” she put the stick down and picked up the baby monitor, twisting it around by its antenna. “He talked about Nate like, I don’t know, like the kid was the chain dragging him to life here. It was so cold. That’s when I realized that this wasn’t a person I even really wanted to know, much less be sleeping with.”

  That certainly fit with what Tom Christianti had said. “Did you see him again after that?”

  She shook her head. “I took a graphic design job downtown a little while afterwards, and moved in with two of my girlfriends. I think my mom mentioned seeing him once or twice after that, but I don’t remember any details.”

  “Did Jason ever tell you where he was going?”

  She nodded. “I’ll always remember that, because it was like a kid’s dream, you know? Like the stuff you tell people you’re going to do, before you grow up. He was going to be a famous screenwriter, and win a bunch of awards for writing something that no one else had ever dreamed of.”

  “Didn’t Plato suggest that there are only a handful of stories in the entire realm of human experience?” I said mildly.

  Delilah Harker gave me a suspicious look for a moment, then let out a bark of sudden laughter. It was an unapologetic, unattractive sound, and I liked her better for it. “I’m not sure if I’ve articulated this clearly,” she said, “but Jason Anderson was kind of a douchebag, at least when I knew him.”

  I thanked her for her time and gave her my card. “How old is your son?”

  She smiled, and for the first time she really looked like she could be someone’s mom. “Five months. Aidan.”

  I hesitated, then asked, “is it really as hard as it seems?”

  “Oh no,” she said fondly. “It’s much worse.”

  I turned to go. I was halfway down the driveway, heading for the Jeep where I’d parked it in front of Nate’s house, when I remembered another question and turned around again.

  “Um—”

  Deilah Harker turned back from her door, eyebrows raised.

  “I know this is a little weird and all, but...did you like your OB-GYN?”

  7. Broccoli. Gross.

  I got to experience my very first round of morning sickness that very night.

  I made turkey meatloaf, and Toby and I had dinner in the Big Glorious Kitchen, as usual. While we ate I told him about the Emersons and visiting Nate’s house, and my promise to a dying Tom Christianti. When I was done he took my hand and pulled me out of my chair and over into his lap. I rested my head on his shoulder. For a long moment, I let go of the case and the pregnancy and the Emersons and just breathed it in, the special equation that Toby and I balanced out together.

  “Baby,” he finally murmured against my hair. “Are you sure you’re up for this case? Another kid in trouble?”

  Jerking to attention, I sat up, craning my head back to see his face. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He reached up and traced my eyebrows gently with one thumb. “I know the Carrie Emerson case was hard on you, and even harder because you couldn’t find the guys.”

  “I tried everything-” I began.

  “I know you did,” he interrupted. “But first it was the Amanda Rink case, and then Carrie Emerson, and now this Nate kid. I’m just not sure it’s good for you.”

  I got up from his lap and sat stiffly back down in my own seat. “Those cases aren’t good for anyone,” I reminded him. “Especially Amanda and Carrie. But someone has to speak for them, and for Nate.”

  “I don’t disagree. But I’m just not sure it should be you.” His eyes were full of concern, and I knew he was just trying to protect me. But it rankled anyway.

  “This is my job, Toby,” I told him, trying to sound patient and reasonable. “This is what I do now. I can’t hand off a case because it might be sad.”

  “I think ‘sad’ is kind of an understatement,” he said, his voice heating a little. “These cases are consuming for you. It’s only been a couple of weeks since you stopped living and breathing Carrie Emerson. There are other investigators in Chicago, Lean. All I’m saying is, maybe one of them would do better with this Nate kid.”

  Fury prickled through my nerve endings, and I had the overwhelming urge to move. I stood, picking up both of our plates. I stalked over to the sink. “I can handle this case just fine,” I snapped over my shoulder.

  “You say that now,” Toby said gently, “but then I have to pick up the pieces when it tears you up.”

  I set the plate I was holding down very, very carefully and turned around. “That was low,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice down. “This is is who I am. You don’t get to pick and choose the parts of me that you’re willing to support.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to go looking for these brutal cases!” he retorted. Then he sighed, giving me a look that was more sad than angry. “You don’t...you don’t have to do this penance, you know. What happened to those girls wasn’t your fault.”

  I threw up my hands. He would bring the cops into this again. “I’m not doing penance, and I didn’t pick this case! This kid picked me.”

  He wasn’t budging. He wasn’t even moving, in fact, just sitting calmly in his chair at the table. That’s Toby. Stoic to a fucking fault. “Why don’t you want kids, Selena?”

  That stopped me short. I felt the color seep out of my face. Did he know? Had Rory told him? No, even Rory wouldn’t do that. This had to be something else. “I never said I didn’t want kids,” I answered carefully. In fact, I’m pregnant right now was on the tip of my tongue, but it didn’t feel right. Needing something to do with my hands, I picked up a rag and began to wipe the counter furiously.

  Toby stood up and was next to me before I could turn around. He placed a muscled forearm on either side of me, trapping me against the sink.

  “Selena.” I didn’t look at him.

  “Selena Kyle. We need to talk about this.”

  “No,” I whispered.

  “We used to talk about kids. You used to talk about k
ids, right before you left the force. And then with everything that happened...I understood. But we’re a little older now, and I’m done with school, and we have the money. But suddenly every time I bring it up you need to go somewhere, or talk about something else.”

  I ignored his words, seething between his arms. I hate being trapped. I hate it, and Toby knows that. I turned my head away.

  “Is it your cases? Is it these cases you keep taking, where kids are in trouble and you’re the only one who can save them?” My right arm closed into a fist. Five seconds, I vowed. If he didn’t let me go in five seconds I was gonna deck him. I could, too. “Because I hate it when you take these cases, Selena, I really do. As your husband.”

  Without thinking about it, really, my weight shifted back to my left, and he knew I was close to the breaking point. He released me entirely and took a step back, shaking his head.

  “Fine. Do what you want. You will, anyway.” He didn’t stomp away. In his heart, he’s a gentle man, no matter how angry I might make him. But when I looked up again, he was gone. And at the very moment I felt his absence, I felt something else, too, in my stomach. Most women get morning sickness much earlier in the pregnancy, but it was just like me to do everything backwards. Surprised, I turned around – and vomited my dinner into the sink.

  Broccoli. Gross.

  Nate Christianti was up late. Tom had had two bouts of coughing that scared both of them, and Nate had dragged a big chair into Tom’s bedroom to keep an eye on him during the night. Tom protested, of course, but Nate insisted he could fall asleep just fine in a chair – and proceeded to fake it. Around 1:30 Tom managed to drift off, but Nate didn’t want to go to his own room until he was absolutely sure. Instead, he cracked open his laptop and did a search for Selena Dane in Chicago. Instantly a couple dozen articles jumped the queue of responses. To his surprise Nate saw a whole series of newspaper articles on Lena, all from around five years earlier.

  Nate began reading through them as chronologically as he could, clicking links that referenced earlier reports, piecing the whole story together. Around five years ago there was a series of attacks on prostitutes in Chicago. The paper kind of danced around the details, but it sounded like someone had been carving on the women with a knife, only none of them would talk about it. They were traumatized and disfigured, and the cops couldn’t get anywhere on the investigation for almost a year.

  Then Lena had joined the case. She was only twenty-five, still a uniformed officer, although no longer really a rookie. Somehow she’d gotten some of the prostitutes to talk to her. She’d learned that the mutilator was another cop, a robbery-homicide detective named Matt Cleary whose grandfather had been Commissioner of the department. Lena had gone to Internal Affairs and tried to get him investigated, but nobody believed her, and the working girls refused to testify. Cleary had put the fear of God in them, convinced them that he had the whole police force in his pocket and there was nowhere they could run.

  Eventually, Cleary had caught on to Lena’s insistence that he was a suspect. He’d come after her as she was leaving her Chicago PD station after work. There was a struggle, the paper claimed, and Lena had shot him in the face. Cleary had died. Nate searched further, and found a crime blog that had followed the story, dissecting every decision from the department. He tried to pick apart the subtext, and got the impression that Lena’s fellow officers hadn’t liked how she’d handled the whole thing. After his death, the prostitutes identified him as their attacker, but there was no other evidence linking Cleary to the assaults, and he had a lot of friends in the CPD. One of the articles Nate found was an editorial in the Tribune that made it sound like Lena and the prostitutes had made the whole thing up.

  Nate thought of his impressions of Lena. Anyone who spent five minutes with her had to realize she wouldn’t do that, right? But then why would Lena quit the police force?

  Nate checked the clock and groaned softly, his thoughts returning to the present. It was after four AM – should he call himself in sick tomorrow, catch up on some sleep? The idea was so tempting; Nate almost sagged with relief at the thought of it...but he couldn’t, he decided finally. He took enough risks as it was – what if the school caught him and tried to report his behavior to Tom? It would be a disaster, definitely not worth the extra sleep. Nate sighed and stood up, checking on his stepfather one more time before heading to his own bed.

  8. Maybe That’s a Sign

  On Thursday morning, Nate overslept again, and was late to homeroom, again. His teacher frowned disapprovingly when he scooted in just after the bell, but he gave her an apologetic smile that seemed to pacify her. The news of his father’s cancer had spread through the administration, although most of the teachers seemed to have forgotten the specifics. It was like his name was on some vague, half-acknowledged list of kids to pity, which was fine by him as long as no one got around to asking what he would do when his only parent died.

  Third period was art, and the teacher Mrs. Winnepeg had been leading them through a unit on Oaxacan wood sculpture. Early in the week she had shown the class a PowerPoint on the small, lightweight carvings and the little town in Mexico where the style had originated, and for the last two days the class had been working with their own small chunks of balsawood and small carvings knives, which Winnepeg collected and counted at the end of every class, lest one of her students decide to go on a murder spree with a one-inch blade. Nate had finished his first sculpture a day early, and had gotten permission to start a second; a small, graceful Orca whale. Orcas weren’t part of the Oaxacan tradition, of course, but during study hour Nate had found a website about Inuit carvings, and had resolved to try merging the two styles. He worked the knife gently against the underside of the Orca’s dorsal fin, which he’d decided would flip over, the way Orca fins did in captivity, just because it was harder. By the end of class he was completely absorbed, actually forgetting about morphine prescriptions and home nurse schedules and the DNR. When the bell rang Nate looked up with a start – his classmates were jumping up to leave and he hadn’t begun to pack up his stuff. He was scraping shavings into the garbage when he heard his name called.

  “Nate? Could you stick around for a second? Just for a second?” Winnepeg had a habit of repeating herself, like she was taking it for granted that no one would bother listening the first time. She looked friendly enough, but Nate felt like his heart had stopped beating and adhered itself to his ribcage. This was it. This was the “Nate, what will you do when your dad dies” conversation he’d been expecting for a year. Now that it was happening Nate almost felt relieved – at least there would be no more worrying, no more anxieties about what would happen when the ax fell. Winnepeg would turn him in to Social Services and he’d go into the foster care system and that would become his life. It was all over.

  Shoulders slumping, Nate trudged up to the front of the room and the metal utility stool next to the teacher’s desk. She smiled at him, a thick forty-something Midwesterner with the obligatory chunky bead necklace.

  “Nate, the Oaxacan bird you did yesterday is really good. Really good.” Nate fought to keep his face still. Wait, was this actually about school?

  “I’ve been looking over some of your work for the last few units, and you really have a gift for sculpture. I’ve never seen this skill level by a freshman.” She pulled out Nate’s last project, a human hand sculpted in potter’s clay, from a box on her desk. A string wrapped around the index finger, leading to a dangling tag with Nate’s name and class period written on it. He focused on the tag, zeroing in on the swirling, graceful ‘A’ in Winnepeg’s handwriting.

  The art teacher had paused, waiting for Nate to jump into the conversation, but he was too used to silences to fall for that kind of thing anymore. “Anyway,” she went on, “I saw the whale you’ve been working on, and I wanted to talk to you about appearing in the all-district art show in April. Entries were due two weeks ago, and it’s pretty competitive, but I’m on the committee and I’d
really like to include your work. What do you think?” She smiled brightly at Nate, pleased with herself. This was probably every teacher’s dream, Nate thought, singling someone out for encouragement, trying to create an important place for themselves in the life of one of the kids. Racking up successes to be discussed at their retirement parties.

  Nate didn’t need the attention. He stood up. “Thank you, but no,” he said politely. “Excuse me, I need to get to class.”

  He left Winnepeg sitting openmouthed at her desk, grabbed his backpack and the small Orca sculpture and left the classroom. When he was safely in the hall Nate jerked his thumb over the little whale’s back, breaking off the hollowed dorsal fin. He dropped the whole thing into the garbage and hurried to Algebra just as the next bell rang.

  That night there were three hangup calls on my cell phone, more asshats who wanted me to know they hadn’t forgotten about Matt Cleary. Years of training as a cop –not to mention a lot of time helping Bryce with middle-of-the-night calls from Ruby– kept me from just turning off the damn ringer, so I woke up every time. When the alarm finally went off I woke up more exhausted than when I’d gone to bed.

  I decided to throw myself into Nate’s case to keep from falling asleep on my desk, starting with the former Savvy agents in New York. I found Casey Dickerson right away, but he had no memory of Jason Anderson or his book. I had to call three agencies to find Jennifer Wu – she’d moved around since arriving in New York – but when I finally got through to her assistant I spent fifteen minutes trying to convince him that I didn’t have a book proposal to pitch. Finally, Jennifer Wu got on the phone and I introduced myself.

  “Jason Anderson? I really don’t remember the name.” She had a thin, high-pitched voice with a hint of a New Yawk accent, which was sort of a funny combination.

  “He wrote under the name J.P. Hashly,” I said helpfully, and described Sunset Dies for her.