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

by Melissa F. Olson

  We did learn one new thing. The shooter’s name was actually Alan Sorrelson, 52, originally from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Sorrelson was an ex-soldier, like Mason Taper, which is how his fingerprints came to be on file. He had attended West Point and become a sniper for the US Army, working his way all the way up to lieutenant colonel. The commander I spoke to said that Sorrelson was smart, efficient, and good at giving orders, but was not particularly well liked. Something to do with being cold and ruthless. On paper, Sorrelson had been honorably discharged after his third tour in Iraq, but privately, the commander told me, he just scared the hell out of people. Not a good situation, in a group of people who have to be able to count on each other.

  At some point during the five years between his discharge and Mason Taper’s capture, the two men had met and become a killing team. When Nate and I finally left, the police were just starting to run Sorrelson’s DNA profile against unsolved homicide evidence in the US. I wished them luck and got the hell out of there.

  Cristina drove me straight from the Malibu sheriff’s station to an obstetrician who was a friend of a friend, insisting I couldn’t fly home until I was cleared by a doctor. They ran every test that anyone could think of on the baby, including an ultrasound. On the outside, I was a little bit banged-up, with another black eye and a slightly twisted ankle, but on the inside, somehow, everything was perfect.

  The OB cleared me to fly, and Nate and I spent another few hours arranging flights and saying goodbye to Starla and the twins. We took the kids to In-N-Out Burger, where Nate ate so many burgers that for a second I really thought I might throw up. Starla hugged us both and tearfully asked Nate to keep in touch. Cristina had gotten her the name of a good family therapist, who’d agreed to see them already that afternoon, so I felt a little better about abandoning her.

  “I can’t even begin to think about this yet, really,” she said to me, eyes still red and puffy. I just nodded, and she looked over at Nate. I could see her struggling not to cry again. “But I do know that wherever you end up, you have a place here with your sister and brother, whenever you want. I’ll buy the plane tickets.”

  The flight home was packed. There was a heavyset guy wedged in the corner of our row, snoring lightly over the sound of the airplane. Nate had insisted on giving me the aisle seat, in case I got sick, and folded his gangly body in the middle. Then he just sat still, looking straight ahead. It was the first time we’d been more or less alone since the gunfight, and I kept peeking at him out of the corner of my eye, afraid he might cry or start to shake or something. I opened my mouth to speak about six times, but even I didn’t have a joke or quip or anything to make it better, so I just closed it again and flipped through the SkyMall catalogue over and over until my eyes glazed.

  About two hours into the flight, Nate finally turned sideways in his seat, leaning his cheek against the headrest.

  “Lena?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Were you scared?”

  I closed the magazine and put it in the seat pocket in front of me, looking over at him. “When Sorrelson had the gun out, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  I paused and thought it over. “Yeah, I was scared. But that wasn’t the worst thing I’ve been through, which helps. It makes you calmer, somehow. More still.”

  “Was that guy Cleary the worst thing?”

  I could tell the question was important to him. “Yes, Nate. He was the worst thing.”

  “Does it still bother you?”

  I smiled a little. “See, this is why I enjoy hanging out with kids. They just ask the not-completely-kosher question they’re thinking about, instead of all the doublespeak.”

  “I’m not really a kid anymore, though,” Nate pointed out.

  “No,” I said thoughtfully, “I guess you’re not.”

  We sat in silence for a long time, until finally I decided he deserved an answer to his question. “Nate, the thing that happened to me with Cleary, that hurt me. It hurt me in most of the ways that a person can be hurt. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t still have nightmares about it, about those girls.”

  “What makes it better?”

  I paused while the flight attendant wheeled a beverage cart past me, carefully tucking in my elbows. “Time, I guess,” I said thoughtfully. “There aren’t really any shortcuts for this kind of thing. No tricks, no secrets. You just wait. And you use it, to make you stronger for the next time you need to be strong.”

  “Well...I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “Thank you, Nate.”

  We flew on in silence for a long time. Then, “Lena?”

  “Yes?”

  “This whole thing, with Jason Anderson and Conrad and the gun, I hope all this is the worst thing I go through.”

  I put an arm around him and kissed his forehead. “Me, too.”

  When Nate and I dragged ourselves through baggage claim at O’Hare, headed towards our carousel, two men stood up from the nearby row of benches. My father stepped forward first and hugged me for a long time, muttering a prayer of thank you under his breath. It was strange to see him outside his little world of the comic book shop and his apartment. I patted his back and hung on tight. “I’m okay, Daddy.” He finally let go and stepped back, swiping at the tears in his eyes. Then he reached over and hugged Nate, too.

  “Your sister wants you to call her immediately, Firecracker,” he said over Nate’s shoulder. “I’m gonna drive Nate home now, so you two can talk.” He released Nate and looked at Toby, who moved up and wrapped his arms around me.

  “Hey,” he said in my ear, his voice breaking. I nodded into his shoulder, starting to cry now myself, and my dad picked up Nate’s backpack and started to lead Nate away. Still hugging my husband, I reached out, and Nate clasped my hand, squeezing tight. Then we let go and the two of them walked away.

  Toby pulled away first, taking a step back to place one hand on my belly. I remembered my news. “She’s been kicking like crazy!” I sobbed, crying hard now. “I’ve been feeling it for like a day and a half!”

  “Is it gross?” he asked curiously, and I choked on a laugh, shaking my head and wiping my face.

  “No. It’s not.”

  “‘She’?”

  “I don’t know why, I just think it’s a girl.”

  He grinned at me. “Come on,” he said, putting his arm around me and picking up my bag. “Let’s go home.” He kissed my forehead. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  And so we did. Back at the apartment, Toby and I curled up on the couch, a deliriously happy Toka between us, and started to talk. And talk. I apologized for quite awhile about taking the case again without telling him, and he said he was sorry for giving me an ultimatum in the first place, which was sweet of him. Then he looked me square in the face and asked me if I wanted this baby, period.

  I tugged on Toka’s ears for a few minutes, collecting my thoughts. “I’m scared about having this baby. I’m scared for all those reasons we talked about in the hospital. Plus all the things every other new mom in the world is afraid of, which, sidebar, are not small. That I can’t handle the pain of labor, that I’ll drop the baby, that I’ll never sleep again.”

  He nodded, watching my face, and I took a deep breath. “Okay. That’s all true, but I realized that there’s something else, something on top of that. Or underneath it, or whatever. After what happened with Cleary, I’ve always had this sort of calm spot, when I get in trouble. Or maybe more like a dead nerve, where I just didn’t...care. Didn’t care if I died.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand. “No, let me finish first. I lost something after Cleary, lost the fear of dying. And I’ve been marching into these situations, with Amanda Rink and with Ruby at the hotel that time, all my cases, and part of me didn’t care if I didn’t make it. Which is probably crazy unhealthy as a human being, but as a cop, there’s like, this grim satisfaction to it. Like, ‘screw you, Cleary, I’m not afraid to do this. You didn�
��t make me afraid.’” Tears pricked my eyes, annoying me. I was so tired of the crying. Lucky I could blame it on hormones. “I know this sounds all backwards, but after Cleary I wasn’t afraid anymore, and now I am again, and I don’t know how to handle that.”

  Toby was silent, watching my face. “But you haven’t actually answered my question.”

  Man. What a lawyer. “I don’t know how to say it right. I mean, I think the idea that every woman should want babies is crap-” I paused, thinking it over. “But being with Nate, spending this time around a kid, has reminded me of something big that I had kind of forgotten about. A long time ago, before Cleary, I always wanted this baby. I want to have this adventure, to be this person to someone. And I want to do it with you.” There. That was about as sentimental as I could get, and damn if Toby didn’t seem to realize that, because he didn’t press me any farther. Instead he hugged me against him, kissing my hair.

  “You know, I really need to start spending some time with this Nate kid,” he said thoughtfully. “He seems to really tame some of your crazy.”

  And I laughed.

  Epilogue

  Toby and I went to Tom Christianti’s funeral in July. My bruises had finally faded, and I’d borrowed an old maternity dress from Rory, hoping the black would do something to disguise my bulging figure. Toby laughed at me and told me it was a lost cause, but I pretended not to agree.

  It was a beautiful service, though poorly attended. A few of Nate’s teachers and classmates were there, and Bryce and Ruby came, which was nice of them. But three-quarters of the pews in the church were empty. Tom had been fading away from life for a long time, and there just weren’t many people left who knew him well enough to mourn.

  At the cemetery, I fanned myself with the program – the temperature was in the high 80’s – and looked over at Nate, huddled in his too-small suit closest to the casket. He seemed to have grown two inches in the months that I’d known him. His eyes were a little red from crying for Tom, and he had a resigned, sad way about him. But his shoulders were straight, and his head was up. For the first time since I had met him, Nate appeared relaxed. The other shoe had finally dropped, and there was a relief in that.

  When it was over I gave him an awkward pregnant-lady hug. “Are you ready?” I asked him, ruffling his hair.

  “Yeah,” he said, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. He looked at me and smiled a little. “Let’s go home.”

  That’s right. Reader, I adopted him. Well, we did, Toby and me. And Toka, actually, who seemed to genuinely believe that Nate was a present we’d brought home for him.

  I know, I know – it probably should have been the obvious solution from the first day I’d taken him to Great Dane. My dad teases me all the time about how dense I was, but to be fair, for the longest time it just never occurred to me. If it had, I would have thought I wasn’t good enough to be Nate’s mom. That he deserved someone smarter, more experienced. Less…broken.

  Even now, I have my doubts. But I wanted a good life for Nate, and dammit, I didn’t trust anyone else to make sure that he got it. The trip to Los Angeles had taught me that for better or worse, in my heart Nate Christianti was mine. And all the rest would work itself out.

  When I’d first pitched the adoption to Toby I had been so nervous, just absolutely terrified that he’d say no or that I’d spend days arguing with him and then he’d say no. But Toby had just pulled me close, given a teasing smile, and said, “Hey, what’s one more kid?” Then he’d shown me the legal documents he’d been bringing home from work, about how to adopt a non-relative.

  Part of me still worried that he was gearing up for a trade: insisting that since we were adopting Nate, I needed to give up my job. But Toby wasn’t manipulative or conniving like that.

  And if he was, I would kick his ass.

  The three of us trooped in the door around sunset, still in our sweaty funeral clothes. Nate and Toby ordered me to go lay down while they made dinner. It made me happy to see them teaming up, even if it was against me. The two of them were still a little shy around each other, even after a dozen meetings with Nate’s social worker. I knew they’d be fine, though. They were so alike in all the right ways.

  We ate in the Big Glorious Kitchen, with the baby doing merry backflips beneath the table like she wanted to get in on the action. It was a quiet meal, and when we were finished Nate put his fork down, scooted his chair back, and stuck his belly way out, to imitate mine. Then he folded his arms across it, gave me a smile with only a little sadness in it, and said, “So…what’s next?”

  Acknowledgments

  The Big Keep had a long journey from my keyboard to what you hold in front of you, and it never would have made it without a lot of support. Of the load-bearing variety.

  While I was distracted with other projects, Krista Ewbank was the one to occasionally say “Hey, whatever happened to Lena?” and remind me not to get so far into my supernatural stories that I forgot my favorite P.I. My deepest gratitude also goes to Denise Grover Swank, who convinced me that Lena was worth backing and went so far as to help format the finished novel. Thank you, as well, to my editors Richard Ellis Preston, Jr. and Cyndi Bantz, who fixed it so my retinas weren’t burned from typos and inconsistencies.

  Much thanks and love to my patient cover design team: mastermind Roberto Calas, photographer Elizabeth Kraft, and her model Michelle, who put together the beautiful image you saw online or on the front of this book. You guys take “above and beyond” to a special new level. Thank you as well to Jason Martell, who swooped in at the last minute with the one element we were missing, and even remembered to take the bullets out first.

  My everlasting gratitude goes out to my family, who have never faltered in their belief in me, and my husband Tyler, who always has my back, especially right when I’m pulling out my hair. Thank you to the entire Westmarch team for your help, advice, and general ego-propping. You guys are a huge part of what makes this job fun – and also what keeps me goofing off on Facebook instead of writing. In the long run I figure I still come out way ahead.

  About the Author

  Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and studied film and literature at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After graduation, and a brief stint bouncing around the Hollywood studio system, Melissa landed in Madison, WI, where she eventually acquired a master's degree from UW-Milwaukee, a husband, a mortgage, a teaching gig, two kids, and two comically oversized dogs, not at all in that order. She loves Madison, but still dreams of the food in LA. Literally. There are dreams.

  Learn more about Melissa, her work, and her dog at www.MelissaFOlson.com.