Protector

by Laurel Dewey

  “You just don’t want them to fit.”

  Jane held firm. “They don’t fit because they don’t fit. Are we done in here?”

  Weyler straightened his body and stared at Jane. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  Jane followed Weyler down the stairs and into the living room. She spotted two rolled sleeping bags in the corner of the entry hall—one adult size and one child size. “Who was Emily going camping with?”

  “Chris noted that. The neighbors said that Emily and her mother had just returned on May 22 from a nine day camping trip to Moab, Utah.”

  “They decide to go on a nine day camping trip in the middle of May while school is still in session?”

  “Perhaps they wanted to avoid the summer rush of tourists.”

  “Why didn’t David join them?”

  “Maybe it was one of those mother/daughter bonding experiences.”

  Jane stared at the sleeping bags, feeling a nagging sense of something being off creep into her psyche. Weyler stood near the front door. “The front door was wide open when the next-door neighbor found the scene the following morning. Based upon the lividity of both victims, estimation of death is put between nine and eleven the previous evening. Both victims were dressed in street clothes and from all appearances, opened the door quite willingly to the suspects. So did the Lawrences know the perps? It’s after nine in the evening. You’re typically not going to open your door at that hour to somebody you don’t know or you don’t trust. Thus, we throw out the idea that this is a random crime.”

  “Okay.”

  “Take a look at the scene,” Weyler pulled out several color photos from the large envelope and handed them to Jane. “The living room was in shambles. Lamps broken and overturned, there was an overstuffed chair that sat over there that was cut open with one of the knives. That white fluff in the one photo is the polyester filling from inside the chair. Most of the glass vases and knickknacks were either chipped or smashed. The scene was totally disorganized and trashed. Then of course, there’s this.”

  Weyler handed a photo to Jane. It was a close up of the coffee table. A mound of five ounces of cocaine was piled on the table. Jane examined the photo closely then handed it back to Weyler. “That’s convenient,” Jane said with a smug look.

  “How’s that?”

  “Look closely. It doesn’t fit into the scene. It isn’t affected by any of the surrounding debris. If this is a drug deal gone bad, the coke is already going to be on the table before the carnage starts. If it’s already sitting there and all hell breaks loose, the coke is not going to stay in a neat little mound! I’m telling you, after all the shit went down, the coke got put there to throw us off.”

  “I’ll have to think about that one.”

  “Hey, boss, I’m thinking outside the box!” Jane rejoined.

  Weyler looked tiredly at Jane, aware she was sarcastically referring to his earlier remark. “We questioned the neighbors about the Lawrence’s overt behavior. They all reported the same thing. Nice couple. He liked to drink a lot at block parties but none of the conspicuous late night drug pickups were ever witnessed. And believe me, these people watch each other.”

  “There’s a Hazel in every neighborhood . . .” Jane said.

  “But take a good look at this.” Weyler held up a large color photo of David Lawrence sprawled facedown across the living room floor. His throat is deeply slashed, exposing muscles and bone. “You tell me a hyped-up drug addict didn’t carve up that man?” Weyler dropped the crime scene photo of David’s bloody body onto the floor. “David fell here. Patricia was here,” he dropped her photo less than three feet from the other one. “David was stabbed over ten times with a double edged knife. The first cut was to the throat, obviously to disengage him from saving his wife. The final kill was to his heart. Patricia Lawrence was stabbed with a single edged knife approximately seventy-five times. Her first cut was also to the throat. Not enough to kill her, but enough to knock the fight out of her. Half of her seventy-five stab wounds were to her face. This photo here shows how the knife entered her left eye and popped part of it out.” Weyler layered the close-up photo of Patricia’s face on top of her full body photo. Jane regarded the photos with cool detachment. “You want to hear Chris’ theory?”

  “Sure.”

  “One of the killers was a woman. The final kill to the heart on David Lawrence and the mutilation of his wife’s face led him to that possibility.”

  “Both of those MOs can reflect a female killer but each was killed with a different knife. So, is Chris saying that two women did this?”

  “He speculated it could be a jealous woman and a man.”

  “Oh, sure. David’s having an affair with the woman and he won’t divorce Patricia. So his lover hauls ass over here in tow with her boyfriend or husband who conveniently just found out about the tryst and together they decide to take care of business in between snorts of cocaine. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Or how about this? Maybe it’s like a roaming Bonnie and Clyde duo? If so, ‘Bonnie’ must have the upper arm and wrist strength of a Romanian weight lifter to plunge that knife in Patricia’s eye and pull it partly out of her head. Not to mention that Bonnie continues this onslaught seventy-five times on Patricia or over ten times on David. Now, there’s a broad you want to have on your office softball team!”

  “You can drop the sarcasm. What’s your point?”

  “A woman played no part in this murder. This is a professional kill. How many male/female teams are out there? I’m not saying that can’t happen. I’m just saying it didn’t happen here. The other reason I don’t think a woman was involved is that pile of cocaine. If this was a drug deal gone bad—and I’m telling you it wasn’t—no woman is going to forget what she came here for!

  “So, it’s two men.”

  “I don’t know. Is it two men who know enough about the MO of a female killer that they consciously create the outward appearance of female involvement? And if so, why? That’s on par with premeditated manipulation. Manipulation of us who are standing here and trying to figure out what the fuck happened! Boss, I know you don’t want to hear this, but nothing fits in my opinion. The whole thing feels purposely disjointed. It’s like three or four different murders that DH has investigated, but suddenly they’re all wrapped up into one house. Is it a man making it look like a woman? Is it one person making it look like two? Is it two making it look like one? I don’t know. All I know is that whatever it turns out to be, it’s not at all what it seems.” Jane’s eyes rested upon the desk in the front hallway.

  “What is it?” asked Weyler.

  “My mother had a similar desk.” Jane crossed toward the desk, gently skimming her finger against its rolled edges. “You don’t see a lot of these.”

  “Are they worth a lot?”

  “I don’t know. They were more a novelty item. I used to call it the ‘riddle desk.’ ”

  “Why’s that?”

  “That’s where the novelty part comes in. Every time you think you’ve found a drawer or cubbyhole, you get tricked. I’ll show you. They must have hired world-class artists to do the three dimensional designs because they’re so lifelike. See these drawers?” Jane pointed to a series of four slender drawers aligned on the top left of the desk. “Try pulling one of them out.”

  Weyler reached over and tried to grab on to the knob but then realized it was only painted on. “Humph!”

  “Lifelike, eh? Try opening what looks like a cubbyhole, and it’s not.”

  “What the hell good is a desk you can’t use?”

  “But you can use it. You just have to know what buttons to push.”

  “Buttons?”

  “They’re hidden. I’m not exactly sure where they are on this one. My mom’s had a couple on the side and some underneath.” Jane moved her face closer to the surface of the desk, slowly running her index finger along the middle of the desk. “You just gotta look real closely and if you’re lucky . . .” With that, her finger wedged
into an indentation in the desk and the front door popped out like a cashier’s drawer. “Abracadabra!”

  “Anything interesting in there?”

  Jane rummaged through the near empty drawer and came up with a handful of paper clips, pencils and erasers. She slid the flat of her hand beneath the underside of the desk. “Sometimes if you feel underneath the front of the desk, you might find a little depression . . . like there.” She pushed her finger into the depression and a quick click-click sound triggered the two smaller front side drawers to unlatch. Jane pulled them both out to find them completely empty. “Have you ever seen a cleaner desk than this one?”

  “I don’t get it. It’s got all these secret compartments and hidden buttons, how do you find anything? How do you know where they all are?”

  “Only the owner of the desk knows what button goes with what drawer. The rest of us just go about blindly.”

  Weyler eyed the five wooden compartments that lined the top of the desk. “Are those real?”

  “Yeah. My mom’s desk had seven of them. One for every day of the week. I used to leave her a little piece of paper in one of those slots every day with a message on it. You know, ‘Hi, Mom,’ ‘Have a good day,’ ‘Please get well,’” Jane’s voice trailed off.

  Weyler broke the silence. “You oughta take your mom’s desk down to that Antiques Roadshow on PBS when it comes to Denver. Maybe it’s worth something.”

  Jane stiffened. “It’s long gone. Dad sold it two days after she died. He got a whole forty bucks for it,” Jane declared sarcastically. She turned away from the desk and sauntered into the living room. After surveying the area, she let out a deep sigh. “What do you know about David Lawrence?”

  Weyler pulled a small notepad from his jacket pocket and flipped it open, scanning the scribbles. “He was Assistant VP of Technical Development for Crimson Technology in Denver.”

  “What’s Crimson Technology?”

  “It’s an Internet networking firm. They’re troubleshooters. David was apparently the quintessential computer geek. But in the words of one employee our detectives talked to, he was a ‘geek who made it good.’ This same guy said David reminded him of someone who was awkward and an outsider, but a guy who carefully rose to the top of his company. Someone who could afford to send his daughter to a private school.”

  Jane brushed up against the Lawrences’ glassed liquor cabinet. “You said, ‘carefully rose to the top.’ Why ‘carefully? ’”

  “I’m going by the words used to describe David.” Weyler read from the pad. “‘Careful,’ ‘Methodical,’ ‘Deliberate,’ ‘Safe.’ One woman at the company threw in the word ‘boring.’ He arrived at the office at 8:30 a.m. and left promptly at 6:00. Kept a tidy desk, emptied his ‘in’ box every day, left nary a scrap of refuse on his office carpet.”

  Jane stared at the liquor cabinet in a daze. She was taking in every word but, at the same time, developing an internal sense for David Lawrence.

  “Bank accounts?”

  “We checked. No unusually large deposits or withdrawals. He paid his credit cards in full and always at least ten days before they were due. No debt, except for his mortgage. His new Audi was paid off as was his wife’s brand-new Toyota 4-Runner.”

  “Other women in his life?”

  Weyler smiled. “We asked about that and we were laughed at.”

  “Why can’t a rich computer geek have an affair?”

  “They can. But David Lawrence did not.”

  “What about the hard drive on his home computer? His personal e-mails?”

  “Chris said there was nothing incriminating.”

  “So, after all the prelim, nobody found anything odd?”

  “The only somewhat odd comment one of his coworkers made was that for a couple months this spring, David was acting . . . how did he say it . . .” Weyler referred to his notes. “Like a guy who finally got picked for the school team.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He walked around with a cocky strut. The fellow wondered if David had landed another promotion and was keeping it quiet. We asked about a promotion and there was none. Apparently, the cocksure attitude didn’t last more than six weeks. He suddenly became edgy and anxious with his coworkers. Talked on his phone in hushed tones. Seemed preoccupied at staff meetings. Showed up at work smelling obviously of whiskey.”

  Jane took Weyler’s comment as a backhanded, personal affront. “He showed up at 8:30 and left at 6:00 and paid his bills ten days before they were due. Who gives a shit what he does on his off time? Alcohol isn’t illegal.”

  “But cocaine is.”

  Jane chuckled. “A by-the-book computer nerd turns into a cokehead overnight?”

  “It’s not impossible.”

  “No, it’s not. But the way everything is laying out around this strange scenario, it’s too convenient—too ‘Movie of the Week.’ Calculating outsider who hasn’t a blemish on his record, in the space of a month or two, decides to turn to cocaine to . . . what? To add excitement to his regimented life? And then, he screws up a huge score with his dealer inside his own house and he and his wife pay with their lives. Pure fiction! Boss, the missing chunks in this case are so big that trains could drive through them! No one point leads effortlessly to the other.” Jane approached Weyler, joining him on the landing near the front door. “Why does a careful, boring, financially secure computer geek who’s an outsider get slaughtered alongside his lovely wife? What is David’s dirty little secret?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone’s got at least one dirty little secret. And those who say they don’t, have some of the best secrets. The Lawrences might have looked clean to their neighbors at block parties, but most people judge you by your outward appearance. And even then, people don’t really pay attention. The neighbors know that Patricia and Emily are away on an off-season, nine-day camping trip during school but no one asks ‘Why?’ It’s not about seeing the little things as much as it’s about feeling the little things. It’s listening to the spaces in between the words. It’s understanding what a lie sounds like. It’s taking a step back and watching. Let’s face it, boss, everyone is far too busy to sit back and watch! The Lawrences may look clean on paper, but it’s what they whisper to each other in bed. It’s what they scream at each other when their kid is at a friend’s house. It’s what they don’t write on the Christmas card letter. It’s the dark, rotten family secret that everybody has but no one talks about. Because, if anybody really knew your little secret, you’d be an outcast. And nobody wants to risk that. I don’t know what their secret was, but I know it wasn’t cocaine.” Jane casually turned her gaze to the rest of the room. “Well, you asked for my assessment and my assessment is . . .” Jane found her gut tightening. She tried to cover it up but the visceral response was overwhelming. She walked away from Weyler, trying to get centered. The more she looked around the room, the deeper her gut moved into it. Holding back was pointless because it only seemed to deepen her attachment. It was as though she could almost hear the walls talking, vibrating, whispering, longing to blare out what they saw. Suddenly, a splash of blood flashed in front of Jane’s vision. In less than a second, Emily’s face appeared through the disappearing crimson haze. Then, unexpectedly, Emily’s face warped into Amy Stover. Her pleading eyes beckoned Jane as her deafening scream pierced the room. Jane grasped her forehead to shut out the disturbing hallucination. Icy sweat beaded across her face and neck. She needed a drink and looked at her watch. It was 11:00 a.m. If she left the house now, she could be downing a bottle of Jack Daniels in less than twenty minutes. “My assessment is that we don’t have all the pieces,” Jane said urgently. “And the kid probably doesn’t either.” Weyler remained silent, staring intently at Jane. She avoided eye contact as she moved to the front door. Pursing her lips, Jane turned to him with an indignant air. “What?”

  “Are you done bullshiting me?”

  Jane anger peaked. “Look, what the fuck do you want me
to tell you? You got no prints except for the occupants . . . no incriminating evidence . . . no witnesses.”

  “We do have a witness.”

  “We don’t!” Jane felt cornered. She started to open the front door when Weyler moved quickly and slammed it shut with the flat of his hand.

  “What are you so damned afraid of?” Weyler yelled.

  “The truth!”

  “The truth is all I care about! But sometimes it’s better to let certain things stay buried in people.”

  She tried to open the door but Weyler kept his hand firmly against it. “You can’t tell me that you believe that in your heart.”

  Jane looked Weyler in the eyes. “Yes, I do.”

  He scrutinized Jane for a second. “That’s too bad. But that doesn’t change the fact that Emily trusts you and only you. You’re the only one she’ll talk to. Whether you want to accept it or not, the two of you made an odd little connection. What draws the two of you together is what she knows deep down and what you can get out of her. And that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”

  Jane’s eyes widened, an anger edged with fear. “No!” Jane bolted toward the center of the living room.

  “Whatever she knows or saw is asleep inside of her. Only you can wake it up.”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “I want you and the child alone in this house for twenty-four hours. Maybe longer. It goes against all policy but I’ll take care of the details.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “I’m not expecting you to probe her with questions. Just be with her and pay attention to what she says or what she can remember.”

  “You will never convince Social Services, not to mention her guardian adlitum and the court psychologist to agree to that deal! They’ll take it in front of a judge!”

  “I know my way around the system. I have a lot of friends who owe me big favors. I’ll take care of it. I have a strong feeling that when Emily returns here, she might get a glimpse of what she saw that night.”

  “This is Chris’ case! Have him talk to her!”