Protector

by Laurel Dewey

  It was one word: child. The word was part of a larger headline from one of the many newspaper clippings Jane had shoved into the satchel the previous night. Emily tried to unfold the newspaper to see it more clearly, but it was stuck too tightly into the satchel. Emily slid the satchel toward her. She lifted the article in question out of the satchel and read the headline:

  DENVER NEIGHBORHOOD STILL IN SHOCK OVER FAMILY’S MURDER—TEN-YEAR-OLD CHILD AMONG VICTIMS

  Emily first thought the article was about her parents, but realized that the accompanying photo did not match her neighborhood. The photo showed a middle-aged woman standing on a street with the Stover’s house diffused in the background. Emily read the caption under the photo:

  “This is just tragic,” Gilpin Street resident, Ellen Del Alba sadly told reporters. “I didn’t know the little girl very well, but she seemed like such an adorable child.”

  Emily looked at the house in the background. It looked just like . . .

  But, it couldn’t be. Emily set the clipping aside and pulled out the next one.

  CAR BOMB KILLS FAMILY OF THREE IN THEIR DRIVEWAY

  This story featured a photograph that showed the scene the morning after the attack. The photo showed Jane standing near the yellow crime scene tape, her left hand freshly bandaged. Nearby was the green and white Gilpin Street sign. Emily stared at the photo of what was left of the charred Range Rover. She studied the driveway with its distinctive manicured cedars. It started to look far too familiar.

  Emily pulled out another newspaper clipping. Her eyes filled with terror and she began to shake uncontrollably. She worked her way up to a standing position, never letting go of the newspaper clipping.

  The scuffling sound awoke Jane. Still half asleep, all Jane could see was Emily’s back and that the child was looking down at something. “Hey . . .” Jane said quietly.

  Emily spun around, gasping in fright. She hid the newspaper clipping behind her back and regarded Jane with a look of abject fear mixed with contempt.

  Jane quickly surveyed the scene. The crime scene photos , she said to herself. “Oh, Jesus. You saw the photos?”

  Emily was breathing so hard, she could hardly speak. “Yes.”

  “You weren’t supposed to ever see those,” Jane said, flipping back the bed covers. “Here, let me—”

  “Get away from me!” Emily shouted, nearly choking on her words.

  Jane sat on the bed, perplexed by Emily’s behavior. “Emily?”

  Emily backed up several steps to the wall, never taking her eyes off of Jane. She inched toward the bedside table, keeping a healthy distance between herself and Jane. “I don’t understand! You promised me. But you . . . lied to me,” Emily nervously stuttered.

  Jane sat frozen on the bed. Something was very wrong. “Emily,” Jane said calmly, as though she was talking a sniper down from a tall building, “what is it?”

  “I was wrong! You don’t want to protect me . . . You want to kill me!”

  “Kill you? Emily—”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Emily screamed. “You knew him all this time!”

  “I knew who?”

  “The man in my bedroom!” Emily screamed. With that, she revealed the newspaper clipping that was hidden behind her back. “The man in my bedroom!”

  It was the front page of the Rocky Mountain News. It was a photo of Jane. Right next to a photo of Chris.

  It didn’t immediately register with Jane. “Chris?” She let his name sink into her consciousness. “Chris was the man in your bedroom? Are you sure?”

  “You knew!” Emily screamed.

  “No, I didn’t!” Jane uttered in a state of shock, glancing away from Emily. “Oh, my God,” was all she could say. “Emily, I—”

  Jane turned back, just in time to see the newspaper clipping fall to ground. Emily lunged forward, grabbed Jane’s Glock pistol on the bedside table and moved back against the wall. The child pointed the gun, two-handed at Jane. “You’re not gonna kill me like you killed my mommy and daddy.”

  Jane felt a strange calmness come over her. It was the same, eerie, centered feeling she always got when her life was in danger. “Emily. Put the gun down.”

  “No!”

  “I didn’t kill your mommy and daddy. You know that.”

  “It says in the paper that he’s your ‘partner.’ I know what that means! It means you do things together!”

  “We didn’t—” Jane stopped. “I didn’t take part in any of this.”

  “Liar!” Emily screamed, aiming the gun toward Jane’s head.

  “Look me in the eye, Emily. I am not lying to you. I did not know Chris was the man in your bedroom until you told me!”

  “How could you not know? He’s your partner! Partners know everything about each other!”

  “No, Emily. That’s not always true.”

  “How could you not see all the bad in his eyes? Didn’t you look?”

  Jane was asking herself the same question. She shook her head in frustration. “I can’t answer that question.”

  “I trusted you. I believed in you.”

  “You still can, Emily.”

  “No! I can’t!” Emily screamed, fighting back tears.

  Silence washed over them, interrupted by Emily’s gasps of air. “So, this is the way it’s gonna end?” Jane carefully asked. “Okay. So be it. You know, Emily, I could tell you that if you kill me, they’ll put you in jail. But that’s not true. When the police ask why you shot me, tell them you were positive that your life was in danger and that you had no choice. They’ll believe you. They’ll believe you because you are a good, decent, innocent person and I’m pretty much the opposite. You talk to Sergeant Weyler about Chris, okay?” Jane reasoned that Weyler wasn’t involved in the corruption. “He’ll take care of it for you. And when all the dust settles, you’ll go to your aunt and uncle’s house in Cheyenne where you can live happily ever after. At night, you can rest easy, knowing that I’m dead and that Chris is on death row for what he did. Right now, all I ask is that when you shoot me, use only one bullet. I’d rather you didn’t have to unload a clip of ammo. You’ve got enough gruesome memories, you don’t need more. Just lower the gun a little bit so it’s square with my chest. That’s called a ‘center punch’ and it always works. You’ve got one shot and if you aim for the head . . . well, even good cops miss that one. So, lower the gun, pull the trigger and then get out of here.”

  Emily stood paralyzed, her finger dancing across the trigger. Jane’s words echoed loudly in her head. “You’re trying to confuse me.”

  “No, I’m not, Emily. I’ve been dead since I was 14 years old. You’ll just make my demise a reality for everyone else. Lower the gun, Emily. Go on,” Emily gradually lowered the Glock in line with Jane’s chest. She stared back at Jane, who returned her glance, expressionless and with no emotion. “Go on.” Jane said quietly.

  Emily slid her finger onto the trigger. She looked deep into Jane’s eyes. “You really didn’t know about him, did you?” Her voice was strangled with emotion.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Jane whispered. “Pull the trigger, Emily.”

  Emily brushed her finger against the trigger, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t!” She lowered the Glock, letting it drop to the floor. Emily bowed her head, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Jane sat on the bed. She didn’t say a word or move a muscle as Emily fell to the floor, her chest heaving with each gut-wrenching cry. After several minutes, Emily calmed down. Jane leaned over, retrieved the Glock and set it back on the bedside table. Emily stood up, wiping her tears. Jane handed her a handful of tissues, which she took without acknowledgment.

  “What are you gonna do?” Emily asked.

  Between learning that Chris was the murderer and having a gun pointed in her face, Jane was still partially spinning in an altered reality. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Emily replied, both surprised and angry.

  “This is all hitting
me at once. I’ve got to figure out a way to alert Weyler without making him think I’m crazy.”

  “But I know Chris was the man in my bedroom!” Emily yelled.

  “I believe you!”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Oh, Emily, it’s egos and politics—”

  “What?”

  “Just give me a second.” Jane grabbed a cigarette from the bedside table, lit up and began pacing around the room.

  “What if you don’t figure it out in time? What’s gonna happen when he shows up and finds me?”

  “Chris doesn’t know where we are! I didn’t let anything slip when I called him.”

  Emily’s eyes widened in fear. “You talked to him while we’ve lived here?”

  “I wasn’t calling him! I was calling another guy. Chris just happened to—”

  “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “He doesn’t know where we are!”

  Emily began to shake. “Yes, he does!”

  “How does he know?”

  “I don’t know. But he does!” Emily began to get hysterical. She tore out of the bedroom and started down the hallway toward the front door.

  “Emily! Where are you going?” Jane ran after her.

  “I’ve got to get out of here! He’s gonna find me!” Emily was half out of her mind. She started into her bedroom. “No, I can’t go in there! He can see me through the window!” Emily shot back up the hallway.

  “Emily! Nobody’s watching you! Calm down!” Jane tried to grab on to Emily, but she moved too fast.

  “He’s watching me!” Emily screamed hysterically as her eyes fearfully scanned Main Street before she retreated back into the hallway.

  “Emily!” Jane yelled back, trying to verbally knock the child out of her growing frenzy. “Chris is not here!”

  “Stop lying to me!” Emily yelled in a state of panic.

  “I’m not lying!” Jane shouted back in full voice.

  “If you’re not lying, then tell me where A.J. is right now!” Jane was taken aback by the sudden subject shift. “Where is she?” Emily yelled, tears welling in her eyes.

  Jane looked at Emily. “She’s dead. So are her parents.”

  For several seconds, Emily looked completely calm. “He killed them, too?” Emily whispered. She looked up at Jane, her eyes wild with terror. “He killed them, too!”

  Emily beat her fists against the hallway wall with such force that she cut open the skin on the side of her hands. “No!” she screamed hysterically, losing control.

  Jane clenched her cigarette between her lips. She tried pulling Emily away from the wall in an effort to protect the child from harming herself. But Emily’s primal fear was impossible to restrain. “Emily! Stop it! You’re bleeding!”

  Emily kicked the walls while still beating them with her fists. Bloody imprints from her skin covered the wall. She shook her head violently, screaming at the top of her lungs. “No! No!”

  Jane grabbed Emily and turned her around so she couldn’t injure herself. The child continued to flail her body in a deranged motion. Jane took one look at Emily and did the first thing that came to her mind. She laid a swift, open-handed slap across Emily’s cheek. Emily fell to the floor in stunned silence. Gradually, the child touched her left cheek and looked up at Jane in disbelief. Jane felt sick. “Emily . . . You gave me no choice.”

  Emily started to cry. “You hit me.”

  Jane leaned toward the child, “Emily, I—”

  Emily slapped Jane’s arm as she struggled to her feet. “Get away from me!” She smacked Jane’s arm again, this time with more force. “I hate you! I hate you!” She ran down the hall into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Jane stood paralyzed in the shadows of the hallway. Every nightmare she ever had was coming true. She took a long drag on her cigarette. As alone as she felt at that moment, she suddenly realized that somebody was watching her. She looked up. There standing at the front door with its front pane smashed out, were Kathy and Heather. It didn’t take Jane much time to figure out how long they had been observing her; their incriminating expressions of disgust answered that question.

  Jane moved toward the front door. Kathy and Heather took a step backward off the front porch, but still held their ground. Jane flung open the door. “What is it?”

  “We wanted to come by and see how Emily was doing,” Kathy said, her voice low and modulated.

  Jane turned to Heather. “Is that right?”

  Heather took another step back, hiding partly behind her mother’s body.

  “We want to invite her to watch the July fourth parade with us,” Kathy said, measuring every word with care.

  Jane took a resentful step toward Kathy. “She is no longer allowed to be anywhere near your sick, fucked up daughter. Do I make myself clear?”

  Kathy’s steely eyes contracted. “Oh, yes. Very clear.” Kathy turned to Heather. “Let’s go.”

  Jane slammed the door shut. She watched as they walked down the front path. Kathy stopped for a moment, lingering on the sidewalk as she stole a glance toward the right front window. When she saw that Jane was observing her actions, Kathy took Heather by the hand and walked down the street. Jane turned toward Emily’s closed bedroom door. “Emily?”

  “Go away! Leave me alone!” Emily screamed at Jane from inside the room.

  Jane debated whether to pursue a conversation with the kid and apologize for slapping her. But she figured it was best to let Emily calm down. Jane walked into the living room, standing with her back to the front windows. After several minutes, she heard a distinctive click from inside of Emily’s bedroom. She turned and realized Emily had just locked her door. Jane stared at the doorknob, distressed that Emily felt the need to lock her door.

  Jane headed for the kitchen and sat at the table, burying her head in her hands. The full impact of Chris’ involvement began to hit her hard. Anger melted into betrayal and then merged into disgust. The enormity of the situation overwhelmed her. The man whom she had called a partner, both on and off the job, was responsible for the murder of two innocent people. The second that thought crossed Jane’s mind, she realized that if he killed the Lawrences, he was also the killer of Martha Durrett. Furthermore, it was reasonable to assume that Chris was also involved in the SUV explosion that took out the Stover family.

  Jane puffed on her dying cigarette as a fountain of memories flashed in front of her. There was that fateful night outside the Stover’s house. She recalled Chris’ edgy behavior. Jane had disregarded his attitude that night, chalking it up to his usual surly demeanor. But in retrospect, she realized there was more to it. Within the folds of his words, there was a sense of urgency. A desire to dominate. A need to coordinate a deadly deal and not get caught. She broke the memory down minute by minute and then second by second. Stover and his family took off for ice cream in their SUV, surrounded by two police flank cars.

  “What an asshole! He really wants to sign his own death certificate!” Chris remarked in a self-satisfied tone as the final flank vehicle drove past their observation car.

  Jane remembered looking at Chris and seeing beads of sweat drift across his forehead. At the time, she thought nothing of it. But now it started to fit together.

  Chris grabbed his cell phone, speaking in the same cocky cadence. “Yeah, it’s me. I can’t believe Stover was so stupid! He drives off with his family for ice cream so he can get thirty minutes in the outside world! Thirty fucking minutes! It looks all clear from here but hurry up!”

  That’s when it hit Jane. All this time, she thought he was talking to an officer in one of the flank vehicles. But now the words had a different flavor. Was it possible, Jane wondered, that he was talking to a lackey who was hidden in the darkness near the Stover’s house?

  A lackey who was in place—C-4 bomb in hand—and waiting for Chris’ call and coded language, telling him that he had thirty minutes to set up the explosive.

  The more Jane tossed th
e notion in her head, the more it fell into place. The cops had done a thorough sweep of Stover’s residence and come up clean for any explosive devices. The crude, military C-4 bomb that was placed in the darkened recesses of the Stovers’ driveway that night was most likely detonated from just outside the Stovers’ house. Jane had always struggled with the idea that the perp who set up the bomb in the driveway must have had the guts of a front line soldier to brazenly walk into the shadows when two cops were seated across the street. But perhaps it didn’t take a lot of nerve when you had a Denver Police Detective calling you and giving you the green light while he covered your ass. The thirty minute window of time gave the minion enough time to set up the explosive, while Chris engaged Jane in conversation, purposely directing her attention away from the action taking place on the driveway. When Jane could not get the lid off of her coffee thermos, Chris jumped on that unexpected opportunity to further distract Jane from witnessing anything.

  The deadly link between the Stover and Lawrence families was still vague to Jane. Was Chris on Bill Stover’s list of Denver’s influential and powerful? Was he tied in with the Texas mob? Did one of the mob’s cronies tip off Chris’ tight connection with the mafia to Bill Stover? And then did Bill spill the whole story to David Lawrence?

  The letter. Did Bill Stover decide to write everything out in that letter as an informal affidavit of what he knew and then hand it to David? Was that letter an insurance policy that David kept from Patricia until he broke down that evening and showed it to her? When Patricia read the letter and understood the gravity of the situation—of their sideways involvement—that could have fueled her vitriolic outburst, simply from the realization that her family’s life was in grave danger.

  Jane’s mind raced as she recalled Emily’s words when the child recalled her mother’s frightened appeal to David Lawrence and her resentment over his “bad decisions.” Perhaps his worst decision was agreeing to go to bat for Bill Stover just in case anything happened to him. From what Jane could deduce, David was the quintessential, self-conscious technical geek who had a secret longing to live life on the edge. He could feel important because he possessed the pivotal, written proof that law enforcement was desperate to acquire.