by Laurel Dewey
Jane couldn’t remember where she’d set her Glock but she was pretty sure it wasn’t next to her bed. She could feel her heart beating so hard that she was certain whoever was in the room could hear it too. Sliding her hand out from under the sheet, she contacted the tiny lamp on her bedside table and flicked it on.
She sat up, ready to take on the intruder. But all she saw was the rocking chair in the corner, creaking back and forth, back and forth. It’s the wind, she told herself, coming from the window not far from the chair. She peered closer at the window but it was closed. With that, the rocker came to a sudden stop.
CHAPTER 13
After a fitful few hours of sleep, Jane awoke with a start at 6:00 am. She’d had a dream but the people in it and the situation were clouded. All she could remember was a sense of something unraveling and of outright chaos. She rubbed her eyes and stared across the room at the rocking chair by the closed window. Was it a dream? It felt like it right then. The whole memory of waking at 3:11 am felt distant and remote.
Jane cupped her palm against her lower belly expecting to feel pain, but she felt surprisingly fine. How could something so profoundly agonizing come and go so quickly? It was as if the pain did not belong to her and that she was shouldering it for someone else. What’s that they say about sympathy pains? Perhaps, she pondered, she had gotten herself so wrapped up in the menagerie of clues and her concern for Jake Van Gorden and projected it into her belly? Sure, she thought. That’s possible. It sure as hell was easier to accept than the more likely possibility that her body was turning on her and she was slowly dying.
She heard the purposely soft closing of the back screen door and quickly moved to the window. Aaron Green ambled outside with several stapled pages in his hand and a large red photo album under his arm. He walked to the farthest end of the backyard, sat down on a bench and opened the album. Jane watched as his face gradually lit up with each turn of the page.
Jane threw on the first shirt she could find—which happened to be the mud-caked one from the night before—and pulled on the dirty jeans and her leather jacket. She quietly inched her way down the short hallway to the staircase and gingerly moved downstairs so as not to wake anyone. Figuring it made sense to walk out the backdoor, she stealthily moved toward the kitchen. The speckled linoleum floor, large table and varnished narrow cupboards framed in glass reminded her of a true boardinghouse of yesteryear. Except for the few modern amenities such as the dishwasher and microwave, nothing looked as if it had changed from the years the place served as a home for women. She opened the back door and quietly closed it. Walking around the house, she tried to look as nonchalant as possible as she strolled across the large yard. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aaron’s reaction to her unexpected presence. He quickly snapped the album shut and purposely slid it under the bench. It was the same gestural extension of shame that she’d witnessed in Bo’s office when Bo covertly buried the bright yellow folder.
“Morning, Detective,” Aaron chimed.
Jane pretended to take a deep yawn and stretch as if getting up at the crack of dawn to greet the sunrise was a habit. “Call me Jane,” she said in the easiest-going tone she could muster. She had to appear as nonthreatening as possible so she could dive in for the kill later and catch him off guard.
He lifted the stapled pages. “I’m going over my sermon for tomorrow morning. You and Sergeant Weyler are welcome to attend.”
The idea of sitting in church was about as appealing as being forced to listen to a precocious child sing off-key. “We’ll take a rain check. We’ve got to spend every second on the case.”
Aaron’s eyes fell to the ground momentarily. “Yes…of course.”
Jane saw a look of guilt fall across Aaron’s face. God, she wanted to pounce on that moment and ask the question but she knew she had to hold back. She felt a crick in her back. “Shit,” she muttered. Aaron looked up at her. “Oh, excuse me. It’s just that my back’s kinda funky this morning. I fell yesterday.”
He glanced at the dried mud on her shirt and jeans. “I noticed. Here…” He moved over on the bench. “Have a seat.”
Jane obliged. She couldn’t help but peer down at the red photo album. It was obviously old with its cracked cover and faded lettering. “What’s that?” she asked, hoping her pitch wasn’t too confrontational.
A second of fear gripped his face. But he quickly recovered and turned to the album. “Oh, that’s just my inspiration. Whenever I’m feeling a bit of writer’s block, I bring it out and it inspires me.”
This was intriguing. Jane noted a mischievous glint to Aaron’s eyes. “Maybe I should look at it. I could use a little inspiration.”
Aaron’s mischievous look turned almost embarrassed as he used his heel to shove the album even further back into the grass. “Are you already hitting roadblocks?”
Change of subject. Yes, well done, Aaron, Jane thought. “There’s more questions than answers on this case, Aaron.”
He slightly winced and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Jane noted that the I’m sorry was more than just a minister’s reflective understanding of her trouble. There was also something else mixed in with it—a sense of regret possibly. “I talked to Hank Ross yesterday,” Jane offered, her voice more pointed. “He told me what a great kid Jake is.”
“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Aaron muttered, averting Jane’s glance.
“I guess he was a little…how would you put it…unique? Walks to the beat of his own drum?”
“Yes, yes. That he does.”
This was starting to sound like pabulum and Jane hated swallowing that crap. “But you liked him, right?”
“We loved Jake. He’s like the son we never had.” Aaron’s eyes welled with tears.
“He hangs out here a lot?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said smiling. “We aren’t his second home. We’re his first.” Aaron quickly caught himself. “That’s not to say that Bailey and Carol don’t care. It’s just that we’re more accessible to Jake.”
Aaron had learned the fine art of damning a soul with faint praise. For a guy who considered Jake as the son he never had, Jane found it curious that he would instigate a breakup between Jake and Mollie. It was time for Jane to cast a lie into the water and see what she could catch. “Hank said that Jake broke off his relationship with Mollie.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. “Really?”
“Isn’t that what happened?”
Aaron uncomfortably shifted on the bench. “Yeah, yeah.”
Thank Jesus there wasn’t a Bible hanging around the area because Jane could then point out to him that he was breaking one of the Ten Commandments. “It wasn’t the other way around?” Jane stressed.
“No…that’s the way it went down.” Jane’s first thought was went down? These Methodists certainly did have an easygoing vernacular. She half-expected Aaron to call her dude next. He swept up his sermon. “I’ve really got to focus on this.”
Again, she was dismissed. This was getting to be a habit. Jane got up and started across the yard.
“Do you mind if I read this to you?” Aaron asked. “Just the first part. I’m not sure if it flows.”
Jane did not want to listen to a Sunday sermon on Saturday morning but she agreed, returning to the bench and sitting down.
Aaron stood up and cleared his throat. “The talk is on fear,” he explained to Jane. “I figured with all the unknowns surrounding what’s going on with Jake, it was a suitable topic.” Jane nodded. Aaron proceeded to read in a commanding yet gentle tone. “’When faced with uncertainty in our lives, I always harken back to something my wife’s grandfather told her to say during times of trepidation. It was just ten words but in those words, there was both comfort and courage to continue. Those ten words were: I will be all right and one day I will die.’” Jane felt her gut clench. Aaron continued. “’I can believe the first part and it calms me to the inevitability of the second part. I will be all right…and
one day I will die. When we are faced with misfortune or hard luck, we are naturally programmed to revert to that primal essence of fear. And when you break it down—break all the things in life down that make us really fearful—the bottom line is death. When you take away that fear, the rest of the things we fear—whether it be poverty or shame or loss of reputation—the rest is fixable to some extent. Death is inevitable, but to stay in the moment and say I will be all right allows us all to keep our faith and not shadow our lives with the castles of fear we often build in the future.’” He stopped reading and looked at Jane. “What do you think?”
She hoped he couldn’t see her jaw quivering. “Sara’s grandfather sounded like a wise Jedi Master.”
Aaron smiled. “I only met him and his wife a couple times. But they were incredible people. They certainly were tested in their lives, but he applied these words during those tests and he came out of everything the better for it. His wife was fond of saying, ‘You must be the light you wish to see.’”
Sara opened the kitchen window and softly called to Aaron. “I’m putting coffee on. It’ll be ready in a few minutes.” Her voice seemed to suddenly catch on and she moved from the window to the back door and joined them. There was a clear nervousness to her gait as she strode between them, her body seemingly blocking the photo album under the bench. She tried to conceal her anxiousness with a forced smile. “How’d you sleep?” she asked Jane.
“Like a baby,” Jane lied. She wanted to add “with colic,” but opted not to.
It was patently clear Sara was guarding that photo album. Aaron’s little red photo album of Sunday sermon inspiration certainly was getting more intriguing to Jane.
Walking into the house, Jane let the back door slam shut which generated a pissed-off yell from Mollie behind her bedroom door. Her angry footsteps stumbled from her bed and she swung open her door. “Mom! It’s not even seven!” Out of her drowsy eyes, she saw Jane standing there in the same damn outfit she was wearing when she saw her the night before. “My God, do you even own clean clothes?” A look of utter disgust came over the kid as she was about to slam her door. But Jane moved quickly and held the door open with the palm of her hand. “Ei!”
“I gotta talk to you!” Jane insisted as she slid into Mollie’s bedroom and closed the door behind her.
The room was not your typical teenage girl’s room. There was the usual desk and computer but it was absent of rock ’n’ roll posters, girly touches and the like. Instead, there was a lone table in the corner that held a copy of the Talmud. A small menorah stood behind that. A votive candle burned in a purple glass holder.
“You burning that for Jake?” The girl was silent. “Is that for his soul or his safe return?”
“Anytime you shed light in the darkness it’s a brocheh.”
“Whatever. Make sure you don’t burn down the house.” Jane heard the back door open and swing shut. She lowered her voice. “I gotta know why you broke up with Jake.”
“It’s none of your business, you yenta!”
“The hell it isn’t!” Jane’s tenor was strict. She grabbed Mollie’s shoulder. “Your dad forced you, right?” Mollie’s eyebrows arched in a look of surprise. Clearly, Hank’s information was not meant for general distribution. “Why?”
“He said that it wasn’t going to work out…that it would never work out and that it was best if I just ended it.”
“Why did he say that?”
Her eyes drifted to the side. “How in the hell should I know?” Jane read this as a lie.
“Were you and Jake having sex?”
“No!”
“Hey, Jake hung out here a lot. The two of you had plenty of time to be together. Your father being a preacher, there’s plenty of reason he wouldn’t want his only child bangin’ her boyfriend…”
“Good God, woman! What’s wrong with you?!” Mollie pulled away from Jane. “We didn’t have sex. I’m a b’suleh.” Jane looked confused. “A virgin,” Mollie whispered with purpose.
Jane watched Mollie. There was something in the way she said, “We didn’t have sex” that sounded uneven. But there was no use pushing the issue. The kid was clearly not going to talk any further. Jane nodded and turned toward the door and then looked back at Mollie. “Hey, I’ve got a question for you, off topic.” Mollie regarded Jane with suspicion. “Has anyone ever asked you if this place is haunted?”
Mollie’s gaze was unyielding. “No one has ever asked me that. Is there a problem?”
“I don’t know,” Jane uttered, feeling ridiculous for asking the girl such an off-the-wall question.
Jane turned to go. “Give my regards to Casper,” Mollie whispered.
Jane quietly crept into the hallway after leaving Mollie’s room, but when she turned to ascend the staircase, she couldn’t help but see Sara standing on a short ladder in the kitchen and replacing the red photo album in a locked cabinet that was situated above one of the glass cupboards. It was also easy to see where Sara hid the key.
By the time Jane and Weyler arrived at Annie’s Place, the local diner, there were wall-to-wall people waiting for tables. A flat screen TV was tuned to the Denver morning news program in the far corner of the diner. Weyler assured her that they had a reserved booth, courtesy of Bo Lowry and his immeasurable pull. Jane had slipped into her last clean shirt, which looked like a carbon copy in color and design of the other two that were sitting in a muddy heap on The Gardenia Room carpet. Her Glock was secured in its shoulder holster. Once situated in the booth next to Weyler, she brought out a stack of notes from her leather satchel, along with the sketchpad with the hanging man she stole from Jake’s room.
“I would think twice before I bring that out for show and tell,” Weyler warned, eyeing the sketchpad.
“The fact that Jake meticulously takes the time to create an animation of an old man hanging in a cell isn’t the least bit disturbing in this case?”
“Baby steps, Jane. You can’t come off balls to the wall with Bo. You know that.”
“Right. I’m a strident dyke.” She stuffed the sketchpad back into her satchel.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Just don’t tell me to sit back and look pretty,” she sarcastically added.
Annie arrived at their table with three glasses of ice water. “Hello, Jane,” she said cheerfully. Weyler looked somewhat perplexed. “Hank came back to the locker room with half-birthday cake, but you’d already split!” Annie offered in a very familial tone.
Jane had only been orbiting the town for less than twenty-four hours and she was already getting the down-home treatment. “Tell him I had to get back to work,” Jane said in an all business tenor.
“Tell him yourself. He’s in his usual spot at the counter!”
Jane looked up and saw Hank wave at her with those twinkling eyes. Good God Almighty, she thought. This was starting to feel like high school. “You got espresso?” Jane asked, desperate to change the subject. Annie nodded. “I’ll take six shots in the dark and two in the dark to go.”
Weyler ordered a cup of black coffee and Annie left to retrieve the drinks. He handed Jane a menu that was tucked between the napkin holder and a greasy bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. “You’ve been busy,” Weyler surmised, taking a gander at the menu.
Jane explained that she talked to Hank about Jake and checked out his locker. She conveniently left out the whole part about the half-birthday. She did disclose the mysterious notation in Bailey’s handwriting of 1401 Imperial. “You think that’s going to come off as too dyke-ish to Bo?” Jane asked curtly, referencing the discovery of the address.
“Jesus Christ, you really are hurting for a cigarette, aren’t you? Try sucking on some ice cubes. Heard that takes the edge off.”
Jane surveyed the menu. “Even a bag of ice wouldn’t work, Boss.” She slapped down the menu. “I gotta ask you something before he gets here. Did you notice the boxes in Bo’s office? The ones labeled with question marks and exclamation
points?”
“I did.”
“So…what’s up with that?”
“Everyone has their own way of organizing their paperwork. Some people color code. What’s your point?”
Jane took a sip of water and slid an ice cube into her mouth. “I just think it’s odd.” She sucked on the cube, hoping it would reduce the growing edge that was building around her. “What’s with Bo’s limp?”
Weyler set down the menu. “It’s an old injury that happened in the line of duty.”
Jane stared at Weyler as the wheels turned. “Oh, shit. Did you shoot him by mistake when you were rookies? Is that what this whole I owe you is about?”
“Suck on another ice cube, Jane. Your imagination is going wild.” Weyler motioned to the front door of the diner.
Bo entered, lumbering across the linoleum toward their booth. He dropped into the seat across from Jane and Weyler, with his generous gut arriving shortly thereafter. “Goddamnit! It’s colder than a lawyer’s heart out there. Sorry I’m late,” Bo said, directing his words toward Weyler. “I thought I was dyin’ this mornin’ when I saw blood in the toilet after I took a dump. Then I remembered I ate beets last night for dinner.” He scooped up the menu and gave it a cursory exam. Without looking at Jane, he directed his words toward her. “Beanie tells me you’re tryin’ to quit smokin’.”
Jane was a little taken back. “Yeah. That’s right.”
Bo had a strange way of reading a menu, glancing back and forth from side to side as if he were watching a tennis game. “So, is that the excuse for your attitude?”
Jane eyed Weyler. “No excuse. I’ve got the same mentality whether I’m smoking or not.”
Bo regarded Jane over the top of his menu. “Is that right? I quit smoking once.” Jane furrowed her brow, realizing Bo was puffing pretty good on his cigar when they first met. “First five days, I’d like to have drawn and quartered every damn person I met. But on day six, everything smoothed out real nice.”
