by Laurel Dewey
“Yes,” Kit responded without missing a beat.
“After what he did to Ashlee? You sat in the courtroom and heard what he did to her in graphic detail. How do you walk away from that with compassion?”
“Back then I didn’t have compassion for him. I had hatred. The kind of hatred that boils inside and eats away at your spirit and perspective until it eats away at your body. And then there was the inevitable deep depression. But isn’t depression really just anger without enthusiasm? All the hatred I held inside didn’t affect Lou one bit. But it sure as hell affected me! I gave myself cancer. I take full responsibility. I gave myself cancer because I couldn’t let go of the hate or the anger. You can’t live like that and expect it not to affect you in some way.” Kit stared out the window. “When you’re dying like I am, if you’re smart, you look at life differently. Pettiness and retribution take too much energy. You want answers. You allow yourself to look beyond the polarized righteous indignation that prevents you from seeing other possibilities. There’s a reason why Lou turned out the way he did. I had to understand it and that’s why I asked Detective Sawyer to locate his mother.”
“If you’re gonna tell me that Lou’s past absolves him from punishment—”
“I wouldn’t be going to California to save another young girl if I believed that! I strongly sense that Lou’s past is dictating his present actions and he must be stopped!”
“I hear something else in your voice. You want to save that girl but...there’s more.” Jane turned to Kit to see if she could gauge any reaction to her statement.
Kit sat expressionless. “You know what I hear in your voice?”
“What?” Jane replied, realizing that Kit wasn’t taking the bait.
“I hear someone who is still living in her past. A past filled with violations and deceit that you can’t let go of. You identity with the victim too well, Jane P.”
Jane kept her eyes on the road. “My past is my past.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s alive and well and written all over you. It’s the jerk in your hand when you pull a cigarette out of your pack and light it. It’s the way your eyes drift off to the side when a memory slips through and reminds you of the reason you rage. I don’t know what happened. But I know it still owns you. If you could forgive whoever—”
“You ever had the shit kicked out of you, Kit?” Jane’s voice was icy. “I mean it literally! Kicked out of you!”
“No.”
“Well, I did! And it didn’t just leave scars like this one,” Jane said, pointing to the old scar on her right temple, “it left permanent scars inside that prevent me from being like other women.”
“You can’t have children?”
“Correct,” Jane replied in a curt tone.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just know that there are a lot of us walking around who don’t have any compassion for the violator because we can still feel their footprints on our flesh.”
“When you hold on to that anger, Jane, you think you’re punishing the violator. But you’re killing yourself. You have this backward notion that forgiveness is a favor you offer to the violator. But in reality, forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself.”
“Sounds like a bumper sticker.”
“Think about it, Jane P. Just think about it.”
They drove in silence for almost ten miles before Kit started to shift uncomfortably in the passenger seat.
“What’s wrong?” Jane asked.
“I have these pains occasionally. It’ll pass.”
Jane’s protective instinct kicked in. “You want to lie down in the backseat?”
“No. We have to keep driving. Every second is precious. Let’s just talk.”
“Okay.” Jane thought for a moment. “What about Bruce Zatkin? The witness who says he saw Lou at Pico Blanco—”
Kit let out a hard sigh and shook her head. “Bruce. Yes. He was a good man.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead. As far as I’m concerned, the defense team and the whole bloody bond hearing last year bears responsibility for his death. He was a good, intelligent man; a man whose story never changed and who never wavered in his memory of what he saw, no matter how the defense lawyers attempted to use his own words against him. I know that Bruce did not want to get involved in the case again. Being the sole witness fourteen years ago, there was a lot of pressure on his shoulders to confirm what he saw. I could see the stress had taken a hard toll on him. He held a lot inside and it finally got the better of him. He died of a heart attack last fall.”
Cross another off the list, Jane thought. “It’s important for us to unearth Lou’s criminal patterns; patterns of prior acts that create the motive for him to strike again.”
“You’re speaking about the two rapes prior to Ashlee?”
“Yes. Who were your sources for that information?”
“Genevieve Paulson. She was one of my regular nude models. Very zaftig.”
“A fat, nude model is the sole source you trusted?” Jane asked skeptically.
“I sense judgment! Just because Gen’s job didn’t have a dress code doesn’t mean her information wasn’t reliable. Cops use informants who are strippers and addicts!”
Jane couldn’t argue that point. “What kind of woman was Gen? A gossip?”
“Absolutely not! She got the information however she got it. Gen wouldn’t lie to me. Her only weakness was a high-strung personality and nervous disposition.”
“How does a nervous woman get the guts to pose nude on a regular basis?”
“It was part of her therapy. And it worked! Much better than the drugs!”
“Drugs? She was a junkie?”
“No! A little pot to calm her down...occasionally a downer to get her relaxed....”
“You supplied these drugs to her?”
“No! She brought her own bag of stuff to our sessions!”
“Exactly how fucked up was she during the sessions?”
“She was calm...very calm...sometimes she’d nap.”
“She was unconscious?”
“Resting, is a better word.”
“Tell me, are her eyes open in any of the portraits you painted of her?”
“I painted them as open,” Kit begrudgingly conceded.
Jane shook her head in disgust. “Well, bump zaftig Gen off the ‘talk to’ list!”
“Because of the drugs!”
“Yes! You are so lucky you didn’t push to get her on that stand fourteen years ago or you’d have ended up with more guilt than you already have! All it would take was a savvy defense attorney to find out that she smoked dope and dropped downers—”
“You make Gen sound like the poster child for Woodstock! Anyway, it wouldn’t have worked for her to testify. She hated Lou. Didn’t trust him.”
“Why?”
“He judged her, of course, for her choice of work. She also didn’t care for his constant spiritual condemnation. On more than one occasion, he apparently took her aside when she was leaving my house and preached the gospel to her. Isaiah, Genesis, the book of John, Revelations. He’d go on chapter and verse. When she told him to shove it up his ass, she says he set his mind to disrupting her life.”
“How?”
“Little things. He left handwritten notes in her bag saying: ‘Jesus is watching you,’ ‘God loves the sinner but hates the sin.’ She also accused him of rooting through her bag and taking a photographic magazine that was full of black-and-white nudes. I guess he was doing what he thought he should do to take the Devil out of her life.”
“Was she able to prove Lou stole the magazine out of her bag? Or was Genevieve asleep when he did it?”
Kit rolled her eyes in silent contempt. “You can think whatever you wish about Gen. She was good people.”
“Okay, let’s say Lou did rape two other girls,” Jane deliberated out loud. “How did he meet them? What was their connection? Were the girls friends? Was it random?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Patterns, Kit. Remember? We’re looking for patterns. If Lou is the psycho you say he is, he’s developed patterns that he repeats or builds upon with each subsequent criminal act. Determining that pattern could possibly help us figure out if he nabbed Charlotte Walker.”
“Do you think it’s possible that the pattern could change drastically from someone he knows to someone he just happens upon?”
“Anything is possible. The question is whether it’s probable. And my experience has proven that if a pattern works for a criminal, he doesn’t change it.”
“You said a few people intrigued you. Who else?”
“Dr. John Bartosh,” Jane declared as she wound the Mustang around the rock-faced highway and passed Idaho Springs.
Kit’s mien appeared to shift into a dark space, rimmed with resentment. “Yes. He was quite the intriguing little man in this whole nightmare, wasn’t he?” There was a sudden, mean twist to Kit’s voice that didn’t escape Jane’s perceptive ear. “I assume you read all about his religious beliefs? Every single backward, preschool perception of God and how things work in this black-and-white world!” Kit’s ire was growing; her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened with each bitter memory of Bartosh.
“He’s definitely a fan of the gospel,” Jane said in an offhand manner.
“You mean, fanatic, don’t you?” Kit asked in a truculent tone, as if Jane wasn’t up to speed in regard to Dr. John Bartosh’s archaic world perspective.
“There was a tedium to his moral diatribe.”
“That’s putting it mildly! Jane, it went beyond his juvenile religious point of view! That asshole basically single-handedly orchestrated Lou’s release last year! Putting him on the stand as if he were a goddamned expert! That man is pure evil. He’s going to have a shitload of karma to deal with when he leaves this world!”
Jane couldn’t help but smile at Kit’s rancorous turnaround. “Evil, huh? Weren’t you the one who was just telling me that anger solves nothing and compassion is the key to understanding our fellow man? Hmm. What would Buddha do in a case like this?” Jane was purposely pushing Kit’s buttons.
Kit reeled in her emotions and let out a sigh. “What would Buddha do?”
Jane didn’t get the desired vitriolic retort she expected, but she wasn’t giving up. “Is it because Bartosh is a fundamentalist? If so, I thought you were all about loving everyone, no matter their sexual deviations, drug use, or warped psychological issues. Weren’t you the cool gal in Big Sur who didn’t judge anyone’s religion? Why doesn’t that apply to Dr. Bartosh? Maybe what you really mean to say is that you don’t judge more mystical religions like Buddhism—”
“Buddhism is not a religion. It’s a philosophy,” Kit quickly interjected.
“Don’t change the subject! If you say you don’t judge religion, then you damn well better embrace even the most fundamental of the fundamental Christians!”
Kit stared straight ahead. After a long minute, she spoke. “You’re right.” Jane looked closely at Kit to see if she was being sarcastic. She wasn’t. “If somebody wants to become a narrow-minded Christian Fundamentalist, so be it. I guess my main concern is Bartosh himself. I take umbrage with the way he created this image of being ‘the expert’ and selling that brand to law enforcement. He may well be a Biblical authority who can quote the Good Book verbatim. But that doesn’t mean he also has the insight to provide a clear, unbiased viewpoint of a psychologically damaged person like Lou in a court of law! He’s blind to Lou’s psychosis, Jane! Blind! He trusts in Lou’s innocence so deeply that he used Congregation money to put up his bond!”
Jane was stunned. “Bartosh paid Lou’s bond? You didn’t mention that!”
“I’m sorry. There’s just so much to this story....” Kit shifted in her seat. “But I think the fact that he did that shows you how committed he is to Lou being innocent! I guess what really pushes my buttons is that Bartosh consistently uses hardcore fear to perpetuate his dogma. There’s nothing more negatively motivating than fear!”
Motivating. The word triggered a recall for Jane. “Bartosh had monthly visits with Lou in prison. There was something about how he was Lou’s advisor, pastor, and ‘motivator for Jesus.’ What does that mean?”
“That’s one of the many pithy terms he uses. He urges his flock to become ‘motivators for Jesus’...to promote, provoke, do whatever they have to do in order to push their doctrine onto others. They all have this fervent need to convert as many people as they can as part of the ‘Great Commission from Christ.’”
“I thought The Lamb of God Congregation was just in Big Sur.”
“Oh, no. He’s apparently got a congregation going in Grand Junction. But that’s not all. Bartosh has devotees all over, thanks to his monthly newsletter and audiotapes. You should read one of those newsletters! The flagrant ranting! Anyone who doesn’t believe the doctrine is considered unclean and risks the hammer of God upon them.”
“The hammer of God?”
“Another one of his pithy sayings. It’s one of his favorites. He actually wrote an article years ago titled, ‘The Hammer of God Will Fall on All Sinners.’ Lou gave me a copy of it when I lived in Big Sur.”
“Why’d he give you a copy?”
“I don’t know. Why’d he take the nude photo magazine out of Genevieve’s bag? Lou liked to make his religious statements in a covert manner. I think he enjoyed a certain amount of subtle drama. His mind is complex and twisted.”
“What did Bartosh mean by the ‘hammer of God’?”
“Vengeance. ‘The hammer of God will befall you if you don’t follow His way.’”
“Is that ‘His’ with a capital ‘H’ or ‘his’ as in Bartosh?”
“Good question. I think Bartosh truly believes he speaks for God. So, perhaps ‘his way,’ is one in the same! He’s religiously arrogant and has managed to convince a helluva lot of people that his literal way is the only way to redemption. And I mean a very literal doctrine of the Bible. The Lamb of God Congregation leaves no room for interpretation. Their whole structure is built on a single level of toothpicks. There’s no texture. No tangents. And there’s certainly no questioning of anything once Bartosh has defined it! What a suffocating existence! It’s what Bartosh leaves out or simply refuses to see or acknowledge that makes him worthy of scrutiny, Jane.” Kit balled her fist and punctuated the air. “His religion is his identity. Do you truly understand what that means?” Jane glanced toward Kit, not appreciating the significance of her statement. “When your religion is your identity, questioning it is akin to questioning your existence.” Kit turned, staring out the window. “Threaten someone’s soul who believes the way he does and you threaten their life.” Kit pinched her lower lip as if she were trying to make sense of an elusive idea. “I can’t put my finger exactly on what it is about Bartosh that deeply bothers me. Maybe it’s his utter blindness. When I said Bartosh was pure evil, perhaps I misspoke. I don’t know if he’s evil by nature. But I do think he does evil things because he chooses not to see.”
Jane sensed that the whole discussion was causing Kit physical discomfort. “What do you say we take a break in a bit? I could use a smoke—”
“Yes. A break. Good idea.”
They agreed to stop at one of Kit’s favorite health food stores on the I-70 route. Getting off the highway at the Frisco exit, Jane’s desire for nicotine was only outdone by Kit’s craving for a cup of freshly juiced carrots. Kit ducked into Alpine Natural Foods as Jane took a deep drag on her cigarette. Mounds of recently plowed snow framed the area, creating a cocoon-like shelter. The high altitude mountain air was a startling change from the more moderately temperate Denver climate. A gust of icy wind swept across the parking lot, stinging Jane’s cheeks and causing her to wrap her leather jacket tightly around her chest. Her thoughts wandered and came to rest on the phone message that morning from Weyler and his offer to bring Jane back to DH with a promotion to sergeant. Had the
ball-buster Kenny Stephens been given the ol’ heave-ho? As much as Jane’s innate curiosity was piqued, she couldn’t bring herself to return Weyler’s call. There was too much water under the bridge. Too much pride. Jane sunk her left hand into her trouser pocket and made contact with the trio of sobriety chips. It suddenly occurred to her that by tomorrow at this time she would officially be six months sober. Six months. She took a long, hard drag on her cigarette. There’d be four chips rattling around in her pocket fairly soon. And yet, somewhere deep down, Jane didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment or pride. There was just a stone-cold emptiness that was hungry and needed to be filled.
The sudden buzz of her cell phone jerked Jane out of the self-imposed daze. Checking the incoming number, she noted a “541” area code that she didn’t recognize.
“This is Jane Perry,” she said with her usual cop edge.
“Jane? Hello! I’m glad I caught you!” The voice was unknown to Jane, but extremely cheerful and casual.
“Who’s this?” Jane asked.
“Oh, excuse me. It’s Chuck. Chuck Sawyer. I guess you and I need to talk.”
CHAPTER 9
“You there?”
Jane quickly got her thoughts together. “Yeah. I’m here.” She turned around to check if Kit was still in the health food store. “I didn’t expect to hear from you. I got the idea you retired.”
“Yeah, you figured right. I moved to a little town in Oregon with the wife. Real quiet. Farm people. Honest, good-hearted folk, you know?”
“Uh-huh,” Jane replied, not quite knowing what to say. She remembered Kit’s description of Chuck’s “lovely aura” that propelled him toward his Higher Self. Jane couldn’t believe that image actually crossed her mind as she lit a cigarette.
“The boys at the department still keep in touch with me,” Sawyer continued in an unaffected manner. “I got a call this morning and they told me about your message. They said it sounded sort of urgent.”
“Yeah.” Jane quickly attempted to figure out what angle she should take with Sawyer and how much she should divulge. “They’re reopening the Lou Peters case. I’m working solo, doing preliminary investigative work right now.”
