Premonition (Detective Jade Monroe 4)

by C. M. Sutter

My desk phone rang. “Hello, Sergeant Jade Monroe, how can I help you?”

  “Sergeant Monroe, it’s Kate Pierce.”

  My smile instantly soured, and I was sure my impatience came through in my voice. I didn’t have the time or energy to tolerate Kate’s alleged premonitions. In my opinion, she was one of the most recent North Bend kooks. I drummed my fingers on an unfiled stack of papers and checked the time. She'd get five minutes and not a second more.

  “Good morning, Kate. What’s up?”

  “Can I come in and talk to you? The dream I had last night was so vivid and terrifying. It has to be a premonition. I have a bad feeling about this one.”

  “Kate, you’ve had a bad feeling about the last several dreams you called in, and nothing came of them. I have a busy day ahead of me.”

  The silence on the other end of the phone line was deafening and made me uncomfortable. I’d dealt with our local paranormal on several occasions, and in my mind, she was a charlatan and a cheesy psychic, at best. The booth she had at every carnival, festival, and work party proved it to me. I did better working with real people with real issues, not ghosts, dreams, and hunches.

  “This dream was different, Sergeant. It’s not my intention to waste your time. Please, just give me ten minutes. I’ve already written everything down.”

  “Send it to me in an email, and I promise to read it. I have court today and a mountain of paperwork to clear off my desk.”

  “I suppose if there’s no other way. It’s about a young woman who ran out of gas on—”

  “Kate, just email it to me. I really have to go. Good-bye.” I clicked off just as Jack entered the bull pen.

  Billings was still laughing as he filled my coffee mug and his own.

  “What did I miss?” Jack asked as he plopped down on his chair.

  “You’d know if you weren’t the last to arrive at work every day.”

  “Ouch.” Jack gave me a frown then looked at Billings and Clayton. “What’s up her rear?”

  Clayton rolled his eyes. “Kate Pierce, that’s what.”

  Jack ducked when I threw a piece of balled-up paper at him. He laughed when I missed him and hit Billings square in the face with it.

  I apologized. “Sorry, Adam. That wasn’t meant for you.” I made a face at Jack. “Why doesn’t she call you instead? She’s single, you’re single, you’re both cute and close in age—sounds like a match made in heaven to me.”

  “Or not. I consider myself someone with at least half a brain and would hate to be ridiculed for lacking sound judgment. She’s kind of flaky, you know.” Jack took off his sports jacket and slipped it over the chair back. He filled his brown ceramic mug and returned to his desk. “Anyway, back to you. Looks like you have quite the messy desk, Sergeant. Need any help clearing it?”

  Jack’s dimpled grin always softened me. “Sure. Thanks, partner.” I handed him a stack of papers to file away, then dug back in.

  Ten fifteen arrived before I knew it. After a decent dent was made in my filing thanks to Jack’s help, my desk phone rang. John from upstairs was calling to say they were loading Mandy into the van to take her to the courthouse. I thanked him, clicked off, and told Jack we had to go. With the courthouse being at the west side of the block of county buildings, it was a five-minute walk outside before we’d enter a long corridor filled with government offices. All of the courtrooms were on the second floor.

  “We’re leaving soon, Jack, just a heads-up.”

  He nodded and took a stack of files to the records room down the hall.

  Fifteen minutes later, with my jacket collar pulled up around my neck and the buttons securely fastened, Jack and I headed into the mid-morning chill and took the long sidewalk to the courthouse annex.

  I had seen Mandy several times since her arrest early in September. With the jail located on the second floor of the sheriff’s department, I had stopped in to talk to her twice at her request. She’d asked if her family had received proper burials, and I had explained how Mariah and Alice, her sister and mother, had been cremated at the county’s expense. Her father, Dean, on the other hand, had been transported to Medford, where his sister and brother-in-law laid him to rest at the cemetery in town. That bit of information seemed to satisfy her. She also wanted to know what would happen to her after the trial. I explained that those were questions she needed to discuss with her court-appointed attorney, not me.

  Jack pressed the button for the up elevator. Four people stood against the walls and nodded when we entered, and the doors closed behind us. Courtroom 2-E was the fifth courtroom down the marble-floored hallway on our left. Hushed conversations lingered in the halls as people waited outside their courtrooms for their cases to be heard. I checked the docket on the wall next to our courtroom door, and Mandy’s case was still set for eleven o’clock. Jack and I took a seat on a nearby bench and waited.

  Chapter 3

  I checked the time on my cell phone before powering it down. I reminded Jack to shut his off too. The courtroom door would be opening any minute, and we’d be ushered in. The crowd of people gathering in front of courtroom 2-E grew as we waited. Some were family members of the victims, and some were curious strangers wanting to hear morbid details as the evidence was presented. They wanted seats at the trial of the year. I was surprised they didn’t show up with bags of popcorn in hand. I recognized several people waiting to enter along with us. The families of victims Larry Taylor, David Smith, and John Leiter were all there. Betty, the post office clerk, who had helped in apprehending Mandy, and the postmaster, James McHenry, were among the crowd. Jack and I chatted with a few of them while we waited. Farther down the hallway, reporters were preparing to make their initial broadcasts. This trial was front-page news in every newspaper in southeast Wisconsin.

  The courtroom door opened, and people funneled in. The bench seats filled quickly. From a side door, Mandy entered, led in by a deputy. She wore an orange jumpsuit, white socks, and black rubber sandals. Shackles caused her to shuffle into the courtroom with slow, small steps. Her dyed-blond hair had grown out a bit, and dark roots covered the top of her head. She appeared haggard and older looking than her young age. I saw her search the crowd of people for a familiar face. She smiled when her eyes met mine. That tugged at my heartstrings, yet I knew I had a job to do. Innocent families wanted justice.

  Mandy’s handcuffs were removed once she was seated next to her attorney, and a plastic cup of water was placed in front of her. Court was called to order, and everyone rose when Judge Cocker entered the courtroom and took the bench. The first day of Mandy’s trial began.

  The testimonies Jack and I gave covered that eventful day several months back. It began with the scene at the post office, with Mandy’s sister, Mariah, holding me at knifepoint and ended when Mandy shot her own mother in the Blakely home. Betty from the post office was called to testify and had to relive the events from that day as well. Mandy’s taped interview in the interrogation room at the sheriff’s department was played for all to see. The psychiatrist Mandy had been assigned to, Deanna Livingston, also testified as an expert witness. Her opinion, as well as my own, was that Mandy was a deeply disturbed young lady and should be committed to an institution rather than a prison for hardened criminals.

  Jack and I returned to the bull pen at three o’clock and told the condensed version of how the trial had gone that day.

  “Your desk phone rang a half dozen times since you’ve been gone, Jade. You probably have a few messages,” Clayton said, giving me a heads-up.

  “Thanks, Chad.” I chuckled and rolled my eyes when he grinned from ear to ear. He wasn’t used to me calling him by his first name. “Anyone want coffee besides me? I really need some right now.”

  They mumbled their affirmative responses. I started a twelve cupper then dropped back into my chair. I picked up my desk phone and listened to the messages.

  “Whatever.”

  With a jiggle of the mouse, I woke up my computer and logged in
. Using the roller wheel, I scrolled down until I found Kate’s email from that morning.

  Jack raised his right brow in question. “What’s wrong?”

  “The messages were all from Kate Pierce wanting to know if I’ve read the email she sent this morning. I told her I had a busy day ahead of me, yet she takes it upon herself to leave three messages asking if I’ve read it yet. She’s seriously getting on my nerves.”

  Billings winked at me and piped in, “Well, have you read them?”

  I shot him the stink eye. “Guess I am now. I’ll let her know to contact you from now on.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Billings smirked and filled my mug.

  I thanked him and took a sip. As I leaned in and rested my head in my hand, I went over the four-paragraph description of the dream Kate had last night.

  “Geez…there’s a lot of information here for a dream. Thank goodness she isn’t credible. If she were, we’d be chasing bad guys nonstop.”

  Jack tapped his pen against his desk and huffed. “We already do, don’t we?”

  “So, what’s she saying?” Clark asked as he joined in on our conversation.

  “It’s her typical ranting, boss. A young lady’s car runs out of gas in the middle of the night on a remote country road. She’s picked up by a stranger in a truck—a bad guy, of course—and that leads to him slitting her throat in a cornfield somewhere.” I looked back at Clark leaning against the doorframe of his office. I groaned. “Fine, I’ll check to see if there’s been a young blond woman reported missing in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Thanks, Jade. You just never know. One of these days, she might surprise you with something credible.” Clark returned to his office and sat at his desk. His chair let out a sigh.

  I checked the missing-persons reports for the city and county during the last forty-eight hours just to be sure. Nothing popped. I went back to my cleaning.

  At five o’clock, I slung my purse over my shoulder, nodded with approval at my sparkling clean and organized desk, and packed up to go home. My workday always exceeded nine hours, and that was on a good day. When we had real cases to work on, fifteen-hour days weren’t unheard of. I was going to take advantage of the opportunities to go home on time when I could.

  “Night, guys. See you in the morning.” I bundled up and looked toward the sky as I walked to my car. Puffy gray clouds against the darkening palette reminded me of the cold months that lay ahead. The short winter days and bone-chilling nights were right around the corner.

  Chapter 4

  Kate

  Kate tossed and turned throughout the night. Her sleep was fitful, interrupted with horrific nightmares. A man appeared, relentless in his pursuit and hungry to kill. His eyes were dark, beady, and full of malice. He chased a woman and never tired. She’d hide, and he’d find her. Her screams went unanswered as she cried out for help.

  Once again, Kate woke, soaking wet and gasping. She reached for her neck to make sure she wasn’t bleeding, then turned toward the clock—2:57 a.m.

  With a reach across the bed, she twisted the knob on the milk-glass nightstand lamp and illuminated the room. She rubbed her temples then got up. For the second time in two nights, Kate stripped the wet pillowcase from the pillow and replaced it with a dry one. She opened the third drawer of her dresser and pulled out a clean flannel nightgown and slipped it over her head.

  In the kitchen, Kate opened the bottom cabinet and pulled out the teakettle, filled it with filtered water from the refrigerator, and set it on the stove. She turned the burner to the highest flame, opened the box of Sleepynight tea, and placed one bag in a waiting cup.

  Her fingers instinctively went to her neck. She touched those raised scars, and a rush of memories came back. Why was she dreaming of him again? It had been years since that night—ten years to be exact. She pulled the calendar off the wall and checked. Ten years to the week since he randomly attacked her and tried to end her life.

  Her mind took her back to that fall night, a night impossible to forget. If only she hadn’t decided to walk home from the bar alone. Her apartment was close, only a few blocks away, but they were the longest blocks of her life. He appeared out of nowhere with a knife. She tried to fight him off, but he was strong and vicious. Robert Lynch tried to kill her and nearly succeeded. She had the scars to prove it. She wondered if these recent dreams manifested themselves because of her anxiety about his upcoming release or if they were actual premonitions. As a psychic that had worked with law enforcement in the past, Kate felt an obligation to report her dreams to the local authorities, even though they dismissed her as unbelievable.

  In the morning, she would call the prison in Atlanta. She knew he was due to be paroled in a few days. She drank her tea and reluctantly went back to bed, hoping for sleep.

  After a restless night, Kate woke to a seemingly normal morning. She sat at the small two-person table wedged in the corner between the kitchen and living room and looked over the notes she had written four hours earlier. The violent dreams she’d had lately weren’t typical, and they shook her to the core. With his description written on paper, she knew the man in last night’s dream wasn’t Robert, or at least the man wasn’t how she remembered him looking. She flipped the page back to the entry from the morning before and realized the man’s description was the same in both dreams. Although the dreams represented the nightmare she had lived through when she was twenty-three, maybe the dreams weren’t about her after all. She wondered if there actually was a killer out there now committing those same type of crimes against innocent women.

  In the bathroom, she lingered in the shower. The hot spray pelleted her back and relaxed her knotted shoulders.

  A bowl of cereal was plenty for breakfast; she had somewhere to be. If a face-to-face with Sergeant Monroe was the only way to get her attention, that was what Kate intended to do.

  Chapter 5

  “Whatcha doing?” I asked. Amber sat at the breakfast bar, her hand a flurry of motion as she wrote. I leaned over her shoulder and took a look. “You’re planning the Thanksgiving dinner menu already?”

  “Of course I am, it’s only ten days away. I want to make everyone happy, meaning Dad has to tell me his favorite side dishes, and so do you. Is anyone else coming over?”

  “Not that I’ve planned, unless you want to go all out and have a real family turkey day.”

  Amber smirked. “If you mean having Dad and Bruce together at the table, I’ll pass. Dad knows how much Bruce creeps me out. Or do you want to invite Lance and Cassie, your ex and his girlfriend, to spend the day with us? Maybe all of them?”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so. How about you, me, and Dad? Easy peasy, right? We can have the usual fare, turkey, stuffing, and pie. That sounds perfect to me.”

  “I’m still going to call Dad and see what his favorite sides are. I can’t wait until he’s here. I’m going to pick his brain about everything related to law enforcement.”

  I laughed. “Um… I’m right here. You can pick my brain whenever you want. Anyway, shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?” I glanced at the clock on the microwave.

  “Yeah, in a second. I have to feed Spaz. Thanks so much for putting up that outdoor pen for him.”

  I watched fondly as my sister stroked her beloved cat. “He’s really come around, don’t you think?”

  She grinned. “Yep, and we aren’t going to go through that again, are we, Spaz? You’re such a naughty cat.”

  The cat purred and rubbed against Amber’s leg. I headed down the hallway, entered my bathroom, and turned on the shower. As the water heated, I picked out my wardrobe for the day.

  Forty minutes later, I called out to Amber as I packed my necessities, filled my travel mug with coffee, and headed to the garage. “See you later, Sis.”

  Her response echoed down the hallway even though I couldn’t make out her words. I assumed the gibberish was Amber saying good-bye and making sure Spaz was indoors. The meow coming from the living room t
old me he was safe and secure on the couch. I closed the kitchen door tightly behind me and grumbled as I got into my Mustang and cranked the heater up to the highest setting. I backed down the driveway and sped away.

  Thoughts of next spring, and the type of flowers I would plant near the woods, popped into my head. I imagined a new patio set too and chairs that had thick floral cushions. The image made me smile until I saw tiny flakes of snow hit the windshield of my car. Maybe I’d pick my dad’s brain too but not about law enforcement. I wondered what it would feel like to live somewhere with twelve months of summer. The San Bernardino area sounded really good, especially this time of year.

  I pulled into the parking lot, killed the engine, and entered the sheriff’s department. Jan was already sipping her morning brew, and it smelled delicious. I noticed a bud vase on the counter. A single red rose stood elegantly in the slender glass tube.

  “What’s that about?” I grinned when Jan blushed.

  “I had a date last night, that’s all. I’m not making a big deal about it yet.”

  “Well, in my opinion, he’s on the right track. Make the woman feel special right out of the gate. You’ll keep me posted?”

  A wide grin spread across Jan’s face. “Of course I will.”

  We exchanged our usual morning gossip and talked about the cold morning, then I tapped the code into the security door and entered the bull pen. I dumped my purse off at my desk and hung my coat in the closet. Jamison and Horbeck updated me on the overnight activities. They had nothing much to report other than checking on an alarm that went off at Sanfrony Auto Mall and a domestic disturbance just outside Jackson City that several of our deputies took care of. The night had been quiet, they said, and I was thankful for that.

  Jack entered the bull pen at eight o’clock, and I had to do a double take. He gave me the “sorry, partner” expression when I noticed who followed him in. Kate Pierce was right on his heels.