by Laurel Dewey
Based on the information that Hank and Jane found, Wanda had just been released from prison after serving a one-year sentence for theft and drug trafficking. She was living in a halfway house in northern New Mexico and that’s where Jane was headed before her life spun out of control. There was a part of Jane that wanted to sit across from Wanda and talk to her. But there was another part that wanted to run from her. She may have been Jane’s missing piece to her evolving puzzle, but that didn’t make the reality of meeting Wanda and revealing her splintered family tree any easier.
Harlan let out a loud, terrified cry. Jane shone the flashlight in his direction but he was sound asleep.
“No!” he shouted. “No, no, no, no…..” he mumbled. He held out his hand in front of him as if he were turning a doorknob and then quickly pulled back his hand. His breathing became labored as sweat beads formed across his forehead.
“Harlan!” Jane whispered with authority. He continued to make low grunts and open his mouth as if he were trying to take in more air. A word formed on his lips that sounded like French to Jane. She leaned closer, trying to hear it more clearly. “Benieu,” is what it sounded like. French, maybe? Harlan repeated the single word with more emphasis before shaking violently. Jane gently placed her hand on his leg in an attempt to calm him. Suddenly, a jolt of electricity pulsed through her body. A blurred series of staccato images raced in front of her. She quickly lifted her hand off his body and the pictures dissolved, along with the electrifying energy within her. “What the fuck…” she whispered. She stared at him for several long minutes as he shook, moaned and gasped in fear.
Retreating back to her fetal position on the front seat, Jane struggled with the reality of what she was up against. She could ditch Harlan the following day and trump up some story about how she found her Mustang abandoned on the side of the road when she returned to Denver. If her driver’s license was ever recovered from the bus crash, she could explain it away with some craftily engineered story. She didn’t have to help Harlan Kipple. But she knew that if she did ditch him on the side of the road, her conscience would never forgive her. His damn spirit would haunt her until the end of her days. And she’d spend the rest of her life asking, “What if?”
She sat up and snuck another look at him. He was settling back into peaceful slumber, temporarily relieved from the nightmare that gripped him. The foghorn snore resumed too, vibrating against the roof of the car. Jane let out a tired sigh. She thought again about how Harlan reminded her of a dim-witted puppy you rescue from the kennel. Against your better judgment, you take him home. But you know in the back of your mind you’re going to regret it. You know that puppy is going to piss everywhere. You know he’s going to forget where his dish is located. You know that when you throw the stick and tell him to fetch he’s going to look up at you with those big eyes and that panting mouth with that sloppy tongue hanging out and not have a fucking clue what in the hell you’re talking about. You’ll tell him to “sit” or “stay” but you might as well be speaking in Norwegian slang because he’ll never wrap his thick head around the concept. But by that time, you can’t take the stupid mutt back to the kennel because you know nobody else is going to want him and all they’ll do is euthanize the poor thing. So, you keep him around and you name him Killer or Rambo because somewhere deep down, you love the irony every time you call his name.
After a bit, you grow to love that dog, even though he eats you out of house and home and has to visit the vet every four months because he’s swallowed another rock from the backyard and if the vet doesn’t operate, he’ll die. But by now, he’s grown on you and you feel like nobody else can ever love him like you do. You know that if you were callous enough to dump him on the street, he’d be run over or poisoned from licking puddles of anti-freeze. And so the two of you dwell in the same space for as long as he’s meant to live. You become his protector and he becomes your greatest lesson. And the day you have to put him down, you cry like a baby and have to take a day off work because you suddenly realize how much you really loved him, even though he never learned to fetch or stop eating rocks. You recognize that what he lacked in intelligence, he more than made up for with his endearing heart. Then it hits you that it was that heart that attracted you to him in the first place when you saw him trapped in that cage at the kennel. He was pure and somehow you recognized that when no one else could. As long as you live, you’ll never forget him because you understand that anything or anyone with a pure heart is rare and should be cherished.
Jane settled back into the front seat. She brought out her cell phone and saw that there was still no coverage. It would take weeks if not months to identify all those burned and shredded bodies from the Anubus explosion. But when her ID was finally found in the debris field, Jane knew her cell would start ringing. And the first call would be Hank. He cared deeply for her and that scared the shit out of her. She couldn’t really understand why he loved her. What was there to love? She’d been trained by her cop father to see the world as a battleground and every fight that was won only led to another fight. It was exhausting but it was the only truth she knew. She was taught to shut down and take whatever abuse was handed to her. After a while, Jane stopped feeling the physical pain, even though the scars were obvious. She’d been on her own emotionally since her mother died in her arms when she was ten and after that, she was her brother’s keeper. But nobody took care of Jane. And that was acceptable because when you don’t know what love feels like, you don’t miss it. She might have seen the signs of love in a fleeting glance when she passed a couple holding hands or lovers locked in an embrace. But that was their reality, not hers. And so she spent the first thirty-seven years of her tortured life building a fortress that would protect her from love and the vulnerability that accompanied it.
Her detached heart had always been a quiet blessing to Jane. A cold comfort that reminded her of the dark world we spin around every day. It was easy to dive into a homicide case and use her mental prowess to solve it. Her heart was always present and engaged but stretching a healthy distance from the tragic interplays was vital for Jane’s sanity. However, that consoling ritual of separation had destroyed any chance of a meaningful personal interlude. Trust had always been the enemy because for Jane to do such a dangerous thing, she had to ignore the arguments in her head and fall heart first into the void. And when she fell, there would be nothing there but faith to catch her and the prayer that this time, for the first time, it wouldn’t end in a blaze of regret.
And yet, as hard as she fought it, it still happened. Somehow, the cosmos went off kilter and a planet must have turned retrograde, because out of nothing, Hank appeared in her life and gently worked his way into her caged soul. “You need an older man,” he told her with that youthful grin. “You’d weaken a younger one.” When she momentarily backed away from him, he would hold her and say, “Think with your heart, Jane.”
As their accidental attraction turned into more than a passing infatuation, Jane did allow her heart to open. But now that they’d been apart for a handful of days, the enemy known as the mind began to question everything. He was too good, she told herself. Pain had been replaced by passion, but that was always short lived, she lectured herself. It was only a matter of time before it imploded. Her head didn’t want to permit her heart to love. “Our fear of pain,” she once read, “is stronger than our love of love.”
So Jane did what she was programmed to do. She removed the battery from her cell phone and slid it, along with the phone, into the glove compartment. It was better this way, she told herself. Her ceremonial “death” was necessary, given the magnitude of the situation she was now committed to investigate.
Sleep came but it was sporadic and filled with cries and screams that didn’t belong to her. The only thing Jane could vaguely remember was the sense of a giant net descending over her and an encroaching fear that her life was about to turn upside down.
CHAPTER 7
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Jane felt the rising sun warm her cheek and stirred. Peering out the front window of the Mustang, the icy sheen of frosty crystals against the glass chilled her weary bones. A thin layer of spring snow covered the dirt. Within a few hours, it would be gone but Jane knew too well that April was a changeable month. Just when you think Colorado will accept the invitation, break the back of winter and cough up spring, it shows up to the party with a sudden blast of wet snow, crushing the warm days of renewal and promise. Spring is the gift for enduring winter’s penance but one has to earn that gift. Letting out a sigh, she saw her breath. This was insanity. They couldn’t hide out here another night. Besides food, Jane wanted a warm room and decent bed. She also desperately required wireless access so she could research all the cascading questions racing through her tired head.
The piercing sun streamed through the aspen grove, washing the white barked trees in a crystalline, golden light. Jane was drawn to one aspen tree and noticed what looked like an eye with Cleopatra kohl outlining it. Checking out the other aspens in the tight circle, she realized all of them shared the same mysterious, naturally occurring outline in the bark. How odd, she factored, that she’d never noticed it before. But now, the more she stared at the tall, slender trees washed in the luminous morning sun, that’s all she saw. “Eyes” everywhere, rimmed with black and staring at her.
She sat back and felt the shallow breathing take over. It was a callback to the past when taking in too much air felt dangerous. Jane glanced in the rearview mirror at herself. Dark circles were evident as was a generally haggard appearance. She wasn’t bouncing back from a rough night like she used to. While Harlan continued to snore and sleep in the backseat, Jane brought out a piece of paper and jotted down what they needed. She knew there would be a lot of eyes out there looking for her classic ride. Staying off the main highways was a necessity but that would sure as hell slow the trip down to New Mexico. But first things first. She nudged Harlan in the leg. It took another harder push to awaken him. “Come on, Harlan,” Jane stressed. “Wake the hell up!”
After he relieved himself outside the car and stretched his rotund podgy frame, Jane directed him back into the back seat and covered him with blankets, coats and anything else she could find. “No matter what happens,” she warned him, “stay under those blankets until I tell you it’s safe.”
They motored down the dirt path and back onto the frontage road. About a mile later on the left side, Jane stopped the Mustang and told Harlan to stay put. She grabbed a screwdriver from her tool chest in the trunk and turned to the acres of trashed cars and dead trucks that littered the area. Jumping the rickety fence, she entered the lonely lot and scanned one vehicle after another. When she found a relatively clean looking, out-of-state license plate, she removed it from the vehicle. By the time she returned to the Mustang, she had four decent plates from four different states. She decided on the one from California, and carefully peeling off the tags from her own plates, Jane reapplied them to the bogus ones. After screwing the plate onto her car, she stepped back to briefly admire her handiwork. This was the beginning of the subterfuge, she warned herself.
“We’re making a stop in about half an hour,” Jane told Harlan, who was still buried underneath the blankets.
“Food?” he mumbled.
“Later. We’ve got more important things on our plate.”
It took longer than half an hour because all the side roads and back roads chewed up more time. She drove into the parking lot at 9:15 that morning where The Tat Palace was located and glanced around the vacant area. Like other areas, it had been hit by the economic downturn, leaving more abandoned businesses to choke out the ones that were still gasping for their financial futures. The Tat Palace was on life support but then again, just like bars, the customers don’t normally congregate until afternoon or evening. From what she could discern from the solo pickup truck in the parking lot, Alex, the owner of the place, was the only one inside. Jane drove the Mustang around back and parked it in a shaded spot away from any prying eyes. She donned her leather jacket and pulled out a Rockies ball cap she found underneath the passenger seat. “Wait here one second,” she advised Harlan, donning the cap and pulling it down so that it hid her eyes. She grabbed her leather satchel and got out of the car, tracing the building for security cameras. As Jane expected, there was only one by the side entrance. Returning to the Mustang, she helped Harlan extricate himself from the car and, after covering his head with a blanket so that only his eyes showed, she led him to the door of the business.
Once inside, there was a small anteroom with a heavy black velvet curtain that separated them from the main room. Jane closed the door quietly and locked it, pulling down the greasy curtain for extra security and turning the sign so it read “closed.” Using hand signals, she motioned for Harlan to wait for her and to be quiet. Peeking through the black velvet curtain, Jane could see that Alex wasn’t in the main room. With stealthy precision, Jane entered the windowless room and waited. The walls were filled floor to ceiling with six-inch square cards that displayed the available artwork that Alex Delaney could ink onto your body for a ridiculously high fee. A small sign above the door to the back room read: I’d Rather Be Pissed Off Than Pissed On! Jane could hear the low hum of a radio playing heavy metal in the background and the sound of footsteps.
“Christ on a cracker, Perry!” Alex said, as he walked in. “What in the fuck are you doing here?”
“You sound just like my second cousin last year when I crashed the family reunion,” Jane calmly retorted.
Alex stood his ground—all five foot seven of his tough, life-beaten body. The forty year old’s greasy black hair was pulled back in a half-ass ponytail and his flesh was covered with so many tattoos that he looked like a walking mural. Even though Alex had been rotating in Colorado most of his adult life, he still retained the Boston edge in his voice. “Whatever the fuck it is, I didn’t do it!” He started to retreat back into the back room.
“Hey! We’re not done. I gotta talk to you!” Jane insisted.
He eyed her carefully. “You look like shit.”
“Keep this up, Alex, and I’m gonna feel like you’re my extended family that I never talk to.”
“You look shook up. You back bending your elbow again?”
Jane regarded Alex with a thick-skinned stare. She turned slightly to the black curtained area, hoping to hell that Harlan couldn’t hear everything. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on. Word on the street was that you put down the bottle.”
“The street, huh? Must be a slow news day on the street.” She needed to move forward. “Look, here’s the—”
“You used to buy whiskey by the case!”
Jane took several steps toward Alex. “You buy bread by the slice?” She scanned the area quickly. “We’re alone, right?”
Alex eyed her cautiously. “Yeah…”
“You got cameras in here or in the back room?”
“Nothin’ in the back. Got one in the corner over there.” He pointed to a small camera in the corner behind Jane’s head.
“Turn it off. And turn off the outside one while you’re at it.”
“What the fuck’s goin’ on here, Perry?”
“Do it!”
“Why?” Alex moved toward her. “What have you ever done for me?”
“Oh, hell, that’s rich! If it weren’t for me, you’d still be serving time for fraud. I went to bat for you with the judge. You got five years plus time served instead of ten years because of me. So, yeah, Alex, you do owe me.”
“Motherfucker…” he mumbled under his breath as he flipped off the security feed. “Okay. It’s off. State your business.”
“My friend and I need some ID—”
“Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me, Perry? I could go back to prison for this—”
“Well, we need to move past that—”
“Move past that? Wha
t? Have you jumped to the dark side?”
“Not yet. Look, how long is it going to take for a few IDs?”
He looked her straight in the eye. “I got out of the business.”
Jane couldn’t believe how obvious the lie looked. “Bullshit. I can smell your laminator in the back room!”
Alex pulled back, his eyes showing pinpricks of fear but his face doing everything to hide it. “Is this a set up? Is that what this is? You tryin’ to trap me?”
“I don’t have a lot of time, Alex. I need some good, fake IDs and you’re going to make that happen for me.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Oh, fuck…” Jane hated having to dish out threats. “How about what if you do? Here’s my offer. If you agree to help me—and you will—I will personally make the phone call and get your little brother transferred to a prison that is closer to you and your mother. It sucks driving more than two hundred miles to see him, right? And your mom? Last I heard, she’s not doing well—”
