Protector. Part 16

"Watch over?"

"You're going to be the only one left who can protect him. He's not as strong as you are. He'll never be as strong as you. You've got to make sure he's always safe. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?" Jane stole a glance outside the window at her father as he angrily shoveled a pile of snow and yelled over at Mike. She lowered her head. "Jane? Do you understand what I'm asking you to do? You do whatever it takes to protect him. Whatever it takes, Jane. Will you promise me that?"

"Okay. But Mama, you can't leave us. I still need you."

"I can't do it anymore, Jane."

"You want me to be strong but you won't do the same for me! It's not fair!"

"No, it's not fair. But there it is." Anne winced in pain as she grabbed Jane's hand even tighter than before. "You promised me, right?"

"Yes, Mama, I promise."

Jane watched helplessly as an enormous wave of pain entered her mother's body. Pavarotti swelled into the climactic finale of "Nessun Dorma," "Vincero! Vincero! Vincero!" he sung with an unsettling fervor. "Vincero!" Anne whispered, wincing in pain. "You must seek that in your life, Jane. Vincero!"

"Do you want me to get Dad?" Jane asked, terrified.

"No!" Anne yelled. "Pull me up!"

Jane grabbed on to Anne's wrists and pulled her forward. Once her mother was in a sitting position, Jane quickly slid pillows behind her back to support her. "What is it?" Jane said, her voice shaking. Anne's body went into a mild seizure as her eyes fixated on the wall. "Mama, please, don't do this! Mama? Don't do this!"

The more Jane pleaded, the more her mother's seizure grabbed hold of her body until the spasms became unrelenting. Anne jerked her head forward, opened her mouth and projectile vomited the soup across the sheets. She started to choke and gasp for air when a surge of energy enveloped her chest. A gush of blood spewed from her throat, covered her white cotton nightgown and dribbled down her chin. Jane stood paralyzed. The smell was acrid and toxic. Anne held her arms out in front of her with her palms upward and whispered in a rattled voice, "Take me . . ." With that, her head tilted backward against the pillows. There was a futile gasp for air and then nothing.

The silence lay heavy in the room. All Jane could hear was the swift beat of her heart and the shallow breaths she was taking. Her mother lay frozen in the moment, arms against the sheets with her palms facing the ceiling. Her head bent back, mouth open and pooled full of blood; her eyes wide open and dead. Jane looked outside to where her father was shoveling snow, completely unaware of what just happened. It was at that point when Jane looked down at her shirt and found bright red splatters of her mother's blood across the fabric. She reached over and gingerly tried to close Anne's eyes. But no matter how hard she pressed her fingers against her mother's rubbery eyelids, she could not get them to stay shut.

A few hours later, from her perch on the staircase, Jane watched the mortician and his a.s.sistants slip her mother's emaciated body into a heavy dark plastic bag and zip it shut with a quick jerk. Dale stayed outside smoking cigarettes. After they left, the house seemed cold and full of strange echoes.

The graveside service was quick and over before it started. There were no speeches or tributes-just an abbreviated prayer from the minister and then they lowered the casket. Only a few of her dad's fellow detectives were there-not because he invited them but because they had found out on their own and made the long drive out to the cemetery. There was no gathering afterward. No sandwiches. No soft whispers. No chance to catch your breath. Within days, everything that belonged to Anne Perry was gone from the house. Dale washed down everything with bleach-the walls, the floors, the shelves. "Gotta get rid of the G.o.dd.a.m.n stench," he angrily announced. The house was sterile. Not even her scent was allowed to linger. "She's gone," Dale told Jane and that was that. Dale only took one day off work and allowed the same for Jane and Mike. There were homicide cases to solve and he was needed back at Denver Headquarters. Three days after Anne died, there was no trace that she had lived.

It was the end of Anne Perry and it was always the end of Jane's occasional dream. When Jane awoke, a sense of coldness overcame her.

The early morning light filtered through the living room curtains, casting a creamy lemon glow across the couch where Emily lay fast asleep in the crook of Jane's arm. Jane snuck a look at a nearby clock. 7:45. Too d.a.m.n early. Her head pounded relentlessly-a physical consequence of cold turkey sobriety. She carefully pulled her arm out from underneath Emily's head. The child stirred before going back to sleep. Jane sat up and rubbed her forehead, trying in vain to push back the pulsating pain. It was then that she realized her hand was shaking. She stared at her trembling hand as if it belonged to someone else. Finally, the tremor stopped. The day wasn't starting off well. At least, Jane surmised, the disturbing, staccato visions had thankfully stopped.

She stood up, taking care not to make any sudden movements that would wake Emily. The soft morning light slowly expanded, illuminating the entire room with a gentle warmth. Jane canva.s.sed the room, taking in every silent detail. She tried to imagine Patricia and David Lawrence sitting on the couch bent over a line of cocaine. The more Jane attempted to force the scene into her head, the more ridiculous it felt. She had never met Emily's parents and yet, she felt she knew them intimately. They were still in the walls, the floor and the fabric of the house. Their energy occupied every seam. Most of all, their imprint was cast upon their daughter. It was a difficult feeling for Jane to distinguish, let alone explain to others. Suffice it to say that their essence lingered and that essence was not resonating a c.o.ked up persona.

Jane felt the need to poke around the room. She walked up onto the landing, brushing her hand against the desk that sat against the staircase. Something called out to her gut that she could not comprehend. There was a strange pull that tugged on her senses, like the eight ball dropping into the corner pocket with a resounding plop. It was the solution to the riddle. It was so close and yet so hidden. The more Jane tried to catch hold of what she was feeling, the farther it slipped from her mental grasp.

Her eyes came to rest again on the liquor cabinet across the room. She moved toward it, quietly creeping across the rug. The cherrywood unit held five shelves of every imaginable alcoholic beverage-everything from Dewar's Scotch to Bailey's Irish Cream. She scanned the bottles and noticed something odd on the E&J Brandy bottle. About an inch above the alcohol level there was a black pen mark that looked to be from a thick tipped permanent marker. A careful examination of a nearby Smirnoff vodka bottle showed the same type of black mark on the bottle. Jane scanned every other bottle in the cabinet and found the same markings.

Who marks liquor bottles? Not the drinker. The one who marks the bottles is the one who feels a need to track their partner's habits. Jane always regarded the act as a somewhat pa.s.sive/aggressive type of conduct. So what if you mark the bottles and you note a change, she thought. It just proves what you knew already. Then what do you do? Show your partner the bottle with the black marks and raise h.e.l.l? What's that supposed to accomplish? Jane scowled with derision at the cabinet. From the little Emily had said about her parents, it seemed that the child made mention of her father's "smell of liquor." That could only mean that the pen-wielding culprit was Patricia. Jane found it even more difficult to pin the label of "c.o.ke fiend" onto Patricia. A woman who takes the time to mark liquor bottles is probably not allowing cocaine in the house.

Jane started to turn away when she spied what looked like a plastic baggie protruding from a dark corner of the top shelf. She strained to make it out but between the lighting and various bottles, it was impossible. The front door was locked but Jane knew the key couldn't be far away. As a teenager, she learned to first skim her hand across the top edge of any liquor cabinet. That was the first place where parents stashed keys. No luck with this cabinet, however. The second most popular place to hide the key was underneath the unit, secured with a piece of tape. Jane knelt down. Without her realizing it, Emily quietly awoke just as Jane was probing underneath the cabinet. Emily didn't move a muscle. As Jane got up empty-handed, Emily quickly shut her eyes, pretending to be asleep.

"s.h.i.t," Jane whispered to herself. "Where are you?" Jane wedged her hand across the rear left side of the cabinet and ran her fingers up and down the cabinet. Emily opened her eyes and took in the scene. Jane switched to the right side of the unit and continued to search. Suddenly, her hand hit a taped protrusion. Jane peeled the tape off of the object and pulled a key from behind the cabinet. She gently unlocked the door and slid her hand across the top shelf of the cabinet toward the suspicious protrusion. She grasped it awkwardly and began pulling on it. From Emily's perspective, Jane's actions took on a dubious appearance. Jane continued to tug on the plastic baggie until it gave way and she was able to remove it. What looked from the outside as a hidden baggie of contraband turned out to be a three by five inch size card inside the plastic baggie that outlined Five Handy Tips to Preserve the Fine Wood Finish on Your New Wood Cabinet . "Oh, for G.o.d's sake," Jane whispered to herself.

Emily continued to observe the scene, still unsure what to think. Jane replaced the plastic baggie, locked the cabinet and secured the key back into its taped spot. Emily decided it was time to "wake up" and let out a fake yawn. Jane turned around just as Emily opened her eyes.

"Hi," Emily said.

"Hi," Jane replied. The two stared at each other amidst an awkward silence. "What are you doing?" Emily asked with care.

"Just looking around."

"Oh." Emily was not convinced.

"You awake?"

"Yes."

"I need to ask you a question." Jane sat on the couch as Emily worked her way up. "I know you're a very observant kid. This is going to sound odd, but did you ever catch your dad or your mother sniffing something up their nose?"

"Sniffing . . . Like smelling, you mean?" Emily said, not quite grasping the idea.

"No . . . like snorting. Maybe off a plate or the top of their hand?"

"You mean cocaine?"

Jane stopped for a second. "Yeah . . . You know what that is?"

"Sure. I've seen it."

"Where?"

"On TV."

"TV? What kind of shows did your folks let you watch?" Jane said, a slight indignant tone creeping into her voice.

"I've seen Cops a bunch of times. People are always getting in trouble for having cocaine on that show. But they're always from Florida and California."

"Is that right? No one from Denver, Colorado?"

"No. They only showed the cops in Denver a couple times and that was just all about people getting drunk and driving their cars into trees and one park bench."

"I see. So, the only place you've ever seen cocaine is on Cops?"

"Yeah. But only when they're in Florida and California."

"Right. Denver just has the drunks. Okay." Jane stood up, rifling through her jacket in search of a cigarette.

"Are you gonna ask me if my dad was a drunk?"

Jane lit her cigarette. "No."

"Oh." Emily glanced at the liquor cabinet, then back to Jane. "'Cause if you were going to ask me that, I'd say yes."

"That's not important to me." Jane moved toward the kitchen. "What do you usually eat for breakfast?"

"I think that's why Mommy took me on that camping trip. She wanted to get away. He got really drunk a lot this year."

"It's not important, Emily," Jane said succinctly.

"But it was important. Every time they fought, Mommy would always say something about how daddy was drinking too much and making bad . . ." Emily searched for the word. "Decisions . . ." She turned her head to the side and furrowed her brow. "Hey . . . you know what?" It was as if a lightbulb started to go from dim to bright. "Mommy and Daddy were fighting that night. I was in my room and I heard their voices get louder." Emily looked at Jane. "Is that when I went in the closet?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

As quickly as Emily's memory wrapped around that moment in time, it abruptly ended.

Jane managed to whip up a mediocre breakfast of scrambled eggs and half-burnt toast. Instead of her usual no frills coffee, she had to settle for the Sumatra Blend from Starbucks. Emily poked at her breakfast with her fork, arranging the eggs in little piles across her plate.

"Stop playing with your food," Jane admonished. "If you don't want to eat it, there's always cold pizza."

"For breakfast? No, thanks. I'll eat this. It's just not how Mommy makes it-"

"Well, that's because I'm not Mommy!" Jane brusquely got up from the table and washed off her plate. Her teeth clenched. What she wouldn't give for a taste of whiskey. Her sudden sobriety was playing havoc with her senses. Lights were brighter, sounds were more intrusive and time seemed to drag.

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," Emily said softly.

"You didn't hurt my feelings," Jane said abruptly.

"Then how come you're mad?"

Jane turned to Emily. "Look, kid, it's too d.a.m.n early in the morning for this. You done with your food?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, go upstairs and get dressed."

Emily slid off the kitchen chair and headed toward the stairs via the kitchen hallway route. Jane stood at the sink in a half-daze. Suddenly, the sound of her cell phone pierced the silence. She tossed her cigarette into the sink and followed the annoying chirp-chirp ring to her jacket pocket that lay over the living room couch.

"Yeah?" Jane answered the phone.

"Jane, it's me," said Sergeant Weyler. "Can you talk freely?"

"Yeah, sure."

"What's happening?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

"No memories?"

"Not unless you count 'Mommy and Daddy were fighting. ' "

"Fighting about what?"

"Who the f.u.c.k knows?"

"It could be important. Ask her more about it."

"People fight. So what?" Jane wandered over toward the staircase where the desk stood. She wove looping patterns into the surface with her finger.

"We have to start making connections, Jane. Maybe they were fighting about drugs. I know you think that cocaine was a dead lead-"

"This has nothing to do with c.o.ke!" Jane said, guarding her voice so Emily couldn't hear. "I asked the kid point blank. The only c.o.ke she's ever seen is on Cops."

"What cops?"

"The television show? Well, it's not on PBS, so of course, you've never seen it."

"What makes you think Emily would be aware of her parents doing c.o.ke?"

"Kids know things. They may not tell their friends about it but they know things. They see things. Any guy who traffics in the amount of c.o.ke that was left behind that night would be sloppy as s.h.i.t. This kid doesn't miss one d.a.m.n thing. She watches you and I mean, she watches you f.u.c.king constantly! There's no way her parents could hide a c.o.ke habit that stretched into late night deals that turned sour." Jane ran her hand over the top of the desk that held the cubby holes. "Look, none of it makes any sense. It's like I told you. The whole crime scene was misleading. Whoever did this was smart and cunning. They made sure that it looked like something it wasn't." Just then, her finger hit one of the hidden b.u.t.tons on the desk and a side drawer popped open. "s.h.i.t!"

"What is it?"

"It's this desk." Jane opened the drawer and looked inside. It was empty, save for an eraser. "Boss, there's nothing this kid can give us. Call her aunt and uncle and-"

"We made an arrest last night in LoDo," Weyler quickly interjected.

"What arrest?"

"There might be a connection to the Lawrence murders. The perp was arrested for public drunkenness and p.i.s.sing on the sidewalk. When PD searched him during booking, they found an item on his person that sent up a red flag."

"What item?"

"A silver cigarette case with the inscription 'Wedding Blessings. David & Patricia Lawrence.' I paged Chris and told him to come back from Dillon. He's been talking to the guy for the past half hour. I want you to come down and check out this guy. Chris thinks this could go somewhere. I'll call Martha and tell her to watch Emily while you're gone. Have one of the cars bring you over."

Weyler hung up. The whole thing felt wrong to Jane. But she couldn't back up her gut feeling with practical a.n.a.lysis and so she was stuck. Jane felt two eyes staring at her and looked up the staircase. There Emily sat on the top step in her denim jumper with the straps undone. "How long have you been sitting there?"

"What's going on?"

"It's nothing." Jane started up the stairs toward Emily. "I have to go see my boss for a little bit. But your good buddy Martha is going to hang with you."

"When are you coming back?" Emily sounded anxious.

"Couple hours probably. Your straps are all twisted around."

"I know. I can't b.u.t.ton them."

"Stand up." Emily complied as Jane tried to untwist the child's straps. The tiny flashlight that Martha had fastened on the jumper was the root of the problem. "You want to keep this thing on here?" Jane said, poking at the flashlight.

"I probably should. She'll wonder what happened to it if I don't."

Jane continued to unwrap the cotton strap from the flashlight. "Stupid flashlight," Jane mumbled under her breath. "I'm surprised Martha didn't ask you to talk in code to her so I couldn't understand your conversations!"

"Code?"

"Yeah. Cops do it all the time between each other when they don't want perps knowing what they're saying." Emily placed her hand on the railing and gently rubbed her hand up and down the wood. Slowly, she became transfixed with the movement until she zoned out. Jane caught a glimpse of Emily. "Hey!" Emily did not respond.