Dying Embers

by B. E. Sanderson

  Jace stared at the woman until Ben pulled a chair over for her. If the man she loved lay comatose, she didn’t think she could be so calm. If someone hurt the man she loved, she’d be out looking for the person, ready to rip their arms off and beat them to death with the stumps.

  Wendy caught her looking. “There’s nothing I can do for him, except talk. Talk to him or talk to you. If either way will help, I’ll do it.”

  Pushing her own thoughts into the background, Jace said, “We’ll take whatever help we can get. They said you drove up and interrupted the… suspect… Did you get a good look at her?”

  “I wish I could say yes, but I was paying more attention to the gas can and the match than to her. Longish blonde hair, tied back with a scarf of some sort. Thin, but not skinny. She looked heavier than me, but she was a few inches shorter, so maybe that was an illusion. It was hard to tell. Big dark sunglasses, like the kind you see on the old movie starlets. My brother called about an hour ago and said Carl might’ve seen her before…” Wendy’s face turned ashen. “She was watching us… She was close enough to my son to touch him… Why didn’t she hurt him, too? Why Devin?”

  Jace opened her mouth, but Ben intercepted her. “We think she may have known your husband before. Maybe in college or high school. Did your husband ever spend any time in Wisconsin?”

  “We met in Wisconsin. We were both in the Conservation Corps, and he was the site supervisor for my crew. I guess you could say months clearing brush out of the forest brought us together. Was she from…?” Wendy’s jaw fell open as she appeared to be watching a replay of the past in her mind’s eye. “It couldn’t be…”

  “What?”

  “When Devin and I met, he was seeing someone. We didn’t start dating until after he broke it off with her, but I think she thought he cheated on her with me. She was very possessive—that’s why he chose to break it off—and I used to see her hanging around the worksite…” She trailed off as the memories overtook her. “Showing up a half hour early to pick Devin up, or dropping in on us unannounced and then sitting in her car until he told her to go home. Funny. She never got out of the car; she just sat there watching Devin like she was guarding him or something. I’m sure she saw us laughing and joking, but I swear nothing was going on until after he stopped seeing her.”

  “What was her name?”

  Wendy shook her head. “It was over twenty years ago. I never would’ve thought of her again if you hadn’t mentioned Wisconsin. Devin said she took their break-up well, but I was never sure. She was just too… I don’t know. She acted like he was her possession—or she was his. Or something weird like that. He couldn’t take it anymore.” She blushed. “I can’t say I’m sorry he left her, but if she’s the one who did this…”

  “Her name?” Jace prodded.

  “I don’t know. We talked about her a lot before they broke up, but that was too long ago.” Wendy tapped her fingers on the arms of the chair. She got up and paced the room, as if movement would jar the memory loose. After several minutes, she stopped. “I’m sorry. It must be the stress. I’m usually so good with names but I can’t for the life of me think of hers.”

  Ben sat forward with his arms on his thighs. “Could it have been Ella?”

  “That’s it!”

  “Ella?”

  “No. Emma. Emma… something Finnish.”

  “Something Finnish?” Ben said with more incredulity than Jace would’ve liked, but she understood the confusion.

  “The Western U.P and Northern Wisconsin had a lot of Finnish immigrants, so you get used to recognizing how the names sound. I think it began with a P… Longish, not like Linna or Saari. Damn it!” She hit the edge of the bed with her fist and then whispered an apology to her husband. “It has to be her,” she said in a calmer voice. “She was a little… warped, if you know what I mean. Very clingy. Passive aggressive… What was her name?!”

  Jace placed a hand on the woman’s arm. “You’ll think of it when you stop trying to think of it. It’s okay. When you remember the rest, call me on my cell phone. Otherwise, work on writing down everything you remember about that day, and I’ll have the same sketch artist sit down with you after he gets done with Carl.”

  Pushing herself away from the bed, Wendy resumed pacing. “I want you to catch her. I want you to catch her and lock her up so she never bothers us again. Twenty years and at least a thousand miles, and she still found him. I don’t want her to find him again.” She looked into Jace’s eyes. “Promise me you won’t let her get away.”

  It was a promise many had tried to exact from Jace, and she’d always managed to side-step the answer. She couldn’t guarantee a result when she didn’t have all the answers, and giving guarantees just set everyone up for more pain when the reality bore itself out. Sometimes she couldn’t catch the bad guys, and sometimes, even when she did catch them, they got away.

  “I promise,” she said before she could stop herself. In the car later, she wondered if she had made that vow to Wendy Thatcher, or to herself.

  #

  A needle stretching toward the sky was the first real glimpse of Vegas Emma got as she sped down I-15. Beyond it, the other casinos swung into view, but that lone finger pointing toward heaven drew her eyes like no other building could.

  She immediately got off the freeway at Sahara, intent on staying at the spire that rose above the Strip like a sign from God. One look at the rooms and the rates told her she could do better. Heavenly sign or not, she could afford the best, and since Will no longer held the checkbook like a starving dog with its bone, she could spend as she pleased.

  Driving south, she went past the point where a clown towered over her, and where men waged a mock sea-battle complete with cannons. And then the true sign came to her.

  The sight was so breathtaking, she hit the brakes. Amidst the squealing of tires and blaring of horns, she saw what she knew would be the perfect place to stay while she hunted for the next man on her list.

  Right there, beside the road, fire blossomed.

  “Hey lady! You want to move that thing before you get someone killed?” A fist banged against her window, and she heard someone yelling obscenities. She couldn’t take her eyes from the manmade volcano, with its spurts of flame; she just took her foot off the brake and let the car roll forward until she got to a driveway. More expletives followed as she entered from the wrong direction, but the shouts barely registered. The eruption filled her ears instead.

  “So beautiful,” she whispered.

  “Ma’am?” a car attendant said as he walked up to her open window. “You’re not supposed to come in that way.”

  With one hand, she reached into her purse and came out with a stack of cash. She shoved it into the young man’s hand as she stepped from the car. “The keys are inside. Be a dear and park it for me.”

  His mouth closed with a snap as he stuffed the bills into his pocket. He mumbled something appropriately contrite, but she was beyond caring. The flames were twisting higher now, snaking across the water like magic. If anything in this town could be a sign from God, this place had to be it.

  Now she had to find Owen Nyland, and the next part of her mission would be complete. At least in Nevada. Once she finished in Sin City, she had one more act of justice to carry out, and she would be free.

  “I left my heart in San Francisco,” she sang as she walked through the jungle motif to the front desk. Staring at the fish swimming endlessly through the gigantic tank behind the woman who booked her room, she whispered, “And he’ll leave his life there, if I have anything to say about it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Where to next, boss?” Ben said as they walked through the hospital’s parking ramp.

  “So now I’m the boss? I’m not sure I’m up to that responsibility tonight.” She shook her head. “Right now, all I want is a soft bed and at least two solid hours without thinking about Emma Something-Finnish.”

  “What you really want is for this to be ov
er, you mean?”

  “What I want doesn’t really matter,” she said, suddenly feeling every moment of her thirty-seven years. “I spoke to the doctor while you were down getting coffee. He said it could be weeks before Thatcher wakes up.”

  “I talked to him, too—while you were getting the wife’s formal statement. He also said Thatcher could wake up tomorrow.”

  “But it’s unlikely.”

  “With head injuries, everything is unlikely, but no two are exactly the same,” he said. “I hate to put it this way, but he could wind up sitting in a corner drooling on himself for the rest of his life. Or he could return to his exact self once he recovers. I’ve known some people with head injuries. You wanna know what my theory is?” He stopped halfway to the car and waited for her answer.

  She went a few yards farther before she turned back to him. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s your theory?”

  “When a man takes a crack on the head like that, his brain hibernates while it’s repairing itself. If the damage isn’t too bad, he’ll wake up when the damage is fixed, and from what the MRI showed, Devin Thatcher’s damage isn’t too bad.”

  She couldn’t help but shake her head at him. “Are you a member of the optimist’s club, by any chance?”

  “Nope. I like to look for the positive outcome.”

  “After everything you’ve seen, you can still think there’s always a positive outcome somewhere? Odd outlook for a cop.” He tilted his head at her, and one stray lock fell across his forehead. The threads of silver within it glowed beneath the fluorescent lights, and she longed to tuck it back in with the rest of his hair. She tried to erase the thought, but the more time she spent with the man, the more her fingers itched to touch him.

  Too little sleep, she told herself.

  “I didn’t say a positive outcome is always easy to find,” he continued, and she let herself be glad he didn’t notice the feelings that had to be obvious on her face, “but I like to think every situation has the possibility of one. I don’t see how I could be a cop and think any other way. If you think everything is going to turn out bad, why bother? Are you telling me you never hope for the best?”

  “Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”

  “That way you’ll never be blindsided.”

  “Ah, so you are familiar with the philosophy.”

  He stepped closer to her. She took a half-step back. “It used to be my philosophy, too. Until one day I figured out I could never be happy looking at the future from that perspective. I could only be happy in the moment. That’s no way to live your life, Jace.”

  Though his tone was soft and gentle, it came as a slap to her senses. “I’ve done just fine living my life that way.”

  “But are you happy?” His eyes blazed into her as if he could burn away everything else to find the truth.

  Jace felt bare, but she wasn’t about to give in. “I’ll be happy when we put her behind bars.”

  “And after that,” he said, “when another victim’s file hits your desk. What then? The happiness stops? You can’t expect me to believe you enjoy living that way.”

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything.” She turned away from him and began walking. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get to our hotel before neither of us is awake enough to drive.”

  “Subject closed, eh?”

  Jace didn’t justify his question with an answer. Instead she pretended it was never asked and stalked toward their vehicle. “Are you driving or am I?”

  He tossed the keys at her. “You drive.” After pushing the seat back, he settled himself beneath his suit coat and closed his eyes. “Wake me when we get there.” And just like that, he remained silent for the rest of the drive.

  She almost wished he would talk with her, grouse at her—yell at her, for petesakes. Silence gave her too much room to think.

  As the car turned out of the medical complex, his words played over and over. When had she become such a cynic? She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t waited for the worst to happen. Always sure she would flunk a test, positive she wouldn’t make it into the academy, certain she wouldn’t be right for the position. Every boy would dump her, if any of them ever asked for a date at all. Relationships fell prey to her pessimism. They never lasted—because she never expected them to. Out there somewhere, her philosophy hovered to kill a romance before it even began.

  Even as she turned down one street and onto the next, she knew in her deepest self she would never catch the Car-B-Que killer. Her co-agents knew it, too, or they never would’ve made up that ridiculous name.

  Agent Jaylinda Charlene Douglas, who used the name ‘Jace’ rather than let people assume she couldn’t do her job because she was a girl, or came from a redneck household, or whatever. She tried everything to never give the world any reason to doubt her abilities, and yet, she remained a joke.

  Her hands tightened around the steering wheel. No one doubted her abilities more than she did, though. She never believed in a positive outcome in the future, because she didn’t believe she had the ability to forge one. She was just a farmer’s daughter, an almost orphan, a woman in men’s clothes doing a job she didn’t really believe she had any right to hold.

  “Do you want me to drive?” Ben’s soft voice startled her.

  She choked back the lump in her throat she hadn’t been aware of. “It’s not necessary. We’re almost there.”

  “If by ‘almost’, you mean you can see the motel from where you stopped in the middle of the street, then you’re right.” Jace started to argue, but his next words silenced her. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been sitting at this stoplight for a good ten minutes. If it weren’t so late, you’d be hearing more car horns than rush hour in L.A.”

  Her fingers relaxed their stranglehold on the wheel, and she slumped back into the seat. “I’m sorry… I didn’t realize… I was thinking.”

  “About the case?”

  “No. About what you said.”

  He didn’t press for details, a courtesy for which Jace felt thoroughly grateful. He just opened his car door, walked around to the driver’s side, and made her scramble over the gearshift to his vacated seat. As she slid across the upholstery, she could feel the warmth of his body imprinted on the fabric and transferring to her fingertips. She still wasn’t sure where her thoughts had been headed, but she felt more relaxed than she had in years—almost as if knowing the problem existed made the problem just a little better.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome.” His reply came quickly, but she suspected he knew her gratitude wasn’t due to his driving.

  The two blocks to the motel felt like the longest ride of Jace’s life. At the end of the drive, Ben would expect to talk, and she had too much to sort out before she could share any of it. If she could ever manage to share it, that is.

  All through the parking lot, the lobby, and the elevator ride, she kept silent. Not because she still mulled over the ideas he placed in her head, but because she didn’t want to continue mulling. She had a job to do, and she couldn’t let quickie therapy for her own problems be part of it. For now, she would have to live with her faults. They never interfered with her job before; she wouldn’t let them start now.

  “My place or yours?” he joked as the elevator doors opened.

  She wanted the answer to be ‘me in my room, you in yours’, but they still had too much work to do. Sleep and solitude would have to wait. “Might be best in mine. I told them to set up the whiteboard in there, and I’ve got the laptop.”

  He must’ve noticed the professional tone, because his own casual attitude fell by the wayside. All at once he became all business—just the way she liked it.

  “Is it too late to call Frank?” he asked after they’d entered her room.

  She took off her blazer and threw it over a chair. “It’s never too late to call Frank. If you ask me, he lives in the supply closet.”

  “Let me
guess… Textbook government techie?” Ben removed his suit coat and hung it in the closet. “Committed to the job and nothing else, like Revenge of the Nerds meets The Untouchables?”

  She shrugged. Thinking about Frank in a personal way never occurred to her. He was damned efficient, and she knew she’d be lost without him, but beyond that she couldn’t even remember whether he was a nerd or a jock, or simply a typical Agency employee.

  Without warning, she found herself back to wondering how much of her life was the job. Except for the forced time-off, she was barely home herself. If anyone asked who her friends were, she might name Frank and Lynn, but they never came to her house. Hell, she didn’t even know if they had homes of their own. Both could live in boxes in the S.C.I.U. basement for all she knew.

  “When we get through with this case, you can ask him,” she told him as she pushed away things she didn’t have time to handle. “Until then, let’s stay focused.” Her last words were as much to herself as to Ben. After this, she could let her mind drift, but scattered focus made for dead bodies in her line of work, and with Emma Something-Finnish running around settling scores, she couldn’t let that happen.

  Without looking at Ben, she put the phone on speaker and dialed Frank’s number. After several rings, she almost believed she fat-fingered a number. She was about to hang up when Lynn’s voice came on the line.

  “Whatcha got, boss?” the woman said.

  “A boatload of work for Frank. Where is he?”

  “I made him go home and take a shower. If he’s smart, he’ll take a nap while he’s at it—like I did—but you know Frank.”

  For years now, she thought she knew Frank Carruso, but she was no longer sure. At least now she knew he had a home somewhere other than the Agency’s basement. Not having Frank around was a blow, but she couldn’t fault Lynn for making him go home. Chances weren’t likely he actually needed a shower, but Jace knew from the long nights they’d spent working, if he didn’t spend at least an hour outside the building, cranky didn’t begin to describe him.