Tough Enough

by Jayne Ann Krentz

“I saw the robber’s face when he turned. He wore a mask and he had something in his hand… .”

  “Even if you recognized him, it wouldn’t be admissible in court,” he said.

  J.D. squeezed her hand. “Her memory isn’t enough to have him arrested—let alone convicted, right?”

  “Exactly.” Dr. Donnley brushed a speck of lint from his pant leg. “There is another point to consider. You may not be able to see the man’s face in your dream because you couldn’t see it that day in the bank.”

  “But I feel so certain the dream is trying to tell me something,” Denver cried. “It must be the identity of the murderer.”

  “Not necessarily so,” the doctor said. “It’s not unusual in a case like this for you to want so desperately to recognize him that you start believing you can. We won’t know until we hypnotize you. And there is a good chance that if it’s too painful, your subconscious might not let you remember.”

  “So what do you think, Sunshine?” J.D. asked. He smiled at her, a lock of his hair hanging down over his forehead. “You still want to do this?”

  She nodded. “I have to. I have to know.”

  DENVER LEANED BACK in the chair, eyes closed, hands curled in her lap. She felt herself drifting in the darkness. The feeling was not unpleasant. It soothed, as did Dr. Donnley’s softly spoken words. Deeper and deeper. Her body felt heavy; her breathing slowed until she feared she’d forget to take a breath. Then she forgot to worry about it as she floated in the peaceful darkness, content.

  “Let’s go back to that day when you were five,” Dr. Donnley said. “You and your parents were going to the bank. Do you remember?”

  Denver nodded, although she didn’t feel her head move.

  “What did you do before you went to the bank?”

  “We picked up my father from work.” Her voice sounded far away. “He’s a policeman.”

  “So he’s still in his uniform when you go into the bank. Tell me what you’re doing as you go into the bank.”

  “Skipping. And singing.” She sang softly, the words still there after all these years. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “They’re behind me. I stop skipping.”

  “Why?”

  “There are people on the floor. Something is wrong. I turn around to tell my parents. But I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I see the other policeman.”

  “What other policeman?”

  “The one on the floor. He’s reaching for his gun. It’s still in his holster. And I hear my father call my name. I run back to him. I’m afraid.”

  “What’s happening now?” Dr. Donnley asked.

  The words poured out as she watched it happening in her head. “My father pulls his gun. He grabs my shoulder with his other hand and pushes me hard. It hurts. He pushes me as he yells at my mother to get down. I hit the floor and slide. The floor is cold and hard. I hit my chest on the desk leg. It hurts so bad.”

  “You’re all right, Denver,” the doctor assured her.

  “It hurts. I can’t breathe.” Denver felt tears rolling down her face, then the fear, the panic. “I can’t breathe!”

  “You’re all right. You’re not there. It’s just a memory. Take a deep breath. There now. What do you see?”

  “Nothing. I’m on the floor by the desk. I can’t see anything.” She sobbed quietly for a moment. “I hear my mother scream. I crawl under the desk. I can see the robber. He’s standing by the counter. He turns. He has a shotgun in one hand and something in the other. It’s shiny. I can’t tell what it is. I look at my father. All I can see is his legs. But I can see the other policeman on the floor. He has a gun in his hand. He’s pointing it at my father. I hear the gunshots.”

  Dr. Donnley kept talking, his voice soft and reassuring. “What is happening now?”

  “I hear people screaming. Now I hear the shotgun go off. My father is on the floor beside me. His eyes are open. There is blood on the floor. Blood everywhere. People are crying. I’m crying. I slide farther under the desk and watch the robber leave. He stops for a moment beside the desk.”

  “Can he see you?”

  “No.”

  “Can you see what he has in his hand?”

  She shook her head. “He leaves. And I see my mother. She’s on the floor, too.” The sobs rose from deep inside her, a well of sorrow. “A lady helps me out from under the desk. She hugs me and tells me my parents are dead.”

  “It’s all right to be sad. It’s all right to cry.”

  Denver cried until there were no more tears, until she could hear the music and feel her mind drifting in the darkness again.

  “Think back, Denver. Are you sure you don’t know the man wearing the mask?”

  She shook her head, remembering only the mask and the flash of silver she’d seen in his hand. But as she looked into the darkness, she saw another face. “I know the other one.”

  “What other one?”

  Denver focused on the darkness. She stared into the man’s face. Into those bottomless eyes. Her heart seemed to race out of her chest. She couldn’t catch her breath. “Ooohh.”

  “You’re all right, Denver.”

  Her eyes flew open. She jerked up, pushing herself back into the chair as her gaze darted around Dr. Donnley’s office. “I saw him!” she cried. He’d been younger then, not much more than a teenager, and thinner. But there was no mistake about that hair, those eyes or that awful, cold look of his. “It was Cal. Cal Dalton. He was the cop on the floor. But he’s dead.”

  J.D. HELD DENNY. The sun poured into the front seat of the pickup. She felt good against him, warm and safe in his arms. He stroked her back, his chin resting on the top of her head.

  “It was Cal,” she whispered. She’d been saying it over and over again. “But he was on the floor of the bank, surrounded by blood. He was dead. How could that be?”

  J.D. hugged her to him. “I don’t know.”

  Dr. Donnley had warned her again about the questionability of memory retrieval. The man she’d seen might have been someone she connected with evil, he’d explained. She’d said herself that this man had tried to rape her. It would be understandable that she’d put his face on a man who might have killed her parents.

  But Denver had argued that she’d recognized him as he was more than twenty years ago. Was that possible? she’d asked him.

  Dr. Donnley had smiled sympathetically and told her there was much they didn’t know about the mind and warned her not to take much stock in the things she’d remembered. He’d suggested further hypnosis.

  J.D. believed Denny had seen Cal’s face, but like the doctor, he was skeptical as to what it meant. She’d been through so much lately. It didn’t seem impossible she should put Cal’s face on a dead man’s.

  “I can’t explain it, but I know I saw Cal,” Denver insisted now as she leaned back to look into J.D.’s eyes.

  “Maybe it was someone who looked like him,” J.D. said reasonably. “Maybe even a … relative.”

  “I never thought of that.” She smiled.

  He knew that smile. “Let me guess, we’re going to Billings to investigate a robbery?”

  THEY DROVE INTO THE Magic City, the sun high overhead, the city’s famous rock rims drenched in warm sunlight against a clear blue Montana sky. The largest city in the state, Billings sprawled across the valley, jumping the Yellowstone River, then running south as far as the eye could see. Denver had been quiet all morning, and he knew she was anxious about what they’d find. She nestled against him, her face set in an iron-willed determination that constantly amazed him.

  The library was a huge brick building just off a one-way street downtown. They waded through the 1969 city directory—the same year as the bank robbery—then the years before and after. Denver’s disappointment showed in her eyes when they didn’t turn up even one Dalton in the years before or after.

  “We just keep hitting one dead end
after another,” she complained, slamming shut the 1971 directory. “So much for the relative theory.”

  On impulse, J.D. flipped through the 1969 directory again, only this time to the C’s. He ran his finger down a column.

  “Take a look at this, Sunshine,” he said, turning the directory so she could see. “William Collins.”

  She stared at him, then at the name. The one that matched the fingerprints Max had taken at his birthday party. “You don’t think—”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Denny slid into his arms, pressing her lips against his neck, before they walked to the pickup. She felt warm, her familiar scent making him want nothing more than to be alone with her.

  The Billings Register was in a large old brick building on the south side of the city, which was part of a city renewal plan. As soon as they walked in, J.D. still limping, heads turned. Denver seemed confused at first as to why everyone was staring at them, and then realized they were staring at J. D. Garrison, country and western star.

  “I keep forgetting just how well-known you are,” she said.

  At that moment, J.D. wished he wasn’t. The woman at the front desk asked him for his autograph. Denver insisted he give it to her. “We need the morgue,” J.D. said. The woman dragged her eyes away from J.D. to point down the hallway.

  They pulled out the roll of microfilm from 1969 and sat down. J.D. held Denver’s hand for just a minute. It was cool and he could feel it trembling.

  “The summer of 1969?”

  She nodded.

  The pages blurred by. He wanted to hold her, to make this easier on her, but he doubted there was anything he could do to lessen her anxiety.

  The first story about the robbery came up on the screen and Denver covered his hand on the knob to freeze it.

  A masked bandit killed two people and wounded a third during a holdup that netted more than a million dollars at State Bank this morning.

  Denver’s grip on his hand tightened; she took a ragged breath. “Wounded a third?”

  Chief of Police Bill Vernon said the male robber wearing a ski mask came into the bank shortly after it opened. At gunpoint, he forced bank personnel onto the floor while one teller sacked the money.

  A spokesman for the bank said this branch doesn’t normally have that much cash on hand but was transferring money from the oil fields.

  The shootings occurred when an off-duty police officer, still in uniform, came into the bank with his family. The police officer was killed, along with his wife, and a security guard was wounded during the shoot-out that followed.

  “Oh, J.D., the guard wasn’t killed,” Denver cried. “Does it give his name?”

  J.D. shook his head as he scanned down the rest of the article.

  The robber escaped with more than one million dollars. No arrests have been made. Chief Vernon said the investigation is continuing.

  J.D. started to scroll to the next story when Denver stopped him. “Look,” she said, pointing to the date of the first article.

  He stared at the numbers and felt a sudden chill. “June 14, 1969. It’s the number from Max’s notation at the end of the Wade file.”

  “The date of the robbery article in the Billings Register,” Denver said. “Bil 69614. He’d already connected the poaching and the robbery or at least suspected a connection. Better make a copy of the stories,” Denver added.

  J.D. nodded, dropped in a dime and hit the copy button. Then he turned to the next robbery story.

  Police Chief Bill Vernon confirmed today that the victims of the State Bank holdup last week were Timothy McCallahan and his wife, Linda. Both were shot during the robbery, which netted more than one million dollars.

  He felt her tremble and pulled her closer. “Are you sure you want to read this, Denny?”

  She nodded.

  Timothy McCallahan, a Billings police officer, was off duty at the time of the robbery, but still in uniform. Witnesses say he entered the bank and, realizing what was happening, went for his gun.

  Also wounded during the shootout was bank guard William Collins. Collins is in satisfactory condition at Billings Deaconess Hospital.

  Denver let out a cry. “William Collins?”

  But J.D. had already scanned ahead to the next robbery story and the accompanying photograph. A young Cal Dalton smiled at the photographer from his hospital bed. “Just what we thought.”

  “William Collins is Cal Dalton!” Denver exclaimed. “We were right!”

  J.D. pulled her into his arms and swung her around in a circle, hopping on his one good leg. She laughed, her head thrown back, her eyes bright, and he yearned to see that kind of happiness in her face always. Then he kissed her. At first lightly, then with a need that made him weak with wanting her. He released her when an older woman came into the morgue. They both sat back down at the microfilm table and waited innocently for the woman to leave, then they looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  After a moment, they turned their attention back to the photograph of William Collins a.k.a. Cal Dalton. Cal was much younger but there was no doubt that William Collins and Cal Dalton were one and the same. “Do you realize what this could mean? If you were right about Cal being the bank guard, then there’s a good chance you were right about Cal shooting at your father, instead of the masked bank robber.”

  Denver moved in closer to read the story. “You’re saying it was an inside job?”

  “That would explain why Cal still had his gun.”

  “This could be what we’ve been looking for,” she said. “It could explain why Max was hanging around Cal, why he’d run a fingerprint check on him.”

  “But Max never got the results,” J.D. observed.

  Denver tilted her head up in speculation. “I wonder if Max knew something or was just suspicious? I guess it doesn’t matter. If Cal even thought Max was on to him …”

  He nodded, thinking the same thing. “It could have been enough to get Max killed.”

  They quickly scanned later newspapers for news of the robbery. The articles became shorter and shorter as the weeks went by. Both the bandit and the money still had not been found. William Collins a.k.a. Cal Dalton recovered from his gunshot wound and was released from the hospital. Then the robbery just died away.

  “I’d sure like to talk to this Chief Vernon,” Denver said as they put the microfilm away.

  He smiled as he took her hand. “Then I guess we’d better find him.”

  AT THE POLICE STATION, a young lieutenant told Denver that Chief Bill Vernon had retired. “But if it’s an old case, he’ll remember it.” He wrote down an address on the west end of town.

  Bill Vernon was a tall, silver-haired man with an arrow-straight back and keen gray eyes. “The State Bank robbery in ’69.” He nodded his head. “Remember it well.” He offered them chairs and coffee. They turned down the coffee but sat down on the couch. “Want to tell me what makes you interested in such an old case?”

  J.D. covered Denver’s hand with his own. “Denver’s father and mother were killed in the robbery.”

  Vernon’s eyebrows shot up; his expression softened with sympathy. “You’re the little girl?”

  Denver nodded, feeling like that frightened little child again. Chief Vernon had the answer she needed. Who had killed her parents? She’d always believed it was a stranger. Now there was a possibility she knew the man.

  “Timothy McCallahan was one fine policeman,” Vernon said.

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “A terrible tragedy.” Vernon shook his head, his gaze distant. “That was one case I wanted to crack more than any other in my career. We knew there was someone on the inside but couldn’t prove it.”

  Denver stole a look at J.D. “We think William Collins was the inside man.”

  Vernon nodded. “I still do, too. The gunshot wound should have proved it.”

  “The gunshot wound?” J.D. asked.

  “Collins was shot with
a standard-issue police revolver,” Vernon said. “He said he was in your father’s line of fire and was shot by accident.”

  “Then my father did shoot him?” Denver asked. “I remember the guard pulling his gun and pointing it at my father, and then I heard the shots.”

  Vernon rubbed the back of his neck, studying her. “So you do remember some of it?”

  “Some. I’m just not sure how much of it is real,” she said, thinking of the flashing silver.

  “We knew the guard had to be in on it, but he wasn’t the brains behind the holdup. He wasn’t smart enough,” Vernon said.

  That certainly fit Cal Dalton a.k.a. William Collins, she thought.

  “The case was never solved?” J.D. asked.

  Vernon shook his head. “Got away free as a bird. Money and all.”

  Denver thought of the memories that had surfaced during her hypnosis session. “There’s something I need to know. Did William Collins kill my parents?” she asked, bracing herself for the answer.

  Vernon shook his head. “They were both killed by the bank robber. Witnesses said the man carried a sawed-off shotgun. That is consistent with the pathologist’s findings.”

  Denver took a deep breath and let it out. In the park across the street, two young boys worked to get a Ninja Turtle kite airborne. “Is there any way to trace the money from the robbery?” she asked, thinking of the $150,000 in Max’s account.

  Vernon shook his head.

  “And if you could prove William Collins was in on the robbery?” J.D. asked.

  “Accessory to murder.” The old police chief smiled. “Fortunately, there’s no statute of limitations on murder, and there is nothing I’d like better than to nail Collins.”

  Denver thanked him. As she got up to leave, she noticed a photograph of several policemen on the wall. She moved closer, recognizing a younger version of Chief Vernon. Then her gaze took in a young policeman on his right. Her pulse thundered in her ears. “Who is that man?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  Vernon stepped up behind her. “That’s Bill Cline. He and I went to the academy together.”

  “He didn’t happen to work for the Billings Police Department in 1969, did he?” Denver asked, holding her breath.