Protector

by Laurel Dewey

  Chapter 21

  “Did you hear me?” Emily said, poking Jane in the shoulder. The red and blue police lights drew closer. “I think it’s Sheriff George,” Emily said confidentially as the patrol car pulled up behind Jane’s Subaru.

  Jane’s mind was still somewhat far away. Almost in a daze, she caught a whiff of her shirt where she had just dribbled the whiskey. “Shit,” she said under her breath.

  From the sheriff’s point of view, he saw a Subaru wagon that had been obviously pulled to the side of the road at the rapid rate of speed, thanks to the muddy skid marks along the pavement. The passenger side door was wide open and the two individuals—one, who was clearly a child—were bent down in front of the car and not responding to his presence. Sheriff George kept on the patrol car’s high beams and adjusted his glaring driver’s side spotlight onto Jane and Emily. He got out of the car, checking the license plate of the Subaru. “Hello?” he called out, walking next to the car.

  Emily looked down at the muddy ground and the puddle of vomit that Jane pitched from her gut. She heard the sheriff ’s footsteps come closer through the sloppy trail of mud. In a desperate move, Emily grabbed her stomach and pretended to throw up right over Jane’s vomit.

  The Sheriff stopped in his tracks. “Patty? What’s wrong?”

  Emily lifted up her head, wiped her mouth with her sleeve and turned around to acknowledge the sheriff. “Mom,” Emily said in an exaggerated voice that had a tinge of overblown drama to it. “It’s Sheriff George.” With that, Emily turned back around and pretended to hurl more into the mud.

  Jane was momentarily speechless by Emily’s quick thinking. “Hello, Sheriff,” she said, the words falling like gravel from her throat.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We were at Kathy’s house,” Emily said, her head still bent over the puddle of vomit. “I think I ate too many cherries . . .” The Sheriff walked closer. Emily realized that he would smell alcohol on Jane. In a bold move, Emily flung her body against Jane’s chest, “Oh, Mom!” Emily said, grabbing on to Jane, “please take me home!”

  Jane wrapped her arms around Emily and awkwardly worked herself up onto her feet. Emily stuck to her chest, refusing to let a hint of the whiskey aroma waft toward the sheriff. “Okay,” Jane said, playing along. “Let’s get you back into the car.”

  Sheriff George reached out. “Let me help you—”

  Emily quickly pretended to start vomiting again.

  “Try to hold it in!” Jane said, patting Emily’s head. “Thanks for your concern, Sheriff.” Jane put Emily into the passenger seat, before heading to the driver’s side.

  He leaned down and knocked on Emily’s side window. “You feel better soon!”

  Emily looked up at the sheriff with the weakest expression she could muster. Jane slowly turned right and headed back to Peachville.

  Jane pulled into their driveway and turned off the ignition. She sat motionless in the car, as did Emily. Realizing the gravity of what just transpired, she buried her head in her hand. “Thank you,” she whispered to Emily.

  Emily reached over and stroked Jane’s shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

  There was no way Jane was going to sleep that night. So, instead of heading for the bedroom, she propped up a set of pillows on the living room couch and sat watching television. Thanks to Dan, she could choose from the “semi-snowy” NBC channel or the crisp reception of PBS.

  Emily started the evening sitting alongside Jane but quickly wound up sleeping with her head on Jane’s lap. Jane lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. A truck’s headlights slowed in front of their house. Jane leaned forward just enough to see that it was Dan conducting his self-appointed night duty. She noted that he observed the lone porch light on outside. Jane recalled that he suggested a “trouble code” of both the garage and porch lights turned on to signal his help. She shook her head. Jane was always the one protecting the weak and innocent, not the other way around. Sitting there with only the light from the television to illuminate the room, she was overwhelmed by the realization of her present situation. Gone were the nights of playing pool at RooBar, getting loaded with Mike and passing out on the couch. Her father was dead. Mike had moved on to a new life with a girl who seemed halfway decent. Whenshe took a step back and analyzed the situation, Jane concluded that she was totally alone in the world. As for her career, Jane had no clue where that was headed. Her job had become her identity and she worked hard to get where she was, sacrificing relationships in the process. If her career was going to hell, she had no clue where she could fit into the world.

  With this self-realization, it was all Jane could do to keep an interest in the television show. It was the popular Antiques Roadshow. The series’ premise was simple: average people dug through their dusty attics and crowded closets for cherished knickknacks that hopefully had some monetary worth. The individual—usually with a hopeful glint in their eye—stood by while a knowledgeable antique appraiser discussed the historical and sometimes quaint background story of their treasures and whether they were of any great worth. After suffering through four original Norman Rockwell prints and a woman with a vase that she swore belonged to George Washington, Jane was just about to change the channel to the crop report. But the camera suddenly focused on an unusual desk—the same distinctive desk that Jane’s mother had owned and that also stood in the Lawrence house. It was the one Jane nicknamed “The Riddle Desk,” due to the hidden compartments that were only known to the desk’s owners.

  The owner of this particular desk, a middle-aged woman, stood on one side of the piece while the antique appraiser stood on the opposite side. “How long has your family owned this desk?” the appraiser asked.

  “My mother bought it before I was born at an estate sale. So, thirty plus years, at least,” the woman chuckled self-consciously.

  “You don’t see many of these desks anymore. They are rare and they are all different. What looks like an ordinary desk with various compartments is actually a clever ruse, thanks to the creativity of the artist and builder of the piece. His name was Cornelius James. James was actually a very gifted painter, renowned for his ability to depict still life objects so well that people would try and grab them out of the painting. However, as brilliant as he was, he couldn’t make a living from his painting. This angered James, especially when his peers were raking in the money for their drab artwork. Cornelius James decided to make a bold statement against those ‘canvas whores,’ as he called them. Consider it poetic justice with a dash of vengeance thrown in for good measure! This desk and the others that he designed became his audacious answer to the art world. You see, besides painting, James was also an excellent craftsman. He blended his artistic gifts and built a desk with a hidden message. That message was ‘Look behind the exterior of what you think you see, for what appears to your naked eye is but an illusion.’ James was frequently quoted. I remember one quote, ‘We believe that what we see is all there is. But behind the facade, lies the truth . . . ’”

  Jane was struck by the appraiser’s words. She paid close attention to his information, sensing somehow that the words held importance.

  “The subterfuge was carefully woven into the basic design and, later, the painted surfaces,” the appraiser continued. “James never made the same desk twice. However, the similarities were as follows: what might look like the knob on a drawer . . .” the appraiser attempted to pull out a “drawer,” “was in actuality a beautifully painted replica of a knob. But if you knew where to look . . .” the appraiser fumbled under the desk and along the side of the desk, “you just might be able to open that drawer!” Turning to the owner of the desk, the appraiser asked with a sheepish grin, “I hope you know how to open that drawer!”

  The woman confidently ran her finger down the front leg, pushed a hidden button and freed the front drawer. “My six-year-old nephew found that hidden button!” the woman said.

  “How many secret compartments are there?” asked a female onl
ooker.

  “To my knowledge,” the appraiser replied, “James never had a set number of hidden compartments. I saw a desk in a Virginia farmhouse with fourteen, while another from a collection down in Birmingham had eleven. At least, eleven they knew of!”

  The owner of the desk spoke up. “We had the desk twenty years before we learned of this side panel that pops out when you press a button in one of the top mail compartments.” The woman slid her hand inside the first mail compartment, pushed a button and the side panel opened like a sloping cereal bin at the supermarket.

  Jane leaned forward. It was as though something was tugging at her gut. Emily opened her eyes and sleepily looked at the television screen.

  “Yes, I’m glad you brought that point to our attention!” the appraiser excitedly replied. “There was one common denominator in all of the desks. While they were not all located in the same place, James made sure that there was one secret compartment that was the most difficult to find. For him, that compartment represented the worst trickery that the art world had foisted upon society. In his eyes, when you uncovered that top secret compartment, you had successfully opened your eyes to the real villain that lay buried between yourself and the Divine Truth that would set you free! They were deep thoughts from an extraordinary man who was never able to get the recognition he deserved!”

  “Any hints on finding that top secret compartment?” a man asked the appraiser.

  “Well, James was fond of placing those highly valued compartments in one of three places. The side of the desk, along the front here and finally, back here at the rear of the desk. For those desks that had the ultra secret compartment located at the rear location, it was not unusual for the owner to situate the desk several inches from a wall in order to accommodate the opening of the compartment.” The camera pulled in tightly on the desk’s secret side compartment as the appraiser showed the depth of space needed to reconcile the opening.

  Emily became fixated on the close-up of the secret compartment. The sound of the appraiser’s voice dissolved into the background and was loudly replaced by the sound of her parents yelling at each other.

  “How could you keep this letter from me?” Emily’s mother yelled at her father. “Goddamnit, didn’t you think I would eventually find out? All those nights . . . All those goddamn nights of you calling me and telling me you had to work late . . .”

  “I was working,” her father weakly interjected.

  “I don’t think they call it ‘work’ after the second or third cocktail!”

  “Patty, please! We’ve got to talk about this rationally.”

  “Rationally? Oh, that’s rich! Suddenly you want to be rational? Why wasn’t that thought going through your head when the relationship became clear? Why didn’t you just walk away?”

  Emily heard shafts of distortion cut through her memory, followed once again by the clear voices of her parents.

  “Didn’t you read this?” her mother screamed.

  “I don’t want to read it again!”

  “No, you don’t want to see what you’ve done to us! Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist and maybe it’ll go away! Am I right? Well, this is not going to go away! But I am and I’m taking Emily with me!”

  Emily heard the reverberation of wood slamming against wood. The sound instantly jerked the child back into herself.

  Jane looked down at the kid. “You okay?”

  “We had a desk like that. My mom kept all my handmade birthday cards in it.”

  “Where did she store them?”

  “In the top secret spot that man was talking about. Mommy said she wanted to keep special cards in a special place. She never told me where it was because that’s where she kept private stuff that I wasn’t supposed to see.”

  “What weren’t you supposed to see?”

  “Santa’s reply to my letters,” Emily said offhandedly, “report cards . . .”

  Jane sat back and stared at the TV screen as the scene changed to another antique. Emily rolled off Jane’s lap and curled up against the side of the couch. Jane clicked off the TV and sat in the dark. A familiar feeling tugged at her gut—it was the same psychic pull she felt many times before, akin to the sensation of cresting a long, steep hill and finally locating what you’ve been searching for. But the more Jane tried to structure the impression into something she could touch and understand, the more elusive it became.

  Resting her head against the couch, she closed her eyes and tried to succumb to slumber. But, instead, she hovered between the worlds. She opened her eyes and fumbled through the darkness of the living room and toward the radio console. Turning on the radio, she was amazed how much light the front panel emitted. Odd, she surmised, for an old radio. Jane spun the dial from one band of static to another until she heard the crisp voice of Tony Mooney. Amazing, she mused.

  “We all think we own our thoughts,” Mooney declared in his deep, trademark tenor. “But do we really? What if two people could share the same thought? The same experience? But, perhaps, from a different point of view?” Jane noted how the light on the radio console seemed to glow even brighter. “Would you allow yourself to suspend disbelief for just one second and believe that?” Mooney leaned closer to the microphone. “Would you . . . Jane?”

  Jane rocked out of the bizarre dream and back into the pitch-blackness of the living room. Her heart raced and her head spun as the sound of Mooney’s voice echoed. Instantly, there was a rapid flash of blinding light, followed by the date, 10-24-99 and, finally a wolf’s face. And then darkness. But somewhere in the air, Jane swore she smelled metal burning.

  Shafts of the morning sun sliced through the front curtains. Jane and Emily were still on the couch fast asleep. Jane stirred, checking the time. 6:20. Peachville’s morning rush hour would soon begin with the steady drone of trucks heading up Main Street to the highway. Five minutes later, it would be over. In the kitchen, Jane sorted through the basket that Kathy had given them. Discovering a tin of gourmet amaretto instant coffee, she decided to give it a try.

  Jane lit a cigarette and sat at the kitchen counter amidst the morning silence. The realization suddenly hit her that Dale Perry was really dead. The greatest known evil in Jane’s life was gone forever. She looked outside the kitchen window into the backyard where the tall grass swayed with the smooth morning breeze. In the last three and a half weeks, her life had taken so many twists and turns that she felt as if she’d been on a roller coaster ride. But suddenly, something seemed very different. As the morning light traced a path through the kitchen, she sensed that a door was opening. She looked around the kitchen and noticed things she had not seen until that moment—a tarnished cupboard knob, an indentation in the linoleum and a curl of peeling wallpaper by the sliding glass door. They had been right in front of her all this time and yet, somehow, she was just now seeing them. It was as if she’d suddenly been given new eyes to see the world.

  She thought back to the night before and that enigmatic desk on the Antiques Roadshow. Recalling her visit to the Lawrence house, she was almost positive that the desk was standing slightly away from the stairway wall. Jane clenched her cigarette between her lips and carried her coffee cup into her bedroom, taking care to walk quietly so as not to wake up Emily. She slipped the Lawrence case file from her leather satchel, set her coffee on the side table next to her pistol and sat down on the edge of the bed. Finding the photos, she pulled them out of the folder. She breezed past the grisly close-ups of David and Patricia Lawrence’s butchered bodies until she glimpsed a photo that included the desk. The first photo of the desk was taken from an angle that made it difficult to decipher its placement. The second photo that featured the desk was better but still not adequate. After shuffling through several more photos, she came upon one that precisely showed the entry area and the desk. Clearly, it was standing several inches from the stairway wall.

  Jane flicked on the table lamp and held the color glossy photo underneath it so she could really examine the unusual
piece of furniture. She canvassed the area inch by inch, noting what looked like a hairline scratch on the photo at the rear section of the desk. However, looking closer, Jane realized it was in the photo. She rummaged in her leather satchel until she found her trusty deluxe Swiss army knife. Pulling out the coin-sized magnifying glass from the side of the knife, she leaned closer to the light and investigated the mysterious scratch. From the angle of the photo, it looked like the edge of a piece of paper that had been stuffed in one of those secret compartments or a shadowy trick of light that bounced off the overhead hallway light fixture.

  She pulled the photo away from the light when something caught her eye. In the same photo, in the far corner, was a glimmering square object. The powerful flash on the camera had attracted this silvery box, illuminating it like a bright star. Jane held the photo under the light and steadied her magnifying glass over the object. It looked like a silver cigarette case. She checked the date on the coding strip. May 24—the day after the murders. While she could not be sure, it looked exactly like the engraved silver cigarette case that the homeless lunatic had in his possession when Chris questioned him at Denver Headquarters. That interview occurred five days after this photo was taken. But that was impossible. Jane looked at the object more closely. It had to be a duplicate of the cigarette case that the homeless man had with him. Perhaps a sort of his and hers wedding gift. Yet, the more Jane mulled over that possibility, the less likely it seemed. Who gives his and hers silver cigarette cases these days as wedding gifts?

  Jane considered the options. If that was indeed the same cigarette case that the homeless guy found, it had to have been stolen after the crime scene photos were taken. The only problem was that the house was locked and taped off to anyone except for police personnel. The only missing objects that could have possibly been photographed and then removed were pieces of evidence, such as blood covered carpeting swatches, destroyed furniture and, of course, that five ounce mound of cocaine. All of these would have been taken into evidence and recorded on the Property Report Form.