Protector

by Laurel Dewey

“I won’t! Can I please open the door?” Jane stood back as Emily flung open the front door. “Hi!” she exclaimed, her enthusiasm pouring out onto the front porch.

  Four girls filed into the living room, followed by Kathy and Heather.

  “Hello, Patty, sweetheart!” Kathy said, softly touching Emily’s chin. Turning to Jane, Kathy’s voice took on a more distant tone. “Hello, Anne.”

  “Hello, Kathy,” Jane replied with a sugary sweet flavor to her voice.

  “Girls! Girls!” Kathy said. “Make sure you’ve got everything you need out of the car! Mary, do you have your eyeglasses?”

  Mary, a freckled-faced, red-haired kid, turned to Kathy. “They’re in my bag.”

  Kathy sidled up to Jane and spoke quietly. “It’s not easy keeping track of all the girls’ personal possessions, not to mention their likes and dislikes. But I do! I know every single one of these girls inside out.”

  Jane glanced over to Emily, who was showing one of the children where the bathroom was located. “Every girl in this room?” Jane asked, alluding to Emily.

  Kathy kept her face forward with a phony smile pasted across it. “Every single one. I know what they love . . . I know what they fear.”

  Jane turned to Kathy, contempt shooting from her eyes. “Is that right?”

  Kathy faced Jane, matching her contemptible glare. “Yes. And every girl here has been taught to tell her parents anything she sees that scares her or makes her sad.”

  “How ironic,” Jane said with a smirk. “I’ve taught Patty the same thing.”

  Kathy observed the girls as they chatted amongst themselves and arranged their sleeping bags. “Perhaps I should stay for a little bit until the girls get settled.”

  Jane opened the front door. “Oh, now Kathy, if I’m not allowed to hang with them, you sure as hell aren’t. See you in the morning!”

  Kathy addressed the girls. “Girls, listen up!” The chatter gradually ceased. “I’m leaving now. Mrs. Calver will be available if you need anything. Since she doesn’t have a telephone, I’m going to leave my cell phone right here.” Kathy pulled out her phone and set it on the side table by the couch. “Now, that’s not for play. That’s only for emergencies. You dial 9-1-1 and then you call me, okay?” Jane bristled as Kathy held court, obviously sending out a loaded message. The girls nodded their heads. “And remember, girls!” Kathy continued. “What are the rules when someone knocks at the front door? We only let them in if they are someone we know or . . . ?”

  All the girls, except for Emily, chimed in. “Someone we trust.”

  Kathy let out a breath of air and turned to leave. “Happy sleepover!”

  The girls plotted out their various sleeping locations across the living room carpet. Jane closed the front door, locking both the handle and the dead bolt.

  Emily looked up at Jane. “Mom? Haven’t you got someplace to go right now?” Her eyes urged Jane out of the room.

  “Why, yes, Patty. I do. I’ll be in the kitchen if anyone needs anything.” Jane pulled out a cigarette from the packet in her shirt pocket, lit it and sauntered down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Mrs. Calver?”

  Jane turned to find Heather standing behind her. “What is it, Heather?”

  “Are you going to smoke in the house?”

  “Yes,” Jane said, her irritation level rising. “Why do you ask?”

  “I have smoke allergies. So do Mary and Virginia. Mary even has asthma.”

  Jane regarded Heather as she would a suspect back at DH. “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes,” Heather said, her steely eyes sharpened on Jane. “That’s a fact!”

  “I’ll crack a window,” Jane turned and walked into the kitchen. Behind her, she heard the overly dramatic sound of Heather coughing in her direction. Jane kept her back to Heather, as she opened up a bag of chips.

  Heather stood in the kitchen entryway for several more seconds, shooting daggers at Jane with her eyes. Without Jane noticing, Heather glanced over to the sliding glass door. She spotted a three-foot long wooden dowel propped up against the wall. She recognized the dowel as a tool to place in the floor tracks against a closed sliding glass door to make it difficult for intruders to break in.

  Jane turned around. Heather quickly took her eyes off the dowel and stared back at Jane. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Heather?”

  “No, Mrs. Calver,” Heather said as she spun around on her heels and crossed back into the living room. “Hey, Patty. If you look in my bag, you’ll find all the CDs!”

  Emily eagerly opened Heather’s bag and brought out a stack of country CDs. “Let’s put on Shania Twain!”

  Heather smiled the same pasty grin her mother perfected. “That’s my favorite!”

  Emily plopped the CD in the boom box and hit the play button. Shania blared forth with “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” The girls began bopping their bodies back and forth to the beat of the song and shouting out the chorus with Shania.

  Jane took a deep drag on her cigarette and realized it was going to be a long night. She grabbed a plate of chips and dip, crossed back into the living room, dodging the dancing girls and headed down the hallway to her bedroom.

  Heather danced along to the music but never took her eyes off Jane. She twirled her body in circles until she stood near the front door. From there, she had a clear view of the long hallway that dead ended with Jane’s bedroom. Jane closed her bedroom door, never once seeing Heather’s inquisitive eyes. “I’m going to the bathroom,” Heather yelled to the girls above the music as she sashayed down the hallway. Poking her head in one door, she found the bathroom. Moving a few steps farther down, she discovered the hall closet. She bopped back toward the living room, stopping in front of Emily’s bedroom door. The rest of the girls were so into the song that none of them noticed as Heather disappeared into Emily’s bedroom.

  Heather quietly closed the door behind her. She surveyed the room with a nasty glare. Everything was exceptionally tidy, thanks to Emily’s rabid cleaning that day. She spotted Emily’s Starlight Starbright vinyl case sitting on a chair and walked over to it. Lifting the cover, she poked around in the case, examining the projector. To get a better look at it, Heather pulled it from the case, uncovering the photo packet. She set the Starlight Starbright on the bed and brought out the photos. The first one featured Emily and her parents. Heather screwed her face into a confused look as she sifted through the photos. After sorting through the stack, she started to put them back into the packet when several of them fell from her hands, landing on the floor upside down. One of the photos had writing on the back. Heather collected the pictures and read the words.

  In Emily’s writing, it said: “Mommy and Daddy. I LOVE You!”

  Heather flipped the photo over to see the Lawrence trio. “Mommy and Daddy?” she said to herself. Suddenly, she heard footsteps outside the door. She quickly stashed the photos back into the packet, tossed them into the case and replaced the Starlight Starbright, slamming the cover shut.

  Spinning around, she started for the door when she turned around to check for the one thing she really wanted. Heather scanned the room and spied it propped up on the bedside table. Satisfied, she pressed her ear to the door, waited until she heard no sound, opened the door carefully and walked back into the living room.

  The girls were still dancing to Shania’s CD. Emily skipped over to Heather. “Come on! You’re missing all the fun!” Emily said loudly over the music.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea for a great game,” Heather said, joining the group.

  Meanwhile in the back bedroom, Jane tried to view the pages of information on the Stover and Lawrence case with a new eye. Nothing in the Lawrence crime folder alluded to any connection with organized crime. Emily made it clear to Jane that the friendship between Amy and her was strictly of their own making and the subsequent alliance between Bill Stover and David Lawrence was born from Bill’s need for computer assistance at his office. After more than two hours of
pouring over the documents, Jane concluded that the single link between these two families was that each couple had a daughter and that the husband of each wife had some level of substance abuse that served to cloud their better judgment.

  Jane turned her thoughts to Emily’s cryptic memory of the man she saw in her bedroom through the crack in the closet door. It had always bothered Jane that the perp butchered two people and then quickly gave up the pursuit of anyone else in the house. In all of the cases that fit the rage-filled kill pattern, the perp was driven to complete his task, leaving no room untouched. The only exception to that rule was if the perp risked being discovered by an unexpected person arriving on the scene. In that case, they would always flee the scene. But as far as Jane could deduce, that didn’t happen in the Lawrence case. Jane recalled that Emily mentioned how the perp grabbed at his mask in an agitated way. Why? If there was any chance of someone else hiding in the house, why would a smart criminal like this one expose himself to a witness?

  Jane remembered the exact way Emily mimicked the perp’s irritation to his mask. It was as though he was clawing at his face. Clawing. Jane thought about that image. She’d seen it before many times. But the individuals had no mask on their face. They were clawing at their flesh thanks to the physical and mental effects of methamphetamine on their system. Meth addicts were prone to developing often agonizing rashes that were made more irritating by anything that touched their skin. And so, it came back to meth. Lately, it always seemed to come back to meth.

  Okay, Jane considered, maybe the perp was a meth freak. It certainly was not outside the realm of possibility these days. The grisly way in which the perp murdered David and Patricia Lawrence could easily be attributed to a meth-induced rage—either coming up on the high or, more likely, tweaking and needing more of the drug to maintain their high. Jane pulled out the crime scene photos and referred to the close-up of Patricia Lawrence. Her left eye was partially popped out of its socket. It wasn’t the first time Jane saw a direct stab wound to an eye, but it wasn’t common. From a profiling angle, a perp who stabs someone in the eye is typically sending a message. It could be “Don’t look at me” or “I don’t want you to see.” It was primitive but some perps retained a certain base animal instinct, especially if they were jacked up on drugs.

  For whatever reason, this particular perp was determined to send similar messages through his brutal slayings. Jane assumed that whoever killed the Lawrences also returned and killed Martha Durrett since she was found with a knife plunged into her face. And there was that note attached to the knife that said “PAYBACK.” So much about this case confused Jane and that note was no exception. Was it directed at Martha? If so, what had she done to deserve payback? Martha always played it by the book. Martha simply wasn’t capable of doing anything that warranted payback. But still, the perp felt a need to attach that note to the knife.

  This time, Jane was certain that the perp had to know Emily was in the house that night because he no sooner thrust the knife into Martha’s face than he booked it upstairs to finish the grisly job. Jane surmised that he knew the cops were covering the house and that he had a slender window of time. It was a ballsy move fueled by desperation and a compulsion to kill the one person who could identify him as the perpetrator of the Lawrence double murder. But from what Jane gathered from Emily later that fateful night, the sight of the circling patrol car down the alley possibly deterred the killer from nailing his target.

  The intense scrutiny of documentation provoked another headache. Jane looked at the clock. 10:00 p.m. She collected the paperwork, replaced it in the files and stashed it into her leather satchel. Feeling like a mouse trapped in a cage, she decided to venture into the kitchen to grab a soda and a fresh perspective. When she opened her door, she was greeted with near total darkness. She could hear the hushed tones and giggling voices coming from the living room. Jane found the girls in their pajamas, sitting cross-legged on top of their sleeping bags that were arranged in a circle. The only light in the room came from a single lamp in the corner and two flashlights that were positioned facing upward toward the ceiling in the center of the circle.

  “Mom!” Emily said, slightly irritated. “You’re not supposed to be in here!”

  Heather stiffened when she heard Emily calling Jane “Mom.”

  “Just passing through,” Jane replied, heading toward the kitchen.

  “Are you going to smoke a cigarette in there?” Heather asked in a catty tone.

  Jane turned around. “Yes, Heather. That’s the plan.”

  “Well, then if you don’t mind, I’ll open the front door to clear the smoke.” Heather jumped to her feet.

  “We’re keeping that door closed and locked, Heather.”

  “I’m just thinking of Mary’s asthma,” Heather replied, putting on a very good act as the concerned friend.

  “Yeah, Mom,” Emily chimed in, “we have to think of our guests!”

  Jane shook her head at Heather’s obvious manipulation. “I’ll blow it out an open window.” She turned to walk into the kitchen.

  “Or, you could just go outside and smoke,” Heather proclaimed.

  “Mom?” Emily cautiously suggested, knowing she was pushing Jane’s buttons. “Maybe you should go outside to smoke. I don’t want anyone to get sick.”

  Jane let out a deep sigh and walked into the kitchen.

  Heather waited until Jane was out of eyesight and heard the kitchen sink faucet turn on before launching into her devious plan. “Are we gonna play ‘Truth or Dare’?”

  “Let’s do it!” Mary exclaimed.

  “Heather,” Emily said. “Turn off that corner lamp. Flip the switch on the wall by the door.” Heather fumbled in the near darkness and flicked up two light switches—one that illuminated the front porch light and the other that turned on the bright beam over the garage. “Try the other switch to your right,” Emily instructed.

  Heather slapped that switch and the lamp clicked off. She looked around the room. “Hmmm. The room needs something more. Something different. If we only had one of those Starlight Starbrights, we could—”

  “I’ve got one!” Emily said, jumping to her feet.

  “No way!” Heather said.

  “I’ll get it!” Emily raced into her bedroom and returned with only the projector.

  “Where’s the case?” Heather said pointedly.

  “I left it in the bedroom,” Emily replied, plugging in the projector and adjusting the knobs. She propped the projector onto a pillow, casting a starry carpet of pinpoint lights across the living room ceiling. Turning another knob, the soft, melodic tones of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma,” interwoven with the sounds of crashing waves and a gentle wind, drifted into the air. The girls sat in awe as the constellation of stars floated above their heads. For a moment, Emily was drawn into the familiar sound.

  “Okay!” Heather announced, plopping her body onto her sleeping bag that was in direct line with the kitchen. She glanced toward the kitchen and noticed that Jane was still standing at the sink, running the water. “I’ll go first. Mary! Truth or dare?”

  Chapter 26

  Mary was surprised to be called first. “I’m first? I’m never first.”

  “Well, you are now!” Heather said in an aggravated tone. “Truth or dare?”

  Mary looked a tad nervous. “Truth,” she said haltingly. “No! Dare!”

  “Alright,” Heather said, the wheels turning in her head. “I dare you to kiss your arm in a real sexy way . . . the very same way you’ll kiss your first boyfriend.”

  Mary looked shocked. “Heather. I can’t—”

  “Do it!” Heather ordered. Mary reluctantly brought her arm to her lips. “Wait!” Heather interrupted. “Instead of using your own arm, you have to use Patty’s.” The girls, save for Emily and Mary, nervously giggled. Emily looked over at Mary, not quite knowing what to think. The whole thing seemed odd to Emily and yet she tried her best to block out the feeling. She held out her arm to Mary w
ho reluctantly held it between her hands. Pausing briefly, Mary leaned down and kissed Emily’s arm as best she could. After a few seconds, she quickly let go of Emily’s arm. The girls let out a cacophony of laughter. Heather shook her head in dissatisfaction. “Gosh, Mary. I feel sorry for your first boyfriend!” Mary shrunk down in embarrassment as the other girls laughed even louder. “You know, Mary,” Heather said, “if you now agree to a double dare, you can sit out the next round and give out two truth or dares.”

  “Do it, Mary,” one of the girls urged.

  Mary looked helplessly around the room. Emily was drawn toward the ceiling as the lilting melody of “Nessun Dorma” from the Starlight Starbright pulled her away from the group. Mary tugged on Emily’s pajama sleeve, bringing Emily back into the moment.

  “What should I do?” Mary whispered to Emily.

  “Um, it sounds like a good deal, I guess” Emily said, not quite sure.

  Mary hesitated. “Double dare it is.”

  Heather leaned forward, speaking in a confidential tone. “You have to kiss Patty on the lips.”

  Emily’s eyes widened in surprise. Mary matched Emily’s reaction. The rest of the girls broke into fits of giddy laughter.

  “Heather!” Mary said in shock.

  “You agreed to a double dare, Mary!” Heather haughtily said over the cackle of giggles. “Are you going to take back your promise?”

  Mary looked at Emily between the eerie shadows that clutched the room. Emily suddenly felt trapped and anxious. “Okay,” Mary said. “I’ll kiss her but it won’t be like a boyfriend.” Mary leaned closer to Emily, who directed her attention toward the ceiling of floating stars.

  Part of Emily was in that room and part of her was someplace far away. She focused on the star-filled ceiling and the familiar sound of “Nessun Dorma” rising above the sound of the crashing waves and wind. She felt Mary’s warm lips touch hers but she didn’t react. Her body was lifting out of her physical skin and drifting behind the thin veil of reality.

  Heather watched Emily with great interest, not sure what to make of her unusual reaction. She expected something else. She wanted to see a jolting reflex or disgust for the kiss and she wasn’t getting it. Mary pulled back as Emily kept focusing on the ceiling. “So, Patty,” Heather said, “is Mary a good kisser?” Emily remained faraway, not moving a muscle or blinking an eye. “Patty!” Heather said loudly. Emily still didn’t react. “My, my!” Heather smugly said. “I think Patty’s in love!”