Redemption

by Laurel Dewey

  “You memorized that well,” Kit responded.

  “I could memorize a phone book. It doesn’t mean I know the people in it.”

  “I think I have,” Kit said, looking off to the side.

  “Have what?”

  “Made a moral inventory. I had to. I had to understand why I did things that, in retrospect, were careless and responsible for destroying others.”

  “I think ‘destroying’ is a bit over the top.”

  “Not in my case. I’ve spent years in ‘moral inventory.’”

  “Well, good for you,” Jane said, taking another drag on her cigarette. “They’re just words to me these days. A million questions but no answers.”

  “What if the answer is that there is no answer? Just faith?”

  “Faith? There’s a fucking dark pit if there ever was one!”

  “Don’t you believe in God?”

  “In that power greater than me? Sure. Why not? Better to believe than not believe and be caught with your pants down when your time’s up, right?”

  “But you still can’t let go and let God?”

  “Well, Kit C., therein lies my daily struggle.” Jane stared aimlessly into the night sky. “I’d let go and let God if I thought He knew what the hell He was doing.”

  Kit stared at Jane in a probing manner. “Do you really mean that?”

  Jane thought about it. “Yeah. I do,” she said as the realization hit hard. “I guess that makes me the ultimate control addict. I want finite answers to infinite questions. I want black-and-white solutions to gray problems. Today is something I just gotta get through. And tomorrow is full of apprehension.” She felt herself slipping into the void. Jane Perry would never usually allow herself to be so vulnerable in front of a stranger, but there she was, standing in the shadows and saying things she had only thought about in these last few months. “You know, Kit C., we think we’ve got it all figured out and that the dark night of the soul is behind us. We become aware that we have a problem and we think that’s the beginning of the light shining into our lives. But it’s just the beginning of the rocky ride. It’s the first layer of the onion after you dig it out of the ground. It’s full of dirt, and you peel that layer away and the layer underneath is still a little dirty, but as you continue peeling, the onion gets cleaner. But you know what happens when you get to the center of the onion, Kit? There’s another fresh, dirty onion waiting for you. It never ends.”

  Kit pulled herself up with the help of the metal rail. “Enlightenment is a lifelong process, Jane P. Just a whole lot of fresh onions waiting to be peeled.”

  Jane came out of her daze and looked at Kit. “Well, that’s fucked.”

  Kit smiled broadly. She picked up her purse, which looked more like a tapestry carpetbag than the typical purse a sixty-eight-year-old carried. “I’ve got something in here that’ll help take the pain away and make your face heal faster.”

  “You got a bottle of Jack in there?”

  “No, but I have this,” Kit said, handing Jane a small, amber glass bottle.

  Jane hesitated as she took the bottle. Using the reflected glare of the orange streetlamps, she made out the word on the label. “Arnica?”

  “It’s a homeopathic remedy for bruising. Take four pellets under your tongue every fifteen minutes for the next couple hours and then take four every hour tomorrow. You should see marked improvement if you get on it right away.”

  Jane regarded Kit with a puzzled look. “You a doctor?”

  “Oh, God, no. A doctor wouldn’t know what the hell those were!” Kit zipped up her purse and carefully moved off the steps and onto the snowy pavement. “See you soon.” Kit started off into the darkness, away from the church.

  “You’re not going to the meeting?” Jane called after her.

  Kit turned. “Not tonight, Jane P.” With that, she turned the corner and disappeared from Jane’s sight.

  Jane stood in the semidarkness, debating her next move. There were fifteen minutes left in the meeting. But the thought of dragging herself into the basement was becoming less appealing. She looked at the bottle of Arnica and thought, “What the hell.” Jane popped four of the tiny white pellets under her tongue and headed to her Mustang.

  She pulled up in front of her brick house on Milwaukee Street ten minutes later, just as the snow began to fall in a blinding diagonal arch. Jane grabbed her Glock from under the driver’s seat and tucked it halfway down the front of her jeans. Stashing the blond wig in her coat pocket, she dashed for the front door. She’d left the television set in the living room on “mute” before going to The Red Tail. The erratic glow served as the only light in the room as she tossed her Glock on the kitchen table. Turning to the television, she was greeted with the words BREAKING NEWS across the bottom of the television screen. Jane knocked back another four pellets of Arnica as she watched a sheriff’s deputy from California hold up a flyer with the photo of an angelic-looking young blond-haired girl. Jane almost hit the volume button on her remote control, but was overcome by the extreme weariness of the day’s events. She clicked off the television and turned to head down the hall to her bedroom when she noted the blinking red light on her answering machine.

  Punching the button, she was shocked to hear Sergeant Weyler’s voice.

  “Jane. It’s me. We just missed each other at the bar tonight. I need you to call me ASAP on my cell or at home. I don’t care how late it is. We have to talk.”

  The machine beeped, signaling the end of the message. Jane hit the ERASE button and walked into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her with a violent swing.

  CHAPTER 4

  DECEMBER 28

  Jane’s morning routine had dramatically changed since she got sober. Instead of stumbling over Corona bottles and trying to ignore a hangover, her new ritual began with a trip to the freezer to unearth a bag of gourmet coffee. There were over twenty one-pound bags of pricey coffee waiting for her, with names like Madagascar Vanilla and Swiss Almond Roast. On this morning, Jane selected a dark oily bag of Italian espresso beans. The aroma alone was enough to jolt her body into adrenal ecstasy.

  Jane flicked the “percolate” switch on her high-tech chrome coffeemaker and then threw on a pair of sweatpants, a light sweatshirt, and a hooded jacket. Thankfully, the weather outside was sunny and dry. It was typical for Colorado: snow and bone-chilling cold one day, sun and T-shirts the next. This served the Denver mantra, “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes.”

  Jane tied her running shoes and headed out the front door for the next leg of her morning ritual. Jane kept a pack of Marlboros and a lighter tucked under her front doormat. Before her feet hit the sidewalk, she took her requisite three drags off a cigarette before softly dipping the glowing ember into a can of sand that stood next to the doormat. She held the potent plume of smoke in her lungs and felt the power of the nicotine take hold as she unraveled the Friday edition of the Denver Post. She peeled off the front section and set off on her run. Not many people can easily read while they’re running, but Jane had perfected this unusual talent.

  Jane flipped the paper over and continued scanning the frontpage stories. The headline, MISSING CALIFORNIA GIRL, 12, WORRIES HOMETOWN caught Jane’s attention. Wrapping a dangling strand of hair around her ear, Jane quickly read the first few paragraphs. According to the story, a twelve-year-old girl named Charlotte Walker from Oakhurst, California—a small tourist town known as the unofficial “Gateway to Yosemite National Park”—was missing and presumed kidnapped. The last known sighting of Charlotte, an only child, was outside a drive-through barbeque restaurant on the main drag on Christmas day. One of the employees of the fast-food joint, a teenage girl, described how she saw Charlotte getting into a beat-up four-door Chevrolet that was heading out of town.

  Jane jogged to a halt and stared at the cheerful school photo of the child. It appeared to be a photo of pure innocence. Charlotte’s soft blond hair curled around her ears as her round, hazel eyes stared sweetly
into the camera. She noted the kid’s lips. They were exceptionally pink, slathered with a shiny gloss, and what Jane would describe as “plump and pouty.” There was the expected quote from the grieving mother: “It’s not like Charlotte to get into a stranger’s car. She’s a good, sweet girl.” Jane looked back at Charlotte’s school photo. Throughout her career, Jane had always had the ability to look into the eyes of a victim or a perpetrator and instinctively feel the truth or lie beneath their surface. Staring into the eyes of Charlotte Walker, something felt off.

  Jane jogged back to her front steps. Removing the partially spent cigarette from the can of sand, Jane lit up and drew four deep drags into her lungs. The sound of the telephone caught her attention as she unlocked the front door.

  “Jane, are you there?” Jane stood motionless as she listened to Sergeant Weyler’s determined voice on the machine. “Pick up for God’s sake!” Jane started to reach for the telephone but pulled back. “Goddammit, you’re standing right there, aren’t you?” Jane peered at the machine with a puzzled look. “I know you got my message because the phone rang four times instead of two!” Jane muttered a frustrated “Shit,” remembering that she was dealing with a man who was as good as she was at deciphering little things such as how many times a phone rings before and after a message is heard and then erased. “Stop avoiding me for Christ’s sake and call me right away!”

  Weyler slammed down the phone with a hard click. She knew he wanted to talk about what had gone down at the bar the night before and her involvement in the case both she and DH were chasing. But her stubborn pride wasn’t going to give in.

  Jane moved with gusto toward the heady aroma of coffee that awaited her in the kitchen. She took a long sip and caught a glance of her reflection in the chrome coffeemaker. She couldn’t quite believe what she saw, so she walked down the hallway to the bathroom. Yes, her face showed the signs of a beating, but the bruising and swelling was much less severe than she ever expected. “Humph!” was all Jane could mutter as she made her way into her bedroom. Finding the bottle of Arnica on her bedside table, she was reminded of Kit Clark and the somewhat pointed conversation they had shared the previous night. For good measure, Jane popped another four pellets of the homeopathic remedy into her mouth and prepared for her day.

  The focus of the day would be straightforward: figure out a way to pick up the pieces from the debacle at the bar, gather together what she had for the FBI, and convince Jerry to give her extra time on the $3,000 bill for bar damages while persuading him to not put her life and career in jeopardy by alerting the media. In Jane’s mind, it all seemed perfectly plausible and possible to achieve.

  But that was before she checked her cell messages en route to her downtown Denver office. There were three messages, all from her contacts at the FBI. The first two were short and to the point. “Call us.” The third message was equally succinct: “The deal’s off.” Jane felt as though she’d been kicked in the teeth. She redialed her contact’s number while driving erratically through the maze of Friday morning traffic, only to hear the taped voice mail recording. As her mind whirled with the various scenarios, none of which were appealing, Jane left the only message she could think of: “No one tells me the fucking deal’s off until I say so!”

  Jane’s mind was elsewhere as she pulled into the parking lot that framed her two-story walk-up office building. She tore out of her Mustang and raced up the stairs that led to suite twenty-two and J.P.I. Her cramped, one-room, 200-square-foot workplace was in great need of a decorator’s touch. The walls were bare, except for a trio of glass sconces across from her desk. Stacks of large boxes crowded Jane’s cluttered desk, which had just enough empty space to fit the circumference of a coffee mug. That spot was soon filled with said coffee mug as Jane ripped through the phone book in search of the bar’s number. Finding the number, Jane dialed and waited more than ten rings before Jerry picked up.

  “This is Jerry,” a gruff voice answered.

  “Jerry. It’s Jane. We gotta talk.”

  “You got my money?”

  “That’s what we’ve got to talk about—”

  “Nothin’ to talk about, Jane. Three grand or I call Channel 7 News.”

  Jane was tired of being dictated to by a low-class slob. “How about this? I caught you serving shots the other night to three kids who were underage. It’ll take me less than two hours to get the paperwork served to shut you down.”

  “Well, it’ll take me less than two minutes to dial Channel 7 News and expose you for who you are! I want my money tomorrow or I talk!”

  “Rose told me you’d give me three days!”

  “I changed my mind. I want my story about you on the Saturday night news. Better ratings. And if you fuckin’ shut me down, I’ll just use that action against you in my story!” With that, Jerry hung up.

  Jane threw her handheld phone against the closed door, narrowly missing the vertical opaque glass pane. Jane peered outside, staring into the crush of cars parked beneath her in the lot. Three months of grueling investigative work was over and she was broke, both physically and financially. The walls started to cave in on Jane. She stared blankly into the parking lot, not focusing on anything in particular, until the sudden glint of a reflection caught her attention. She looked to where the sparkle of light emanated from and clearly saw a dangling crystal hanging from a rearview mirror. Peering more closely at the car, she realized it was an old sedan. She remembered the mysterious sedan with the identifying crystal that had been parked behind her the night before outside The Red Tail.

  In her peripheral vision, Jane quickly noted a figure obscured against the vertical opaque glass in the hallway outside her office. Instinctively, she reached for the Glock in her shoulder holster, and then realized she’d left it underneath her car seat.

  “Who’s out there?” Jane yelled, a nervous edge creeping into her voice.

  The figure moved toward the door. Jane looked around for an object she might use as a defensive weapon. But before she could grab anything, the door opened.

  It was Kit Clark.

  “Hello, Jane P.”

  CHAPTER 5

  It took Jane several seconds to get her bearings as she stared incredulously at Kit.

  “I figured you’d be surprised to see me,” Kit said, closing the door. Jane attempted to sort out the scene in silence. Kit looked down and saw the handheld phone Jane had thrown in anger. She picked it up and placed it on Jane’s desk. “That must have been what I heard hit the door.” Kit dropped her tapestry satchel against the lone chair reserved for clients. “Your face looks much better. I told you that Arnica works.”

  “What in the hell is going on here?” Jane said, regaining control of her domain.

  “Are you going to offer me a seat?”

  Jane searched valiantly for words to match her confused thinking. “We talk outside the meeting and...what? What is this?”

  “I guess I’ll offer myself a seat,” Kit replied, pulling the chair away from the desk and plopping her round frame into the cushion.

  “Wait just a goddamned minute!” Jane said, coming to her senses.

  “Sit down and I’ll explain everything to you,” Kit replied succinctly as she removed a series of envelopes and folders from her satchel.

  A bolt of anger erupted inside of Jane. “No! I will explain it to you! You don’t follow me from a bar to my private turf outside an AA meeting and talk to me as if you’re one of us and then just waltz in here! That was sacred territory last night!”

  “I understand and respect that,” Kit said in earnest.

  “The fuck you do!” Jane yelled, feeling terribly exposed and vulnerable.

  “Hell, I don’t care if you’re a recovering alcoholic! That doesn’t make you less of a person in my eyes. Frankly, it makes you more human. If you were all bravado and no vulnerability, then you couldn’t work from your heart, and I know you work from your heart. Last night, it was imperative for me to look into your eyes and really
see you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You do the same thing with others before you agree to form a relationship.”

  “Excuse me?” Jane said, in a semimocking tone.

  “You did it with me last night! You looked into my center. You felt who I was.”

  “Jesus....”

  “Let’s not play games, Jane P. Time is of the essence, and I don’t have any desire to fill that time with bullshit.”

  “Get out!” Jane ordered Kit, pointing toward the door.

  Kit dug her backside into the chair and flipped her long, salt-and-pepper braid over her shoulder in a defiant thrust. “No! I’m not leaving until you hear my petition.”

  “If you don’t move your ass out of that chair—”

  “What are you going to do, Jane P.? Take a pool cue and knock me across the forehead?” Kit let that statement sink into Jane’s ears.

  Jane was dumbstruck. Kit had somehow witnessed the fiasco at The Red Tail the previous night. Grabbing a small digital clock, Jane slammed it on the desk. “Five minutes and then you’re out of here!” Jane sat down.

  “Do you believe in fate?”

  “Do I believe in fate?” Jane repeated with a wicked edge.

  “Yes or no, Jane P.”

  “You just chewed up twenty seconds of your time with a dumb question.”

  “Oh, you’re going to play tough with me?”

  Jane tapped the back of the digital clock. “Four and a half minutes, Kit.”

  Kit angrily slapped the clock off Jane’s desk, sending it against the wall. “Scratch the badass cop act! That’s not who you really are!”

  “You don’t know who the fuck I am!”

  Kit sat forward. “Yes, I do! I followed the Emily Lawrence story very closely this past summer,” she said, referring to the high-profile homicide case that had propelled Jane’s name into the public eye. “I was fascinated by the case and the way you so deftly solved it. When I found out you were going to be on Larry King Live, I taped the show.”