Protector (15 page)
Authors: Laurel Dewey
Tags: #Police Procedural, #Denver (Colo.), #Mystery & Detective, #Psychic ability, #Women detectives, #Crime, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Children of murder victims, #Fiction, #Occult & Supernatural, #Espionage
Jane may have had her eyes on the TV the whole time, but she didn’t miss a word of her father’s speech. “I gotta get going,” she said.
“Hold your fuckin’ horses. I told you I wanted to discuss some things with you. I understand from the boys at DH that you and Mike are going through the house and cleaning it out. I got some things that I want to sell to some of the guys. They’ve been hounding me for years about my tool chest and guns. Your lover boy Chris wants that old hand drill for his boat. Go over to the house tonight and get the stuff and take it to DH. They’ll settle up among themselves and Chris can bring me the money.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s in the workshop. Take care of it tonight.” Dale sunk his head into his pillow and watched the television. Jane sat motionless in her chair. “I thought you had to go,” Dale said. Jane gradually got up. “Tell your brother he’s a fuckin’ coward.” Jane moved toward the door. “Oh, and Jane?” Jane turned around. Dale moved his right hand up to his face, stuck out his thumb and first finger to look like a gun and pointed it at Jane’s head. He peered at her and then quickly flicked his thumb to mimic a trigger. A grin crept across his face and he quietly said,
“Bang!”
Their eyes locked and Dale shot into her head.
Jane dropped Mike off at Duffy’s to pick up his car. She didn’t say a word to him about getting the tool chest and guns from the workshop. Mike was so far gone into his own world, Jane wasn’t about to broach the subject with him.
She stopped at the corner liquor store and picked up a six-pack of Corona. By the time she hit the turnoff on I-70 to her father’s house, she had knocked back two bottles and was on her third. No matter how loud she cranked the volume on her radio, Dale’s voice continued to play loudly in her head. “Follow the protection money” and “You actually believed you were going to be the hero, didn’t you?” blended into “Didn’t I teach you that lesson a long time ago.” The last sentence stung. This was where the madness always began. And to compound matters, she was less than five minutes away from the present melting into the past.
Jane pulled into Dale’s gravel driveway and turned off the engine. She drained what was left of the third Corona, popped open another and lit a cigarette. Jane stared ahead at the workshop, standing starkly against an aqua sky. The alcohol gave her a slight buzz—a welcome effect that she had hoped would dull the process and make it easier. But instead, it was as if her senses were heightened. She tried shaking it off as she popped open the car door and got out.
As she walked toward the workshop, a cacophony of screeching birds welled up from the surrounding willow trees. She reached the workshop and waited before clinking open the broken, rusty lock and letting the battered door slowly creak open.
Immediately, Jane was greeted by that familiar odor of wet wood, dirt floor and old paint curled at the edges. Sharp shafts of sunlight beat down from the slanted windows on the roof. She crossed inside, minding each step on the dirt floor that lay littered with the broken glass from the impromptu bottle and bullet vandalism she and Mike enjoyed a few days ago. Jane regarded her father’s worktable where parts of a .22 rifle were strewn. Dale’s reading glasses were perched next to a can of gun lubricant oil that was missing its red plastic protective tip. Her eyes scanned the table until they rested upon Dale’s dusty eight track stereo player with the bent handle.
Jane took a long swig of her beer and turned to face the opposite wall. Several boxes sat on the dirt floor in front of a rectangular object covered by an old blanket pad. She nervously dragged on her cigarette for several minutes, staring at the blanket pad. Finally, Jane scuffed toward it, gingerly lifting the padding to reveal the end of a five foot long, unframed mirror. Along the corner section was a curved crack that ran from top to bottom. She pulled the padding off the mirror and sunk to the floor. The fracture across the mirror sliced her reflection in half, distorting her image. It was no use fighting it any longer. So, she decided to give in and live her nightmare to its conclusion once again.
It’s that same snowy night in her 14th year. Dale pushes Jane forward into the workshop. She skids across the soft dirt floor on her shoulder, her face bloodied. Dale closes the door and snaps off his thick black belt. He lunges toward Jane and lays a hard crack of the belt across her back.
“Who the fuck do you think you are!” Dale screams before moving closer to Jane and nailing her with another lick of the belt. Jane covers her head with her arms and tries to get up, but at each attempt, Dale’s belt whips down harder. “You don’t fuck with me, bitch!” Down comes another lash of the belt. “You understand me?!”
Dale hovers over Jane’s crouching body and showers her with a series of punishing blows from his belt. By the ninth stroke, Jane begins to lose consciousness. She fights the feeling and rolls up on one knee, ducking the continuing lashes. She reaches out toward the oncoming belt. Connecting with it, she grabs the belt with both hands and pulls herself up on her feet jerking the belt from her father’s hand and throws it against the wall.
“Asshole!” she screams, slightly dazed.
The words no sooner stumble from her lips when Dale backhands Jane hard across her face. She spins to her right and careens headfirst into Dale’s worktable. As she makes contact with the table, she feels a surge of excruciating pain in her right temple. At the same moment, her hand reaches out to break her fall and hits the “play” button on Dale’s tape player. The voice of Nancy Sinatra fills the workshop, singing “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.”
“You keep saying you got something for meSomething you call love but confessYou’ve been a’messin’ where you shouldn’t have been a’messin’And now someone else is getting all your best.”
Jane’s back is to Dale. Blood drips from her right temple and into her eye. The room spins wildly. In the distance, she can hear the faint sound of his voice screaming at her but can’t make out the words. Nancy Sinatra’s recording drones loudly in her ear as Jane tries to focus on the object directly in front of her on the table.
“Well, these boots are made for walkin’And that’s just what they’ll doOne of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you . . .”
Jane tips her head to the right to force the blood out of her eye and makes out the object that sits within her reach. It’s a Smith & Wesson, 357 Magnum revolver and the chamber is fully loaded. She carefully drags her hand a few inches and wraps it around the butt of the gun. Her head pounds and the searing pain in her temple permeates her entire being. She gathers her strength, lifts her head, scoops the gun off the table and spins around to face her father. She stands, both arms outstretched, hands wrapped tightly around the grip of the gun. Blood streams from her temple, down the side of her face and gradually works its way into the corner of her right eye. Through the glaze of blood, she aims the shiny black barrel at her father’s head. Dale stops screaming and stands firm. The only sound between the two of them is the incessant blare of Nancy Sinatra’s voice and Jane’s labored breathing.
“You keep playing where you shouldn’t be playingAnd you keep thinking that you’ll never get burnt (Hah!) . . .”
“What the fuck are you waiting for, you little cunt!” Dale yells over the music. “Go on. Pull the fucking trigger! I dare you.” Jane slides her finger onto the trigger. The workshop rotates around her. “You don’t have the guts,” Dale screams.
Jane can hardly see out of her right eye which is now completely flooded with blood. She blinks hard in a wasted attempt to clear it. “You don’t . . . know me . . . very well,” she manages to get out.
“I know you better than anyone. You think you’re tough, but you’re nothing! You think you know how to win, but you’ll always fail.”
“I’m going to kill you now,” Jane utters, with no emotion.
“Is that so? You’ll go to prison.”
“I’ll go to ‘juvie.’. . . I’ll fake insanity . . . I know the ropes. . . I’ll be out. . . when I’m 18 and you’ll still be dead.” Jane feels the sweat of her finger against the steel trigger and starts to put pressure on it.
“What about Mike!” Dale yells. “When you’re stuck in juvie, who’s gonna watch out for him and protect him?” Jane stands firm, still pointing the barrel at Dale’s head but saying nothing. “You don’t have an answer for that, do you?!” Dale screams. “Stupid bitch didn’t think about that! You know where the little fuck’s gonna end up? . . . A foster home! And the guy who runs it will butt fuck him every night because he knows Mike won’t fight back! You want that on your head the rest of your life? If you do, you dumb bitch, then shoot me! Shoot me!”
Jane can hardly see through the blood. The more she tries to think rationally, the cloudier her perception gets. Dale’s face waves in and out of focus as the gun becomes heavier. And through it all, the song plays against the moment.
“These boots are made for walkin’, and that’s just what they’ll doOne of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”
Jane strains to focus. She can see that Dale is slowly moving toward her. As the blood clears from her eye, she can clearly make out that he is smiling.
With a sudden jolt of movement, Dale slaps her arms off to the side. Jane pulls back on the trigger and blows a hole in the ceiling. Dale grabs the revolver from Jane’s weak hands and throws it on the ground behind him. It falls against the rectangular mirror that leans against the wall, forging a deep crack in the glass. Jane stumbles backward. With his right hand, Dale grabs her by the throat and pulls her upright. She gasps for breath as she attempts to pull his hand away. “You are nothing! You understand me?” he screams. “You understand me?”
Jane manages to pull several of his fingers away from her throat. She looks Dale straight in the eye. “Fuck you!”
Then, another power suddenly enters Dale’s body—a power so destructive that it will stop at nothing until it shatters its target. Dale balls his fist and nails Jane hard against her cheek, sending her to her knees. Before she knows what hit her, she feels Dale’s boot kick her hard in the stomach. She falls to the side, trying to protect her body. But no matter how much she tries to take cover, Dale is relentless. He kicks her hard repeatedly in the groin.
The pain crescendos and then . . . nothing.
Jane opens her eyes and sees her reflection in the cracked mirror. She observes her father’s boot contacting with her body but feels nothing. There is no sound. There is no pain. There is no grief. There is no emotion. There is a cocoon of emptiness and she sits in its void. She watches as a trail of blood travels from the cut on her head and into the corner of her mouth. That’s the last thing she remembers before she loses consciousness.
Hours pass before Jane wakes up on the dirt floor. She is alone. The snow outside has turned to pellets of hail that beat a drowning rhythm on the workshop roof. At first, she wonders if she is dead and that Hell looks just like her former existence. She starts to move but feels a bolt of pain in her tailbone that works its way down both legs. Jane looks in the mirror and sees the dried cakes of blood smeared with dirt crisscrossing her face. She remains on the floor for another hour, considering her next move. About five feet away from her, she spies a gallon jug of whiskey hidden underneath a chair. She drags the bottle closer and pops the cork. Jane looks around for a clean cloth but finds nothing. She tips the jug and pours a handful of whiskey into her palm. Jane then holds her palm against the deep gash on her head. A low, guttural moan emits from her throat but she continues to bathe the wound in the whiskey.
Jane uses what is left in her palm to wash away part of the blood on her face. She pours another handful into her palm and rinses off the thick crusts of dried blood that settled in the crease of her lips. A few drops make their way into her mouth and she winces at the bitter taste. She continues to cover her face in whiskey. Each time, more of the liquid makes its way onto her tongue. She shakes off the flavor, but then begins to notice a comforting warmth enveloping her injured body. Jane takes a small sip from the jug and then another, until she swallows several ounces.
She starts to free-float. The pain in her tailbone fades. A penetrating heat surrounds her body. For the first time in her short life, she feels safe and protected.
Other books
Fish in the Sky by Fridrik Erlings
Summer Boys by Hailey Abbott
Buffalo Trail by Jeff Guinn
Dirty Nails by Regina Bartley
White Apples by Jonathan Carroll
WM02 - Texas Princess by Jodi Thomas
Hidden Moon by K R Thompson
Take Mum Out by Fiona Gibson
The Light Who Shines by Lilo Abernathy