Protector - Laurel Dewey [47]
Jane sat stunned. There was a long stretch of silence between them. For a brief moment, she felt as if should could trust him. “Boss . . .” Jane struggled with revealing herself, “I’ve . . . ah . . . had some weird shit happening lately . . .”
“What is it?” Weyler asked compassionately.
Jane traced the grass with her eyes, realizing that to divulge the splintered images and odd notations with drawings of wolf faces would be career suicide. She shook her head. “Nothing . . .” There was a moment of silence.
“Can you pull yourself together by 9 a.m.?”
“Why?” Jane quietly asked.
“I want to take you to the Lawrence crime scene. I’d like to get your impressions.”
“It’s Chris’ case and I thought I was suspended.”
“Technically, yes.”
Jane looked up at Weyler. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m in charge. And I say that I’m going to pick you up at 9 a.m.” Jane nodded. “Oh, I almost forgot,” Weyler said, turning to his car, “Emily Lawrence asked about you. She wanted to know if your injured hand felt better.” Weyler got into his car and drove down Milwaukee.
Nine o’clock came quickly. Jane only woke twice during the night. Both times, it was the result of her recurring nightmare of the Stover murder.
The nightmare always followed the same pattern. She and Chris are sitting in the unmarked sedan across the street from the Stover’s house. Stover and his family have just left the location in their SUV to get ice cream, flanked by two police cars. All is still and very dark around them. Jane, sitting in the passenger seat, is trying to get the lid off her thermos of coffee. She is wondering how she is going to tell Chris that she wants to end their relationship.
Chris is edgy and irritated as he calls one of the flank vehicles on his cell phone. “Yeah, it’s me. I can’t believe Stover was so stupid! He drives off with his family for ice cream so he can get thirty minutes in the outside world! Thirty fucking minutes! It looks all clear from here but hurry up!”
In the dream, Jane thinks to herself how arrogant and self-important Chris sounds on the phone. Like he’s ordering people around that he has no authority over. Chris enthusiastically engages Jane in conversation about himself. He drones on about how he’s getting a plasma TV along with mega-sized speakers. He offers to help her get the lid off the thermos and they concentrate on that for several minutes.
The dream accelerates in time and Jane sees three sets of headlights in her passenger mirror coming down the street from behind their parked location. Stover’s SUV is sandwiched between the two police vehicles. Jane turns toward the oncoming cars. This is where it all slows down in her dream. The Stovers’ SUV creeps up the street and stops briefly in front of Jane and Chris’ sedan. Amy Stover is seated in the backseat, behind her father who is driving. Amy presses her face against the car window and makes eye contact with Jane. She waves toward Jane and smiles warmly as Stover pulls the SUV into the driveway.
There is complete silence until the explosion cracks into the night air and the car goes up in flames. Jane charges out of the sedan toward the SUV. Chris chases after her. Jane stands several feet from the burning car and comes face-to-face