Redemption (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

The late December night air stung Jane’s cheeks as she walked to her ’66 ice blue Mustang. She’d parked the car within fifty feet of The Red Tail Hawk’s front door with the idea that she could quickly rip out of the establishment if necessary. One thing about Jane, she was always thinking ahead and factoring in what may or may not happen in any given situation. It was this highly calculated approach to life that defined her investigative method and had paid off in the past with numerous high-profile collars. That’s why the chaotic battle inside the bar completely caught her off guard. She had worked and reworked every possible angle before ever embarking on the set-up with Carlos—everything from planning the ice tea for whiskey substitution with Rose to maneuvering the meeting at the joint’s only semiprivate pool table, one situated on a raised platform with three walls surrounding it. Jane had strongly debated whether to take her Glock into the bar as a safety backup, but she had concluded that to hide a wire and a gun would be pushing her luck.

Jane ducked into her Mustang and slammed the door just as a flurry of snow whirled against the front window. The crimson glow from the bar’s neon sign reflected an eerie blood wash effect against the car’s interior. Drawing a squashed pack of Marlboros out of her jacket pocket, she pulled out a cigarette and lit up. For Jane, the first hit off a fresh cigarette was always like a flood of anesthesia that softened the edges. She pulled the smoke in, allowing the burn to penetrate her lungs. Looking off to the side, Jane noticed a lone prostitute on the corner. It was typical fare for this part of Denver. She noted how the hooker’s blond wig was askew and exposing a tendril of dark hair. Jane thought how trashy it looked and then caught a glance of herself in her rearview mirror. Her short-cropped blond wig had been pulling double-duty hours
over the last three months and was starting to show the wear. Jane yanked the wig off her head, exposing her pinned up brown hair. Removing the barrettes, Jane shook out the tangles and took another drag on her cigarette. She returned her attention to the prostitute. A cheap, white, cropped faux fur jacket fit snugly around her narrow frame. The hooker tugged self-consciously at her tight-fitting, pink miniskirt. That single action caused Jane to regard the girl with greater interest.

On closer examination, she looked no older than sixteen. Probably a runaway, Jane thought. She was trying to give off a tough vibe, but Jane could see the fear and vulnerability bleeding through her eyes. Jane knew that look all too well. She’d seen the same face staring back at her in the mirror when she was a teenager. Under the smeared black eyeliner, cheap rouge, and fireengine red lipstick, there was an odd innocence to the girl. She still retained enough baby fat to send up a red flag to anyone with a perceptive eye. The more Jane watched her, the more she reeked of inexperience. It was the way the kid bit her lower lip as she glanced from side to side. It was the apprehension in her step. Give her another year on the street and all that would be walled up inside a crusty exterior.

A tall, lean guy crossed Colfax Avenue and approached the kid. Jane noted how the girl’s entire body seized up as she caught sight of him. That single movement convinced Jane that this girl had never turned a trick in her life. The kid exchanged a few words with the guy, but then things turned ugly. The guy slammed the girl’s body against the wall, just a few feet from an alley that skimmed the bar. He had one strong hand on the girl’s right shoulder and the other was working its way up her short pink skirt. Jane peered more closely at the guy and got out of her car.

“Hey!” Jane yelled with a punctuated clip.

The john turned his head toward Jane but still kept a tight grip on the girl’s shoulder. “Mind your own business, bitch!” He turned his attention back to the girl. “A deal’s a deal!” he said in an intimidating tone.

Jane moved closer. The girl’s eyes darted to Jane. They were brimming with tears. As Jane moved within a few feet of the kid, it became clear she was all of fourteen.

“You like ’em young?” Jane said to the guy as the snow spit against her face.

The guy turned back to Jane, pissed. “Unless you want to do a three-way, get the fuck outta here!” With that, he jerked the girl by her wrist toward the darkened alley. “Come on!”

“So, Rick,” Jane yelled out, “how old is Chelsea now?” The guy stopped dead in his tracks. “She’d be, what?” Jane continued. “Thirteen. No, fourteen. As old as this kid right here. Fourteen. You know how I remember Chelsea’s age, Rick? I nabbed your sick ass twelve years ago when I worked assault at DH.” Rick turned around, squinting at Jane through the falling snow. “I also personally wrote up the restraining order that barred you from having any contact with your then two-year-old daughter.”

Rick glared at Jane. “Perry?”

“Yep. Take your hand off the girl, Rick!”

“I never touched Chelsea in that way,” Rick said his hand still firming gripping the kid.

“Ten years in prison and your old lady moving out of state with Chelsea never gave you a chance. Are you gonna let this girl go?”

“I gave her a twenty for a blow job and she ran off with the money before services were rendered! What are we gonna do about that?”

“She’s gonna put the twenty toward a bus ticket back home so she can finish ninth grade and start high school with a clean slate. And if that doesn’t sit well with you, Rick, I’ve got a Glock under this jacket,” Jane said, lying through her teeth, “and I’ll use it to blow off your dick so you won’t have to worry about blow jobs in the future. What’s it gonna be?” Jane unbuttoned her jacket as if she were reaching for her pistol.

Rick quickly let go of the girl. “Fuck, Perry! You’re crazy!”

“And you’ll be dickless if you don’t get the hell outta here!”

Rick backed up several steps, then spun on his heels and took off down Colfax.

Jane turned to the girl. “So, tell me. Is the reason you ran away from home worse than living out here and dealing with scum like him?”

The girl shook her head, still trembling from what had just transpired. “No.... No, ma’am.” There was a soft, southern drawl to the girl’s frightened voice.

Jane’s perceptive ear tuned in. “Tennessee or Alabama?”

The girl’s eyes widened in surprise. “Tennessee. Just outside Nashville.”

“Denver to Nashville. That’s gonna be about $150 plus whatever food you need.” Jane dug into her jacket pocket and withdrew her wallet. She pulled out every last bill. “All I have left is $160. Here,” she said, handing the cash to the kid. “We’ll have Rick’s twenty pick up dinner, okay?” The girl took the money in stunned silence. “There’s a runaway shelter one block down on this side of the street. It’s next to the gas station. You can’t miss it. Ask for Hilary and tell her you need a ride to the bus station. If you leave tonight, you can be home around this time tomorrow. But do me and your family a favor. Wash off the face paint and ask the shelter to give you a pair of jeans and a sweater. You don’t want to get off the bus dressed like this and give your mother a stroke! And call your folks before you leave so they know you’re coming home. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl stuttered.

“And by the way, if I ever catch you working the street again, I’ll kick your ass into next week. Understood?”

The girl smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered through a well of tears. She started down Colfax and then turned back to Jane. “Hey, how’d you know I was fourteen?”

Jane shrugged her shoulders in an offhand manner. “I just did.”

The girl turned and continued toward the shelter. Jane felt a sharp stab of pain around her jaw where Carlos had punched her.
For the first time that night, she realized how much the beating truly hurt. She took a final drag on her dying cigarette, crushed it into the wet pavement, and headed back to her car. Once inside, she angled the rearview mirror toward the light of the bar’s neon sign and examined her battle scars from the bar brawl. Her right cheek was starting to swell. Likewise, her cut lip was beginning to show signs of bruising. For a second, Jane flashed back to a bloody night nearly twenty-two years before, when she was fourteen years old and her cop father, Dale, nearly kicked her to death in a drunken rage. It was an incident that had haunted and defined Jane for many years, and one which fueled so much primal anger. It was also a memory that, up until nearly six months ago, had triggered her need for a fifth of Jack Daniels in one sitting.

Jane was just about to fall back into the violent flashback when she thought she saw a face looking at her in the reflection of the rearview mirror. She shifted the mirror to the old sedan parked directly behind her Mustang. However, between the shadows that cut through the curtains of falling snow, Jane couldn’t see a figure in the car. The only thing she could identify was a crystal hanging from the sedan’s rearview mirror.

Paranoia kicked in as Jane sat back in the seat. She slipped her left elbow toward the driver’s door lock and pressed it down. Reaching under her seat, she pulled out her Glock, placed it in her lap, and stared straight ahead. Jane’s mind raced with various scenarios of who she may have seen—a mob lackey hired to stay outside and wait for her exit, a Denver detective planning to trail her moves, or...nobody. It was the psychological price Jane paid for getting involved in dicey clandestine work, and it was taking its toll on her psyche. She snuck another look in the rearview mirror and was shocked to see that the sedan was gone. Jane looked around. She couldn’t believe she had missed the stealthy exit of the mysterious car. She tuned in to the moment, surrounded by the fast falling snow, and listened to her gut. When all else failed, Jane Perry could always rely on her sixth sense. And right now, her gut was surprisingly free of turmoil.

Checking her watch, she noted it was just after seven thirty. She deduced she could head home and order a pizza and ruminate on how her life was going to hell or she could attend the regular 8:00 AA meeting in the basement of the Methodist Church a few blocks from where she lived. Being a Friday night and a couple days after Christmas, Jane figured the meeting would be filled with people who were equally engaged in gnashing their teeth over their individual dramas. “What the hell,” Jane muttered to herself as she clenched a fresh cigarette between her teeth, slid her Glock under the front seat, and peeled away from the curb.

She pulled into the parking lot of the Methodist Church at 8:10 with the butts of two cigarettes still smoking in the ashtray. Traffic had been heavy due to the snow, and the parking lot was crammed full of cars. Several other vehicles stacked up behind her Mustang in search of parking spots. Jane was about to give up when she eyed a sliver of cement next to a far curb. Banking her wheels so that half of her car was on the curb and the other half on the cement, Jane managed to squeeze her Mustang into the space. As she crossed to the back door of the church, she sensed prying eyes focused upon her. She quickly turned around. The only action she noted was three AA members sucking on the dying embers of their cigarettes before heading down the back steps of the church. But as she followed the others down the steps, Jane could still sense the intense gaze of someone out in the snowy darkness.

As Jane expected, the church basement was packed with well over sixty people. The 1,000-square-foot room felt hot and dank as she maneuvered around the crowd, all tightly stuffed onto the couches and chairs with only the cushion of their down jackets between them. She located a metal folding chair and wedged it between two couches in the back, just behind the table that held the coffee and a bowl of packaged crackers and cheap candy. The meeting had started on time, and the customary recital of the Twelve Traditions was completed. Another female member read the Twelve Steps.

“One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable,” the woman said with a shaky voice. “Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity....”

Jane peered around the crush of bodies, noting a lot of new faces. Their hollow eyes gave them away. It was the look of every alcoholic new to the program—a lifeless, blank stare that gradually filled with hope as the weeks progressed. In Jane’s peripheral vision, she caught an old man staring at her. When she looked over at the gentleman, she realized he was drawn to her beaten face. He gently patted his own cheek as if to say, “What happened to you?” Jane shrugged her shoulders and mouthed, “It’s okay” in an offhand manner, trying to minimize her awkward appearance.

“Three,” the woman continued reading, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God
as we understood Him
. Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves....”

That’s where Jane tuned out the woman’s voice. It was appropriate. For whatever reason, Jane was stuck on Step Four. She wasn’t sure if she just didn’t want to work the program or if the words simply weren’t connecting with her. Somewhere deep down, Jane could appreciate the significance of the Twelve Steps, but the words weren’t integrating into her psyche. At times, she likened it to crossing a rickety bridge over a roaring river and wondering how in the hell that compromised bridge was going to safely lead her to the other side. The straightforward declarations within each of the Twelve Steps resonated with millions and made the difference between pursuing a chaotic life or a serene existence. Yet for Jane, the words felt flat and meaningless. She had no idea how to begin a “searching and fearless moral inventory.” Jane could fearlessly defend herself or someone she loved against any number of oppressors. But to boldly delve into the deep, dark regions where the demons play...well, she didn’t know how to begin such a daunting task.

“Would anyone like a twenty-four-hour chip?” the evening’s appointed leader asked the group. A petite, red-haired woman in her thirties raised her hand. “Great! Come on up and get it! How about thirty days?” An angular, crusty old cowboy in his seventies got up from the couch and collected the chip. “Ninety days?” Three people dislodged themselves from their seats and pocketed their three-month chip. “Six months?” Jane was two days shy of snagging that chip, but figured it would be bad luck to add it to her collection before the actual date. The distribution of sobriety chips continued with nine months and finally one year. Finally, it was time to cruise around the room and make introductions.