Read Online Protector by Laurel Dewey - Free Book Online

scene textbooks. It was the stuff of her childhood. She popped the lid off one box and uncovered a neatly arranged selection of old homicide manuals. Hoisting the box off the stack, she took it into the kitchen and set it on the tiled sideboard near the sink. The homicide manuals covered everything from crime scene surveillance to protecting the integrity of evidence. Interspersed between the dry text were pages of black-and-white crime scene photos, depicting gunshot wounds, stabbings, hangings and the occasional decapitation.
     
    Jane lit a cigarette. As she lifted a large manual out of the box, several dozen color Polaroid photos slid out from the book and spread across the kitchen floor. The photos showed in great detail the dead, decomposing bodies of a husband and wife in bed. The husband had shot the wife and then turned the gun on himself. They’d been dead for three weeks in the middle of July before someone found them. When Dale Perry arrived on the scene, a bedroom taken over by thousands of cockroaches and maggots greeted him. They were everywhere—on the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the bed and inside of each black, bloodied and bloated victim. The roaches had made a permanent trail inside the head of the husband, entering through his eyes and nose and exiting through his mouth and the hole where the bullet entered. It was all there in each grisly close-up, down to the trace markings of excrement left by a roach on the woman’s wedding ring. The photos were twenty-one years old, but they were as disturbing as the first time Jane saw them. Instantly, it triggered the memory.
     
    She’s in the same kitchen with the same furniture, except she’s fourteen years old. She’s seated at the kitchen table under the piercing overhead lamp she half-jokingly referred to as “the third degree bulb.” Her brother, nine years old, is seated next to her. Her father sits across from her. The Polaroid photos of the roach-covered bodies are strewn across the table. It’s February and there’s an icy chill in the air. Pellets of hail mixed with snow bounce off the kitchen window in a steady rat-a-tat-tat. Jane is serving her father and Mike dinner, doling out macaroni and cheese onto mustard yellow plates. Her father’s cigarette dangles precariously from his lips, heavy ash hanging from the tip. He examines the crime photos as Mike grimaces at the gruesome images.
     
    “I don’t feel good,” Mike says with a soft whine.
     
    “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Dale says, eyes still examining the Polaroids.
     
    “My tummy hurts,” Mike says, sitting back in his chair.
     
    “There’s nothing wrong with you!” Dale says brusquely. “Eat your food!”
     
    “Come on, Mike,” Jane quickly interject. “It’s okay. Take a little bite.”
     
    “Noooo,” Mike replies.
     
    Dale smacks Mike’s head. “Stop whining and eat your goddamn dinner!” Mike reacts with a muffled cry. “Did you hear me?” Dale screams as he leans over to Mike, inches from his face. “Shut up! You understand? You understand me?”
     
    Mike sinks down into his chair and cries out, “Don’t. Don’t . . .”
     
    Dale stands up and his chair skims across the floor. Jane bolts out of her seat.
     
    “Goddamnit, you weak little fuck!” Dale yells. “You want something to cry about?” Dale grabs Mike by the back of his shirt and yanks him out of his chair.
     
    “Janie!” Mike screams, trying to reach out to her. “Janie!”
     
    Dale gives Mike a hard slap across the face, sending his son onto the floor. “I said shut up! You understand?!”
     
    Mike screams as he rolls into a fetal position and covers his ears. “Janie!”
     
     
    “Janie?” Mike’s voice shook Jane out of her daze. “You okay?”
     
    It took Jane a second to put herself back into the moment. “Sure,” she said, quickly gathering up the fallen photos from the kitchen floor.
     
    “Here, I’ll help,” Mike offered.
     
    “No!” Jane