Pamela Tracy - What Janie Saw

She made an attempt to draw something on the page. But it only took her a moment to wrinkle the paper and toss it in the trash. Two more pages quickly followed. Her hand was shaking badly—no wonder she couldn’t draw.

Katie watched, her lips pressed together. “What kind of danger is Janie in, Sheriff? Are you going to arrest the kid who wrote the art book?”

Of course that would be Katie’s first concern. She knew all about predators, though mostly the animal kind. Being a zookeeper did that. And she and Janie both understood what Rafe knew.

The human predator wasn’t all that different.

“Right now,” Rafe said, “we just have to focus on finding out what was in the art book so we can take the next steps. Derek’s not a threat to Janie.”

Janie’s fingers tightened around the pencil, but she didn’t look at the paper. Instead she stared at Rafe. “What do you mean he’s not a threat? How can he not be a threat if what I read is true?”

A case that already set his cop teeth on edge was going to get even uglier. She needed the truth. “Chaney’s dead. He died this weekend in a meth-lab explosion.”

* * *

GUILT PRICKLED UP the back of Janie’s neck even as she felt the floor tilt. She started to stand, wanting to run but unsure of where to go. Derek’s death wasn’t something she could escape from. Nor could she escape her guilt that she’d been relieved by Derek’s absence this past week.

She hadn’t realized it would be permanent.

She should have tried harder to reach the kid, to find out what made him so unhappy, so dark.

Katie opened her mouth to say something, but Janie settled back into her seat and stopped her. “I’m fine. Really fine. I know what I need to do.”

But crowded with three people, the walls of the office started to close in on her. The room was devoid of color.

It made her remember living with her aunt. They’d rented a barren apartment, with no real colors anywhere to brighten the mood of the place. Until she picked up her paintbrushes and created.

Rafe must have picked up on her assessment of his office. “We can do this somewhere else if you’d like? We have a nice conference room.”

No, the brown, black and beiges of his office were fitting colors for what she was about to do. If they walked through the police station again, she’d have to see the men in uniform. She’d have to think about how they shone their flashlights while they searched for people on the run. Rafe was dressed like one of those cops, even though he was the sheriff. His badge was bigger, too.

“Here’s fine,” she managed to say.

Katie excused herself and went to find the ladies’ restroom. Janie relaxed a little bit. She should have come by herself, should never have dragged a pregnant Katie along.

“I’m sorry you have to go through this,” Rafe said.

She’d heard that line before, from cops even.

Rafe didn’t look like any of the cops she’d met, though. His black hair was somewhat short, straight, and only mussed where he’d run his fingers through it in frustration. His piercing eyes were as black as his hair. He gazed at her as if he could see past the facade she presented the public. He was a big guy, solid. He was the kind of guy who would catch you when you fell and not grunt because you weighed more than one-thirty.

She got the feeling he really was sorry.

But many of the cops she’d dealt with had been sorry for what they’d put her through. Rafe was no different. She didn’t need his sympathy. After all, he would only be sorry until he didn’t need her anymore. Then he’d forget her as the next day, the next crime, dawned.

Typical cop, or sheriff, or person in authority, or whatever.

Janie’d learned at a young age to only trust herself and her sister, Katie. That was why Janie drew animals. They gave no false pretenses, had no ulterior motives.

“Yeah, I get it.” Janie’s goal right now was the same as it always was when it came to the local authorities. If she couldn’t avoid them, do what they wanted so they’d leave her alone.

This time, however, she needed the cops. She just wished she believed, like her sister did, that the men in uniform were the good guys, defenders of the innocent and destroyers of evil.

Because evil had definitely rocked her world.

“It was just a typical evening, a typical class,” she muttered, amazed by how quickly normalcy had changed into nightmare.

“I’m sure—” he started.

“And then it wasn’t.”

How could she explain to him that after reading a few pages of a kid’s art book, her world had turned upside down, and she was still clinging to the hope it would right itself, that what she’d read would prove to be just a graphic novel—fiction, and nothing more.

“So nothing happened in class?”

“Nothing. It was after class, in the student union, that everything happened.”

“Give me every detail. Brittney’s been missing too long.”

“You talk as if you knew her.”

“Her dad’s my insurance agent. Her family attends the same church I do. I’ve known her since she was born.”

Janie couldn’t imagine that kind of stability. Rafe had lived in Scorpion Ridge his whole life. She’d bounced from her father’s place to apartment after apartment, neighborhood after neighborhood with an alcoholic aunt. In some ways she was still bouncing. Maybe she always would be, as her goal was to paint exotic animals in their natural habitat, and this meant lots of travel. Right now, she was saving every dime and putting together her portfolio and résumé, hoping she would be chosen as a visiting artist in Johannesburg, South Africa.

She could hardly wait.

Rafe, on the other hand, was a third-generation law officer with roots so deeply grounded in Scorpion Ridge that even during his few vacations, he’d rather have been home.

Janie’s idea of home didn’t match his.

She’d figured that out during their one date.

He’d been all about Scorpion Ridge, its people, the way of life. She loved it here, too, but there were people to meet and places to go.

And pictures to paint of so many different things far away.

* * *

RAFE OPENED HIS top desk drawer and withdrew two flyers. These were just the newest. From the day his father entered the Scorpion Hills Police Station to serve and protect, missing persons had received special consideration.

But his father had never solved the one missing-persons case that was the most important to him—his own son, Rafe’s brother. Ramon could have been dead all these years...or he could be alive, waiting to be found.

Not knowing he had a family that loved him and that had never stopped searching for him.

Rafe stared at both flyers for a moment before casually placing one in front of Janie.

Three words could describe the photo: young, pretty, happy.

In comparison, Ramon’s missing-persons photo had been of a baby not even forty-eight hours old.

Compassion warred with fatigue across Janie’s face.

Brittney’s white-blond hair streamed past her shoulders. A gray, sleeveless blouse hugged curves that hadn’t had time to mature. In her right arm, she clutched a brown-and-white spotted dog, maybe just a puppy, that stared happily at the camera.

Janie leaned forward and began re-creating.

While she worked, Rafe logged onto CopLink and learned more about the late Derek Chaney.

The kid’s rap sheet was long enough to make Rafe grind his teeth. However, nothing but petty crimes were listed. And yet, judging by the names of those alongside Derek during his criminal activities, the boy was capable of finding himself in the middle of a murder.

Rafe would love to give Brittney’s parents some good news. But Derek’s involvement only pointed to bad news. For everyone.