A/n. Once again my scene breaks are being stripped from the chapters. If anyone has any idea how I can stop this happening I would be very grateful if they could contact me. Thank you. Tracy
Chapter Twenty One – What Are Little Girls Made Of?
The moment Jesse stepped out of Lauren's office reality hit him. What was he doing standing in a hospital hallway when his daughter was lying in intensive care? He broke into a run and made his way towards the bank of elevators in front of him, two minutes later he was standing just out of sight of Anneya's room.
It had all seemed so simple when he had been in the elevator, he would walk into the room, smile at Rae and sit down, but now, now that he was here, it was different. His consultation with Lauren had been exhausting, and usually he would have the luxury of sleeping after something like that, but today, instead, he had to face his greatest fears, both of them together, and he wasn't sure if he could do that.
Rae, she was the number one fear, everything that he was trying to hide away from came rushing to the surface if he saw her, thought of her, even if he just saw an object that reminded him of her. It wasn't something he could deal with right now, but neither was his second fear, which was being unable to protect his children from danger. Eliana had been taken, she had been kidnapped from this very hospital, and he hadn't done anything to stop it. And now his youngest daughter was dangerously ill, and he couldn't do anything about that either. "Dammit, this just isn't fair!"
"Jesse?" Rae's voice was quiet but strong, and she came to the doorway of the room she was in and smiled at him. "Hi, Honey, do you want me to go?"
"Yes … no, yes, I don't know, Rae, I just don't know." He moved a little closer to her, he could do this, he had to do it, for himself, for his child, especially for his child. "Can we try, like we did before?"
"Of course. If you go and sit closest to Anneya, I'll use the chair by the door, that way I won't disturb you any more than I have to when I leave." Rae wanted desperately to reach out, to just touch him, but she didn't dare.
"I … I need to talk to you, I don't know if I can, but I want to try."
"Ok, what is it that you want to say?" Rae could feel her heart beating loudly, and she clenched her fists behind her so that Jesse wouldn't see how keyed up she was.
Jesse looked at her, now she had asked him, he had no idea what he did want to say. The silence stretched out in front of him, and he longed to fill it, but he had no words to put his feelings into and so he sat, watching his daughter, not daring to look at his wife and wishing with all his heart that she would leave.
Steve looked at his watch, ever since Jo had called him he'd been wondering what it was she'd found. It was only eleven-thirty in the morning, and he wasn't sure if his curiosity could wait until six o clock to be satisfied. Cheryl had been right, it could be another oil well, with his wife and her background it could be almost anything he could think of and probably quite a few things he couldn't.
With a sigh he pulled himself back to the moment and looked at the computer screen in front of him. He was trying to work out a release to send to the newspapers and then he was going to write another one to send to all the California police departments to see whether they had any similar cases, solved or unsolved, to their red rose killer, on their books.
The profile that Ron had worked out for Rae and himself was printed out beside him and he cast his eyes over it once more. The description was quite specific and he wasn't sure that he was as totally convinced of its accuracy as Rae was, but he could definitely see the merits of having the benefit of its information. Steve smiled, he hated computers too, but they were invaluable to his job and he had a feeling that to discard what Ron had come up with would be just as big a mistake as not joining the technological age.
Slowly the press release took shape before his eyes, and he had to admit to being pleased with it. Nadine's photo would be on the release, as would details of Jenna and where she had been buried. The conversation that Steve had with the parents of the dead girl had been traumatic but, in the end, they'd been anxious to do anything to expedite the capture of their child's killer.
"Lieutenant, we realise that you want to close this case as soon as possible, but the details that you are asking for, they … well they seem like just one more injustice being done to our little girl." Mrs Palmerton had spoken quietly, but the concern and desperation had been evident in her words.
"Yes, Ma'am, I realise that, but my partner and I have liaised with the FBI on this, and one of their profiling experts feels that if we can give the killer some more personal information about one, at least, of his victims, help him to get closer to her, we might get him to come out into the open and we can apprehend him before he kills again." Steve wished that Rae was with him, but Anneya was unwell, and so she had stayed home with her child.
"He already killed her, how much closer do you think he can get?" Mr. Palmerton was a large man, probably 6'3" or 4" and his voice was deep and once again full of emotion. "What do you think he will do with any information we release?"
Steve tried to keep the shudder he felt inside of him. He knew what the killer would probably do at the graveside of their daughter, but he thought that it would be better to keep the information as sketchy as possible.
"Sir, Ma'am, this man will still feel a link to your daughter, I know this is something that you will find hard to deal with, but I am trying to explain it from his point of view." Steve had stopped talking for a moment and paused in case either parent wished to speak.
Mr Palmerton had shaken his head and insisted. "Please go on, Lieutenant Sloan."
"Sometimes he will go out to kill and be unable to do so, or it may be an anniversary of your daughter's death, not necessarily a year, it maybe a month or two months, or even an anniversary that you or I wouldn't think to include, and he will feel compelled to return either to the scene of the crime, or if that isn't possible, to another place that makes him feel close to his victim. We don't have the manpower to keep an eye on these locations all the time, but in the case of where your daughter … where your daughter was found, it is a reasonably open piece of land and I can make sure that patrols take it in regularly."
"And her grave? That isn't somewhere easily accessible, and to be perfectly frank about this, I'm not sure that I want any Tom, Dick or Harry being able to go and see where … where my baby … where my little girl … is buried. I'm sorry." Mr. Palmerton had stood up then and made his way out into the back yard, and Steve had felt so for him.
"Ma'am, it isn't our intention to upset you in any way, but we need your help, we can't move this investigation on in the direction we want it to go without your permission."
"Lieutenant, do you have children of your own?"
"Yes, Ma'am, I have a fifteen-year-old son." Steve had managed to keep back the grin that usually accompanied his thinking of Daniel.
"Well then, maybe you can understand a little of what we are feeling." Mrs Palmerton was obviously in tight control of her emotions, but Steve knew that like her husband it wouldn't take much for her to fall apart.
"Will you just talk it through when I've gone? I wouldn't have asked if I didn't think it was important."
Mrs Palmerton had smiled slightly then and nodded her head, "Yes, Lieutenant, we will do that."
Steve had received a call from Mr. Palmerton that morning giving his permission for all the information Steve had requested to be made public. Steve had thanked him, and hung up, not wanting to embarrass or distress the man any further, but he was impressed by the quiet bravery that the couple were showing and he hoped that the sacrifice of their privacy wouldn't be in vain. He began to check over what he had written when he heard his name being spoken and looked up in surprise.
"Steve, is there anything I can do to help you?"
"Rae? What are you doing here?" Steve shot out of his seat and moved over to her side in an instant. "Anneya, is she … Rae, why are you here?" He didn't know how to word his fears and so Steve fell back on asking the obvious.
"She's still unconscious, but closer to the surface than she was." Rae closed her eyes for a moment, she had wanted to be where she felt safe, where she could be of some use, but now she wondered whether she should have come. "Steve, Jesse couldn't even speak to me, and I didn't want to make him feel worse than he does, so I said I would work for a couple of hours and then go back … He hates me, Steve, he hates me so much that he can't even bear to be in the same room with me when our daughter is dangerously ill." Rae could feel the tears trying to break free but she had no intention of letting them succeed.
Steve wasn't sure what to do but he could see his partner battling with her emotions and knew that he had to say something. "No, Rae, I don't think it's as simple as that." He didn't want to betray Jesse's confidence, but he didn't really understand himself why Jesse couldn't just talk things through with his wife.
"He told me … before … before Anneya was ill … he told me that he wished he'd never met me, that things were way better before I came along …" Again she closed her eyes, and this time she fought all her feelings back and when she opened them there was a resolution about her, a strength that hadn't been there before. "I don't want to talk about it any more. I want to work for two hours and then go back to my baby."
"What about Ana? Shouldn't you go and spend time with her?" Steve was surprised and not a little worried that Rae didn't want to go and see her other daughter.
"I … I can't, right now I can't deal with her, she will be cheerful and happy, I … I know I should, but I can't." Rae turned away and wiped at her eyes, she then moved round so that she could see what Steve had been typing. "Hey, this looks great." Rae sat in Steve's chair and he knew not to say or do anything that would take her out of work mode until it was time for her to return to the hospital.
Jo had called the company where she had all her boxes stored and, to speed herself along a little, had arranged to have five of them delivered every three days. Even then it was going to take her forever to go through them all. The box with the gems in was now in the safe and Gilbert was arranging to have her insurance increased to unlimited coverage. Suddenly she needed to see the jewels again; she hurried over to the painting on the wall, moved it to one side, opened the mechanised door, took them back out and put the box onto the table.
Some of the jewels, she knew, would be described as semi precious, and Jo thought that she might have something made with them. She wished that Steve wore jewellery, but she knew that to have anything other than a tie-tack for when he wore his best suit or cufflinks for his tuxedo shirt commissioned for him would be a waste and it would just sit in the drawer.
As Jo ran her fingers through the different stones, enjoying the feel of them once again she caught sight of something white in the bottom of the box and so she tipped it up and watched as the contents slid out with a very satisfying noise onto the table. It was a folded piece of paper, and Jo knew it would be for her before she even opened it.
My dear Josephine,
So, you have finally made your way through the attic at the ranch. I wonder how long it has taken you, and whether you have opened the boxes as you found them or done as I would do and gone straight for the locked room.
Whatever way you have gone about it, you have, quite literally, found the jewel in the Walter's crown. As I am sure that you will have realised by now, there is a whole lot of money in this box. I don't really know why we did it this way, but over the decades all the Walters' women bought gem stones to put in here. It was kind of a nest egg in case the oil or cattle businesses failed, and was only to be used in an emergency.
I guess you can probably tell that the emergency never happened, but I still put a new stone in the box every year on the anniversary of your daddy's birth and I will continue to do so. Something tells me that the emergency will never go away, and we may one day be mighty glad we have this to fall back on. Sweetie, if you have another child, or if you are married now, choose a date and buy a stone every year that you can afford it.
You can, of course, dip into it if times are hard, but you need to keep a list of the value of the stones you take.
My darling child, before you put the box somewhere safe (and by that I mean some place close at hand), have fun with it. Run your fingers through the stones, watch the light through them, they are a beautiful gift of God that has been turned into something entirely different through the greed of man, I guess sometimes we need to remember that.
Josephine, just thinking of a time when we won't be together makes me feel very sad, I pray that by the time you read this you will be happy and content and that I was a very old woman when I passed on.
You have all my love as always
Florence Walters
Jo read through the letter again and then wiped her eyes. The notes that she found from her grandmother never failed to reduce her to tears, and she wished with all her heart that the woman had felt able to share these things with her while she had still been alive.
Jo wondered what had made the Walters' clan begin to hide away a priceless provision for the future. Her interest suddenly piqued she pulled her laptop around the pile of sparkling gems in the middle of the table and logged onto the internet.
It didn't take her long to find the site that she wanted, and very soon her eyes were almost popping out of her head. Jo had been surrounded by wealth her whole life, and she knew that she was sometimes guilty of taking the trappings for granted, but the type of diamonds that she had recognised from her box were, by themselves, worth just over $800,000.00 and she didn't dare look at the pages with the rubies, emeralds or sapphires on them. One diamond on the page caught her eye, and she searched through the stones on the table for a moment before returning to the screen. The stone was black, but it was still a diamond. There was no black diamond in the collection before her, and so she put it into the shopping cart on the page, then, not really believing what she was doing Jo went through the payment details, and five minutes later she had bought her first jewel for the box and her credit card was $5,250.00 lighter than it had been. She would, in future, make sure that each year on, or as near as possible to, the day that Daniel was formally adopted, purchase a stone in his name.
As she closed down the computer Jo heard the familiar sound of her son returning from his first day at school as Daniel Sloan, and so she went out to greet him.
"Hi, Honey, how was your day?" Jo couldn't stop the beam which crossed her face as she looked at the tall, no longer neat and tidy, boy before her.
"It was good, I gave the letter in at the principal's office and his secretary said she would make sure that Mr Wallis got it. I changed the name on all my stuff, and the other kids were real nice about it, y'know, I thought they might be a bit funny, but they weren't. How about you, did you have an interesting day? And Anneya, how is Anneya?"
"She moved her hand this mornin' but I haven't heard anythin' since then, so I'm guessin' there has been no change, an' yeah, you could say I've had an interestin' day, come an' look at what my grandmamma left me."
Daniel couldn't believe what he was seeing, on the table there must be over a hundred jewels. He guessed that the white ones were diamonds, green, emeralds, red, rubies, but there were blue ones, yellow, even pink ones. "Wow!" He shook his head in amazement, "you know, life sure is different living here."
Rae had received a call on her cell phone just over an hour after she arrived at the station; it had been Alex telling her that Anneya had opened her eyes. Steve, seeing the state the call had put her in insisted on driving her over in her car, saying that he could get a lift home from his dad.
Rae had only just managed to wait until the car was stationary before leaping out of it and racing into the hospital. Steve had followed at only a slightly more sedate pace, and because he was so much taller than she, had arrived at the elevator just as Rae did.
The doors opened almost immediately, but still it seemed to take forever to get to the PICU and Rae was almost too scared to leave the elevator when it finally did arrive. As the doors opened though and both Steve and Rae heard Anneya cry out she ran into the room, stopping only when she had no place else to go.
"Alex, Jesse, what happened, is she gonna be ok now?" Rae looked at the two anxious faces in front of her, and the fear rushed up in her once more.
"Rae, sit a minute and let me explain." Alex put his hand on her arm and guided her to the nearest chair; out of the corner of her eye she saw Mark come and direct Steve off towards the elevator once again, and as she lost sight of him she forgot him too.
"Can I hold her? I just want to hold my baby." Rae looked up into the kind eyes of her doctor and realised that she was too scared to read him.
"In a minute, listen to me first. She came round about ten minutes before I called you, Jesse was with her, and she just slowly woke up. I need to run some tests on her, to see what follow up treatment she will need, but she's gonna be in the hospital for another ten days at least."
"Ten days, Alex, no." Rae's face mirrored the horror she felt.
"Rae, listen," Alex gently shushed her and then continued to talk, "I told you when she arrived that she would need to finish a course of antibiotics for the ear infection she had, and that she would need to be monitored very carefully, she still does. The main danger is over, but she is still very ill, and has to be treated that way."
"I … I'm sorry." Rae looked down at her feet, she was still so scared for her daughter, but somehow she had thought that when Anneya came round that all the main problems would be over.
"Rae." Alex spoke again.
"Yes?"
"Now, you can hold her." He smiled at her, and then carefully turned, picked up his small patient, who opened her eyes at the unexpected movement, and gently wrapped a blanket around her before handing her to her mom. Anneya was obviously still unaware of her surroundings and she just leant into Rae's body, closed her eyes and was still again.
"Oh, Honey, Mummy has been so worried about you, Daddy too, but it will all be ok now, everything will be fine." There was no reaction from the little girl, and Rae gently ran her finger down the soft cheek of her child and then brushed the pale blonde hair away from her face. Anneya opened her eyes again, just for a moment, smiled a half smile and then gave a sigh and snuggled a little tighter against her mom.
Mark had filled Steve in on the condition of Anneya and then driven his son to the station to get his car. The mood was considerably lighter than it had been the last time the two Sloans had been together, and they had chatted happily all the way to North Hollywood. Steve mentioned that Jo had called him about a discovery she had made, and when he saw how his dad's eyes lit up had invited him for dinner, knowing that Michael would always have enough for one more person.
Michael had been crossing the hallway when he had seen the beam from Steve's car light up the front of the property and then another vehicle drive in behind the first. He stood in the open doorway as the two men walked towards him.
"Lieutenant, welcome home, Sir, Madam is in the breakfast room and asked me to direct you straight there. Doctor Sloan, how nice to see you again, will you be staying for dinner?"
"Grandpa! Grandpa, come see what Mom has!" Daniel's voice came rushing out of the breakfast room just before he did, and then another voice joined in.
"Unki Teve, Unki Teve, pwetty, look at v pwetty fings." Eliana was soon pulling on her favourite uncle's hand, totally ignorant of what she was taking him to, but knowing that both Aunty Jo and 'Danl' liked them.
"Hi, Honey, look what I found." Jo was suddenly embarrassed by the riches in front of her, and when she saw the look on her husband's face she knew she had good reason to be.
Steve couldn't actually believe what he was seeing and shook his head as he spoke. "I think I would have preferred an oil well."
"I beg your pardon? What did you just say?" Jo stared at him.
"Nothing, my God, Jo, there's a small fortune sitting on our dining table."
"Not so small, actually," Jo said sheepishly. "I have to have everythin' appraised, but I'm sure it's well over two million dollars."
Eliana had climbed up onto chair and now she reached over and picked up a handful of the stones and then let them fall to the table. The feeling and the noise made her giggle and as they bounced and pinged all over the place Steve shook his head again and, trying to ignore the heaviness he was feeling inside, he picked her up and left the room.
Mark watched him go, listening as his son promised the little girl a glass of milk and one of Michael's sugar cookies, and then he turned and placed an understanding hand on Jo's shoulder.
"I knew he wouldn't really like them, but I couldn't not show him could I?" Jo felt hot tears sting her eyes. She couldn't help being as rich as she was, and she had always known that Steve had a problem with it, the scene right back at the beginning of their relationship when he had accused her of using him until someone richer came along was still painfully vivid in her mind.
"No, Honey, I guess not, but maybe a little warning might have helped. Something along the lines of, before you come in there's a couple of million dollars worth of jewels on the table, that sort of thing." Mark smiled as he spoke and then pulled his daughter-in-law into a hug.
"I'll put them away in the safe, an' then we can have dinner, Mark, you will stay won't you?" Jo's voice was a little muffled as she spoke into her father-in-law's chest.
"Yes I will, and ,Sweetie, Anneya came round."
"Oh, Mark, that's just wonderful …" The room was suddenly silent as Jo felt the guilt which had been tapping away at her all day suddenly overwhelm her. "I … I was so caught up in my own little world that I never even asked … Does that mean that the danger is over?"
"No, not quite, she is still gonna be in PICU for a while, but things are a lot more positive than they were. Now, let's go get some of those sugar cookies before Eliana eats them all up!"
Mark watched as carefully Jo put all the stones back into their box, including a few which were sparkling on the floor, and then she fastened the lid of what was obviously an everything-proof box. He had a feeling that fire nor flood would even make a dent in it, even so he still had to ask. "Wouldn't it be better if you kept that in a bank vault?"
"No, I don't think so, Mark, there was a letter with it, an' I got the feelin' that the bank was the last place that these stones should be." Jo handed over the piece of paper which she had purposely left out of the box before returning it to its new home.
Mark read through what Florence Walters had written and then handed the note back to Jo. "I see what you mean; I guess then that your safe is as safe a place as any. Sorry." Mark chuckled as he realised what he had said and then wanting to change the subject and knowing that he had a very easy way of doing it he turned to his grandson. "And so young man, how does it feel to be a Sloan?"
Jesse had stayed with Anneya for as long as he could after Rae returned from the station, but by eleven in the evening he was so tightly wound that he knew he had to leave. Not wanting to actually go anywhere other than the hospital he had found his way to the sleep room in the ER doctors' lounge and slept there, his body and his mind finally getting the rest it had craved since he had begun to unburden himself to Lauren in a session that now seemed a lifetime away.
Rae had watched over Anneya almost all night. She had stolen away between the hours of two and four in the morning to stretch her legs and get some cool air, and her wanderings had taken her to the hospital chapel. It had been so peaceful and free from worry and concern there that she had sat in one of the pews at the back and prayed for the health of her children and for her husband, asking that he might find strength and peace, because Rae knew that whatever his problems were, he was going to need one to reach the other.
Her daughter didn't appear to have stirred while she had been away, and so Rae had settled down in the chair again and watched over her as she slept, hoping that the little girl would realise just how much she loved her.
It was just after nine the following morning when Anneya opened her eyes again and stared at her mother. Rae was almost too scared to move, the brief time the little girl had been awake the day before had become almost dreamlike in Rae's memory, but now she had done it twice. Rae knew that speaking would break the spell that both of them were under, and so for a minute she kept still and mother and child watched each other, and then, knowing that Jesse and Alex would need to be told, Rae pressed the buzzer before leaning over to kiss her daughter and welcome her to a new day.