Chapter 40

For the second time in 13 days, Bryant drove from Atlanta back to Emerald Cove. His had flown from Dayton to Charlotte, N.C., after dropping off the Lucas family in Wapakoneta. He had left Kelley Lucas with enough money that she could rent a car and a hotel room four times in the next two months. He planned to put the Lucas family in for the reward that the Feds had offered for the capture of Eileen Mayfield – if she ever turned up. That $50,000 would help the family a great deal, he knew.

The Lucas children had given him a hug as he'd dropped them off outside of their trailer in central Ohio. Both kids had smiled for hours after the visit with their father ended and all three had seemed to think the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they'd shared were better than the finest meal in Paris.

Kelley Lucas was now listed as a C.I. for the Ohio State Highway Patrol – and thus would be permitted to escort her children into prison and to visit with her husband. Mike Mitchell had told her that he would never contact her nor expect her to provide him with information. It was just a procedural move to get past her felony conviction. Once Ryan was dropped to a Level 3, Mitchell would remove her name from the file because it would no longer be necessary.

The layover in Charlotte had given Bryant some time to consider what he would be facing in Emerald Cove. His job was still there. He knew that much. But the 90 days he'd taken off were only 18 days gone. He would have a lot of time on his hands once he got back there.

There was also the question of how things would work with Jan. He had spent a lot of time with her as they waited for Parsons to arrive – but all of it was while Holly was there, too. Bryant was the only one of the trio on leave so he always took the night watch. He would stay up and drive Jan and Holly to work before returning to his apartment and sleeping for a few hours during the day.

He was pissed at himself that he didn't notice Parsons following him on the afternoon that the man was arrested. It was Holly who picked up the tail in the passenger side mirror. Rather than drive to Jan's house, Bryant cut through some side streets and parked beside his apartment. The three officers had slipped upstairs and Jan had pulled out the Remington 700 Police PSS. She loaded the black-tipped .308 ammunition as Holly scanned the region for the vehicle that had tailed them. She spotted it across the street but she couldn't make out the features of the driver because of the glare from the afternoon sun.

It wasn't until Chuck O'Bannon had called upstairs with the confirmed sighting that Holly and Bryant had slipped down the back stairs and threaded their way through the cross streets until they both had a visual on the car. The bicycle officer had stayed close by and Stan Williams coordinated Stuebens' approach with that of Holly and Bryant. As soon as the officers were in position, Jan activated the laser guidance system on the tactical scope. Even in the bright light illuminating the interior of the car from behind, Parsons had no problem understanding what was happening.

The arrest of Derek Parsons didn't give Bryant much more time alone with Jan. She, Holly and Regina were working with Jonah and Allyson in making sure the charges were filed properly and dealing with the FBI to ensure the deal Bryant had offered the guy would stand up.

The lead FBI agent wasn't particularly happy but eventually gave way when Parsons offered them all the information he could recall about Eileen Mayfield. It was usually the other way around: the person who paid for the hit generally wound up getting far less time than the one who performed it. The federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Ohio was far more interested in nailing Eileen Mayfield than she was in making sure Derek Parsons never saw the light of day again. She figured there was an even chance the man would be killed in prison, anyway.

Jan had been distant during the minimal amount of time she spent with Bryant before he flew back up north to put the coda on the Jonathan Mayfield saga. Once Eileen Mayfield was captured there would be no one left to handle the Mayfield's assets.

Bruce Mayfield was still in the county jail, being held without bail as a flight risk. He would face trial in October for felony assault on a police officer. There was no doubt that the man would be convicted. The courthouse had surveillance video in every corridor and Mayfield was caught live and in Technicolor pushing Holly Garvin. The fact that a dozen people had come forward – including Wyatt Quinn – and offered to testify sealed the case. He would spend a minimum of two years in a South Carolina prison. No one thought for a moment that he would get parole the first time around; very few felons did in South Carolina. It was more than likely that the man would spend 42 months in prison.

Eileen Mayfield was facing a stiffer sentence. The penalty for soliciting the murder of a police officer could net her life in prison. The prosecutors would decide if she spent that time in a federal prison or in a South Carolina prison. The FBI was involved because the crime spanned several states. The initial contact was made in Ohio; the money was paid in Missouri; and the crime was to be committed in South Carolina. The federal prosecutors in each jurisdiction were jockeying for position to level charges against Eileen Mayfield. The Mayfield family had gotten a lot of media coverage over the past few months: from the son's arrest on rape and murder charges, to the father's fall from grace during the trial. The prosecutor who capped off the destruction of the family might find his or her way onto the federal bench in a year or two.

There had been much hue and cry from the Midwest and the South when the Attorney General had declared that the federal prosecutor in the original jurisdiction (the Northern District of Ohio) would handle the case. The woman in that office had immediately filed an arrest warrant for Eileen Mayfield – and signed off on the Derek Parsons' deal.

The local law enforcement agencies and the local prosecutors wouldn't get a shot at Derek Parsons or Eileen Mayfield. That was reserved for the big boys whose bosses sat in opulent Washington, D.C., offices. The attorneys general in Columbia, Columbus and Jefferson City would have to bite their tongues and hope they might be tapped for the next federal job. The cops in Youngstown, Emerald Cove and Berkeley, Mo., would never interrogate Eileen Mayfield, nor would the agency that finally found her get the credit for her arrest.

The FBI office in that area would be lauded for their professionalism and their attention to detail. The state trooper or airport security guard or roving patrolman who actually captured the woman might get a pat on the head and a spot at the dais but his or her name would never be mentioned.

The flaw in the plan was that Eileen Mayfield was nowhere to be found.

Bryant didn't know or care about the jurisdictional in-fighting that would follow Eileen Mayfield's arrest. Derek Parsons was locked down tight in a federal holding facility. Jan and Holly were safe; Mary Beth Brockleman had been avenged; the City of Emerald Cove had rebounded from the depths that the previous department had driven them.

The summer was coming to a close. The last group of tourists was spending its final days in Emerald Cove. The local colleges had already started and the area school systems would begin the following Monday. Life would slow to a crawl – and Bryant wouldn't even have his job to keep him occupied. He kicked himself for filing for a ninety day leave of absence. That was seventy days longer than he'd needed to take care of everything that needed to be done. It would be Halloween before he could strap on his gun and badge again.

At least he would have time to visit with the Jimenez family and get to know the Kozlovs. Both families had made the move to Emerald Cove while Bryant had tracked down Derek Parsons and taken the Lucas children to meet their father. He would have time to watch Anna and Angel play soccer.

"Shit!" Bryant muttered as he drove down Oceanside Drive to his apartment. The sun was just coming up over the horizon but Bryant had no interest in sitting on the back deck to watch it. He unlocked the private door and wandered upstairs to sleep.

Sleep didn't come easily, though. Bryant lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, his mind reflecting on the two months that had just passed and the months that were to come. He wanted to repair the rift in his relationship with Jan but he wasn't sure how.

The divide was not only personal; it had expanded to professional because of how he handled the Parsons situation. He knew he had handled it badly but even after long periods of reflection he couldn't find a way to handle it differently. Time had been of the essence. As it was, he had gotten Parsons name and description only forty-eight hours prior to his arrival in Emerald Cove.

If he had taken the time to ferret out the information by solid police work Jan would be dead. There was no two ways around that fact. For all of the improvements that the Emerald Cove Police Department had undergone in the past fifteen months it still wasn't up to the task of finding a single face in a sea of a million people – particularly if they had no idea of what that face looked like.

Bryant wasn't certain that Jan – or the other officers who served with him – understood the realities of the situation. Outside of Holly – who had overheard the conversation he'd had in Jan's living room – none of the others knew the threats he'd made to Ryan Lucas. They only knew that he'd flown back to Ohio to take the man's kids to visit him.

Regina and Holly had run the detective bureau for the past six weeks and they had done an exceptional job. He wondered how long it would be before one or both moved on to head up their own departments. Both were qualified and he had to admit that he would give them a glowing recommendation if they chose to leave. He also wondered how long Steve Curtis and the city council would put up with him. He'd gone off the reservation when he'd taken the mental health leave. They hadn't balked but it had to be grating on them to pay his salary while he sat around and did nothing.

He was still on his bed when he heard the downstairs door open. He sat up and looked at his clock. It was too early for Chuck to have arrived downstairs. He glanced around his bedroom for a weapon. One of the drawbacks of taking mental health leave was that he had to surrender all of his firearms. He didn't even have a baseball bat handy. The largest knife he had in the kitchen had a three-inch blade.

Bryant realized he was still sitting on his bed when the front door to his apartment opened. There hadn't been enough time for someone to pick the locks. Someone had a key – and that could only mean Chuck O'Bannon. Bryant relaxed slightly and walked out of the bedroom – and straight into Jan Elliot.

"Christ!" she said, startled to see Bryant standing in the doorway. Bryant, for his part, looked just as surprised at Jan.

"You're not Chuck!" he said.

"Nice of you to notice," Jan replied. "I saw that you were back and I thought I'd stop by."

Bryant glanced down at the keys in her hand and Jan flushed.

"OK, fine," she said. "I just lied to you. I got the keys off Chuck last night because I wanted to wait for you to get home today. I didn't figure you'd be back until later this morning."

"I got in about 7," Bryant replied. "I was trying to get some sleep. I never sleep well on airplanes."

"I know," Jan said. "That's why I figured that you would wait until today to fly home. I want to talk to you."

"I figured," Bryant said tiredly. He took a seat on the sofa and Jan took the seat beside him.

"I'm sorry," they both said at the same time.

"Why are you sorry?" Bryant asked. "I'm the one who flew off like Superman. I should have discussed this with you and explained why I decided to handle things the way I did. I was wrong about that. When Mitchell told me that you were in danger I thought I was going to snap the phone receiver. I still should have explained all this to you."

"I understand things a little better now," Jan admitted. "That's why I wanted to apologize for. I was pissed off that it seemed that you didn't think I was capable of taking care of myself. Then I was angry that you went off to do what you did without even calling me or talking to me about it. That's why I was so distant at first. It got worse when you were right and I was wrong. I thought we could accomplish the same thing by taking it slowly and working through protocol. If we had done it differently I'd probably be dead. At the very least, Derek Parsons would be. I don't like being wrong and I took it out on you."

She sighed.

"Holly put it into perspective for me," she continued. "She asked me what I would have done if the threat had been against you and time was closing in. That finally got to me. I would have done the same thing, Bryant. I would have dragged the kids kicking and screaming from their beds if I thought it would protect you. I guess it finally hit me when I had the bead on Parsons' chest. If he had even lifted his hand I would have put one through his chest. I wasn't concerned about Holly or Kevin Stuebens. I was only worried about him hurting you. That's when I started to understand."

"So what do we do?" Bryant asked.

Jan shrugged.

"Depends on how mad you are at me for my Ice Queen act," she said.

"I understood it," Bryant told her.

Jan gave him a small smile.

"Then I guess the only thing left is make-up sex," she said brightly. "I've always heard that was the best."

Bryant returned to work only thirty days after he had put in for extended leave – courtesy of Jan fudging the paperwork before she had submitted it. He settled in to the off-peak routine he had developed the year before after Mayfield's apprehension.

There had been more good news in the preceding month: the Emerald Cove Chamber of Commerce had put together a reward for Chuck O'Bannon's help in apprehending Derek Parsons. Chuck, in a move that surprised absolutely no one who knew him, passed the reward along to the Lucas family.

The next piece of news was the arrest of Eileen Mayfield in the Bahamas. A keen-eyed local policeman had recognized the tail number on the private plane from an FBI advisory. That had led to a combing of local hotels and rental houses. Eileen Mayfield was arrested in a nighttime raid that had provided more entertainment than danger for the local authorities. She spent two days in a Freeport jail before being returned to the United States via an expedited extradition warrant.

The woman, barely 40 years old, was led from a plane in Cleveland with greasy hair and no makeup. Instead of a $4,000 dress and $1,000 shoes, she wore a federal prison jumpsuit and slip-on canvas sneakers. She looked much older.

The federal judge denied her bail and she was sitting in a federal holding facility in Buffalo, New York, while she awaited trial on a host of charges.

Life had settled down significantly by late September. The city was down to its usual 35,000 full-time residents, and most serious crime had come to a close. All his detectives had been to the State Police Training Facility and many were taking their yearly vacations.

Erik Kozlov was fitting in well despite his lack of a law enforcement background. The Jimenez family had also enjoyed their first full month in the city. Angel was beside herself at her new school. Despite the fact that she looked different than most of the students, no one had given her any grief. She had a friend in Anna Kozlov and both were starters on the school's vastly improved soccer team. Mira Delgado and Michelle Williams were part of their circle, too.

A knock on the doorframe drew Bryant from his paperwork.

"Hey, Carlos," Bryant said, motioning to the man to enter.

Carlos Morales came in carrying a folder in front of him.

"What's up?" Bryant asked. The man sat in a chair opposite Bryant's desk, looking uncomfortable.

The man didn't speak but instead pushed the folder across the desk to Bryant. Bryant saw it was a circular from the FBI about an exploited child whose sexual abuse had been uploaded to the Internet.

Bryant took in the pictures. The abusers' faces could not be seen. That wasn't the point of the videos. Instead it was a teenaged girl who was the star. She looked like she might be 13 or 14. Her nude body was covered by pixilation but Bryant could see that she had few curves.