Razing Kayne

ONE



Snow.

Shitloads of it, as far as the eye could see.

Usually when people thought of Arizona—if they bothered to think of it at all—they pictured Phoenix with its desert and cacti, not realizing that mountain communities like Payson existed. With an elevation of 5,157 feet, Payson resembled the northwestern suburbs of Denver topographically and climatically speaking, though it was home to a mere thirty-thousand full-time residents.

More than seventy miles from the nearest city, tucked between the Mogollon Rim to the north, the Hellsgate wilderness to the east, Mount Ord to the south, and the Mazatzal Range to the west, Payson provided a gateway to some of the best hunting, fishing, and camping areas in the state. In short, the sleepy little town was an outdoors-man’s paradise.

Though he'd simply been trying to outrun his past, somehow State Trooper, Kayne Dobrescu, had managed to snag one of the most coveted assignments the Highway Patrol offered. He'd gladly take a little snow in winter over the 120 degree weather on the desert floor he'd been putting up with for the past two years.

The radar gun whined, alerting him to a speeding vehicle, and Kayne glanced up from his paperwork. The midnight-blue Tahoe was traveling twelve miles an hour over the posted speed limit, on a dark highway, through an area known for nighttime elk migration. Tangling with one of those beasts could almost ensure a fatality.

By the time he'd tossed his paperwork on the passenger seat, maneuvered his patrol car out of its hiding spot and onto the highway, and activated his emergency lights, the Tahoe was pulling over. He liked cooperative drivers. While it wasn’t necessarily an admission of guilt, it went a long way in his book and usually meant the difference between a warning and a ticket.

Kayne called the traffic stop in to dispatch, noting the vanity plate: IM 10-7, a radio call sign officers used to signal off duty. He exited his patrol car. The interior lights in the Tahoe came on, affording him a dim view through the tinted windows as he approached the vehicle.

A quick glance inside told him the driver was a woman with a car full of young children. Two of them small enough to be in safety seats, all four sound asleep.

“Good evening, ma'am—”

“Sorry,” she said at the same time and handed over her license and registration before he’d requested it. She wasn’t strikingly beautiful, but she was more than girl-next-door pretty. She had long curly hair, not really blond, not brown either, but a dozen shades in between. It fell across her shoulders and disappeared down her back, leaving the ample curves of her breasts on display beneath a clingy pale blue sweater.

At the touch of her hand, he took a quick step back. Damn! He had no business thinking about how nicely those breasts would fill his hands.

“Been pulled over before, huh?” he asked, all business. Something about her made him want to flirt, just a little. A foreign emotion, one he’d best steer clear of.

“Now why would you assume something like that?” she said innocently. Too innocently.

So she wasn’t above a little harmless flirting either. Hm…Was she trying to get out of a ticket or did she feel the spark too? And why the hell do you care?

“So, what am I going to find if I run this?” He glanced at the license. Jessica Hallstatt. He didn't pay much attention to her stated height and weight—they were rarely reliable, though from what he could see, she was close to five-foot-three and about 130 pounds. He did note she was three years younger than his own thirty-four years.

“That's a really good question. Last I heard, they still hadn't had any luck pinning those murders on me. You know that whole lack of physical evidence is such a hindrance, and since I always Priority Mail my drugs...” She paused, tapping one slim finger against her chin, as though deep in thought. “I don't know, you tell me.” She laughed, revealing a little dimple in her left cheek.

Kayne shook his head and introduced himself. He had to touch her again.

She grinned. “I heard we had a rookie in town. I dispatched for Payson Police until two years ago.”

Kayne leaned against the door while they quietly made small talk for several minutes. Then one of the kids made a noise, reminding him that he had no business flirting with this woman, and so he said, “Keep your speed down and take care of those kids.”

“Nice to meet you.” Jessica gave a tired smile. “And thanks for the warning instead of a ticket. I'd say I won't do it again, but I think we both know that would be a lie, and I’ve tried to make it a habit of only lying to myself.”

Kayne's mind drifted to Jessica time and again throughout the rest of his shift. He found himself recalling the way his skin had tingled at the sound of her slightly sultry voice, or the way his gut clenched at the feel of her smooth delicate palm brushing against his larger calloused one. Each time, he pushed those thoughts away. Sure she was pretty enough with that heart-shaped face and sassy little dimple, but she had to be married. Even if she wasn't, she screamed forever, and he wasn’t that man anymore.

It wasn't until later that night, when he took off his uniform, that he realized he still had her driver's license and registration. He'd tucked it into his shirt pocket, as he did on any stop, and forgot about it.

“Damn.” He didn’t need a distraction, no matter how sexy that dimple was.

***

The next morning, Kayne woke to the sound of his phone. He debated whether to answer for three solid rings. It had interrupted a very erotic dream involving a petite blonde with huge, whiskey-colored eyes. He had no business fantasizing about Jessica, he thought, even as he reached down and fisted his throbbing cock, giving it a couple of lazy strokes to relieve some of the ache before he answered the phone.

“'Lo,” he grumbled into the phone. By the sound of radio traffic in the background, he knew dispatch was calling.

“Morning, sunshine.”

Candice. No one should be that happy this early in the morning.

“Sarge needs you to cover day shift.”

“When?”

“Uh, now?”

“Great.” Kayne sighed. Apparently sleep was overrated.

“If it makes you feel better, he has someone to cover your shift so you can take me out tonight.”

Kayne wasn't sure if she was joking or hinting, so he felt it best to nip it in the bud with a simple, “I don't date.”

Before she could respond, Kayne heard, “Eleven-three-two traffic!” in the background—an officer calling in a traffic stop. Thankfully, it would keep her from questioning him further. He hung up, climbed out of bed and into the shower, pretty sure his day was sliding downhill fast.

After a quick shower, Kayne threw on a clean uniform, strapped on his bullet resistant vest and duty belt, and headed out the door.

Following a cursory safety inspection, he settled into his patrol car, ready to begin his shift. One of the advantages—and sometimes disadvantages—of working in a remote area was having a take-home vehicle, thus allowing him to respond immediately to afterhours emergency callouts.

“Hey, you eat yet?” Del St. Phillips, a seasoned State Trooper asked when Kayne radioed 10-8. His onduty status.

Kayne laughed. He switched his radio to the simplex channel and responded to Del’s question. “That requires cooking, and cooking requires going to the grocery store.”“How about the Knotty Pine?”

“The place everyone says has great biscuits and gravy?”

“Yep.”

Kayne was all for Del’s suggestion and headed toward the restaurant. When he arrived, Del was already in the parking lot. Kayne shook his hand and followed him into the restaurant. Though the sign read Please Wait to Be Seated, Del headed directly to a booth in the back corner. “The girls always save the corner booth for the officers that come in for breakfast.”

After ordering the house special—eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, and a side of biscuits and gravy—Kayne asked, “Hey, you know a Jessica Hallstatt?”

“Sure do, why?”

“I just need her address.” When Del continued to stare at him he elaborated. “I pulled her over for speeding last night and forgot to give her license back. There's just a P.O. Box listed.” With so many rural locations lacking proper addresses, Arizona had allowed box numbers until just recently. Most licenses were good until a driver reached 65, so updating had been a pain.

Del nodded. He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Did you ticket her?”

“No.” Truthfully the thought hadn’t crossed Kayne’s mind.

It seemed to be the answer Del wanted. He nodded and said, “She lives out on Highway 260, the big place in the meadow. Hallstatt House, it's called. ”

“Wow, that's some house,” Kayne said. The thing had to be well over twenty-thousand square feet. With its battlement-topped towers and stone façade, it reminded him of a castle. “What does her husband do for a living?”

Del continued to study him for a minute. “He's dead.”

That got Kayne's attention like nothing else. He refused to think about why.

Del gave a heavy sigh. “It's not a secret, so I'm not gossiping, mind you. Her husband was a fire-medic. About two years ago, he responded to a motor vehicle accident down on Corvair Curve. There was an equipment failure, and he couldn't extricate before it exploded. He died later at the hospital. Jessica built Hallstatt House with the award from the wrongful death suit. It's an Event Center, in addition to their residence.”

Kayne hadn't gotten a good look at the kids last night, but he was pretty sure the youngest wasn't much older than two. About the age his oldest daughter, Natalia had been. He wished, not for the first time, that Oksana had spared his children when she decided to end her life. How had Jessica handled finding herself suddenly left with four children to raise on her own? He knew it couldn’t have been easy, but did she realize how lucky she was? He would give anything to still have his with him.

“You okay?” he heard Del ask and realized he’d been staring off into space.

“Yeah, sorry.” He tried for a smile. He couldn’t explain his feelings at that moment, even to himself. Sadness for Jessica’s loss, inexplicable jealousy that she still had her children. Anger, always f*cking anger.

“I guess you two share that in common, don't you?” Del asked speculatively.

“What do you mean?” There was an edge to his voice that Kayne couldn't help.

“I heard you lost your wife.”

“You heard I lost her or killed her?” Kayne asked, the anger seeping through.

Del met his gaze square on and held it. “I heard she died, but did you? Kill her, I mean.”

“She was the only one who committed murder that day. She drowned our children—my children—before killing herself.”

Initially, he'd been the prime suspect in his wife's death, and it had been splashed all over the media. The initial responding officers hadn't believed his story. Oksana had used his service weapon, and due to the bathroom’s close quarters, Kayne had been covered in higher amounts of gunpowder residue and body matter than should have been on someone who was several feet away when she pulled the trigger. The fact that the detectives couldn't locate Kayne’s infant daughter, Tasha, only compounded the issues. Thankfully, once they received the autopsy reports, they'd eventually concluded that Oksana had killed the children. Believing she must have dumped Tasha's body somewhere before he'd arrived home, they'd searched dumpsters and landfills for weeks, then dragged local waterways, all to no avail.

Unable to return to an apartment filled with so many memories and the stamp of such tragedy, Kayne had stayed with a buddy for a couple months, waiting and praying for them to find Tasha. But they hadn't, and just like he couldn't return to that apartment, he couldn't return to the agency that had investigated him. So he'd applied and been accepted into Arizona's Highway Patrol and spent eighteen months patrolling the area they referred to as 'the ditch' in the unbearable desert heat. Which in a way seemed appropriate, because he certainly was living in hell.

A month ago his supervisor had come to him and asked if he'd like to transfer to this remote mountain town. Not wanting to face another summer of 110 plus degree weather for the better part of the season, he'd jumped at the chance. Now he sat here face-to-face with an officer who didn't seem surprised by his revelation, and while that shouldn't have bothered him, it did. He hated that people who didn’t know him, knew such intimate details about him.

Christ, he couldn’t deal with this today. Kayne stood, threw some money on the table, and stormed out.

He knew he had to let go, to find some way to forgive Oksana and move on before she completely destroyed his life. Some days he felt so dead inside he was afraid she'd already succeeded. Other days, like today, every emotion was so raw—anger, betrayal, and overwhelming grief pulled him under, making him wonder why he bothered to live.

Kayne had no idea how long he'd been standing there staring at the snow-packed escarpment when Del laid a hand on his shoulder and asked, “Do you want to talk about it, son?” He heard nothing but compassion in the older officer's voice.

Kayne shook his head. No, he didn't f*cking want to talk about it, he just wanted to forget. Not that that would ever happen in this lifetime. “I need to get to the office,” he managed to say.

“I'm here if you need someone to listen, and I give you my word it goes no further than me.”

Kayne gave a brisk nod, unable to say anything else.