Revelations (43 page)

Bo dropped into his chair, wincing a bit as his ass hit the cushion. “Shit,” he uttered, taking a few nervous puffs on his cigar. “If that don’t look exactly like the oilcloth duster Trash Bag wears around town! Goddamnit! Get me Trash Bag’s file,” he asked Vi in a quiet tone.

Jane furtively watched Vi through the open door as she pulled out Jordan’s file, removed the front page, placed it in her top lefthand drawer and retrieved a sheet of paper from the center of her desk. When she returned to Bo’s office, she handed him the file and turned to Jane, giving her the single sheet of paper from her desk.

“You asked for a copy of the front page material on our files?” Vi asked.

Bo’s mouth dropped open. “What…
What…
”

Vi calmly turned to Bo. “Sergeant Perry asked me to make her a copy of our front page with all the formatted data regarding the contents of the file.” Bo looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “She thought maybe Denver PD might want to incorporate the system.” Weyler shot Jane a suspicious glance. Vi turned back to Jane. “If there’s anything you need from me, don’t hesitate to ask.” With that, Vi smiled and walked back to her desk.

The woman was such a wonderful liar, Jane decided she should work for the CIA. She said everything in such a smooth, casual and comfortable delivery that it was obvious to Jane she’d been spouting the same drivel for decades. It was the old adage that if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes the truth to you and, therefore, it was easier to declare with conviction. Like Bo, she was out of that office in one week. But whatever artifice she and Bo shared would stay hidden forever.

Bo snorted and settled back into his chair, sucking a few more agitated puffs on the cigar. He opened his desk drawer and brought out a magnifying glass. Flipping open Jordan’s file, he brought out the page with his prints and dragged the
Ace of Spades card with the bloody fingerprint toward him. Jane watched as he waved the magnifying glass between the two prints in an effort to find commonalities. Without looking up, he waved his cigar at the remaining clues spread out on the desk. “So what in the hell does all this crazy ass shit add up to? What do you make of that note, Beanie?”

Jane glanced at the white paper with black printed words. It read:

Weyler repeated it out loud. “Could be a warning of what he has planned for Jake. It almost has the tone of someone who is giving up…”

“
Whoever
is one word, not two,” Jane interjected.

Bo tossed down the magnifying glass. “This ain’t a goddamn English class!”

Jane was impervious to Bo’s snide remark. “And if you’re starting a sentence with the word
who
, you’d put a question mark at the end. There’s not even a period there.”

“Well, how ’bout if we correct it with a red pen and send it back to him?” Bo replied.

“She’s got a point, Bo,” Weyler gently issued.

“Aw, hell! Let’s check the writin’ on the Chesterfield cigarette! See if there’s any spelling errors there! And what in the hell is he stickin’ an ol’ timey smoke on the pile?”

“It’s certainly a new addition to the line of clues,” Weyler said, looking at the imprint of
CHESTERFIELD 101
closer on the single smoke.

Now it was Jane’s turn to feel the walls caving in around her. Sequestered in her desk drawer back in the The Gardenia Room were twenty matching cousins to keep this deserted cigarette company. The realization that Jane had absconded with that dramatically laid out clue—including the crushed pack
and
antique ashtray—with only a few photos on her cell phone to preserve the moment, was beginning to concern her. The longer
she waited to tell Weyler about it, the worse it would be. However, this was certainly not the appropriate venue to confess that particular sin.

“And the Ace of Spades?” Bo asked, directing the question to Weyler.

“I’ll do some digging,” Jane affirmed. “It could be a symbol or somebody’s name for all we know.”

“Ace?” Bo asked, somewhat incredulously.

“I don’t know, Bo. Let me check it out,” Jane said, irritation growing.

Bo shook his head. “What in the hell am I supposed to tell the Van Gordens? I guarantee you this is gonna be all over town before noon!”

“We need to tell them face-to-face before they hear it on the grapevine,” Weyler advised Bo. “We should probably show them these clues just in case it triggers a possible connection for them that could help us.”

Bo buried his balding head in his fat hand. “Shit. How in the hell do you show a parent their son’s sliced off ponytail?
Good God
! This ain’t right!” Bo was unexpectedly putting himself in the shoes of a tortured parent—something Jane hadn’t seen him do prior to this. It was a rare moment of humanity from a guy who seemed sorely lacking in that department. Bo nailed another layer of toughness against his skin. “This mess has got Jordan Copeland’s creepiness writtin’ all over it and I’m sittin’ back here with my hands tied because I don’t have satisfactory evidence to arrest his paroled ass! He’s fuckin’ with our heads and laughin’ the whole way. Well, I say, people like him who live in glass houses, shouldn’t.”

Jane waited but Bo was finished talking. “Shouldn’t what?”

“Live in glass houses!” Bo replied, as if Jane were stupid.

 

The three arrived at the Van Gordens’ house, sharing a single patrol car. Jane sat in the backseat and stayed silent while Weyler and Bo volleyed stories of their days in Denver together.

While the infamous break-in using the wrong address wasn’t mentioned, he did use the “
Gomezing
” term a couple times in the discourse. The Van Gordens knew they were coming after Bo called them to say he needed to discuss “a recent development.” Jane figured that they’d probably already heard exactly what it was, thanks to the gossip siren that tends to blare in most small towns.

Carol opened the enormous front door before Bo rang the bell. She looked pale and shell-shocked. She was dressed in a three-quarter sleeve faux leopard-skin tunic with black slacks and her hair was styled in the usual manner. But Jane noted something slightly off with the woman. Maybe it was the strands of blond hair that weren’t as neatly plastered on her scalp or perhaps it was the ever-so-slight stain of food that remained on her pants. It was as if the burden was becoming too much. Errant cracks were forming along the surface of the mantle.

“Is he…” Carol started to ask just as Bailey swooped in behind her.

“We’ve gotten four calls already but they all tell us a different story! What in the fuck’s going on?” Bailey bluntly asked. In contrast to his wife, Jane didn’t note a single crack in Bailey’s exterior. In fact, if anything, there was a sturdy reinforcement that buffered his arrogant resolve. Furthermore, his pressed stonewashed jeans and starched white shirt looked impeccable. There was nary a scuff on the heels of his Lucchese boots. This man was certainly not dressed for distress.

In the most respectful good ol’ boy manner available, Bo asked to come into the house so he could show them the clues. Bailey impatiently waved the trio inside. It wasn’t until Jane was inside the door that she realized Louise Van Gorden had been seated in her chrome wheelchair, just outside of view. She wore the same crisp button-front shirt, this time in black, while a heavy white blanket covered her lower body. Jane nodded toward her, but she got the impression that the old woman was more comfortable in the role of the hawkish observer. Louise
studied Bo and Weyler with the same steely glare her son had learned, although Bailey hadn’t mastered the precision in which Louise coolly delivered the glower.

Jane started to move toward Bailey’s office on the left of the entry, but Louise’s strategic positioning of the wheelchair prevented her movement.

“This way,” Bailey gruffly instructed Jane and the men.

Jane let the others lead while she lagged behind, moving next to Bailey and closely tailed by his mother who maneuvered her chair slowly behind Jane. There was awkward silence until Jane quietly spoke to Bailey. “You got those allergies under control.” He regarded her with a shadow of annoyance. “You’re not stuffed up or flushed anymore.”

“Right,” he sneered as they settled in the spacious living room and Bailey closed the large double doors behind him. He turned to Bo. “Cut to chase, Bo. What in the fuck was on public display this morning at Town Hall?!”

Bo proceeded to lay out the first of four plastic evidence bags on the burl wood table. First came the knife with Jake’s severed ponytail. Jane stood back from the group, taking in the scene and casually observing the reactions from each family member. Louise’s countenance never changed. Bailey curled his lip. Carol covered her pale face and turned away, clearly distraught.
Jesus
, Jane thought, looking at Bailey and Louise. It’s one of the goddamned identifying aspects that represents Jake, short of sending his fedora or sending a chunk of skin that displayed the matching dragonfly tattoo he and Mollie shared. Of the three family members, Carol was the only one emotionally affected by the ponytail.

“Carol…” Louise said in a low, controlled gravelly voice that sounded like a warning. Almost robotically, Carol wiped her tears and turned back to the burl table. “Focus…” Louise instructed, almost as if she was the programmer and Carol was her little chip.

Bo laid the evidence bag with the oddly worded note,
Who
Ever Believes Bad Eventually Resolves
, next to the knife and ponytail. Again, Jane watched them. Bailey screwed up his face, clearly not understanding the words. There was a blank stare from Carol and the same stoic glance from Louise.

Bo stepped forward and laid down the bag with the cigarette in it. “It says
Chesterfield
on it,” Bo advised the family.

Bailey’s eyes narrowed. Carol looked blank. Jane caught a subtle flutter in Louise’s eyes.

“Finally this,” Bo reluctantly said, “and there’s blood on this one.” He set down the bag holding the Ace of Spades with the bloody fingerprint. “We’re sending this to Denver, along with the knife. We don’t think that’s Jake’s blood. I want you to know that. We think the kidnapper did it to give us a clear identifying mark.”

Carol looked repulsed by the bloody print but it was the reaction of both Louise and Bailey that struck Jane the hardest. Before Bo even mentioned anything about blood, Louise and Bailey, almost in unison, showed pinpointed wrath in their eyes. Jane casually turned to Weyler to see if he was picking up any of this odd behavior, but he was more focused on the clues.

Bailey turned around, his nostrils flaring. He walked a few feet away from the group, grabbed a heavy crystal vase on a side table and hurled it across the living room toward the large stone fireplace. “Fuck him!” The vase smashed into thousands of pieces. Carol winced and moved toward Weyler. “
Fuck him
!” Bailey screamed again, his voice more high pitched than normal. It was an audio cue for Jane that often signaled fear mixed with unbridled rage.

“Bailey!” Louise shouted in a quick command. “Get a hold of yourself!” Bailey turned to his mother and they exchanged a meaningful glance. Louise’s grey face carried malice, but Jane determined that it wasn’t cast toward her son. Bailey stormed out of the living room through the double doors and, leaving them open, walked outside. They could hear his angry screams of “
Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him
!” Louise wheeled herself closer
to the group. “You’ll have to excuse my son,” she announced, her thin lips carving out each word with a knife of contained hatred as she stared at the clues on the table. “He hasn’t learned to control himself properly.”

“It’s completely understandable, Mrs. Van Gorden,” Bo allowed.

“No, it’s not!” Louise spat back. “A man who cannot control his impulses loses everything!” The words echoed like a stern pronouncement to Jane. “Which brings me to Jordan Copeland. Why in the hell has that man not been arrested?! He is clearly involved in some way!”

“It’s not clear at all, ma’am,” Jane interrupted, her tone edgy. Bo shot her a look of contempt.

“Of course, it is!” Louise yelled back. “Do your fucking job and arrest him!”

Bo moved between Louise and Jane, obviously creating a barrier between them. “Mrs. Van Gorden, you have my word we are working like hell on your grandson’s case every damn day of the week. If Trash…” Bo caught himself. “…Jordan Copeland is linked, we
will
arrest him. All of us want nothin’ more than to find who did this and get your grandson home safely.”

“Jake is dead!” Louise screamed. A black aura enfolded the old lady. Her eyes spit venom toward Bo. “Wake up, you idiot!”

Bo looked as if he was about to coldcock the dying bitch. Instead, he took a hard breath and shut up.

“And you?!” Louise continued, leaning forward and addressing Jane. “You’re not doing shit, except to cause problems! Arrest the damn Jew or whatever the hell he is and let’s get this over with!” Carol choked on her tears and ran from the room, disappearing into the kitchen. Louise glanced at Carol with disdain. “Goddamnit! What in the fuck is happening to people?!” Her breathing became labored.

Bo kneeled down to placate her as Weyler walked around and sat on the couch to get closer to the woman. She wasn’t interested in their pandering, but she also wasn’t able to breathe
easily so her fight was temporarily diminished.

Jane took the opportunity to covertly sneak out of the room and into the kitchen. There, she found Carol vomiting into the kitchen sink as waves of sobbing heaved her body forward. Jane wasn’t known for playing the comforting cop role, but she knew this was no act on Carol’s part; the woman was wracked with grief and heartbreak. Jane quietly approached her and gently laid her palm on her back.

Carol jumped, not expecting anyone to be in the room. “Oh, my God!” Carol yelped, quickly wiping her mouth and turning on the faucet, whisking the vomit down the drain. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”