by Laurel Dewey
“Was?” Jane asked.
“Yeah, see, she broke up with him two weeks ago. He took it real hard.”
“A reason to want to hang himself on the ol’ bridge?” Weyler proposed.
“Or a reason to set it up like a suicide and then run away to gain sympathy,” Jane countered. “Did you find a suicide note in his room or at the bridge?”
“No,” Bo answered curtly.
“Well, if the suicide was spur of the moment, he might not have left a note. But most kids…most people…leave notes… if this is real. And you have to admit, the chances of Jake being kidnapped while in the process of attempting suicide is stretching the plausibility factor off the chart! We cannot categorically rule out that Jake is not involved in his own disappearance.”
“Well, I can tell you he wouldn’t be sending his folks this!” Bo exclaimed, signaling Vi to hand him the third clue. “This was also left in the Van Gorden’s mailbox.” Bo placed an 8½ x 11 sheet of paper shielded in a plastic bag in front of Jane and Weyler. On it, was the full-color figure of an eight- or nine-year-old boy that had been cut out of from a magazine. Based upon the clothing and the vintage red baseball cap on the kid’s head, Jane thought it looked like it came from an from an old magazine advertisement from the 1950s or 1960s. The figure was glued on the page to give the impression that the boy was being dragged by his arm. The other arm had been artificially extended and highly exaggerated with a pen drawing that gave the impression that the flat of the boy’s palm was pressed against a surface. Below this, were letters cut out from various magazines that spelled the sentence: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL INNOCENCE ! Bo laid the large envelope, also protected in plastic, next to the page. The only writing on it was the cryptic BAWY in the same unsteady hand. In the upper right corner was a lone, uncancelled, twenty-five-cent stamp with an old Packard on it.
“It was hand delivered to the Van Gordens, right?” Jane asked. Bo nodded. “So, why put a stamp on it?”
“Why did Jeffrey Dahmer pick up only certain boys to eat?” Bo cracked. “The criminal mind is complex!”
Jane thought back to the sinister voicemail message. “’He pounds on the window and you do nothing.’” Jane repeated as she pointed to the exaggerated extension of the palm on the third clue. “Doesn’t this look like a palm pressed against glass?” Jane held her hand up in the air to mimic the drawing.
“Maybe when he grabbed Jake,” Weyler interjected, “he threw him in a car and Jake was screaming or pounding on the glass trying to be heard.”
“What car?” Jane asked.
“The one on the bridge that left a stain of antifreeze. The peckerwood must have a leak in his radiator. We got tire tracks, which proved we can rule out smaller cars. We figure we’re lookin’ for a truck, van or SUV. That narrows our search from 1,000,000 to 500,000.”
“How do you know the car that was sitting there has any connection to Jake?”
“We have to make an ass out of you and me, and assume it does. This is an old bridge that’s hardly used. You don’t see cars just sitting there…waitin’…”
“What do you mean by waiting?”
Bo let out a tired puff of air. “One witness came forth. A woman walkin’ her dog. She said she saw a black vehicle sittin’ on the bridge. Couldn’t see the driver and, no, she didn’t get a license plate.”
“Black vehicle? Black what?”
“She’s a woman,” Bo stressed, as if Jane wouldn’t understand. “I asked her what the make was and she looked at me like a pig looks at a wristwatch. I was lucky to get the color of the vehicle out of her and even then, she said it could have been dark blue.”
Jane realized her next question was absurd, but she had to ask it. “There wouldn’t possibly be any security cameras on that road or outside town hall or the Van Gorden’s subdivision so we could see who’s dropping off these clues or identify the vehicle?”
“These yahoos are settin’ up cameras all over the damn town. But that’s on the QT. 10-4? There’s none in the subdivision yet. They put one outside the door here but it works about as good as the front buzzer. As for the road, we got a couple speed photo cameras out there by the bridge but it only takes a photo if someone happens to be speedin’. There was one photo on March 22nd but there was no vehicle on the bridge and no sign of Jake in the photo.”
“You have more clues?” Weyler asked.
“Oh, yeah. The hits just keep on comin’.” He turned to Vi. “Wanna play ’em numero dos?” Vi punched in the codes on Bo’s phone and then depressed the SPEAKER button. “This one came in after-hours on the same day as the other voicemail and the creepy cut-out of the kid with the red ball cap.”
There was the stark sound of what sounded like a young boy whimpering again in the distance, followed by the scratchy interlude and the distorted voice of the kidnapper. “He cried like a baby and will never be a real man.” Click.
Bo shifted in his chair, clearly in some sort of discomfort. “Nice, eh? I’d like to see this peckerwood hangin’ by his goddamn nuts!”
Now it was Jane’s turn to shift uncomfortably in her chair. “Wait a second. There’s not a word wasted with this guy. He used the word cried instead of cries. That doesn’t make sense when we just heard the boy actively crying in the background. Wouldn’t Jake still be crying when he leaves the message? So the guy should have said, ‘he’s crying like a baby.’”
“You a part-time lawyer?” Bo asked. “’Cuz you just took an ax to split a hair.”
Jane leaned forward, pressing her index finger into Bo’s desk. “Why is he telling us something obvious? We can hear the kid crying. Of course, the kid conveniently stops crying right before the kidnapper makes the final statement.”
“What in the hell are you sayin’?”
“She is saying,” Weyler interjected, “that the kidnapper is possibly playing both roles on the phone. He takes the disguiser off the phone, moves away, does the crying jag, puts the disguiser back on and says a message.”
“Thank you!” Jane declared to Weyler. “Which brings us back to the idea that there is no kidnapper and this is all Jake’s elaborate set up. That’s why I called…”
“You don’t know Jake, lady!” Bo bellowed. “I do! Vi knows him, too. He’s not involved in this!” Bo slapped another plastic covered drawing in front of Weyler and Jane. A crinkled blank page in plastic was attached to it. “Or this!” He slammed another plastic sheeting on the desk that held a smaller piece of paper. “Or this!” The final clue hit the desk, another protected sheet of 8½ x 11 paper. “This one,” pointing to a sexually graphic drawing of a young boy around eight or nine years old in bondage, with his pants around his ankles, “is not something Jake would draw!”
The other two were handwritten in the same hesitating and somewhat childish scribe. One was an odd riddle:
Name this classy car.
Seven letters.
The first four spell what you do before going on a trip.
The first three spelled backward is something you take on that
trip and
wear on your head.
The last clue was written in all capital letters:
I BEARED MY SOUL AND STILL YOU IGNORE ME???
“His parents got the sicko drawing with the blank sheet of paper,” Bo added. “The last two were delivered under the mat out front. This one,” he pointed to the I BEARED MY SOUL… clue, “showed up this mornin’!”
Jane stared at the graphic drawing of the young boy that implied sodomy. She’d seen a lot of perversion directed at children in the early days when she worked four hard years in assault but this sketch somehow seemed more explicit. She felt deep down in her gut that what was drawn on that page had indeed already occurred. Now, the idea of Jake being a runaway was starting to feel less likely if his “scrawny, shy, sensitive, artistic” description was indeed valid. And yet, the more Jane scanned the clues, the more she felt that there was a deeper implied message as well as an actual and quite valid
threat to Jake’s family. She began to regret her knee-jerk phone call to Betty at the runaway shelter. It was now clear to her that this case would require some intense thought, and intense thought usually involved a pack of cigarettes. She pinched the skin between her eyes hard, realizing that she had never worked a case without nicotine fueling her adrenal glands. Suddenly, the idea of making any headway on this case seemed beyond comprehension.
“You got a problem?” Bo’s voice broke the silence.
Jane pulled herself out of her self-imposed mind fuck. “I’m good,” she said succinctly.
Bo searched his desk. “I got a fax somewhere around here from a profiler at Quantico…” Vi spotted the sheet on his desk and handed it to him. Jane immediately noted a strange apprehension in her movement as she put the fax in Bo’s hands. Bo pursed his lips as his eyes scanned the page. “Oh, hell!” he tossed the page toward Weyler, “I don’t have to read the goddamn thing again. See, I got it memorized. Suspect is a male Caucasian, thirty-five to fifty-five years old, educated, social outcast, dissociative disorder due to early childhood trauma. Prefers to operate alone, rather than work with an accomplice. Based on handwriting, is exacting and seeks retribution for past wrongs. Likes order. Wants his message to be clearly heard. Has an overwhelming need to prove himself.”
Weyler finished reading the page. “You’ve still got a photographic memory, Bo.”
He turned his head slightly to Vi. “10-4. I sure do.” He shifted in his seat. “I called up the feller in Quantico and told him to let me know what kind of coffee the son-of-a-bitch likes so when I pick him up, I can have a cup ready.”
“I thought you liked Jordan Copeland for this,” Weyler asked.
“Oh, yeah. Trash Bag is definitely the numero uno pervert on my short list.”
“Trash Bag?” Jane said.
Bo leaned forward, looking weary as he explained himself. “I look at Copeland and I think of a trash bag…a big brown plastic trash bag. A human blivet…ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag. A walking, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound dingleberry… a trash bag. It follows!”
Jane stared at Bo, speechless. Jake Van Gorden was a Juice Box and Jordan Copeland was a Trash Bag. The visuals were stunning.
“Vi, why don’t you set up the video of Trash Bag’s interview with me.” Vi worked her way around the crowded office to a small monitor near the file cabinet. Jane noted how antiquated the system was versus what Denver Headquarters had installed. “Beanie,” Bo said to Weyler, “you give her the background on Copeland?” Weyler nodded. “What the paperwork don’t tell you is the high and mighty son-of-a-bitch he’s become! He don’t talk like a common criminal. Nah, he’s educated. He got himself not one but two college degrees while sittin’ in his cell.”
“What in?” Weyler asked.
Bo leaned forward to make his exaggerated point. “Philosophy and esoteric psychology. Our tax dollars at work! When I got wind that Copeland was comin’ to live here two years ago, I ’bout shit a brick. In the five years he’d been out at that time, he’d lived in no less than six places. Got run out of all six places. One of the towns he lived in, a bunch of teenagers damn near beat the crap out of him. It almost became an annual event to kick Jordan’s ass. Can’t blame ’em. Nobody wants a goddamn child killer or ‘Chester’ livin’ ’round them?”
Chester was a word amalgamation of child and molester. “I didn’t know Jordan molested Daniel Marshall,” Jane offered.
“He didn’t,” Bo stated. “But you know as well as I do that child killers can graduate to molesting…especially when they’ve had thirty-four years to sit in a cell and think on how they want to get back at society.”
“So, Jordan picks a town known for its secrets, in hopes of getting better treatment?” Jane deduced.
“Maybe, but livin’ here ain’t no guarantee people like him will be safe,” Bo tartly replied. “I’m partly responsible for his two year streak livin’ here and not gettin’ a weekly beat-down. Let’s get one thing straight: I don’t like Jordan Copeland. He’s got a stink on him like cat piss on shag carpet. But my job is to protect the citizens of this town and that’s what I do. I’ve protected that child killer ever since he moved his sorry ass to Midas. People here keep to themselves but that doesn’t mean some citizens didn’t fantasize about tying him to the bumper of a trailer and taking him for a scrape down the road, or burnin’ down his little log cabin on the river…”
“Is that why he lives outside of town and doesn’t drive a car?” Jane asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not his real estate agent. I’m just the guy who’s hired to make sure we don’t find him tits up, DRT on the side of the road.”
Jane hadn’t heard the cop term DRT for dead right there in a long time. “So you’ve protected him for two years,” Jane said.
“I protect everyone in this town. Everyone. People don’t move to Midas to live in the spotlight. They come here to lay low and live out their lives in peace and quiet. And it’s my job to make sure they get their peace and quiet!”
“Do you keep their secrets?” Jane asked.
Bo was caught off guard. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“One that could use an answer!” Jane wasn’t about to back down.
Bo stood up, leaning his large gut over his desk. “I protect people!”
Vi put her hand gently on Bo’s back to calm him down. “Bo…”
Bo retreated and sat back down, cringing as his large ass hit the chair. He snapped up his cigar and puffed several times on it. “You got that tape cued up, Vi?” Vi nodded. “Let ‘er rip.”
Vi depressed the PLAY button. The video between Jordan Copeland and Bo Lowry began. They sat across from each other at an empty table. Jordan appeared seriously disheveled. His straggly, curly salt-and-pepper hair was matted with cakes of dried mud; his grey beard and mustache sported the same filthy look. His face—although mostly hidden by his beard and mustache—looked ravaged by time and regular beatings. The crystal, enigmatic, nearly translucent blue eyes that stared back at Jane from the mug shot in 1968 were now dim, clouded by prison and a grim, lonely existence. He wore an oilcloth duster that brushed his mid-calf and was draped with threads of mud. While she couldn’t be certain, Jordan’s large hands looked to still have the remnants of the blood Weyler mentioned. As a whole, Jane had to admit that Jordan Copeland did indeed look like a giant human trash bag.
“It don’t look too good for you, Jordan,” Bo’s voice rang out tinny on the video. “Where’d the blood on your hands come from?”
Jane watched as Jordan’s body language reflected complete condescension mixed with distrust of Bo. It was the way he pulled his shoulder away from Bo and the manner in which he glanced across the tiny room when he spoke to Bo instead of looking him in the eye.
“I told you,” Jordan stated in a been here before tenor, “I was running outside along the riverbank and I fell.”
“That explains the mud, Jordan. That don’t explain the blood.”
“Well, I know it don’t.” Jordan’s voice turned demeaning. “I can’t tell you where the blood came from…”
“Can’t tell me or won’t tell me?” Bo yelled.
“I don’t know,” Jordan replied in a surly fashion. “I must have cut myself when I was running.”
“Why were you runnin’ in the middle of a goddamn rainstorm? At night?”
Bo motioned for Vi to put the tape on PAUSE. “See, the thing is with ol’ Trash Bag here, he’s hardly ever inside his dingbat cave. He prefers to roam the woods around his property night and day.” He raised a judgmental eyebrow. “Reminds me of someone who’s been over-vaccinated!” Bo motioned for Vi to start the video again.
“Why were you runnin’, Jordan?” Bo repeated the question to Jordan on the video. Jordan sat motionless. “Did Jake slip out of the noose on the bridge and fall in the river? Did you find him, Jordan? You pull him out of the river? Was he dead? Or did you kill him like you killed that poor
little, retarded Danny Marshall forty-one years ago?” Jordan turned his body away from Bo. “You hide Jake’s body on your property? Are we gonna find that boy’s dead body under your goddamn bed?”
Jordan looked like he wanted to jump across the table and kill Bo. Instead, the convicted felon just sat seething, his eyes purposely turned away from Lowry. “I…blacked…out…by… the…river.” Jordan said, in measured syncopation.
“Blacked out? Well, you sure picked one helluva time to do that, Jordan!”
Jordan collected his thoughts and turned to Bo. “I am the ruler of shovels. I have a double. I am as thin as a knife. I have a wife. What am I?”
On the tape, Bo sat back in his chair. “What in the hell are you jabberin’ about?”
Jordan let a smug snigger.
Bo looked at Weyler. “He’s just a bubble shy of bein’ level, eh, Beanie?” Bo asked Vi to fast forward to the section where Jordan is given a polygraph. “I was hopin’ that if I went knee-to-knee with him, I’d get a confession. But that was a big ol’ 10-74. So, we put him on the box.” Bo looked at Vi. “Ready?”
Vi nodded and hit the PLAY button again. Jordan was strapped to a lie detector. Across the table, a polygraph expert asked him questions and jotted down notes.
“Is your name Jordan Richard Copeland?” the man asked Jordan.
“Yes.” Jordan answered quietly.
“Do you live in Midas, Colorado?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a beard and mustache?”
Jordan shifted slightly in his chair. “Yes.”
Jane watched the tape carefully. The first questions were controls, used to ascertain a baseline response line that, when stressed, could determine a possible lie. The way that skilled criminals “beat the box” is to use the control questions so that the peak comparison values on later pertinent questions—questions that can determine guilt or innocence—don’t equate. This could be done a variety of ways: inserting a tack into your shoe and pressing your toe on it during a control question, squeezing your anus together on the question or varying one’s breathing techniques to create artificial stress. It was for this reason that Jane watched Jordan more closely when he shifted in his chair when he answered “yes” to a simple question about his beard and mustache.
