by Laurel Dewey
“Do we know for a fact that Jake spent a lot of time at that bridge?” Weyler calmly asked.
“How the fuck should I know?!” Bailey exclaimed. “The point is the connections make sense here! I’m telling you, Copeland is involved in this in some way!” He turned to Jane. “Using your control theory, Jordan is out of control, right? So, he seeks control in whatever perverted ways he can. I mean, he’s convicted for shooting a boy and then, in trying to control an out-of-control situation that he created, he hides the boy’s body under his bed. So, yes! Control! Absolutely!” He jabbed his finger in the air toward Jane and Weyler. “This…this…is a valid path to investigate!” Bailey almost looked as if he were about to jump out of his Lucchese boots.
“You know,” Jane interrupted, “just to cover all the bases, it might be prudent to put an officer on your phone so we can trace calls in case the perp decides to call, or if Jake decides to call…”
“We already went through this!” Bailey declared. “It was pointless. Didn’t Bo fill you in? I told him I couldn’t handle it anymore.” Again, it was all about Bailey.
“If your son calls,” Weyler said, “and stays on the phone long enough, we can possibly triangulate the signal…”
“We did this already!” Bailey interrupted. “Four fucking days of people in this house waiting for the phone to ring! I finally convinced them to leave yesterday. There’s a limit, you know? A limit to what a person is supposed to be able to deal with!”
Jane noticed that Carol was nervously biting her lower lip. “Mrs. Van Gorden…”
“Call me Carol,” she said weakly.
“Carol,” Jane continued, “would you show me Jake’s room?”
Carol looked to her husband for help.
“Bo already checked his room,” Bailey said with an edge.
“I’m sure he did. But like you said, Mr. Van Gorden, Bo couldn’t find enough to nail Hitler’s ass.” She leaned a little closer to Bailey. “I’m not Bo. I can see a lot of things in a room that others never see.” Jane wanted to add that she could look behind a person’s eyes and hear things, especially since she quit smoking. But judging from the way the guy was squirming, she figured she’d said enough.
“Fine,” Bailey said, his gaze turned from Jane. “Whatever.” He turned to his wife, seemingly sending her an unspoken message.
Carol tentatively led Jane out of the living room and into the spacious entryway that led to the dual staircases. Jane followed Carol up the closest staircase observing the woman’s movement. It was as though she was trying to hold her skin as close to her body as humanly possible. She gave the word retraction a whole new definition. It was almost as if Carol was desperately trying to think as quickly as possible, but she didn’t have the equipment installed to make that happen. They walked in stony silence up the stairs. Stopping on the landing, Jane couldn’t miss another marble table with yet another arrangement of large ivory pillars that had never been lit.
Jane couldn’t hold back. “You like candles, huh?”
Carol turned back to Jane, her countenance still detached. “Excuse me?”
Jane motioned to the arrangement on the table. “You know, if you lit all of them in this house, you’d probably be able to navigate around here in the dark.”
Carol actually contemplated Jane’s somewhat sarcastic comment. “Well, yes, but then they would be…” She struggled to find the right word.
“Imperfect?” Jane suggested.
A tiny light seemed to flicker briefly in Carol’s head. “Yes… exactly!”
Jane looked around the pristine area. “That would screw up the veneer, wouldn’t it?” She locked eyes with Carol. There was a split second where Carol looked like she was going to emerge from her self-imposed trance but it was quickly squashed.
“Jake’s bedroom is this way,” Carol said, turning around.
“What’s that room down there?” Jane pointed to the closed room with the arched doorway just off the entry.
Carol turned. She hesitated. “Bailey’s office.” She quickly turned back. “This way.” Carol led Jane down a wide, sconcelined hallway interrupted by several rooms.
Jane noted a guest room with a neatly made king bed, another guest room with an untouched king bed and finally a third guest room with a turned down twin bed. Jane stopped and took in that room. Finally, a room that had a somewhat lived in feel to it. Carol continued walking down the hall, not noticing Jane’s observation. “Is this the maid’s room?”
Carol turned and took in a quick breath. She quickly walked to the room and closed the door. “That’s a mess!”
“Maid?” Jane asked again.
“We have a maid but she’s not a live-in.” She put her hand on Jane’s shoulder and directed her down the hall. “Jake’s room is this way.”
Jane followed Carol but factored that subterfuge wasn’t the woman’s forte. If the maid didn’t live in there and the Van Gorden’s didn’t have a houseguest, Jane figured it had to be in use by either Bailey or Carol. From the faint scent of perfume that Jane noted when she stuck her head in the room, she figured that Bailey wasn’t the occupant.
The hallway ended at a T with the middle of the intersection appearing to be the master bedroom suite with the over-the-top closed manor house doors. Carol motioned Jane around the corner and down a shorter hallway where the lighting dimmed and dead-ended at a closed grey door. A stolen street sign hung on the door that read: No Trespassing. Carol opened the door and took a step over the threshold.
Jane’s first impression reminded her of the scene in The Wizard of Oz when the black-and-white film turned to brilliant color. It wasn’t that the room that lay in front of Jane was dramatic or engaged the senses in all colors of the spectrum. Rather, it was the distinct, possibly deliberate, visual shock that separated this three-hundred-square-foot room from the rest of the ostentatious interior design. Finally, Jane felt as if she were standing in a room in which a human being with real feelings and fears and dreams resided. While the rest of the house smacked of a façade, this room was imbued with honesty.
It was in these moments that Jane always thrived. When the dead bodies were removed from a crime scene, she’d step into the location and allow the vibrations from the walls, the furniture and even the knickknacks to resonate around her. Each sung their own song. All the angst, terror, tears and unspoken words vied for Jane’s attention. For her, it was akin to a psychic symphony where the notes were actually feelings and when strung together, played a story of whatever transpired in that space. Sometimes, Jane would close her eyes and feel the slain victims around her, desperately shouting their pain into the ether.
But at this moment, there wasn’t a dead body—not yet, at least. Standing in Jake Van Gorden’s bedroom, Jane inhaled his spirit.
“I’m not allowed in here,” Carol meekly offered. “Nobody is…except maybe…Mollie.”
Jane recalled the drawings of Mollie in Jake’s notebook that Bo showed them in his office. “Right. Daughter of the Methodist preacher. They broke up two weeks ago. Jake took it hard,” Jane rattled off, essentially repeating what Bo told her.
Carol’s face fell. “They broke up? I didn’t know! He didn’t say a word.”
It was truly amazing how a buffoon of a police chief like Bo Lowry could know this information and the kid’s own mother was blindsided. But Jane had a feeling that there were lots of things that Carol didn’t know about her only child. Jane needed to be alone in the room. “Do you mind if I…” Jane let her intentions hang.
“Oh…sure…uh…I’ll be downstairs if you…need anything.” Carol retreated down the darkened hallway.
There were some advantages, Jane decided, to working with a woman who was hobbled and acquiesced too much. She closed the door and took in the room visually.
Three vertical windows stood across from her on the wall that overlooked the stand of aspen trees and the edge of the next estate on the cul-de-sac. In the far left corner, a single glass door led out to a five-f
oot-square redwood deck. Jake’s desk sat against the right side wall with a closet wedged in the corner. His single bed with the navy blue comforter was to her left and situated so that when he sat up in bed, he faced the bank of windows. The walls, painted soft blue, were plastered with posters. Posters of sleek black Lamborghinis, eye-popping red Porsches, high-altitude extreme skiing and a snowboarding Shaun White plastered the walls. But there were two posters that stood out from all of those. One was above his computer. It was all white with one word written vertically in fat, black lettering. The word was: TRUTH. The other poster that stood out was taped above Jake’s bed. It was a photograph of a buxom model in a yellow bikini blowing a kiss with her highly red-glossed lips.
Jane meandered to Jake’s closet and opened it. On the inside of the door, four brass hooks held four different fedoras. She removed one of the hats and looked at the label. It was from a vintage clothing store. Studying the hat, Jane remembered seeing personalities such as Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop and other notables from the 1960s wearing the same hat. But she’d also seen resurgence in the hat’s popularity with actors such as Brad Pitt, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp.
She sifted through Jake’s closet. Several shirts reminded her of what guys who lived in Palm Beach wore in the mid-60s. These must have been the “vintage” shirts Carol referred to earlier. Mixed in with those dated styles, Jane found the obligatory “Fuck you” T-shirt Bailey had mentioned downstairs. They were all black with one stating: You’re One FUCK YOU Away From My Fist! Jane hung one of the 1960s Palm Beach shirts next to the “Fuck You” T-shirt, facing her. She took a step back and stared at them. They couldn’t be more contrary to the unknowing eye. But to Jane, they both had statements written across them. The “Fuck You” was obvious. Jake was small and undeveloped for his age so he was probably overly sensitive about that fact. Wearing a ballsy, in your face T-shirt possibly made him feel a little more powerful. Nothing says “I’m building a wall so you don’t hurt me” like wearing a T-shirt that blatantly tells the world to “Fuck off.” But the dated offering from the mid-60s also screamed a statement as well. Yet, no matter how Jane strained to hear the declaration, the message became suffocated before she could interpret it.
After replacing the clothes and closing the closet door, she scanned Jake’s desk. A stack of schoolbooks sat to one side of his computer—behind that, two framed photos of Jake and Mollie. In one photo, Jake was wearing a fedora and one of the Palm Beach-style shirts. He was facing Mollie, a cherubic brunette with piercing eyes, and holding her close to his body. In the other photo, Jake was dressed in one of his “Fuck You’s” with his arm around Mollie’s shoulder and sticking his tongue out toward the camera.
Jane glanced between the photos, focused only on Jake. This is when the victim often started telling their story to Jane. This is when the unspoken became revealed. “You like to rock the boat, don’t you Jake?” The words fell from her mouth without formulating them first in her head. Her eyes traveled to the poster with the word: TRUTH. Why not FUCK YOU? After all, that was the statement he wore on his chest for the world to see. Of all the posters with single words, why TRUTH? What resonated in that word for Jake Van Gorden? In a town known, off the record, as a place where you go to hide your dark secrets, wasn’t truth a dangerous proposition? Were people who chose to plaster that word on their bedroom wall at risk?
She spotted a spiral notebook under the stack of schoolbooks and pulled it out. Inside were pages of notes he’d taken in various classes, with precise doodles edging most of the pages. There was a spate of blank pages followed by one page that held a collection of website addresses. From what Jane could deduce from a few of the names, Jake was checking out a few soft porn sites. Unless, of course, the pussy reference had to do with cats and the big boobs site had to do with idiots. It was typical fare for the horny mind of a fifteen-year-old boy. But one website address was separate from the others and didn’t seem to involve tits or vaginas. It was mysecretrevelations.com and it had a bold red checkmark next to it. Jane made a mental note of the website, tucked the notebook back under the school books and was about to turn when she spied a small notepad wedged in between one of the books. She slid the notepad from the book and found an elegant linen pad that had From the Desk of Bailey Van Gorden etched in gold at the top of each page. What in the hell was he doing with his dad’s pretentious notepad? she wondered. The pages were blank, but Jane saw a distinct pen impression on the top page that had been left from whatever was written on the page before it. Jane found a soft pencil and lightly ran the lead over the impression. The only notation she could make out was 01 Imper. Jane tore off the top page, folded it and put it in her pocket before replacing the pad where she found it.
Jane turned and faced the bed. “Where’d you go Jake Van Gorden?” she asked out loud, as if the walls were ready to spill their secrets. “What did you do before you left this room with that rope?” Jane felt into the moment. “Did you sit at your desk, or did you lie on your bed and think about what you were planning to do?” She waited for the answer and was drawn to his bed. Jane lay down and stared up at the ceiling. The model in the poster wearing the yellow bikini and propping up the fake tits stared back at her. Jane smiled when she understood the precise placement of the poster above her. The girl’s face was exactly over Jane’s head, giving the impression that the sex hungry goddess was on top of her. It was slightly unusual to feel her way into a fifteen-year-old boy’s sexually excited body, but she gave it a shot. Her right hand drifted across the blue comforter, skimmed the side of the mattress and reached under the bed. There, waiting for her in the exact spot Jake left it, was a wellenjoyed, erotic magazine full of nude women with shiny asses propped in the air and enough saline implants to make them bleed seawater. Some of the pages were stuck together—just another sign that Jake benefited from his time perusing the arousing pictorials.
Jane swung her head over the mattress and lifted the comforter to see what else was underneath Jake’s bed. Amazingly, there was only one other item. Jane slid the magazine back underneath and removed an 8 x 10 inch artist’s spiral-bound sketchpad. Sitting up, she read the front. The Truth Shall Set You Free was handwritten in a diagonal sweep. She opened the pad and found a disturbing black-and-white pencil drawing. It depicted what appeared to be portly man, possibly in his late forties, locked in a room with a steel door and small barred window. The tiny window cast an ominous shadow of light onto the man who was hanging by his neck above an overturned chair. What made the drawing even more disturbing was that the man was wearing an exact replica of the 1960s Palm Beach shirt found in Jake’s closet along with a plaid fedora on his head.
Jane turned the page and found a drawing almost exactly like the one before. Turning the next page, the drawing, again, was slightly similar, except the juxtaposition of the man’s body was just a hair off. Jane turned to the last page of the fifty-page sketchpad and found a drawing of the same scene. But this drawing showed the man alive and posed with one leg on the seat of the chair as if he was about to climb up on it. The page prior to that showed the same scene but the man was farther along in his movement up on the chair. Jane suddenly realized what this was and, starting with the last page, she slowly flipped the pages, creating a deftly drawn animation of a man in a room with bars standing up on a chair, placing a belt around his neck, kicking the chair aside and hanging himself.
Jane flipped through the pages again and again, replaying the disturbing charcoal-penciled suicide scene. The man’s face lacked clarity. That is, except for his jutting jaw—a jaw that reminded Jane of Jake’s father. At that realization, an electrical shock shot down Jane’s spine. She suddenly felt sick and needed air. Securing the sketchpad under her leather jacket, she crossed to the door that led out on the deck and walked outside. The wave of nausea quickly passed. She was about to go back inside when a gust of wind blew the door shut. She tried it and realized it was either stuck or locked. “Shit,” she muttered, factoring her
next move. She could wait until Carol came up to retrieve her or…with that, Jane glanced to a long black tube that was screwed down to the floor of the deck. A bright, highly reflective, neon-yellow, three-inch tip peeked out from the outside of the tube that faced the edge of the deck. Jane leaned down and gently pulled the yellow tip away and kept pulling and pulling and pulling until she withdrew a heavy-duty rope that easily retracted back into the tube. Lifting the rope up she immediately saw a clear rope indentation burned into the redwood beam that formed the railing. Jane’s first fleeting thought was that Jake had fashioned an odd retractable mode of hanging himself. But then, that notion gave way to a more practical use for the invention: a secret mode of escape. Perhaps the kid did it out of necessity after getting locked out late at night and needing a creative way to free himself from the predicament. Or maybe, it was just his way of fashioning a way out of the house without having to journey through the house. Jane leaned over the railing and realized that instead of it being a risky freefall, the aspen tree that grew against the deck served as a kind of stepping stone to the ground with its graduated sturdy branches that safely led to the dirt thirty feet below.
Withdrawing the rope, Jane gingerly rotated her body over the railing and quickly secured the heel of her cowboy boot in the inside cut of a large aspen branch. She continued her careful rappel until she reached a point where she could easily jump to the ground. Before retracting the rope, she wondered how the wily fifteen-year-old retained it on the ground for later use to covertly climb back up to his room. She found the answer in a well-worn scar against the aspen trunk where he had obviously tied off the rope, keeping the neon yellow reflective end detectable. The high visibility yellow told Jane that Jake’s sojourns down the rope were most likely at night. She pulled slightly on the rope and then released it, allowing it to slither back into its secret tube.
She secured the sketchpad under her jacket and made her way down the soft dirt path through the wooded area around the house, ending up on the Van Gordens’ driveway. To her right, was the ridiculously oversized garage with the doors open. Jane wandered into the first bay where a spotless taupe Lexus sedan was parked. She peered into the vehicle, noting a pair of women’s sunglasses and a pink wool scarf. Checking the door, she found it locked. Jane looked across the garage into the other two bays. One held a sporty silver coupe and the other a top-of-the-line coal black Land Cruiser. Nothing like getting ten miles to the gallon and draining your tank as you haul the bucket of steel and leather up and down the mountain passes. Jane noticed how clean the sporty coupe was but the Land Cruiser had what appeared to be freshly caked mud in the tires. She touched the back tire and tried to discern if the mud was wet but the outside temperature made the determination difficult. She checked the driver’s side door and found it unlocked. Taking a quick glance around toward the front door of the house and seeing nobody, she opened the car door and sat in the driver’s seat. On the dashboard sat a red vinyl pass that read, Elite Athletic Club Membership to the local gym. Bailey’s name was embossed in gold lettering in the middle. The guy did like his gold lettering. A trio of CDs were scattered on the passenger seat. Queen’s Greatest Hits, Opera’s Greatest Moments and a two-CD compilation of Elton John’s Greatest Hits. It seemed that Bailey didn’t want to suffer through any tune that wasn’t certified platinum. Jane’s highly acute senses came alive. A rank odor filtered through the interior of the SUV. It smelled sort of like a gymnasium, but…no…that wasn’t it. It was sweet mixed with sour and pervasive with the windows rolled up. Odd, she factored, for a car that hadn’t been driven in six days, according to Bailey. Jane thought she heard voices approaching and looked in the rearview mirror. But the mirror was flipped to accommodate nighttime driving. “Huh,” Jane muttered to herself. The sound of voices became louder. Jane quietly exited the vehicle and closed the door. She was able to walk well past the garage and into the driveway by the time Weyler and the Van Gordens met her.
