by Laurel Dewey
Jane’s stared at the word cried. She’d brought this up in Bo’s office and it still bothered her. Why cried? Shouldn’t he have said, “He cries…” since the sound of the kid crying was previously active in the background? Was Jane just focusing on picayune details?
She turned her attention to the fifth clue on the clothesline. This was a duo sent to the Van Gordens: a blank sheet of crinkled paper and the twisted drawing of a child that implied sodomy. Jane’s heightened sense of smell detected something malodorous emitting from the crinkled sheet of paper ensconced in the protective plastic cover. It was sickly sweet and pervasive. She snapped that clue off the line and opened the plastic bag. Immediately, the aroma knocked her back on the bed. She knew the smell all too well. It was urine. But why piss on a blank sheet of paper? she wondered. Unless… Jane jumped off the bed and scrambled to find the lighter in her leather satchel. Taking the crinkled page to the light, she held the flame under the paper, weaving it back and forth until the urine stains turned slightly brownish. Like magic, the words appeared: Why you piss me off BAWY? Jane sat back on the bed, somewhat stunned by the sheer creative bent of the kidnapper. She reasoned it could mean a couple things. Either the urine was a symbol of literally being pissed-off or, perhaps, it was a metaphor for being so scared that the kid peed in his pants. Either way, the secretive way in which the words were hidden using urine as the acidic ink certainly instilled a further concealment of the kidnapper’s message. The obscurity of the clues bound with the sense that on some level they all made perfect sense frustrated Jane. It was as if it was a secret wrapped in a larger secret and capped within a haunting enigma.
Jane returned the urine-stained page to the plastic evidence sheet, set it aside and turned her attention to the sixth clue that was sent to Bo Lowry’s office. It was the riddle that read:
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.
Jane sat back and ran through every classy car she could think of. Mercedes. Rolls Royce. Porsche. But then her eyes traveled to the twenty-five-cent, uncancelled stamp on the envelope that held the sympathy card. “Packard!” she said aloud. “The first four spell what you do before going on a trip,” Jane re-read. “Pack,” she muttered. “The first three spelled backward is something you take on that trip and wear on your head.” Jane quickly worked it out in her head. “Cap!” she exclaimed. She scanned the clues and locked onto the one with the magazine cutout of the child being dragged by his long arm. The boy in the cutout wore a red vintage baseball cap. Underneath were the words: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL INNOCENCE! There had to be a connection. It was becoming more and more clear that this deviant was not just smart; he was deliberate. Everything in front of Jane had a purpose. She knew it. Each word was carefully chosen, allowing not one spent syllable of verbiage. Even the voicemails were sparse in their words, showing a calculated economy for expressing his message. This led Jane to believe that the kidnapper was unyielding in being heard and understood.
With that in mind, she viewed the final clue sent to Bo Lowry by the kidnapper. It was written in all capital letters:
I BEARED MY SOUL AND STILL YOU IGNORE ME???
Jane now had a much better feel for the person behind the clues. He was smart and he was purposeful. And when you’re smart and purposeful you don’t use the wrong spelling for a word. Instead of the correct bared, he wrote beared. He absolutely meant to write it that way.
She pulled herself back into the crush of pillows and stared at that single sentence for twenty minutes. She felt into the desperation behind every word. There was a sense of being neglected…ignored. Why ignored?
She spent another half hour reading the clues from left to right until she had them memorized.
And then she saw it. Not one, but two startling discoveries.
CHAPTER 12
Jane heard Weyler trod down the hallway. She bolted from her bed and opened the door. “Boss,” she whispered with punctuation.
Weyler stood there in his suit and tie and stared at Jane, wearing nothing but her faded long nightshirt. “What?” he asked, almost feeling a need to avert his eyes.
“I found something. Two somethings!” She said, waving him into her room.
Weyler looked a bit askance when he spotted the odd setup Jane had erected with the clothesline. “What’s with all this…”
“It’s outside the box, Boss,” Jane motioned him to close the door and then stood in front of the clothesline of clues on the left side. “These are the clues in order of their delivery. But you can’t read them as individual pieces. You have to read them as a whole because they tell a story.” Weyler shook his head, not sure of where this was going. “Just wait! Hear me out. Each clue builds on the one before it. Like this one…” Jane pointed to the first drawing of the child with the red cap on his head. “In this picture, he’s being dragged somewhere, possibly in a car. But this one over here,” Jane quickly moved to the second, sexually graphic drawing, “is greater and more threatening than the first drawing. This one…” pointing to the second drawing, “is what happens days or maybe weeks after the first one.” She moved to the transcript from the first voicemail. “The kidnapper says, ‘He pounds on the window and you do nothing.’ Then we have a kid conveniently in the next clue looking like his palm is pressed against a flat surface, like a window.”
Weyler moved closer to the clothesline, reading through a couple clues in order. “I don’t see how the first clue of the book bleeds into the second clue of the voicemail.”
“I think the book, You Can’t Go Home Again, is establishing the theme.”
“Theme?” Weyler almost looked irritated.
“The sympathy card that came with it read, So sorry for your loss. It’s establishing the situation. I’m still not clear why he wrote JACKson sends his regards in the card. But I’m sure it means something along the way. Look, the person who did this is intelligent, motivated and vengeful.“
“So, you’re saying this is a crime of revenge?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet. But I think there’s something in the book that’s obviously important. Something that literally states the purpose of everything else.”
“What was on the dog-eared page?”
“It talked of phrases as symbols of something real. And then there was a line in there regarding the main character George Webber about something that mattered greatly to him and would not be denied. Maybe the kidnapper is…pretending to be George Webber.”
“An intellectual kidnapper?”
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility, Boss!”
“Does an intellectual draw a graphic picture of a young boy being sodomized?”
“Sure. If it’s part of the story.”
“The story…” Weyler looked dubious. “So you think he’s telling us what’s going to happen to Jake?”
“Possibly.”
“If that’s so, then where is the demand to the Van Gordens to keep all of this from happening to their son? Isn’t it normal for the kidnapper to threaten this, this and this unless you do this, this and this?” He looked at the clues again. “There’s no request to the Van Gordens. No ransom demand…”
“He wants attention,” Jane interrupted, grasping the idea from the ether.
“Come on, Jane. You don’t go through all this and take a child just to get attention.”
Jane sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the clues. After a moment of silence, she spoke up. “He needs to be heard, Boss. He’s a loner. Nobody’s ever paid any attention to him. He was dismissed because he was in the way. So he chose a life of silence and isolation.” In that moment, Jane felt the unrelenting pain that poured forth from the pages on the clothesline. It was at once suffocating and shattering.
“You just described Jordan Copeland
,” Weyler stated.
“I know,” she said quietly.
“All the more reason to keep him in our sights.” Weyler looked at Jane. “But not too close.”
Jane looked up at him. Weyler had a look of warning on his face. “What?”
“I know you pretty well, Jane. You tend to go against protocol. We’re here to help Bo but, in the end, this is his case and this is his town. Copeland is the number-one suspect and he knows it. If he’s involved in this case, give him all the space in the world so that he can fall on his own sword. We need to keep an appropriate distance from him so we’re not accused later at trial of compromising the case and getting it thrown out on a technicality. If we screw this whole thing up for Bo, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Jane implicitly understood Weyler and did her best to not show offense at his veiled threats toward her. “Because you owe him, right?” It came out far too petulant but she couldn’t help it.
“Because I take a promise as seriously as you do.”
“Well, Boss…” Jane stood up. “…what if your ol’ buddy isn’t being honest with you? Would that alter your promise?” Jane followed through with what she witnessed in Bo’s office when Vi went out to get the files on Jake and Jordan—the way she ripped off the top page that was stapled to the outside of the folder and slipped it into her top drawer before heading back into Bo’s office. Jane’s assault on Bo continued when she questioned his need to keep the whole case quiet. It was a fact that raised too many red flags for a guy who claimed to want to solve the case before his retirement. And what about his early retirement, she added. Was it a strange coincidence that he and his trusted ally, Vi, were cutting and leaving the joint simultaneously? In her rant, Jane wanted to include the mysterious bright yellow folder on Bo’s desk that he purposely covered up but she could see that Weyler wasn’t buying her suspicions.
“I think your nicotine withdrawal is causing you to create conspiracies where there are none.”
“Then take the edge off my suspicion and tell me the story between you two!”
Weyler pulled himself up to his full 6’ 4” frame. “Is there anything else you want to show me?”
Shit, Jane thought. Maybe it was the nicotine withdrawal. God knows her body was speeding through some crazy sensations. Between smelling gardenias where there were none and her heightened senses, she was clearly rotating more outside her body than in it. She jumped off the bed and handed Weyler the blank sheet of paper with the writing in urine. “It says, Why you piss me off, BAWY? Every single clue doesn’t waste a word. Why does he write this and suddenly sound like he can’t speak proper English?” Jane pointed to the riddle about the Packard. “Is it just a coincidence that the answer matches an old Packard postage stamp that he conveniently affixed to one of the envelopes? Is it a coincidence that one of the answers in the riddle, the word cap, just happens to be what’s drawn on the boy’s head in both pictures?”
“Copeland likes riddles. What was that one he mentioned on the interrogation video? ‘I am the ruler of shovels. I have a double…”
“’I am as thin as a knife. I have a wife. What am I?’ Yeah. King of Spades,” Jane acknowledged off-handedly.
“Very good.”
“Look, Boss. This guy doesn’t make mistakes. That’s what brings me to my second discovery. We always say to look for patterns, right? We all have them and we act and react to them unconsciously. Watch this…” Jane moved to the book, You Can’t Go Home Again. “First clue shows up at the Van Gordens’.” He nodded. “Second clue is the first voicemail message. That one comes into Bo’s office.” Jane touched the third clue, “Back to the Van Gordens and then,” she touched the fourth clue, “second voicemail to Bo’s office. And then, we’re back to the Van Gordens for clue number five. Clue number six, the Packard riddle, shows up under Bo’s front mat. Clue number seven, I BEARED MY SOUL, also suddenly shows up under Bo’s front mat.” Jane took a hard breath. “It’s out of sequence. Somewhere between clues six and seven, the Van Gordens should have gotten something. This makes sense because if I’m right that this a linear story, the clue that says I BEARED MY SOUL, relates to whatever came before it.”
“I understand patterns, Jane, but…”
“Boss, there’s zero connection between the riddle about the Packard and I BEARED MY SOUL AND YOU STILL IGNORE ME??? I mean, he’s saying it right there! YOU STILL IGNORE ME???”
“Jane, he’s not being acknowledged for any of them!”
“Bo told us that the Van Gordens are only aware of the clues that they received themselves. That’s the book and sympathy card and the two drawings. I’m telling you, Boss, there are really eight clues and the Van Gordens have number seven and didn’t give it up to Bo.”
“Why in the hell would they intentionally hold back a clue that could potentially save their son’s life?”
Jane said the first thing that popped into her head. “Disgust? I mean, the last clue they supposedly got was that picture.” She pointed to the sexually graphic drawing. “Maybe the next clue was even worse. Remember, this family is all about honing that surface impression. If the missing clue was embarrassing to them, I can understand how they’d want to ignore it so save face. And, you know, it’s not like they haven’t already lied to us.”
“Who lied?”
“Bailey. I checked inside his SUV…”
“You went inside his car?” Weyler was stunned.
“Yeah. He likes a lot of Greatest Hits CDs. And the car smelled funky. But he lied to us, Boss. He said the last time he was out was six days prior to go to the gym during the day. But his rear view mirror was flipped for nighttime driving and the vehicle looked freshly caked with mud. And today? Same story about going to the gym. Yeah, right. All dressed up with a half tube of gel in his hair to go to the gym? I think not. The reason I hung back after you left was to check out his story…”
“Jane…” Weyler’s cadence was warning.
“His SUV was nowhere near the damn gym!”
“These are the victims, not the suspects! He’s free to go wherever he wants. Maybe he wanted to go on a drive and clear his head…”
“Dressed up?!” Jane wasn’t backing down.
“Jane, you’re scattered! You’re not focusing!”
“I am focusing!” She was falling apart, but she didn’t want Weyler to know it. Her head was exhausted from juggling all the unknowns in her own life, as well as the life of a missing boy she was starting to really care about. She wondered if she cared about him more than his own parents did. A thought crossed her mind. “Why aren’t the Van Gordens offering a reward for Jake’s return?”
“I asked Bo that question. He said they were planning on it, but withdrew the plan last night.”
“What happened last night?”
“I don’t know. Bo said they just decided that they wanted to keep this thing low-key.”
“What the fuck?” Jane was disgusted. “They’ve got beaucoup bucks! They could afford to plunk one hundred grand out there. Hell, in this economy, they could get someone to squeal for twenty-five!”
“Jane, we’re both bone tired. Let’s hash it out in the morning when we’re fresh. We’re meeting Bo for breakfast at the diner…”
“Oh, shit, he’s not going to listen to me, Boss! He doesn’t even want me here!”
“Let’s do this by the book, okay? Get some sleep.”
Weyler wearily left her room, quietly closing the door behind him.
“Fuck!” Jane half-whispered in frustration. Sure, this wasn’t technically her case, but she was brought in to help solve it and now her outside the box considerations were being questioned. She glanced toward the clothesline of clues. Who in the fuck lives at 1401 Imperial, she thought, and where in the hell is it? Crossing to the last two clues, she slid her hand between them. She recalled that Bo told them he had received the last one with the I BEARED MY SOUL… sentence that morning under his front mat. If she was right about patterns and if the Van
Gordens actually did receive a clue that they didn’t disclose, it made sense that that mysterious clue could have been delivered the day before. Perhaps she was right about them feeling disgust at it—so much disgust that they abruptly cancelled the reward. Jesus Christ, she thought, you don’t withdraw a reward for your only son because you want to keep things low-key.
Jane’s head was spinning a million miles a minute. Weyler was right. She was scattered. She had to slow down her brain and there was only one way she knew to do that. She spied the single cigarette pack on the table. The torture was too much. She slid the cigarette out of the pack and searched for the lighter she used to decipher the words on the urine-stained page. Suddenly, a wave of pain permeated her lower gut. She grabbed hold of the bedpost to steady herself as she bent over and grabbed her belly. Tossing the cigarette back on the table, she was hit with the strong scent of gardenias once again. She fell to her knees and rolled into a fetal position on the floor. The persistent pain was agonizing. Her pelvis felt as if it was about to break in two. She briefly wondered if this was what it was like to give birth. Then she wondered if something was seriously wrong inside of her.
Jane managed to crawl up onto the bed. She turned off the light and drew the comforter over her aching body. She began to gently brush her fingertips across her forehead, repeating the motion continuously—the same way she did in the doctor’s office. The odd, uncharacteristic gesture felt soothing to her, especially as a wave of nausea overwhelmed her. Ribbons of pain engulfed her as the scent of gardenias lingered. She finally fell asleep, the pain abating and the aroma disappearing.
All was silent until she awoke to the sound of creaking in her room. Jane opened her eyes and was met with a mat of blackness and the eerie glow of the bedside clock that showed 3:11. Somebody was there. She could feel it. And with it, that goddamned sickly sweet floral scent that had dogged her for nearly twenty-four hours. The creaking continued, back and forth, back and forth. It was coming from the corner of the room near the window.
