by Laurel Dewey
She closed out the web page and realized that 1968 was a popular year in relationship to this case. Jordan was arrested in July of 1968, David Sackett, the old man who owned the phone number spoofed on the kidnapper’s cell phone, told her he moved into that house on Warwick road in Short Hills, New Jersey, in February of 1968. And now, this particularly vintage pack of Chesterfield 101s, just happened to be launched in late 1967 and ramped up their advertising in early 1968. Jane examined the black marker line on each cigarette. Just like the advertisement made a silly point of drawing attention to the extra millimeter, it seemed that the kidnapper was doing the same thing. Was it some kind of date stamp to create context within the complex story? If so, the year 1968 wasn’t boding well for Jordan Copeland.
Jane turned her attention to the note on the far right of the clothesline—the one with the mysterious website she found with a bold red check mark in Jake’s notebook when she was snooping in his bedroom. Typing www.mysecretrevelations.com into the browser, Jane entered a strange, bold world. Against a black and red backdrop, people from all over the world and from all walks of life posted their deepest secret revelations, completely anonymously. Pages and pages were filled with secrets from children, wives, husbands, grandmothers, lovers and more. Some were poignant such as the 42-year-old woman who wrote, I keep my dad’s driver’s license in my wallet even though he died ten years ago just so I can see his face. And the one from a lovelorn eighteen-year-old boy, I sit behind you in math class and wonder what it would be like to press my head against your chest and hear your heartbeat. A handful were frivolous such as, I broke up with my last boyfriend because he liked classical music but I told him it was because I met someone new. Now I really miss him. A lot were downright disturbing on different levels. There was the one from the sixteen-year-old boy who wrote, Dear Mom and Dad, the brownies tasted funny because I put pot in them! Or this one: I have five children but I only love the first two. The one-sentence secret from a supposed twelve-year-old girl really alarmed Jane. My cousin raped me and I liked it.
On and on it went, pages of revelations—thousands of confessions from people who found comfort in writing down their secrets anonymously with only a date, an alleged age and notation of whether they were male or female next to their revelation. Jane wondered if this cathartic regurgitation in cyberspace helped them by releasing the burden of the secret from their shoulders. On the other hand, did those who bookmarked the website and read the newest offerings each day do so with a sense of compassion or a sense of sleazy voyeurism?
Jane scrolled through the pages, looking for the secret revelations posted before March 22nd, the day of Jake’s disappearance. Primarily, she was searching for anything written by a fifteen-year-old boy. She had to assume—and it was a big assumption—that Jake Van Gorden, seeker of “Truth,” would use his real age and sex when and if he added a secret to the website. All the entries for seventeen days prior to March 22nd were identified as adults, but there were two in February and two in March—one of those just sixteen days prior to March 22nd, all from a fifteen-year-old boy—that Jane thought might be connected to Jake. They were startling, to say the least.
The first one from February 10th read: “I fear that my blood is infected with the sins of my family”. Infected. That was the identical word Hank said Jake used during their conversation when Jake asked Hank if he felt a family could be infected with a curse. If memory served her, she was pretty sure Hank mentioned that he had that conversation with Jake about six weeks prior to his disappearance, which would almost coincide with the February 10th entry.
The second entry from the fifteen-year-old poster was from February 22nd. “How many secrets does it take to curse a family? How many revelations does it take to set them free?” There was that mention of a curse again. But in this post, it appeared that the boy was searching for the possible solution, citing the freedom in uncovering the revelations.
When Jane read the March 1st entry, a shiver bolted down her spine. It echoed too closely to words she’d already heard from someone else. “The dead are following me. I’m terrified that the secret has become flesh and blood and is chasing my family from generation to generation, contaminating my bloodline.” The second line was almost exactly the same verbiage used by Jordan when he and Jane were discussing his theory of family secrets.
Finally, there was the last chilling entry from the anonymous fifteen-year-old on March 6th. “I saw you but you didn’t see me, YOU FUCKING PERVERT! Which one of us will hang in hell???”
Jane sat back in her chair. Pervert was a word used more than once to describe Jordan, specifically by Bailey and Bo. Hang in hell? Again, with the visual of hanging. This was getting to be a sickening, familiar pattern. Sixteen days after those words were written, Jake attempted suicide by hanging. To give it even more impact, the March 6th entry was around the same time when Bailey Van Gorden talked to Aaron privately and Mollie was told to break off her friendship with Jake. Yes, Jane surmised, these posts had to be written by Jake Van Gorden. For Jane, they were akin to another four valuable clues that further confounded and complicated an already mystifying case.
Jane pasted and copied the four comments on a separate page, printed them out and then bookmarked the secret revelations website. She was about to close up her computer when she remembered the remarks that Mollie made about Bailey’s YouTube video. As she recalled, Bailey had at least three thousand hits on his download of their over-the-top, Colorado log monstrosity of a house. Jane also remembered that Bailey said it could be found by simply putting his name into the search engine on the website.
Yep. There it was in all its glory. He’d amassed an additional 333 hits on the video, giving him a whopping 3,333, and received a five-star rating as well. Jane clicked on the play button, waiting for Bailey’s splendor of the crass to grab hold of her. As the video cued up, she figured Bailey would have a sweeping shot of the house exterior with pounding music in the backdrop to ratchet up the sales pitch for his architectural services. After all, he was a screaming narcissist who needed to make everything big, bold and annoying. But when the video started, Jane’s prediction was way off. There was Bailey standing in the kitchen, behind the granite countertop, dressed in a tight-fitting black T-shirt that showed off his muscular physique and speaking directly to the camera. Since the camera didn’t move an inch, Jane assumed he had it set on a tripod and was most likely, alone in the room. His voice was surprisingly low-key. He introduced himself, talked about where he lived and how he designed and oversaw the building of his home, which he said was “nestled in the Colorado Rockies.” Jane’s bogus-meter went off on that one since Midas was more realistically sitting in the proverbial thumb of the Rockies if the mountain range was lying on its back and spread-eagled. But he wasn’t the first architect to use hyperbole to make a sales pitch.
Bailey then went on for about two minutes, blabbering about how he loved to create “magic and passion” in whatever he did, how it was important that clients “came to the table with that same passion” and that while they may only “collaborate on one project together” he knew that it would be memorable. The scene cut to Bailey doing a handheld shot of the front and rear exterior of the house, showing the expansiveness of the property. He then walked to various areas of the house, bragging about his “vision” or “intention” when he created this or that gaudy touch. There was the imported, five-tiered, Italian fountain on the back terrace. And then viewers got to hear about the mahogany chair Bailey scored from an estate sale in Africa. The most ludicrous and somewhat embarrassing part for Jane came when Bailey showed off his deluxe Weber outdoor grill with “all the bells and whistles.” Only problem was, Bailey didn’t have a clue how to operate the grill and even admitted he’d never “fired it up.” The whole video was one badly conceived, bombastic bore. The more Jane listened to the eight-minute pitch, the more she felt Bailey should have hired a professional to produce the video. Instead of maximizing the house to show it o
ff, Bailey seemed to spend more time droning on about himself and all the facile appurtenances of his success, using convoluted phrases such as “I have such enthusiasm for the lifestyle and making a creative connection with clients.” “Who gives a shit about you, asshole?” Jane exclaimed. “Show me the damn house!”
The video ended with Bailey seated on a large rock outside his house, his left leg bent with his hands encircling his knee, which made his bulging muscles even more apparent. “Thank you for taking the time to watch my presentation,” Bailey said to the camera with a stiff smile. “I hope you liked what you saw and that I can be part of bringing the good life to you. Together, we can create something wonderful.”
Jane shook her head in disgust. She wouldn’t hire Bailey to redecorate her broom closet, let alone her house. What a pompous asshole. It was absolutely shocking to Jane that he had a five-star video rating as well as fabulous comments posted below the video. People wrote everything from, I love your style! to I’ll be setting up an appointment soon! What was wrong with people? Couldn’t they see that Bailey was all flash and no substance? Who in their right mind would want to linger longer than five minutes in this egotist’s presence? It would certainly drive Jane back to the bottle. What’s more, Bailey must have been so selfabsorbed when he listed the search engine tags for the video, that he spelled Italian fountain as “Italain” and misspelled the Weber Grill as Webber Grill. Obviously, Jane deduced, all that money didn’t buy the pretentious prick an education.
Still, she couldn’t allow her distaste for Bailey to compromise his son’s case. Jane needed to smooth things over with him if only to make access to their home easier in the future for her. But she needed a valid reason to warrant another visit, especially after causing such an uproar earlier in the day. The idea hit her. She called Weyler and after Jane explained that she needed to check Jake’s computer history for possible entries on a suspicious blog—a blog she described as vaguely as possible. He smoothed the way with Bo for her second visit of the day, provided she made the visit “as short as possible.”
Before Jane left, she glanced once more at the four obtuse posts she copied from mysecretrevelations.com. Her eyes caught the words: The dead are following me… Jane furtively looked at the rocking chair in the corner of her room by the window. She did everything possible to keep the insane possibilities at bay.
The blue Colorado sky finally appeared, allowing the sun to steal a few minutes of freedom from the clutch of clouds and to warm Jane’s tired body. Had it only been two days in Midas? It felt like years. And now, as she parked her Mustang in the cul-de-sac and started the long walk up the Van Gordens’ driveway, she found herself conflicted by what the evidence was showing her and what she didn’t want to believe. The last thing any cop wanted to consider was that a child’s family was linked somehow to his or her disappearance. And yet, the sad reality was that too often there was a close family member or friend that had a nefarious connection to the crime. The excuses from the perps ranged from “accidental” to “insanity.” As Jane crested the Van Gordens’ driveway and walked up the path to the front door, she felt that if this family was involved, it was full of twists and turns that even she wasn’t sure she could traverse.
Jane walked between the two pillars carved in the shape of owls and rang the doorbell. She looked down at her filthy shirt and quickly buttoned her leather jacket all the way up to hide the dirt. After what seemed like a long wait, Carol answered. She was still dressed in her same black-and-white outfit and still looked ever so smart and pulled together. However, the look on her face when she answered the door was one of great stress. Jane immediately assumed she was the reason for the woman’s strain and launched quickly into her apologies, using the excuse that her impatience to solve her son’s case clouded her better judgment. As Jane spoke the words, she really meant them, but she also made sure to throw in a few well-positioned facial gestures that implied regret and guilt. She hung her head, sighed at appropriate moments and even went so far as to put her hand over her heart in a show of contrition. Instead of getting the response the wanted, Carol stood at the doorway and seemed more preoccupied with matters taking place in Bailey’s office. She ushered Jane inside and directed her toward the living room. As they crossed to the right, Jane glanced over her shoulder at the closed arched doors that protected the players behind them—players whose vocal tones reverberated ever so slightly off the walls but failed to reveal the words they were speaking.
Sitting prominently on the large burl wood coffee table was Jake’s computer. Obviously, somebody got the message that Jane told Weyler and somebody decided it was best to bring the computer to Jane rather than allow Jane back into Jake’s bedroom. Somebody had also plugged in the computer and turned it on to make Jane’s time at the Van Gordens’ both efficient and speedy. That somebody, Jane surmised, was not standing in front of her at that moment, rubbing the heel of each palm against the other and focusing vacantly on a spot in the wood floor. Jane thanked Carol for the swift cooperation but the woman didn’t seem to hear a word.
“Coffee?” Carol asked Jane, still half in her abstracted world.
“No, thank you.”
“Tea?”
“No, thanks. But please, make yourself a cup,” Jane suggested, more to shake loose of Carol for a few moments.
Like a dutiful Stepford wife, Carol nodded and walked out of the living room, turned right and clip-clopped into the kitchen.
Jane quickly opened up Jake’s Internet web browser and selected the History menu and the dates previous to his March 22nd disappearance. Nothing. Zip. Nada. She opened each available day in the history file prior to that and found the same empty result. Selecting Jake’s email box, Jane was stunned. It was empty. Not even spam occupied the lonely box. The likelihood of there being no mail, even junk mail, up to the present date in Jake’s mailbox, was ridiculous. There was always the option of taking the computer and scanning the hard drive and hopefully recovering the lost data. But Jane realized that even if she was able to get the Van Gordens to agree to such a thing, the chance of finding a techie in that town who would agree to breach the trust of a fellow secret holder was slim. Her only chance was to talk to Mollie again and ask her if she might have any correspondence with Jake. Before Jane closed out of the windows, she pulled up the browser again and clicked on Favorites, hoping to find the secret revelations website listed. But she was zero for three. That folder was also empty.
Jane crossed into the entry hall just as Carol returned with a cup of tea balanced on a fine china saucer. Suddenly, the voices got louder in Bailey’s office. Carol turned to the closed doors, a look of apprehension carved on her countenance. The door handle turned with an angry twist and Bailey walked out into the entry hall. His face was flushed and irritated. He was dressed in another stiffly starched white shirt, a tight pair of stonewashed jeans and an intricate leather belt with a large turquoise buckle. Bailey was in his own world momentarily until he saw Jane.
“You got what you wanted?” he gruffly asked her, his nose clearly congested.
“Yes, thank you. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything on his computer.”
Bailey stared at her with his steely eyes. “Right,” he nodded, sniffing a bit of mucus up his nose.
“You’re still stuffed up,” Jane offered.
“Excuse me?”
“When I was here and met you the first time, you were stuffed up and looked feverish.”
Bailey regarded Jane with a look that surfaced somewhere between quizzical and aggravated. “Allergies,” he said succinctly.
Jane nodded. From what she could see outside, there weren’t many trees or flowers blooming yet in the high country. And there weren’t any pets scrambling around the ol’ log homestead. Jane started to leave when she turned back to Carol. “Oh, did you get anymore of those two-ring, hang-up calls after I left?”
“No,” she said with honesty.
“What’s that?” Bailey said, moving clo
ser to Jane.
“Your phone rings twice and then when you answer it, there’s no one there. And the Caller ID reads Unavailable.”
Bailey locked eyes with Jane in what appeared to be a death grip. His tanned, flushed face tensed up ever so slightly. “Is this pertinent to my son’s case or is this just more chatter?” Before Jane could answer, the sound of a woman clearing her throat with purpose could be heard coming from behind the half-opened office door. Jane watched Bailey pull back and slightly turn his head toward the office. “If this is relevant information, please tell us,” he said, his tone more refined.
Whoever was behind the door seemed to have tangible control over Bailey. Jane wanted to look for the invisible cord that was connected between Bailey and the operator on the other side of the door. Jane leaned over as the office door creaked open. There was another cough, but this time, it was generated from deep within the lungs. The door moved further and the wheel of a chair revealed itself. Finally, the door swung open wide and a tiny, gaunt woman, no more than ninety-five pounds, appeared, seated in a chrome wheelchair. She wore white wool slacks, a black button-front shirt and a cream-colored cardigan. Her grey hair was styled in an abrupt coif, with sharp edges that framed her chin. For a moment, Jane thought the woman had to be Carol’s mother. Their dress and style seemed to match in an eerie, unsettling manner. The only variance in their look was Louise’s skin color. It was a yellowish tint, an outward expression of her cancerous liver.
