Revelations

by Laurel Dewey

  “I cannot allow you to…”

  “You know, Aaron, I hate to say it, but you’re looking complicit in Jake’s disappearance.” Jane was lying through her teeth, but she sold a good threat when she had to.

  His eyes widened, both in fear and slight anger. “My God! How can you suggest that?! He was like my son! I’d never hurt that boy!”

  “Well, you’re hurting him now! What in the hell did Bailey say to you?!”

  Aaron looked at Jane with shame. “I…I…I can’t do this.” He got up and started to leave.

  Even though his big-boned, tall body towered over Jane, she held him back. “Goddamnit, Aaron! Tell me what you…” Jane’s cell phone rang. Checking the number, she saw it was Weyler. She answered quickly. “Yeah?”

  “Jane, you need to get over here to Bo’s office immediately. We’ve got another clue on the front door of Town Hall…and it’s not good.”

  Jane hung up. “Fuck,” she murmured.

  “What is it?” Aaron asked, his voice shaking. “Is it Jake?”

  She shook her head at him and headed out the door. “Let me give you some advice, Aaron. Take another read of your little needlepoint Bible saying on the wall over there… the one from Matthew? What you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops? I will persuade you to tell me what you know. Mark my words, whatever you’re hiding, I’ll uncover it.”

  CHAPTER 24

  By the time Jane ran down the street and crossed to Town Hall, it was evident that whatever was waiting at the front door had attracted a small crowd. Bo and Weyler were doing their best to move the onlookers back from the scene as a deputy took photos of the front door. The crush of bodies made it impossible for Jane to see, but as she slid through the crowd and moved toward the deputy, the sickening display became visible.

  A black-handled knife penetrated the door. Wrapped around the handle of the knife was a five-inch, blond ponytail secured with an elastic band. Three items were lodged in the steel point of the knife: a printed note, the Ace of Spades and a single Chesterfield cigarette. Pressed into the playing card was a clean, bloody thumb print.

  Jane sidled closer to Weyler and spoke quietly. “Who found it?”

  “Bo. He was coming in for a couple hours to pack up some boxes.”

  Jane saw movement near the window inside Bo’s office. “Who’s in his office?”

  “He called Vi. She’s more adept at operating the video playback of the new security system.” Weyler nodded to the camera above the front door of the building.

  Even from ten feet away, Jane could see that the camera wasn’t positioned correctly. She turned to Bo who was holding back the growing crowd. “Who set up that camera?”

  Already aggravated, Bo turned around quickly, took a quick look and turned back to the crowd. “One of the techie guys I guess.”

  The deputy announced to Bo that he was finished and Bo urged the crowd to disassemble. Weyler handed Bo a series of plastic evidence bags. After slipping on a pair of gloves, Bo carefully slid each of the five pieces into separate bags. They went into Bo’s office where he immediately closed the blinds on his office window that faced the street. Vi was still checking the technical manual on how to operate the new video system while she fiddled with the buttons on the keyboard.

  “Well, that was goddamn awkward!” Bo exclaimed as he lit up a fat cigar. “I haven’t had to dodge this much awkwardness since old Miss Hyman named her cat Buster and then got him a subscription to Cat Fancy that they addressed to the cat: Buster Hyman. The postmistress damn near had a stroke.” He turned to Vi. “Any luck with the video?”

  “I’ll have it up in a second,” Vi replied.

  Bo turned to Weyler. “How long is it gonna take for the Denver lab to match that bloody fingerprint?”

  “Depends how backed up CBI is. Rush orders are about a two week turnaround.”

  “Two weeks?!” Bo yelled. “Jesus Christ, Beanie, I’m hangin’ it up in a week!” The walls were clearly caving in around Bo.

  “I’ll make some calls,” Weyler said in an assuring voice, “and see what I can do.” He laid out the five plastic bags across Bo’s cluttered desk. “We can send the knife too. The guy’s been good about wearing gloves, but he could have slipped up.”

  “He’s not slipping up,” Jane offered.

  “What in the hell are you yappin’ about? He’s dumb as a box of hair to stand under a goddamned camera and leave a clue!”

  “He wants to be found. Every clue is getting more in our faces. He wants to make his mark publicly so that people gather’round and see it! He wants to shock us. That’s why he cut off Jake’s ponytail and left the bloody fingerprint.” She examined the fingerprint more closely, sizing it up with her own thumb. “Check out the size of this print. That’s too big to belong to Jake. And look how clean it is.“ Jane considered the print a blaring cry for attention. It was if the kidnapper was screaming, “Look at me! Discover who I am!” He had to be in the system, she deduced, because there was no other reason to leave such a clear imprint of who you were. Perhaps, she wondered, there was something about discovering the owner of that print and what that might lead to. God, it was like one long scavenger hunt with the disturbing prize of a broken or buried boy at the end.

  “Vi,” Bo interrupted, “when you’re done here, get me Trash Bag’s file. I want to compare prints.”

  “Wait,” Jane countered, “you can’t eyeball a print…”

  “The hell I can’t! Back in the day, before we had all this bullshit technology, we eyeballed a whole helluva lot of things!”

  “And sent innocent people to prison because of it! This is not a fucking good ol’ boys’ club!”

  Bo’s eyes flared with white-hot anger as he slammed his fat fist onto the desk. “Well, that ain’t my fault!” There was something way too defensive in the way Bo said it. “If I want to eyeball Jordan Copeland’s fuckin’ fingerprint, I will damn well do it so back off, girl!”

  “Bo!” Vi spoke up.

  He turned to her. There was a meaningful pause from Vi. “What?” Bo asked, his voice tamed.

  “I got it synched up.”

  Vi stood back with the remote control and hit the PLAY button. The full-color playback was crisp and clear. But it was also clear to Jane that whoever set up the camera outside the front door desperately needed direction. A figure of what appeared to be a male, somewhere between five foot eight and six foot three or so, wearing all black, including a hat and long coat, walked up to the front door and stabbed the knife into the door, securing the assortment of clues. The entire movement from start to finish was fast, taking less than six seconds. And his head was down the entire time; which made Jane assume that whoever left the clue knew that there was a camera above him.

  Bo instructed Vi to play back the video repeatedly, painstakingly using the slow-motion feature that Vi discovered to try and detect anything that could identify the individual. But there was nothing. All they knew was that, based upon the video’s timer, a possible male wearing all black approached Town Hall at 6:29 am that morning and stabbed a public clue into the front door.

  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 th
e 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:

  Who Ever Believes Bad Eventually Resolves

  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 d
isplayed 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.