by Laurel Dewey
“Really.” Jordan looked a Jane more closely. “Your kidnapper is calling and leaving messages?”
“Strange you wouldn’t have a phone…”
“I know I’m the number-one suspect…”
“No, actually, you’re a person of interest. It means the same thing as suspect. We just use that gentler term now because we don’t want to sound like we’re violating your good name until we decide it’s time to violate you.” Jane moved toward a spruce tree opposite Jordan and leaned her back against it. She kept the Glock close at her side. “You on meds?”
“They wanted to give me drugs to amend my anti-social behavior. I told them socializing was overrated. I don’t do well amidst the groaning clog of humanity. When I left prison, the docs wanted to give me pills that would quiet me,” Jordan said with a greasy tenor. “I feel too much and they think that a drug is going to help that. Typical. Choke the underbelly of emotion even though it has the right to exist in a person.” He pulled another few needles of new growth off the spruce tree and ate it, spitting out several needles that disagreed with him. “I think, therefore, I’m dangerous. I observe, therefore, I’m worthy of suspicion. Odd, isn’t it, that thinking has become a liability in our society. Better I should follow the mediocre sheeple to slaughter than dare entertain ideas that provoke and frustrate the drones. And nobody understands the art of observation anymore. All the zombies wait around for the Big Boys who run the joint to spoon feed them their commentary on what we’re seeing because critical thinking died a quick, painful death. Original thinkers are as common as a rotary phone. Those who choose to ruminate outside the box are either condemned or destroyed.”
Jane had to check herself. There were too many similarities between the way she and Jordan looked at life. Even though they were standing in a circle of evergreens, she would continue this interview as if they were seated in the green-walled interrogation room back at DH. “You smoke, Jordan?”
“No. Nasty habit. Why? You cravin’ a ciggie?”
“I don’t smoke.”
He observed her the same way she scrutinized liars and smiled. “Riiight.”
Obviously, the aroma of tobacco still lingered on her clothing. “I quit.”
“Of course you did.” His eyes dove into hers. “But they didn’t quit you. You haven’t smoked your last cigarette, Jane. Mark my words. You smoke to smother all those feelings. You suffocate your sensitivity because somebody made you believe that feeling is dangerous.” His translucent blue eyes fixated on her. “But you do feel, don’t you? You feel and see what others can’t. Ah, you have the gift! Yes!”
Jane ignored him. Her thoughts turned back to the classic Chesterfield cigarettes and ashtray. “You collect antiques?”
Jordan seemed pissed that she changed the subject. “Oh, yeah. Love antiquing. Next to romantic walks on the beach at sunset, it really jerks my chain.” He gave a sarcastic wink.
“You could go online and buy archaic crap…”
“No phone, no TV, no computer.”
“The library has free computers.”
“Don’t own a credit card. I’m taken care of once a year by a long time friend of my father’s. Edward Butterworth. Eddie. He hates it when I call him Eddie. He’s a real East Coast, stuffed shirt, cocksucker. Ass so fucking tight he squeaks when he walks. He always stands back at least five feet from me when he slides that big ol’ ugly trust fund check in my direction. Doesn’t want to get too close to the family’s little mistake.” He took a step toward Jane. “Da blackest of da black sheep, dats me!” Jordan made a point to be as mordant as possible. “Yes, sir, Eddie’s been takin’ care of business for our family since heck was a pup. He’s the cleanup man, you know? Makes sure the status quo is kept up and running. Makes sure everything that has to be buried stays dead.”
It was important for Jane to toss out more questions, quickly changing the subject to try and throw off Jordan. “You a religious man?”
“That’s hard to say. I don’t believe in atheists.” He waited for Jane to absorb that retort. “If God resides in every one of us, then isn’t an atheist just someone who doesn’t believe in himself?”
Jane figured these were the types of philosophical contemplations a person comes up with after spending way too much time wandering the woods at night. “So, you’re not religious?”
“Life has enough challenges. I don’t need to walk a dogma around and make it more complicated. Ah, religious folk! Why have one limiting belief when two or more makes your life that much more insular?” He stiffened his back. “I don’t trust any faith that uses fear to keep me compliant. And I certainly can’t be part of a religion that requires the suspension of thoughtful debate. I don’t question the belief in God. I question the humanity of those who believe in Him.” Jordan’s stance relaxed and his facetious posture re-emerged. “I made Jesus a deal. I don’t hide behind His name and he doesn’t use my name to get into clubs. I’ve kept up my end of the deal. He’s kept up his… as far as I know. It’s hard to trust those Jewtians.”
Jane was afraid where this was headed. “Jewtians?”
“Jews who go Christian. Slippery lot. They retain their drive for absolute power but now they’re doin’ it for J.C.!” Jordan winked and smiled. “You can take the Jew out of the synagogue but you can’t take his edge off.”
“Isn’t Copeland a Jewish name?”
“Could be, I guess. But I’m not Jewish. I was raised Episcopalian. Just a wine glass and wafer away from being Catholic and playing hide the weenie with a homo priest. I could be a Buddhist, being that I enjoy the solitude and live like a fucking monk. But I couldn’t stand having to worry about reincarnating as an inbred lap dog. I could never be a Muslim because I have bad knees and I can’t kneel down to tie my shoes let alone hittin’ the rug and facing Mecca five times a day. Although, it would be pretty damn cool to pop the cherries of seventy-two nubile virgins when I croak.” His expression soured. “Does that answer your question?” He picked up a branch off the wet ground and proceeded to drag it through the dirt. “What are we gonna yak about next, Jane? How ’bout my childhood? That’s always good for a few shits and grins. We know I was an outcast, right? I’m sure you’ve read all the yellowed newspaper clippings on my sordid life. I imagine the psych reports also enlightened you.”
This was the perfect opportunity Jane had been waiting for. “Mom and dad were kind of long in the tooth when they had you.”
He smiled a Cheshire cat grin. “You noticed? Good for you, Jane. Your attention to detail is cheering. Yes, Mrs. Copeland was a veritable treat. She kept her girlish figure twenty pounds underweight by drinking her lunch and never staying awake long enough to eat a complete meal. She was the single-handed reason that Valium was such a hot seller in the ‘60s. She was as soft and sweet natured as a full-blooded German. My dad, on the other hand, was an ascot-wearing, Bentley-driving rambler with polished fingernails and palms so soft because they never saw an honest day’s work. When he had his fill of late night cigars, brandy snifters and pâté orgies at the Short Hills Country Club, he lowered himself from his high perch to socialize with my mother and I. He and I had everything to talk about from A to B. The ice clinking against the Scotch glass was the soundtrack of my childhood. That and the suffocating silence and disgust the Copelands showed toward me. It was a grand childhood, Jane. Just like a war without the poignant moments. A young boy’s fantasy. Lots of money. Lots of stuff. Money buys happiness, you know.”
Jane observed Jordan’s defensive posture. “Who took care of you?”
Jordan’s face slightly froze. It was very slight but Jane caught the pause of expression. “A lovely Negro woman. I suppose I should say African American so I can be PC. But she was from the Carribean. St. Lucia.”
“What was her name?”
“Why? You gonna look her up? Don’t bother. She’s dead. She died a long time ago.”
Jane caught Jordan’s lower lip quivering. “How long ago?”
&n
bsp; “When I was eight.” Jordan’s visage turned cold.
A piece fell into place for Jane. The traumatic event that created the schism, the moment when his world crashed around him came into view. Suddenly, Jane’s thoughts turned to the two clues that featured drawings of a child wearing a red cap. The kid in the drawing looked to be around eight or nine. Jane steadied herself against the tree, holding the Glock tighter. “How’d she die, Jordan?”
He sneered at her. “You think I killed her.”
Jane attempted to remain stone-faced. “Did you?”
Insult covered his face. “No. She was asked to leave by my father and died shortly thereafter in a hospital at the age of thirty.”
“What did she die of?”
“The inability to be,” he said without hesitation.
“To be what?”
“To be.”
Jane watched as Jordan’s mind sunk deeper into the past. “So, she was an outcast, just like you?”
“Yes. We were two of a kind. She qualified to be the house Negro due to the fact that her shade of skin wasn’t as offensive as the other house Negroes that proliferated our neighborhood.” His eyes drifted to the left, recalling the woman. “Soft beige. Lots of cream in her coffee. Still, Mrs. Copeland liked to call her my ’darky nanny.’ And I was her little ivory problem.”
“Why were you a problem?”
Jordan glanced at the ground. He abruptly thrust the branch into the wet soil. “Life is more difficult when it becomes unpredictable.”
“I’m not following you. Were you unpredictable?”
“I was unexpected, and thus, life became unpredictable.” His eyes were a mix of extreme anguish and unforgiving rage. “The Copelands didn’t like hiccups in their schedule. And I was one goddamn hiccup. Mrs. Copeland would communicate with me with the disdain usually set aside for thieves and gardeners.” His tenor dripped with odium and scorn.
“Why do you keep referring to your mother as ‘Mrs. Copeland?’”
“Because that was the bitch’s name.”
“So, the nanny’s out of the picture at age eight. Your dad is hardly there. And you’re left with a mother who despises you. You ramble around all alone in your big house with no one? Weren’t there other kids in the neighborhood?”
“Sure. But I didn’t exactly have the skills to relate. The only kid who wanted to hang with me was a thirteen-year-old retard.”
“Who you killed…” Jane added, purposely wanting to see how the statement affected Jordan.
He tipped his head to the side. “Oh, Jane. What are you looking for?” Jane was intrigued by his seeming ability to read her mind. “Remorse? Anger? Unbridled regret? I can fake all those faces but why bother?”
She pushed back on track. “You chose not to have friends because it was safer to be alone. Nobody can leave you. Nobody can hurt you.”
He brushed his oilcloth duster against the bark of the tree, attempting to get to an itch he couldn’t scratch. “Is that why you’re single, Jane? To avoid the pain?”
Jane’s body tightened. “No ring on my finger. Brilliant deduction.”
Jordan picked at a few errant specs of debris in his long beard. “Ring’s got nothing to do with it, honey. You’re hard. Your palette hasn’t been softened by the brush of the right guy. Your steel cannot bend to the forge of a man because to melt your fear you have to become vulnerable.” He leaned forward. “And that, my dear, scares the living shit out of you because once you go there, there’s no turning back. You’ll be toast!”
This was hitting too many nerves for Jane. “Do you…”
“Vulnerability for you equals weakness,” Jordan stated, boring into Jane’s soft spot. “Your daddy did a number on you, didn’t he?”
That was the stinger for Jane. She stood taller in her boots in an attempt to get the upper hand. “Do you know where Jake Van Gorden is?”
“Back on message!” Jordan clapped his hands together and moved closer to her. “Good girl! Can’t let a perfect stranger worm their way into your formidable psyche…especially when that stranger may have done something so vile. So vile, indeed! You seek the truth about Jakie’s disappearance but you don’t seek the truth within yourself.”
Now it was her turn to get her back up. “I’m here to do a job, not be psychoanalyzed.”
He moved another step closer. Jane slightly raised the Glock against her thigh. “You will never be free until you seek the truth within! When you have the guts to follow the secrets that defined you and rule you even though you’re not aware of them! You want to know whether I’m capable of unspeakable crimes? Yes! I am capable of the worst crime on earth. And that is telling the truth. As the Arabic proverb goes, ‘If you’re going to tell the truth, have one foot in the stirrup!’ Truth, my dear, is dangerous, so I am dangerous!” he yelled, his voice booming across the property. “In this kingdom of secrets, the man who tells the truth must be destroyed!”
Jane couldn’t help but think of the enigmatic TRUTH poster on Jake’s wall. She took an equally hostile step toward Jordan. “Read my mind, old man. I’ve never destroyed anyone for telling the truth. But I will destroy you if you took that boy and harmed him in any way.”
Jordan stood still. He stared at Jane in a somewhat fractured gaze that lasted half a minute. “God, I can’t get you out of my mind, Jane Perry.” His voice was laced with an eerie calm. “You haunt me. You haunt my dreams at night.” His voice became distant. “You and that damn boy.”
Jane’s gut clenched. He was only a few feet from her. Was this when he would try and take her down? She lifted the Glock a few inches higher. “Jake?”
Jordan peeled out of his semi-trance. “Christ, you’re a onetrick pony. No, not Jake. The other one.”
Jane’s head spun. “Who in the fuck are you talking about? Daniel?”
Jordan’s eyes looked off to the side. “No. The other one. I never knew his name.”
Jane moved back a step. “There was a boy before Daniel?”
“Yeah. It was about six months before Daniel. He used to hover around the back gate on our property. We had a lot of trees back there and beyond the fence was a half acre of ground that separated us from the house and street on the other side. I’d hear the neighborhood kids building forts in there and playing cowboys and Indians. This kid…I called him ‘Red’ because he had a shock of curly red hair that fell at odd angles across his freckled forehead. He was seven, maybe eight. He never said a word to me, but I heard him say so much just by looking at him. See, if you haven’t noticed it yet, I can do that. I can look at a person and I can feel what they feel. I’ve been able to do it since I was a child. The gift of clear sight is in my blood. I can hear people’s stories just by looking at them. Once I make that connection with a person, no matter if it’s a few minutes or a few decades, they’re in my brain locked away. And any time I want, I can access that person and download what they’re feeling.” He looked at Jane. “Sometimes, I can even tell what’s about to happen to them with the most frightening precision.”
Jane felt cornered against the tree. She was starting to wonder if this extemporized meeting was in the best interest of her long-term health. She decided the best choice was to play along. “Okay. You have second sight. You looked at this kid on the other side of the fence. This eight-year-old you call ‘Red’ and what did he tell you with is mind?”
“He was very confused and angry…”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Jordan closed his eyes and forced himself back in time. “Nobody helped him. He cried like a baby. He screamed and no one cared.” The words “He cried like a baby” were an exact match to the voicemail left on Bo’s phone. Jordan opened his eyes. “And now, for some fucking reason, he haunts my dreams at night, every night for almost one week. He stands at that fucking gate and stares at me and tells me how much pain he feels. ‘Listen to me!’ he keeps screaming. ‘Why won’t anyone listen to me?!’”
Jane felt her heart pound
ing. “Did you kill this kid, Jordan?”
He snapped out of his daze. “Kill him? Jesus Christ, Jane! No! I didn’t kill him!”
“You said this all went down six months before Daniel’s death!”
“So what?”
“You were eighteen years old! What were you doing hanging around an eight-year-old boy?!”
“Shit! You think I used ‘Red’ for practice? Which one of us here is the sick fuck?”
“Then what happened to ‘Red?’”
“How should I know? One day, he just stopped coming around the back gate and then six months later, my life got really fucked up.”
Jane figured she needed to inject some logic into the conversation. “If you can talk to people without saying a word, if you can hear their thoughts, then why don’t you know where ‘Red’ came from, or know his real name or what happened to him or…”
“Jesus Christ, Jane. I don’t do parlor tricks. I just sense things when I’m connected to somebody. Just like I know all about you!”
“You’ve read about me on the Internet.”
Jordan rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you hear me before? I don’t own a computer.”
“You read about me in the newspaper.”
“I just read the local town rag to check the weather forecast. Look, I’m not gonna debate with you on how I do what I do. Either you believe me or you don’t. But don’t fucking patronize me.” His posture became more aggressive. “You’ve come into my world for a reason, Jane Perry.” He was so close to Jane that she could smell the acrid stain on his breath. “You haunt my dreams at night, alongside ‘Red.’ I don’t know why but I don’t question it! All I know, all I feel, is that you have something I desperately need! That’s why I shake! I have no control over it. I’ve done it since I was a kid. People figured I had a nervous condition, but I started to realize that I only shook when I was around a person or a thought that had a profound future potential. It’s my barometer of confirmation that what I’m feeling or thinking is momentous. When I saw you yesterday on the bridge, even though we never spoke, I felt it like an electric bolt that shook my etheric body. You felt it, too. Don’t deny it.” Jane couldn’t refute his words, but she fortified that unseen wall between the two of them. “And don’t try to build that fucking wall!” Jane was speechless. “You build too many walls thinking they’ll keep you safe when all they do is keep you a prisoner. You filter your feelings with restrained joy.” He leaned even closer. Jane found it difficult to pull away from Jordan’s intense gaze. It was like a drug she would regret taking. “You need fear to feel alive! You’re terrified of being happy and feeling contentment because there’s nowhere to go from there. Happiness is fatal, whereas struggle and sadness and frustration are familiar and safe, even though they make your life unbearable. Where is the safety in happiness, you wonder? When one is happy, the only thing that can occur is death because the struggle is over.” Tears welled in Jane’s eyes. “I’m right. I can see it! It bleeds from your eyes. You don’t have relationships, Jane! You take hostages! And you think you can strategize your way through life. That’s why you were a drunk.”