by Laurel Dewey
Jane wrote the address down on a piece of paper. Vi scanned the page that held old information on Jordan, including his parents’ address. “It’s not the same address,” Vi whispered to Jane.
Jane whispered back, asking for Jordan’s parents’ first names. Vi found the information and pointed to it on the page. “Sir, this might be an odd question, but did you ever know Richard and Joanna Copeland. They had a son, Jordan Copeland?”
“Jordan Copeland? The child killer?”
Obviously, forty-one-year-old murder cases die hard in Short Hills. “Yes, sir.”
“Why in the hell would I fraternize with that family?”
This was getting tricky for Jane—especially since she had an audience watching her every move. “Well, sir, you say you bought the house in February of ’68.” Jane checked Jordan’s file. “Jordan Copeland was arrested in early July of the same year. I just wondered if Short Hills was small enough back then that you might have run into the family at some time.”
Sackett let out a painful cough. “We were new in the neighborhood. We didn’t make a point of getting to know our neighbors. We didn’t even realize how close the Copelands lived until we heard the sirens and saw the police cars all around their house.”
Jane leaned closer to the phone. “How close did they live to you?”
“One block over, directly behind our property as the crow flies.” Sackett coughed again, this time longer and louder. “Listen, I gotta go. If you need anything else, you call. Goodbye.”
The blare of the dial tone rang out in Bo’s office until Vi depressed the SPEAKER button and hung up the phone. She excused herself and returned to her desk. Jane collected Sackett’s phone number and address, and stashed it in her pocket.
“Goddamnit!” Bo exclaimed. “Jordan Copeland is involved in this mess!”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Jane warned.
“I don’t have to go to Mars to know it’s colder there than a well digger’s ass!” He put down his cigar and leaned across the desk. “You talk about coincidences? Here we got a guy who lives one block away from where Copeland lived…”
“Yeah, over forty years ago…” Jane reminded him.
“Who cares?! What are the odds? If you’re right and the person who has Jake spiffed, spocked, spoofed this Sackett guy’s phone number, there’s got to be an obvious reason for it!”
“Yeah, he’s setting up Jordan!”
“Settin’ him up?! Christ Almighty, woman! Which side are you butterin’ your bread on? Have you read what Copeland did to that poor little retard forty-one years ago? He shot him point blank in the head in his backyard! And then he dragged his dead body to his bedroom and hid it under his bed!” Bo leaned over the desk. “Are you hearing me?”
“Yes! Loud and clear!”
“I tell you, stupidity hangs around longer than a bad cold.” Bo settled back in his chair.
Jane regarded him with a hostile eye. “Excuse me? If that was directed at me, then I guess I’m just stupid enough to figure out the whole phone spoof!”
Weyler held up his hand. “Enough!” He looked at Jane with the glare of an unhappy father.
Bo stared at Jane, pointing his chubby finger in her direction. “Look, if you want to water more dead trees, you do it on your own time! We work this case with the clear understanding that Jordan Copeland is most likely involved in this, either alone or with a partner.”
“That’s an assumption,” Jane said quietly. “Just because the light turned red, doesn’t mean the traffic stopped.” It was a comment meant to mirror Bo’s love of corny sayings but it fell on deaf ears.
“Until we have enough hardcore evidence to show different,” Bo ordered, “Jordan Copeland is in my damn scope and I will not hesitate to pull the trigger on his guilty head!”
Vi popped her head into the door. “Bailey Van Gorden is on line one, Bo.”
Bo ran his fat fingers through his comb over. “Aw, shit.” Bo picked up the phone.
Fuck, Jane thought. This was going to hurt. She leaned over toward Weyler. “I tried to call you, Boss, but I didn’t have any cell coverage.”
Weyler leaned closer and whispered. “Was that before or after you fell into that mud hole inside your Mustang?” His eyes were tense and unnerved.
Jane figured it was time to get out of there. She stood up, moving around the boxes.
“Hold on there!” Bo bellowed toward Jane. “Hang on,” he said to Bailey. Bo motioned Vi toward the phone to put him on SPEAKER. Jane felt the walls closing in on her. “Go on with what you were saying…”
“I’m driving back with my mother who I just picked up from DIA and I get a call from my wife that your Denver detective was nosing around my private office in my home! What in the hell is going on over there?!”
Weyler regarded Jane with a look that was between anger and shock. Jane stayed mum while all eyes in the room focused on her.
“Are you there?!” Bailey screamed into his phone.
“Yes, sir!” Bo answered.
“I wasn’t being nosy, for God’s sake,” Jane whispered, in a weak attempt to defend herself.
“I don’t know where that bitch got the idea that she has a right to show up unannounced at my home!” Bailey screamed.
“Yes, sir!” Bo affirmed, shooting Jane daggers.
The sound of a woman’s voice could be heard in the background. “It’s inappropriate…” the woman said.
“It’s inappropriate!” Bailey yelled. The woman spoke again in the background saying something about “this case.” Bailey quickly spoke up. “She should be taken off this case immediately!”
Jane didn’t care what Bailey was saying; she was more interested in the fact that this blowhard, egotist was allowing his mother to feed him verbal cues of righteous indignation. In Jane’s opinion, the whole thing was coming off as a bit peculiar, given that Bailey Van Gorden seemed to regard women with indifference and disfavor. What kind of perverse control did this woman have over her only son?
“Yes, sir. I see what you’re sayin’! I’ll take care of it!” He hung up and pointed his fat finger at Jane. “I don’t know how Beanie trained you, but I sure as hell wasn’t taught to cross the lines that you do on the job! You show up here with your Denver attitude…”
“My Denver attitude?” Jane questioned.
“You got a mile-high chip on your little shoulder! How you ever got the accolades you got is beyond me! I’d have sent your ass packin’ years ago!”
“Hey, I never asked for accolades! I just did my job and went home at night!”
“And then drank yourself under the goddamn table!”
Jane looked at Weyler in shock. It took a lot to sting Jane, but that one hurt. She spun on her heels and bolted out of the building. Weyler followed close behind.
“Jane!” he yelled at her as she headed across the street.
She stopped and turned back to him. “You tell him I was a drunk?”
“Of course not!” Jane walked back to the curb. “He’s just looking at you and making assumptions.”
“Like the assumption that I’m stupid?”
“Good God, Jane. You had no business going to the Van Gordens’ house and you know it!”
“I tried to call you…”
“I don’t care!” He lowered his voice. “And don’t lie to me about how you got your shirt muddy…again.” Weyler looked around to make sure nobody was listening. “Do you have any idea how you going on Copeland’s property and observing him could seriously compromise this investigation?”
Jane struggled with how much she should divulge to Weyler. Between the path of Chesterfield cigarettes that ended with the antique ashtray and her two up-close-and-personal visits with Jordan, it almost seemed like too much to divulge in one setting. He obviously assumed all she’d done was observe Jordan. “Boss, whoever is responsible for this is begging to be heard. Begging. I think he wants to be caught so he can tell his story. I don’t know what the stor
y is, but I bet it’s one helluva tale.”
“You are basing that on a theory that the clues have a linear explanation. I still don’t know if that’s correct.”
Jane started knocking off the reasons on her fingers. “There’s no ransom request. We have a book with a dog-eared page that has references to social masks, phrases as symbols, and a main character named Webber who has something that matters to him greatly and will not be denied! Then we have explicit drawings of a child, not a teenager. A riddle about a Packard that just happens to be on an old out-of-print stamp that’s stuck on an envelope. The rest are still cloudy but I know they somehow connect. If we don’t at least show some agreement with the kidnapper…a reward fund, a news conference, a fucking candlelight vigil that’s the top story on the Denver news networks, something that says ‘We hear you and we want to resolve this,’ then he is going to think we don’t give a shit and he will have no other option but to kill Jake!” Weyler looked off to the side, his frustration evident. “Boss, if you allow a half-ass police chief to run this case…a guy who only has his eyes on his fucking calendar and the day he gets to shake loose of this town…the last clue we get is gonna be Jake’s dead body splayed out in the middle of Main Street. That’s the kidnapper saying, ‘Do you hear me now, motherfuckers?’ And then nobody wins! The Van Gordens lose their only child. Bo walks out of here with his head hung low. We, the big-ass Denver contingent, leave saying ‘mea culpa’ as we drive down Main Street. And you? Whatever deal you brokered with Bo a long time ago…whatever friendship you think you have, is fucking gone!”
“Jane, I hear you. But this is not our normal hunting ground. Even I can’t strong-arm Bo into doing something he simply won’t do. And we can’t muscle the Van Gordens into reinstating their reward and then question their intent when we have nothing except a gut feeling that they’re holding something back!”
“Don’t ever question my gut! My gut has solved a lot of fucking cases! When I don’t listen to my gut, that’s when people get hurt. That’s when people get killed. Goddamnit, I don’t need another dead kid!” Jane turned away. Her heart slammed into her chest.
“Since when is this all about you?” Weyler calmly asked.
Jane retreated. He was right. As usual, she was too entwined in the case. “I just want to find out the truth, that’s all.”
Weyler waited, trying to sort out the options. “How do we acknowledge Jordan when our hands are tied?”
Jane considered her conversations with Jordan. If he was involved in some way, perhaps her connection with him might help. “What if I reach out to Jordan? Face-to-face on his property?”
“And compromise this case? No chance! If he’s involved with this and you cozy up to him and then something happens to Jake, we’re screwed! The DA would say we baited him, entrapped him or twisted his words and any court case would be in jeopardy. Then we’d have the Van Gordens handing us a lawsuit, and rightfully so!”
“But what if he’s not involved, but he can help us?”
“Help us?”
“Maybe he saw something…”
“Saw something?”
Jane caught herself. She didn’t actually mean “see” as in witness. She couldn’t believe she was entertaining the notion that Jordan Copeland had a psychic eye and could possibly see where Jake was. It was ludicrous and she had to quickly check herself to make sure her rage wasn’t compelling her to throw out insane possibilities to Weyler. She had to maintain logic or any argument she waged would be rooted in a bed of water. “He doesn’t leave his property very often. He wanders all day and night. That’s what Bo told us. Jake wandered around at night, too. Maybe their paths crossed? Not in a nefarious way but a pure, decent way.” Her words sounded ridiculous. “Pure” and “decent” weren’t exactly the first adjectives she’d choose to describe Jordan or any relationship he might have. Selling this idea to Weyler was like selling symphony tickets to the deaf.
“Jane, you can’t reach out to a viable suspect like Copeland on his turf and risk everything.” Weyler thought for a moment. “You want to go knee-to-knee with Copeland? We do it above board. We bring him in and question him…”
“That’s not gonna work! You saw that video between Jordan and Bo. Jordan doesn’t respect him. He thinks he’s stupid and Jordan won’t lower himself to talk to people who he perceives are beneath him.”
“Then you question him.”
There was a veritable landmine. Jane was caught in between that proverbial rock and a hard place. “With you and Bo on the other side of the two-way mirror? He’ll know you’re listening and he still won’t talk. He’ll play one of his games. Start asking me riddles and blabber about cryptic philosophic theories…”
“What are you talking about?”
Jane quickly realized she misspoke. “Didn’t Bo say he got a couple degrees in prison? Esoteric psychology, right?”
“Yes. But why would you think he talks about it, unless you…”
“If I got a degree in esoteric psychology,” Jane said in an attempt to lead the conversation away from her mistake, “I sure as hell would be taking any opportunity to show it off. Wouldn’t you?” Jane purposely changed the subject. “Look, Boss, the bottom line is Jordan is no good to us unless he’s standing on his own land, on his own territory, where he’s safe and where he’s not being monitored.”
“Who’s to say he wouldn’t just string you along because he enjoyed the attention? We have a finite amount of time here that is better spent pounding some pavement and trying to decode those clues.” Weyler started back inside.
“There will be more clues, Boss.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my gut doesn’t lie.”
Weyler crossed back to her. “You can observe Copeland all you want from a distance. You can track his comings and goings. But you need to give me your word that you’re not going face-to-face with Copeland on his property.”
Jane struggled a bit with the statement. She looked him straight in the eye. “You got my word.” Her gut never lied but, at that moment, Jane certainly did.
CHAPTER 17
Jane’s gut didn’t lie but it sure was rumbling with hunger. After Weyler went back inside Town Hall, she spun on her boots and walked across the street and down the main drag to The Rabbit Hole. The place wasn’t jumping like it had been the night before, but it was still feeling the groove of the Saturday lunch crowd. Underneath the din, Lee Ann Womack sang “Solitary Thinkin.’” Jane slid onto a barstool and ordered a sparkling water and hot dog with everything on it to go.
“How come you always want that dog walking?” Jane turned to the right, just as Hank sat in the stool next to her. “You can’t sit in one spot for ten minutes?” He smiled and patted her back lightly.
“I’m on the clock. And it’s a good thing I don’t drink anymore because this would be day one of a four-day bender!”
Hank took a gander at her muddy shirt. “Isn’t that the same shirt you were wearing yesterday?”
“Similar.”
“Do they all come with the muddy imprint or do you pay extra for that?”
Jane could have said any number of smart-ass retorts, but for some reason, the way Hank said it to her was sweetly sly and good-natured. She couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m glad you stopped in,” he said, standing up on the rail of the bar and leaning over as he searched for paperwork in the bay of the bar. Jane’s eyes drifted to his backside. She lingered there until she realized that it’d been a long time since she’d gazed at a guy’s ass. A flash of embarrassment flushed her face, and she quickly turned away just as Hank plopped back onto the barstool. He placed a short stack of pages on the bar and turned to her, “I checked out…” He stopped and smiled at her.
“What?”
“You’re blushing.”
Damn. You really can’t take the cop out of someone. They notice every detail. “Why would I be blushing?” The waitress delivered the sparkling water,
which gave Jane a reason to turn away. “It’s hot in here.”
Hank grinned. “Okay.” He unclipped the pages. “I did some snooping for you. I hope you don’t mind.”
“That depends,” Jane said warily.
“You know the address you found in Jake’s locker? 1401 Imperial?” Jane nodded. “I did a MapFind search on the Internet and there is no street named Imperial for the entire thirty-mile radius I checked, using Midas as the starting point. I only mapped it out thirty-miles because basically when you get around here and here…” Hank pointed to the north and eastern quadrants. “…it’s just lots of BLM and ranches. Now, that’s not to say 1401 Imperial doesn’t exist because when you drive up Highway 7…” Hank pointed to a strip of highway on one of the pages. “…it’s desolate in spots. There’s a lot of little side roads, usually just numbered, but some have names. If the MapFind isn’t updated, they could have missed it. But I’m sure you know that already.” He shuffled through the pages. “So I did a search of any business using the word Imperial in its title, also for a thirty-mile radius.” He found the page he wanted. “And what I found was Imperial Cleaners, Imperial Liquors, Imperial Savings and Loan and Imperial Cemetery.” Hank gave the page to Jane. “I copied the addresses for all of those in case you want to check them out, along with a map to show you how to get to each one.”
Jane was duly impressed and a bit overwhelmed. The interest he took in helping her was reminiscent of what all guys do, no matter their age, when they are trying to impress a woman. Whether it’s a thirteen-year-old boy offering to carry schoolbooks, a thirty-year-old man offering to mend a broken pipe or a fifty-year-old ex-cop volunteering to do some gumshoe research, they all had the same intent behind the offer—the inevitable conquest of said female. “Thank you.”
“Hey, it was fun. I felt like I was back on the job.”
Jane scanned the maps. “What kind of cop were you?”
“Fraud investigation. I couldn’t handle the gritty stuff that you do.”
Jane looked at the names of the businesses. “Where does the number 1401 play into this?”