by Laurel Dewey
Jane felt like shit. Weyler had always defended her, supported her and lifted her up through the years when she was too drunk or self-destructive to care about her own welfare. He did deserve better from her. And Weyler was absolutely right—the more anyone told her not to do something, the more she’d do it… and with salient impunity. “I’m sorry, Boss.” She felt a catch in her throat. “I’m not thinking really clear these last few days.”
“Why?”
A wave of emotion hit Jane. “I might…I might have cancer.” It was the first time she’d said it out loud and the reality brought the fear front and center. She swallowed hard as her eyes welled with tears. “I don’t know for sure. I gotta wait for the test results.”
Weyler’s face fell. “Oh, dear God.” He reached out to Jane. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant…”
“Relevant? Jesus, Jane! Your welfare happens to be extremely relevant to me!”
“I’ve always had that carry on mentality. You know that. This isn’t the first time.”
“You should have told me.”
“So you could do what? Worry about me?”
“I always worry about you.”
“Oh, Boss—“
“Stop calling me Boss, would you? I’m your equal.”
Jane played with her food. “Oh, fuck. You’re my better half. You’re the eloquent me. You’re certainly the better-dressed me.” Jane took a deep breath and told Weyler everything about her encounters with Jordan—from his philosophical dissertations on the perils of keeping a family secret to the truth about his parentage. She mentioned his obscure dreams involving the mysterious “Red,” his frightening insight into Jane’s life and the conflicting issues she had with Jordan’s inexplicable references to You Can’t Go Home Again. She wrapped it up with car accident and Jordan’s rescue. The only part of the long story she left out was the unresolved issue of her dead mother’s reappearance. That freakish aspect was too bizarre for even her to process.
Weyler took it all in, gravely weighing every word. She couldn’t read his face as to what he was thinking until he spoke. “You did what you had to do, Jane.” Jane was stunned. She obviously hadn’t given him enough credit. “I would have done the same damn thing. You’ve always been brash. That’s why I relate to you in a lot of ways. You remind me of the way I used to be. Only problem was, that brashness got me into trouble a long time ago.”
Jane leaned forward. “Is that where your favor to Bo fits into this thing?”
“Yes.” He took a sip of coffee and looked off to the side, bringing up the memory. “I may appear to be the epitome of calmness and thoughtful repose today, but when I was a rookie, I was an unmitigated show-off. I wanted to prove myself, no matter the cost.” He got up and dished himself several large spoonfuls of the egg combo. “Bo was about two years ahead of me in the Department and we got assigned together on patrol. He was an affable guy. People liked him and felt comfortable around him. One day at a coffee shop, this Caucasian guy came over to us and asked to talk Bo alone. I watched the guy as he discussed something obviously important with Bo and then scribbled some words down on a scrap of paper. Bo looked at the paper and stuffed it in his wallet. When he came back to the table, Bo said the guy was worried about his sister who lived with a crazy boyfriend. The guy asked us to drive by their house occasionally and check it out.
“A few weeks later, Bo ran across the scrap of paper in his wallet. He said it was 714 South Myrtle…”
“Wait. You remember the address after all these years?”
Weyler sat down, secured his napkin over his shirt and took a bite of food. “Oh, yes. You’ll see why in a second. I thought to myself, 714 South Myrtle? That’s a bad part of town…gangs, drugs, bad scene. But at the same time, I was eager to cut my teeth on something more than traffic stops. I didn’t tell Bo, but I was secretly looking forward to it. I wanted to break down a door and save a woman from her abusive boyfriend.” He rolled his eyes at his youthful ignorance and took another bite of food. “I told Bo we needed to check it out, and so we get to the house and everything looks okay. But I insist that we get out of the car and check closer. So we do. The house is a ramshackle dump. We stand on the porch and then Bo tells me he’s got a feeling like we shouldn’t be there. But I’m all piss and vinegar and ready to rumble.
“That’s when we heard it. It was a bloodcurdling scream and it was coming from a child. Bo wanted to call for backup, but I’d already made my asinine rookie decision. Before he could stop me, I kicked in the front door.”
“With nothing to go on but a kid screaming?”
“I figured justifiable entry, right? I call out ‘Police!’ and suddenly there’s no sound. We pulled our guns and Bo motioned for us to go in the back of the house. We made our way down this dark hallway that led to a backroom. And what do we see?” Jane was transfixed, like a kid listening to a malevolent bedtime story. “Fifty kilos of Columbian cocaine. Bo and I looked at each other with the understanding that this was way bigger than we could handle. Then we heard this guy yelling, ‘Shut up! Shut up, bitch!’ coming from the bathroom. We shout, ‘Police!’ and bust in, guns out. But there wasn’t any girlfriend and the guy wasn’t white. What we saw was a strung-out Mexican guy, drowning his six-year-old girl in the bathtub. Bo screamed at him to let her go, but the guy reaches in his boot and, before either of us could react, he’s got a pistol out and he shoots Bo in the hip. Bo returned fire, nailing the son-of-a-bitch in the side. It all happened in a split second and I didn’t know what to do. Bo’s down, Mexican guy is down and the little girl is floating face down in the bathwater. I froze. Bo’s voice brought me out of it. He screamed at me to cuff the guy and grab the kid and lay her on the floor. I do it but she’s turning blue and not breathing. I panicked, but Bo dragged his bleeding body over to her and breathed the life back into her.” Weyler shook his head and took a sip of coffee.
“Jesus…” Jane mused.
“Of course, by the time we radio for backup and the Chief of Police gets on scene, we look like heroes! I mean, nailing a stash of coke that big and saving a little girl’s life? That’s golden. It makes a rookie look good. He tells us the D.A. will look at the collar as a ‘good-faith mistake.’”
“I’m sensing a catch here.”
“We get to the hospital and Bo goes into surgery. The Chief takes me aside, shakes my hand and asked me ‘What made you go in that house?’ I told him we got a tip from a citizen who wanted us to check out the house and make sure his sister was okay. Chief said he needed some proof for the paperwork. So, later that day, I go collect Bo’s personal effects and root through his wallet and find the scrap of paper. And that’s when I know we have a problem. The address wasn’t 714 South Myrtle. It was 714 North Maple. Which made sense, in retrospect, since the whites lived on Maple and the Mexicans lived on Myrtle.”
“So you busted down a door and made entry without probable cause?”
“Yes, ma’am. And by doing so, I nearly got my partner killed.”
“But then you also found the large stash of coke and saved a girl’s life.”
“You got it.”
“Quite a quandary.”
“Not at all. It’s called covering your ass. I tore up the scrap of paper in Bo’s wallet and manufactured another scrap of paper to look just like it. With the oddest handwriting I could fashion, I wrote 714 South Myrtle and crumpled it up to make it look like it’d been folded in a wallet. I handed it to the Chief and everyone was happy.”
“Everyone? As in you and Bo?”
“It was our secret. The shooting left him with a bad hip. Never got the bullet out of him. That’s why he limps and still has pain. He stayed on desk duty in Denver before he was hired here in Midas.”
“So that whole fiasco is what brought him here?”
Weyler nodded. “I guess it all worked out in the end. He slowly moved up in the ranks and became a big fish in a little pond. I did okay to
o. But I always told him I owed him. I owed him for keeping his mouth shut about a rookie who should have thought first before he kicked in a door and nearly got his partner killed in the mêlée. But being the kind of guy Bo is, he said it was no big deal and that he should have memorized the address better. I think he actually was happy to get out of the city and be part of a smaller venue. But no matter, I never forgot the promise. That’s why when he asked me to come up here, I didn’t hesitate or ask a lot of questions.”
Jane thought about the story. “I’m just curious. The Chief just took the piece of paper that you forged as proof of this anonymous Caucasian guy? Didn’t they want to track him down to confirm everything?”
“Well, fortunately the case never went to trial because the Mexican guy copped to the drugs and attempted drowning. But, yes, we figured an angle to float our story. We said that Bo got approached by lots of citizens and they all just used first names. So we told the Chief that a guy named Gomez gave Bo the tip.”
“Gomez?”
“Certainly a popular Mexican surname.”
Jane gave it a moment of thought and the light bulb came on. “Ah! Bo used that term in his office the other day. He said we couldn’t ‘Gomez’ this case away.’”
“It means there’s no anonymous fall guy to link the case to.”
Jane took a bite of eggs. “But there is a Gomez in this case. It’s Jordan Copeland.”
“You really believe that?”
Jane thought hard before she answered. “I’m ninety percent there.” Weyler questioned her with his eyes. “Okay. Eighty percent. There’s still something he’s not telling me…but he’s going to.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me he would reveal a ‘big secret’ to me tomorrow.”
Weyler looked worried. “You want me to go with you?”
“No! He won’t talk if you’re there. He’s a wing-nut paranoid. It’s just gotta be the two of us.”
“What if he tries something?”
“He won’t.” Jane realized her own odds gave Jordan a twenty percent chance of turning on her, but she was willing to take that chance.
Mollie popped out of her room and appeared in the doorway. She was still in her pajamas. She took one look at Jane’s appearance and shook her head before returning to her bedroom.
Jane leaned closer to Weyler and whispered. “I’m working on her. Don’t worry.”
Weyler stood up and crossed to the sink, rinsing the dish and setting it to the side. Jane heard him sigh, something he wasn’t known to do a lot.
Jane turned around. “What is it?”
“You know the odds, Jane.” Weyler stared out the kitchen window in the backyard.
Jane understood what he meant. The odds of a kidnapped child found after three days was slim. Now, nearly eight days later, the chances got slimmer with each passing hour. “Yeah. But you know what, Boss? This case is stacked with long-shot odds, starting with the odds of a fifteen-year-old boy being kidnapped. And how about this one:…what are the odds of Jake’s computer being completely erased, including his Internet favorites and even his spam, beyond the day he was taken?” Weyler turned to Jane, eyebrows arched. “And don’t get me started on the odds of a terminally ill grandmother who doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about her missing grandson, suddenly showing up to do…what? Is liver cancer less deadly in the high altitude? I think not.”
Weyler sat back down across from Jane. Concern covered his face. “His computer was completely erased?”
Jane leaned forward. “Not even spam from Nigeria.” She studied his face as he silently contemplated. “We have to at least consider the fact that Bailey Van Gorden is keeping something useful from us.” The vision of Bailey exchanging an envelope of cash with an unknown man in a strip club came into Jane’s vision.
“Your theory that he’s keeping a missing clue?” Weyler asked.
“Yeah…” Jane struggled with revealing what she saw in the strip club. Weyler seemed like he was on her side, but she didn’t want to assume too much and have him pull the reins in on her. And while she was fairly certain that Bailey was working a back end deal, she didn’t have proof. “Why do people keep secrets?” she asked, more as a point of debate.
“Allegiance to another person…embarrassment, humiliation…”
“Covering up… maintaining control…” Jane recalled her improvised discussion with Bailey during their first meeting when she threw out the three most common reasons people commit crimes—sex, money and gettin’ even. When Bailey didn’t resonate with any of those, Jane proposed another possibility—control. She remembered how Bailey jumped at that postulate and eagerly used it to attach Jordan to his son’s disappearance. “Control,” Jane repeated. “For some reason, Bailey found it necessary to strong-arm Aaron Green into forcing Mollie to break up with Jake.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But I’d say that’s pretty controlling on Bailey’s part, wouldn’t you? Two weeks later, Jake goes missing. Coincidence?”
“Two weeks later, Jake tries to kill himself and then he goes missing.”
“If the suicide was real…and I think it was…the only options are that someone happened to be near the bridge and saw Jake with the rope or…”
“Someone was stalking him for awhile and knew his patterns so he was already there…waiting…”
Jane hung her head. “Back to Jordan,” she said sadly. She knew that Weyler was right. It had to be a stalker—a stalker with a driven aim and a premeditated plan. She’d already deduced that the clues were well thought-out and far too intricate to come up with after Jake was already in his grip. The spoofed Short Hills phone number with the 1968 area code that belonged to the family who lived directly behind the Copelands was an example of something that took some thoughtful time to concoct. But then again, why would Jordan, who didn’t own a phone—and might not even know about spoofing—create a phone number that was linked so closely to his childhood home?
If there had been a ransom request, Jane would simply chalk it up to a calculated capture of a rich man’s son with the intention of gaining a million-dollar prize. But whoever did this, didn’t want money. Again, Jordan’s name popped up. He lived on a healthy trust fund, doled out by Eddie each year. From what she could tell, Jordan’s main expense was books. But he probably had enough cash in the bank to live a more opulent life if he chose. Between the hypothesis that a stalker by the bridge was involved and whoever did this was not interested in financial gain, Jordan was starting to look like a more likely suspect—albeit with conflicting data. “Fuck,” Jane murmured, as she ran her fingers through her tangled hair, still wet from her shower. “Okay…I’ll start digging on Jordan. I have to piece together those missing pages from his file that you gave me on him. I hope Midas keeps its library open on Sunday.” Jane downed her coffee and rinsed off her plate. She glanced at the glass cabinet and, without hesitating, opened the bottom drawer and removed the key, which was located way in the back.
“What are you doing?”
Jane stood on a stepladder and unlocked the high cabinet. “I’m not sure. Collateral? Maybe blackmail.” She removed the red photo album and then noted an additional brown box marked, OLD PHOTOS. She grabbed that too, locked the cabinet and replaced the key. “What are your plans today?”
“I brought plenty of paperwork to keep me busy. Then I’ll have lunch with Bo.”
“You guys are reconnecting, eh? That’s good. Once he moves to Florida, you probably won’t see him again.”
“Probably not. More reason than ever to make this a good case for him.”
Jane started out of the kitchen when she turned back to Weyler. “One more thing… why does Bo call you ‘Beanie?’”
“I kicked in a door and entered a property with no real cause. What would you technically call that?”
Jane thought. “Breaking and entering?” Weyler nodded. “B ’n’ E…Beanie.”
“That’s how Bo’
s mind tends to work.”
Upstairs in her room, Jane hid the red album and box of photos under her bed and then collected the paperwork she would need when she got to the library. She heard a scratch of paper under her doorway and turned. It was the small collection of printed emails between Jake and Mollie.
Jane opened her door and unexpectedly found three T-shirts and a couple dressy shirts on hangers resting on the door handle. She looked up just as Mollie was heading downstairs.
“Mollie!” The kid kept walking. Jane remembered. “Liora!”
Mollie stopped and turned. “What?”
“Come here.” Jane took a peek at the youthful assortment of shirts. One of the T-shirts had cap sleeves and pronounced in gold lettering, I LIKE BOYZ! Another was a tie-dye T-shirt with the word, Groovy across the front. Yet another proclaimed, I Must Be Trippin’ ‘Cuz You Look Cute! The other two were dressy, somewhat vintage-looking, with chiffon fronts, flutter sleeves and delicate lace and embroidery around the collars.
Mollie walked back to Jane. “What is it?”
“I appreciate the offer, but I can’t wear these.” Jane handed them back to Mollie.
Mollie refused to touch them. “Are they your size?”
“Yeah. Sure. But they’re not my style.” Jane attempted another transfer.
“Oh, geh vays! There’s a shock. Don’t be a nudnik and stop your kvetching!” Mollie let out a tired puff of breath. “Are you a dyke?”
Jane was taken back. “For Chrissake…what is it with everybody?! No, I am not a dyke!”
“Then I suggest you wear those shirts.” Mollie leaned closer. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to girl it up a bit. Know what I mean? Start with this one…” Mollie removed the T-shirt with I LIKE BOYZ! “Just to quiet the rumors, ya know?”
Mollie turned on her heels and left. Jane looked at her three identical, soaking wet poplin shirts still dripping water on the carpet by the window. She glanced down at her unkempt nightshirt. The choice was undesirably clear to her.