Jane noted how Bailey turned away, seemingly disgusted. “Vintage?” Jane asked.
Carol looked at Bailey who was still turned away. “Uh, yes.” Carol looked apprehensive. “He’s been favoring these retro shirts lately…”
Bailey quickly popped back into control. “You know, he was probably wearing his normal outfit…black jeans, a dark T-shirt and black jacket.”
“Was Jake into the Goth scene?” Jane asked.
“No.” Carol looked at Bailey as if to double-check her feelings. “I don’t think so.”
“He wasn’t into Goth. But I’m sure he had one of those
fuck you
t-shirts on,” Bailey offered with a roll of his eyes.
“What’s a
fuck you
T-shirt?” Jane inquired.
Bailey let out a long, tired breath. “You know?
What the fuck you lookin’ at? What part of shut the fuck up don’t you understand? Dude, you’re fuckin’ with my mellow
!” Bailey raised his eyebrow. “Fabulous, articulate statements such as those.”
“So, Jake is a pissed-off fifteen-year-old,” Jane offered.
“Isn’t that a redundant observation?” Bailey replied with a narrowing of his eyes.
“So,
you
were a pissed-off fifteen-year-old.” Jane stated unequivocally.
Bailey shifted his steely eyes to Weyler. “
Excuse me
?”
Weyler gently raised his hand. “Sergeant Perry is trying to discern what might have precipitated Jake’s disappearance. If he was depressed or angry, there’s a chance he might have gone online and attracted a predator…”
“Predator, yes!” Bailey exclaimed. “But not online. The predator is one mile away and his name is Jordan Copeland!”
“There wasn’t enough to hold Mr. Copeland,” Weyler offered.
“For Christ’s sake…” Bailey touched his gelled hair. “Bo Lowry couldn’t find enough evidence to hold Hitler!” He leaned forward, both feet planted on the floor and posturing a show of aggression. “Look, Jake has been gone now for five days. First, I had to wrap my mind around the idea that he attempted suicide.
Then,
I start getting these goddamn crazy clues in my mailbox from the fucker who grabbed him off the bridge. So now I have to wrap my head around a kidnapping scenario. It’s
been nonstop around here!” Bailey rubbed his forehead. “The walls are closing in on me. The last time I was out of this house was six fucking days ago when I went to the gym at lunch…”
“Is that where you were headed when we showed up?” Jane interrupted.
Bailey was taken aback. “Ah, yeah. Exactly. I’m just…
fuck
….” He ran his fingers through his hair, but Jane noticed that he had so much gel in his locks that he could only move his hand halfway. “The fucking walls are caving in on me! So, if I appear anxious to you, I think I have a goddamn right to be that way!”
“Of course, you’re anxious,” Jane interjected. “That’s to be expected.” She felt it was time to drop some pabulum, if only to make Bailey feel like she had compassion. The truth was that Jane had no compassion for the man. It was the way he interminably kept referring to how this family crisis was affecting
him.
He could have easily used “we” instead of “I” to at least create the appearance of desperation for himself and Carol. But Bailey’s arrogance was so deeply ingrained, that he wasn’t able to emerge from it—even briefly—to give the impression that he gave a shit about his wife or his son. Jane factored that living with this son-of-a-bitch was like living with a two-year-old on steroids.
His Stepford wife suddenly spoke up. “It’s not just our son’s disappearance. Bailey’s mother, Louise, is terminally ill with liver cancer. She lives back east where Bailey grew up and it’s tough being so far away…”
“Carol, they don’t need to know about mom.” Bailey’s tone bordered on rude.
“Where’d you grow up?” Jane asked.
“Why does it matter?” Bailey snapped, defensively.
“Just…curious…”
Bailey paused. “I’m sure you wouldn’t know the town.”
Jane turned to Weyler with a smile. “Yeah, we don’t get out of Denver much. Farthest we travel is the stock show every
January.” Weyler shot Jane a look of censure. She turned back to Bailey. “But try me.”
Bailey regarded Jane with an uneasy stare. “Wentworth, New Jersey.”
Jane noted that Carol’s eyes seem to freeze momentarily. “Never heard of it,” Jane declared.
Now it was Bailey’s turn to smile mockingly. “As expected.” He shifted in his chair. “It’s a small town.
Prosperous
, though.”
It was obvious to Jane that Bailey wanted to make sure that “small town” didn’t mean he grew up in the hillbilly hills. Money and stature ruled this guy. Jane was about to ask another question when Weyler took the words out of her mouth.
“Were you and your son having any problems?” Weyler asked.
“He’s fifteen. What do you think?” Bailey’s voice was brimming with anger.
“Was Jake depressed lately?” Jane quickly asked.
“Jesus! We already answered these questions…”
“Good. Answer them again,” Jane demanded, her patience wearing thin.
Bailey regarded Jane with complete disdain. “Hey, Sergeant, I don’t like your attitude! My world is completely imploding right now.
Do you understand that
?”
Jane was tired of Bailey’s me-centered rhetoric. “I
understand
that your son was so despondent about something that he took a rope to a bridge and was planning on hanging himself! I’d like to know what drove him to that desperation…”
Bailey’s already flushed face glowed an even darker shade of crimson. “I don’t have a fucking clue!” he said, pounding his tanned fist on the burl table.
Weyler leaned forward. “Mr. Van Gorden, Sergeant Perry is direct with you because time is of the essence.”
Carol brought a shaky hand to her mouth, stifling her grief as tears rolled down her face. “What are the odds after five days of our son’s safe return?”
“There are no hard and fast rules, ma’am,” Weyler offered. “The fact that the kidnapper is still engaged in sending clues, however abstract they are, is a good sign.”
Bailey seemed to perk up. “Bo got another clue since that, ah, that goddamn drawing we got with the tied up kid?”
“Yes,” Weyler affirmed. “Two more.”
Bailey looked at his wife briefly, a look of angst clouding his countenance. “What…what are the clues? What are they saying?” His voice was rushed.
“We can’t divulge the content of the clues being sent to Lowry,” Jane said.
“But
you know
,” Bailey replied, his tone searing.
“I know what the clues say, but as Sergeant Weyler informed you, they are as abstract in nature as the rest. I mean, we’ve got a book that you received that features George Webber and his adventures…”
“Excuse me?” Bailey interrupted, his eyes narrowing.
“The first clue you got in your mailbox?
You Can’t Go Home Again
by Thomas Wolfe? The main character is George Webber.”
Bailey’s breathing became shallow. “Really?”
“Does that mean something, Mr. Van Gorden?” Weyler asked.
Bailey looked off to the side, lost in a moment, licking his lips. “No…I never read the book.” He shook himself out of his daze. “Jesus! This whole goddamn thing is so fucking out of left field. So…vengeful.”
“Yes, sir. Vengeful.” Jane said, studying Bailey carefully. “Well, you know what we do with any crime is tick off the possible motives. And, believe it or not, it really just boils down to three: money, sex, and gettin’ even. Like you said, vengeance. Revenge.”
“We can eliminate money,” Weyler interjected, “because there’s never been a request for ransom, especially given your obvious financial acumen. If money was the motive, it would
have been the first thing mentioned.”
“So, that leaves sex and getting even,” Jane declared in an offhand manner.
Bailey seemed strangled by the choices. “There’s got to be other motives!”
“No, they basically all fall under those big umbrellas,” Jane insisted.
Bailey sat back in his chair. His face was still flushed and his nose clogged but he had a grey aura around him. “Well… I… I just…don’t know what to make of it…” He shook his head. “There
have
to be other motives!”
Jane thought for a second. “Okay, maybe there are.”
“What?” Bailey quickly asked, grasping at straws.
“Control,” Jane stated.
“Control?” Carol repeated, meekly. She snuck a guarded look toward her husband.
“Yeah,” Jane was still building the premise in her head. “It’s kind of connected to revenge but it has its own flavor. The criminal does whatever he does in an effort to control the victim or the family of the victim.” Jane wasn’t sure how she was channeling this presumptive theory, but she let it flow. “The criminal has lost his ability to feel validated and so his action, whatever that might be, seeks to control a situation that he feels he is powerless to contain.” She stared at Bailey. He swallowed hard and turned away. Jane had witnessed this reaction many times in the interrogation room. It was always a sign that the individual was responding with a deep, almost visceral validation of what they were hearing. It was the proverbial
bingo
of body language; a signal that an individual is connecting in an emotional way to whatever is being said. The turning away was an attempt to run or escape because of fear. Jane replayed in her head what she had just said.
The criminal does whatever he does in an effort to control the victim or the family of the victim
. Why was this striking a chord with Bailey?
“Control.” Bailey thought about it. “That little shit,” he
whispered to himself. Jane heard the sudden shift in Bailey’s voice before he even spoke. “Focus on Jordan Copeland!” he exclaimed.
Jane looked at Weyler. “Well, yeah, of course, we’ll look into him. But are you saying your son has a connection to him?”
“Who knows? Jake’s in his own world! He’s either up in his room with the door closed or wandering around town. But the point I’m making is that Jordan Copeland is a known child predator. And the bridge? The bridge is right there on the edge of that asshole’s property! If Jake frequented the bridge, then this pervert Copeland had to have seen him and…and…what’s going through the asshole’s head? You tell me…”
“Do we know for a fact that Jake spent a lot of time at that bridge?” Weyler calmly asked.
“How the fuck should I know?!” Bailey exclaimed. “The point is the connections make sense here! I’m telling you, Copeland is involved in this in some way!” He turned to Jane. “Using your control theory, Jordan is
out
of control, right? So, he
seeks
control in whatever perverted ways he can. I mean, he’s convicted for shooting a boy and then, in trying to control an out-of-control situation that
he
created, he hides the boy’s body under his bed. So, yes!
Control
! Absolutely!” He jabbed his finger in the air toward Jane and Weyler. “This…this…is a valid path to investigate!” Bailey almost looked as if he were about to jump out of his Lucchese boots.
“You know,” Jane interrupted, “just to cover all the bases, it might be prudent to put an officer on your phone so we can trace calls in case the perp decides to call, or if Jake decides to call…”
“We already went through this!” Bailey declared. “It was pointless. Didn’t Bo fill you in? I told him I couldn’t handle it anymore.” Again, it was all about Bailey.
“If your son calls,” Weyler said, “and stays on the phone long enough, we can possibly triangulate the signal…”
“We did this already!” Bailey interrupted. “Four fucking
days of people in this house waiting for the phone to ring! I finally convinced them to leave yesterday. There’s a limit, you know? A limit to what a person is supposed to be able to deal with!”
Jane noticed that Carol was nervously biting her lower lip. “Mrs. Van Gorden…”
“Call me Carol,” she said weakly.
“Carol,” Jane continued, “would you show me Jake’s room?”
Carol looked to her husband for help.
“Bo already checked his room,” Bailey said with an edge.
“I’m sure he did. But like you said, Mr. Van Gorden, Bo couldn’t find enough to nail Hitler’s ass.” She leaned a little closer to Bailey. “I’m not Bo. I can see a lot of things in a room that others never see.” Jane wanted to add that she could look behind a person’s eyes and hear things, especially since she quit smoking. But judging from the way the guy was squirming, she figured she’d said enough.
“Fine,” Bailey said, his gaze turned from Jane. “Whatever.” He turned to his wife, seemingly sending her an unspoken message.
Carol tentatively led Jane out of the living room and into the spacious entryway that led to the dual staircases. Jane followed Carol up the closest staircase observing the woman’s movement. It was as though she was trying to hold her skin as close to her body as humanly possible. She gave the word
retraction
a whole new definition. It was almost as if Carol was desperately trying to think as quickly as possible, but she didn’t have the equipment installed to make that happen. They walked in stony silence up the stairs. Stopping on the landing, Jane couldn’t miss another marble table with yet another arrangement of large ivory pillars that had never been lit.
Jane couldn’t hold back. “You like candles, huh?”
Carol turned back to Jane, her countenance still detached. “Excuse me?”
Jane motioned to the arrangement on the table. “You
know, if you lit all of them in this house, you’d probably be able to navigate around here in the dark.”
Carol actually contemplated Jane’s somewhat sarcastic comment. “Well, yes, but then they would be…” She struggled to find the right word.
“Imperfect?” Jane suggested.
A tiny light seemed to flicker briefly in Carol’s head. “Yes… exactly!”
Jane looked around the pristine area. “That would screw up the veneer, wouldn’t it?” She locked eyes with Carol. There was a split second where Carol looked like she was going to emerge from her self-imposed trance but it was quickly squashed.