Revelations (23 page)

She turned and saw a somewhat uneasy look on his face. Walking toward him, the look of concern grew. Her gut twisted. “What is it?” she asked.

“The receptionist at Town Hall just got a call from the kidnapper. The voice was distorted. All he said is ‘I’m waiting’ and left the line open. They triangulated the signal and found the scene. There’s a black car there. And Jake’s body may be in the trunk.”

Jane followed in her Mustang while Weyler rode with Bo in a patrol car. It was the same damn, two-lane road with the red rock on the right side; the same road that led to the bridge and Jordan Copeland’s hideaway. But now, they drove past the infamous bridge, past the speed cameras and past Jordan’s ten-acre fenced property. They continued for another two miles as the sky darkened and thick flakes of snow fell indiscriminately across the landscape. The whole time, Jane felt sick. Weyler quietly told her that the deputy smelled decomposition coming from the trunk of the vehicle—the vehicle that matched the color description of the car seen on the bridge. Was the kid who sought the truth and declared it on a poster in his bedroom lying dead in the trunk of a car, abandoned on the side of the road? Had the
truth
become this dangerous?

By the time Jane and Bo pulled up to the scene, the sky had given way to diagonal waves of snow. As Jane got out of her Mustang and walked along the road to the site, the flakes quickly covered the hoods of the three police vehicles that had already shown up. Weyler brought an umbrella and sheltered Jane as they made the solemn journey past the police vehicles and up a short, dirt incline that led twenty feet further to a twodoor, black beater of a car that looked to be a thirty-five-year-old Chevy Vega. No plates. Busted tail pipe. Smashed in passenger side with primer covering the door. A small rock cairn sat in the center of the car’s closed trunk, seemingly marking the spot. It wasn’t easy in these mountains to successfully triangulate a cell phone ping. Jane asked a cop standing nearby how the deputy discovered the car since it was pretty much off the road and out of sight. The cop pointed to another larger rock cairn positioned neatly on the side of the highway. The kidnapper was doing everything now to make sure his handiwork was seen.

Jane didn’t need the cairn to locate the black vehicle. The smell of decomp was overwhelming, starting from the moment the three of them walked up the hill to the scene. Several cops near the vehicle covered their mouths with cloths to repel the nauseating stench. Jane, Weyler and Bo stood waiting while the police photographer took shots of the rock cairn on the hood. The snow subsided as quickly as it started, with only a few errant flakes falling on the ground. Weyler discarded the umbrella as the photographer finished the last shot. Bo gave the order to “Open ’er up.” Another cop stepped forward with a tire iron and jimmied the trunk. Jane’s heart raced as it popped a couple inches and stuck, releasing the ungodly stink of death. A nearby cop quickly turned, vomiting. One more good thrust and the trunk lifted.

“Good Christ Almighty!” Bo exclaimed. “That bastard!”

Jane and Weyler had to step back. Staring back at them was a heap of animal carcasses, most likely road kill, in various stages of putrefaction. The rotting stench was like getting
hit in the head by a two-by-four. What looked like a raccoon had almost dissolved to liquid goo that intermingled with the bloated carcass of a deer. Thousands of maggots feasted on the trunk’s contents, moving freely through the empty orbs and out the well-devoured nostrils. While it was difficult to judge—given the fact that the animals were already flattened and disintegrating prior to being tossed in the trunk—Jane wild-guessed that the sickening soup of death had been cooking in the Vega’s trunk for at least five days. That was important to her because it meant that this clue had been planned from almost the moment Jake was kidnapped. If her theory that the kidnapper was telling a story was correct, what in the hell did this mean? Where was the symmetry that gave this clue significance?

Looking closer at the putrid pile of death, Jane saw a black cell phone sitting upright in the chewed out ear of the deer. It was on and still connected to Town Hall’s main line. Bo’s cell phone rang. Jane called out for gloves and an officer handed her a pair. She snapped them on, held her breath and wrestled the phone from the grip of maggots. “I’m sure it’s a prepaid disposable,” she commented in Bo’s direction.

“That was Vi,” Bo stated, snapping his cell phone shut. “She said we got a phone number on the Caller ID that doesn’t match the first two numbers that came in. This one has an area code from back east. She’s gonna track it down.”

Moving away from the car, Jane slid the back panel of the phone off and saw exactly what she expected. “No SIM card.” An officer handed her a plastic evidence bag into which she deposited the phone. She pulled off the gloves and tossed them in a trash bag.

After the police cameraman finished documenting the frigid scene, Jane drew her leather jacket tight against her chest, walked around to the driver’s side door and peered inside the vehicle. The seats were shredded. Springs popped through the upholstery in the backseat. Piles of rodent droppings littered both the front and back seats. After learning that the door handles
had been dusted for prints and were absent of anything fresh, she tried the handle on the driver’s side door. It was locked shut. The same thing proved true for the passenger door.

“Nobody’s driven this car since Nixon was in office,” she stated to Weyler who scanned the car interior from the passenger side. She looked at the set of tire tracks that led up to the car. “If Bo takes molds of those tracks, they’ll probably match the SUV, van or truck that dragged this piece of junk here. I’d rule out a van, personally.”

Weyler revealed that Bo was familiar with the black beater Chevy Vega. It had been sitting at the dump for twenty years, which was located five miles down the road.

“Any chance of security cameras at the dump?” Weyler shook his head. “You said Jordan doesn’t own a car, right? So, if he’s involved, how’d he get this thing here?”

“He’s got to have a partner.”

“An outcast and a loner decides to partner up? Does that sound plausible to you?”

“Anything’s possible at this point, Jane.”

Jane turned around, leaning on the hood of the car. She stared into the thicket of trees and brush in front of her. At first she didn’t see it, even though it was fairly obvious. But once she spotted it, she froze. It was another cairn, tucked away behind a stand of trees. It was even bigger than the one located on the highway that alerted the patrol cop.

“See something?” Weyler asked.

Jane spoke before she thought. “No.” The minute the word fell from her lips, she regretted the lie. She’d only lied to Weyler a few times in her career and that was when she was either drunk or not thinking clearly. Right now, she figured the latter was applicable, but she didn’t correct herself. Instead she told Weyler that she was going to walk around the perimeter of the area to check out things. Once he moved away from the area and she was certain the surrounding cops couldn’t see her, she calmly strolled to the cairn behind the trees. When she stood over it, it
was easy to see the line of smaller rocks that extended out from the stacked rocks and into the woods, forming an obvious path.
Perhaps it isn’t the car with the dead animals in the trunk or the cell phone that’s the next dot in the story,
she thought. That might have been just the kidnapper’s loud announcement that led to something else…something that had more value.

She stared at the rock path and then back at the cairn. What she did next was called “interfering with an ongoing investigation.” She preferred to call it “taking the bull by the horns and ramrodding the investigation.” With one good kick, she toppled the cairn. She used the toe of her cowboy boot to toss the long pathway of stones to the side. Checking back at the scene, she was satisfied that nobody was watching her. She turned and followed the well-placed rock path that wound around a stand of spruce trees and graduated up an incline toward a shaded rocky area. She made sure to kick the small rocks in the path as far away as possible to make the clue indistinguishable to anyone else. Jane stopped right before the outcropping of large rocks. The wet snow lay heavy on the spruce branches around her, dipping their tips of new growth toward the earth. But the rocky outcropping had been protected from the snowy blast by the large evergreens, exposing the next clue in the story.

A single cigarette was positioned on a large rock in front of Jane, its tip pointed slightly to the left. Without hesitating, she withdrew her Glock, holding it at her side as she moved closer. She stood over it and easily noted the black mark of a pen encircling the cigarette about one millimeter from the tip. The other end clearly showed the insignia of the brand,
Chesterfield.
Noting the direction the cigarette was pointing, she picked it up and continued on that path. Ten feet farther, up another slight incline, she easily found the next cigarette. It was the same brand and had the same curious mark near its tip in black ink. This cigarette pointed straight ahead and so she collected it and kept walking. Like a game of hopscotch, she followed the cigarette pathway, collecting each identical one before moving onto the
next, taking care to move judiciously just in case the kidnapper was watching, gorging on the attention as much as the maggots were still enjoying their juicy banquet in the trunk. After recovering the tenth cigarette, she emerged into a small clearing, smattered with snow. Artfully placed on the bed of dried spruce needles was a heavy glass and leather ashtray with four grooves that each held a cigarette. The remaining six cigarettes formed an arrow that pointed to an empty, crushed Chesterfield burgandy pack. On the front, it read:
CHESTERFIELD 101.

It was the sort of scene that needed to be photographed and documented. Whatever it meant, Jane knew it was a vital link in the story that the kidnapper was telling. But, goddamnit, she was tired of being called everything from “lippy” to a dyke by Bo Lowry simply because her out-of-the-box opinions and theories were off-center. Jane stood over the scene for several minutes, wrestling with her next move. Finally, she pulled out her cell phone, selected the camera feature and took four photos of the mysterious set-up before picking up the evidence—including the ashtray—and burying them in the pockets of her jacket.

When she returned to the Vega, Weyler crossed toward her. “Anything?” he asked.

Jane made a point to look away so the lie wouldn’t read. “Nothing.” She turned back to Weyler. “Is Bo going to tell the Van Gordens about this?”

“No.”

“If I’m correct about the guy’s signature pattern, he’s most likely given up now on back and forth clues between the Van Gordens and Bo. If the pattern were still in effect, the Chevy Vega with the dead meat in the trunk would have shown up outside the Van Gordens’ house. But he’s changed it up because the family refuses to talk publicly.”

Weyler turned to Jane in a confidential manner. “You’re basing that on the assumption that the Van Gordens are holding back a clue.”

“Yeah. I am. But I also know this guy is getting bolder. You watch. The clues will get bolder too. He’s tired of playing it safe. This guy is basically saying ‘Fuck you. I want the world to
hear
me and understand me.’”

“Understand what? Dead animals in a trunk?”

She felt the corner of the heavy leather and glass ashtray pressing against her side. “Sure. Why not?” Jane moved closer to Weyler. “Listen, I think it would be prudent to put some eyes on Jordan’s property. Nothing obvious. Just watch him.”

“Meaning you?” Weyler asked, his tone uneasy.

“Yes. The more I can steer clear of your buddy Bo, the healthier we’ll all be. Don’t you agree?”

Jane made her way back to the Mustang, happy to be clear of both the rotting stench and trail of lies she left at the scene. Carefully removing the ashtray and cigarettes from her jacket pocket, she secured them in the pocket of her leather satchel. She headed back to Jordan’s property two miles back up the highway. Parking on the river side of the highway with the car turned so that the driver’s side was closest to the river, Jane sheltered the Mustang amidst an opportunistic stand of trees that shrouded the car from view. From this vantage point, she could easily view Jordan’s property, including most of his log cabin that sat on stilts. She rolled down the windows to push the stagnant air from the car and popped open her glove compartment, unearthing a small pair of well-worn binoculars. She noted the time as 10:10 am. As she surveyed the river’s edge and surrounding acreage, she saw no sign of life. All was eerily quiet until a voice broke through the stillness.

“Whatcha lookin’ for, Jane?”

Jane quickly turned toward the passenger window. There, leaning on the partially open window, was Jordan Copeland. How he was able to perambulate there without Jane hearing him was anybody’s guess.

He reached inside the car, unlocked the door and opened it. Jane touched the Glock inside her jacket.

Jordan wedged his filthy body with his trademark oilcloth coat in the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. He turned to her with impunity, his iridescent eyes glimmering. “I knew you’d come back to see me.” He winked. “Take your hand off your gun. You’re not gonna shoot me. But you
are
going to drive.”

Jane regarded Jordan with contempt. His foul body odor filled the Mustang, permeating every inch of the car. Chunks of mud laced with fresh snow fell off his boots and onto the floor mat. His grey beard, coated with stems of dried mud and frosty fingers of snow, matched his scruffy, uncombed and unmanageable curled mane.

“Go on, Jane. There’s another small bridge about a hundred feet ahead. Drive across it and onto my property before your merry band of black-and-whites come barreling down the road and see us.” Jane remained motionless. “
Jane
?” Jordan said, like a scolding schoolteacher. “What are you waiting for?
Drive
!”