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 story 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?”
“If it’s not a street address, it could be anything from a ticket number at the cleaners, a safety-deposit box number at the bank or a headstone number at the Imperial Cemetery.”
Jane could see she had her work cut out for her. She halfwished she could put Hank on the payroll so he could do some footwork for her. The waitress delivered Jane’s hot dog. She took
a hearty bite and couldn’t believe how good it was. “Damn, Hank. What do you make these hot dogs with? Crack?”
“Naw. Just a lot of heart,” he replied, gathering the pages together and clipping them into a neat pile.
The front door opened and in walked Annie Mack. She still had her apron on from the diner, covered with various sauce stains.
“Hey ya, Hank!” she said in an offhand manner as she strolled up to him.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said. Jane noted that same softening of the eyes when he looked at her. He put his arm around her waist tenderly when he greeted her.
Annie asked if Hank had any one-dollar bills she could have for a twenty. He hopped off the barstool, walked to the cash register and doled out the singles to her. “There you go, kiddo,” he said with a warm smile.
Annie nodded to him and acknowledged Jane before leaving the place. Hank wound around the bar and came back to rest next to Jane. She must have had a discernable look of judgment on her face because Hank analyzed it for several seconds before speaking up. “What?” he asked, with a cockeyed grin.
Jane took a large bite of the hot dog. “Hey,” she said, hiding her mouth full of food, “it’s none of my business.”
Hank continued to scrutinize Jane’s face, something she wasn’t used to other others doing. “You think Annie and I…”
“Look, if you can keep her happy with a twenty-five-year age difference, then you ought to ferment and bottle whatever you got and sell it to everyone over twenty-one.”
Hank broke into a fit of laughter. “Oh, Jesus, you just made my day. But she’s not my girlfriend.”
Jane finished off the hot dog and regarded Hank with a doubtful eye. There was no denying the loving look he cast toward Annie—not once but twice, in her presence. If Annie wasn’t his girlfriend, Jane deduced that he was working the angles to make it happen. “Everyone lives in Midas for one reason,
right?” Jane wiped mustard off her mouth and slid the plate away from her. “You’re all hiding something. I get it. I’ll keep your secret.”
Hank smiled and shook his head, “You like to hover around people, don’t you? Like a helicopter? Not too close, but just hover. Try to figure out what’s what and who’s who? And I bet you wonder why they don’t take your advice more often.”
Without a doubt, that’s exactly what Jane was doing when she ambushed Carol Van Gorden. She certainly wasn’t comfortable being around someone who could read her that well. It was one thing to have a telepathic loony like Jordan Copeland worming his way into her head. But to have a fifty-year-old ex-cop with a cute ass understanding how Jane’s mind worked was more than she could handle at the moment. Besides, she needed to get back to work. “Look, I gotta go pound some pavement. What do I owe you?”
“Another visit. And if you need me to research something for you, let me know.”