Sitting prominently on the large burl wood coffee table was Jake’s computer. Obviously,
somebody
got the message that Jane told Weyler and
somebody
decided it was best to bring the computer to Jane rather than allow Jane back into Jake’s bedroom.
Somebody
had also plugged in the computer and turned it on to make Jane’s time at the Van Gordens’ both efficient and speedy. That
somebody
, Jane surmised, was
not
standing in front of her at that moment, rubbing the heel of each palm against the other and focusing vacantly on a spot in the wood floor. Jane thanked Carol for the swift cooperation but the woman didn’t seem to hear a word.
“Coffee?” Carol asked Jane, still half in her abstracted world.
“No, thank you.”
“Tea?”
“No, thanks. But please, make yourself a cup,” Jane suggested, more to shake loose of Carol for a few moments.
Like a dutiful Stepford wife, Carol nodded and walked out of the living room, turned right and clip-clopped into the kitchen.
Jane quickly opened up Jake’s Internet web browser and selected the
History
menu and the dates previous to his March
22
nd
disappearance. Nothing. Zip.
Nada
. She opened each available day in the
history
file prior to that and found the same empty result. Selecting Jake’s email box, Jane was stunned. It was empty. Not even spam occupied the lonely box. The likelihood of there being no mail, even junk mail, up to the present date in Jake’s mailbox, was ridiculous. There was always the option of taking the computer and scanning the hard drive and hopefully recovering the lost data. But Jane realized that even if she was able to get the Van Gordens to agree to such a thing, the chance of finding a techie in that town who would agree to breach the trust of a fellow secret holder was slim. Her only chance was to talk to Mollie again and ask her if she might have any correspondence with Jake. Before Jane closed out of the windows, she pulled up the browser again and clicked on
Favorites
, hoping to find the
secret revelations
website listed. But she was zero for three. That folder was also empty.
Jane crossed into the entry hall just as Carol returned with a cup of tea balanced on a fine china saucer. Suddenly, the voices got louder in Bailey’s office. Carol turned to the closed doors, a look of apprehension carved on her countenance. The door handle turned with an angry twist and Bailey walked out into the entry hall. His face was flushed and irritated. He was dressed in another stiffly starched white shirt, a tight pair of stonewashed jeans and an intricate leather belt with a large turquoise buckle. Bailey was in his own world momentarily until he saw Jane.
“You got what you wanted?” he gruffly asked her, his nose clearly congested.
“Yes, thank you. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything on his computer.”
Bailey stared at her with his steely eyes. “Right,” he nodded, sniffing a bit of mucus up his nose.
“You’re still stuffed up,” Jane offered.
“Excuse me?”
“When I was here and met you the first time, you were
stuffed up and looked feverish.”
Bailey regarded Jane with a look that surfaced somewhere between quizzical and aggravated. “Allergies,” he said succinctly.
Jane nodded. From what she could see outside, there weren’t many trees or flowers blooming yet in the high country. And there weren’t any pets scrambling around the ol’ log homestead. Jane started to leave when she turned back to Carol. “Oh, did you get anymore of those two-ring, hang-up calls after I left?”
“No,” she said with honesty.
“What’s that?” Bailey said, moving closer to Jane.
“Your phone rings twice and then when you answer it, there’s no one there. And the Caller ID reads
Unavailable
.”
Bailey locked eyes with Jane in what appeared to be a death grip. His tanned, flushed face tensed up ever so slightly. “Is this pertinent to my son’s case or is this just more chatter?” Before Jane could answer, the sound of a woman clearing her throat with purpose could be heard coming from behind the half-opened office door. Jane watched Bailey pull back and slightly turn his head toward the office. “If this is relevant information, please tell us,” he said, his tone more refined.
Whoever was behind the door seemed to have tangible control over Bailey. Jane wanted to look for the invisible cord that was connected between Bailey and the operator on the other side of the door. Jane leaned over as the office door creaked open. There was another cough, but this time, it was generated from deep within the lungs. The door moved further and the wheel of a chair revealed itself. Finally, the door swung open wide and a tiny, gaunt woman, no more than ninety-five pounds, appeared, seated in a chrome wheelchair. She wore white wool slacks, a black button-front shirt and a cream-colored cardigan. Her grey hair was styled in an abrupt coif, with sharp edges that framed her chin. For a moment, Jane thought the woman had to be Carol’s mother. Their dress and style seemed to match in an eerie, unsettling manner. The only variance in their look was
Louise’s skin color. It was a yellowish tint, an outward expression of her cancerous liver.
“Hello,” the woman said, obviously having trouble breathing. Bailey turned to face her. “Wheel me out there,” she instructed. Bailey quickly obliged. She held out her hand to Jane. A well-used linen hankie was wedged in the arm of the cream cardigan. “I’m Louise Van Gorden. Bailey’s mother. You must be Detective Perry.”
Jane gently shook her hand. “Yes, ma’am.”
Louise may have been on death’s door, but there was a hard resistance in her eyes that gave Jane the impression that this ol’ lady wasn’t going down without a fight. “You need to excuse my son, detective,” she said in a tone that was dry and flinty. “He’s forgotten what he was taught. Do you need to leave immediately?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Good,” Louise declared with an officious tenor. “We’ve finally got some goddamned sun outside. Wheel me out onto the terrace so we can visit.”
Jane wasted no time pushing Louise through the kitchen and out onto the spacious tree-lined terrace that Jane was already intimately familiar with—thanks to Bailey’s YouTube video. To her left was the three-tiered Italian fountain that Bailey misspelled on his video tag, and to her right was the covered and probably still unused Webber grill.
Carol handed Jane a heavy blanket to drape across Louise’s lap before closing the French doors and giving them privacy. Jane took a seat on the stone edge of a large planter box, replete with frozen offerings from last fall’s final growth. Louise held her wrinkled face to the sun, squinting but seemingly finding some relief in the late afternoon rays.
“Tiring flight?” Jane asked.
“Everything’s tiring these days.”
“Which airport did you fly out of?” Louise turned away from the sun and looked at Jane. “Bailey said he grew up in
Wentworth, New Jersey. I’ve never heard of Wentworth. Is that where you still live?”
“I flew out of Newark. I live in Princeton. I moved there years ago.” She reached into her cardigan pocket and brought out a pack of Parliament cigarettes and matches. Jane watched in stunned silence as the woman lit a cigarette with her thin bony fingers, let out a gagging hack and inhaled a hard drag with her thin, cracked lips. “You smoke?” Louise asked, handing the pack to Jane.
“No. I just quit.”
Louise smiled and turned to the side. “Yeah, sure. I quit too.” She took another hearty puff. “I understand Carol told you about my predicament.” Jane nodded. “So, you must be wondering why I’m smoking?”
“That’s your business,” Jane said matter-of-factly.
“Yes. That’s right. It
is
my business.” There was a harsh, unforgiving quality in Louise’s voice. “I suppose others in my condition would be searching the world for cures or maybe securing their relationship with God. But I’m more the type who just accepts my lot in life.
What’s cooked at home is eaten at home
. That’s an old saying but it fits. You take what you get and you deal with it.” Louise inhaled another drag. “So, Jordan Copeland…” The shift in the conversation was purposeful. “It seems we have the likely suspect in our midst.” She titled her head toward the sun again. “Copeland? Isn’t that a Jewish name? Do you find a lot of child killers who are Jews or do Jews steer clear of that particular twisted desire?”
Jane felt her back stiffen. “Copeland’s not Jewish.”
“Are you certain?” Louise returned her gaze to Jane.
“Yes.”
“Hmmm. Aaron Copland was a Jew, right?”
“It’s spelled differently.”
“Really? Well, well, well…” Louise seemed to drift for a second. “How unfortunate to have a last name that has such an undesirable association.”
“You have your prejudice?” Jane asked as gently as humanly possible.
Louise smiled. “Only in the morning. By the evening, I’ve worked it completely out of my system.” She shifted in the wheelchair, having a difficult time finding a comfortable position. “I think it’s obvious that Jordan Copeland is involved with Jake’s disappearance.”
“What makes it obvious?”
“His record, for God’s sake!” Louise snapped. “His personality…”
“How do you know his personality?”
“My son has informed me.” Louise started to take another drag on the cigarette but began coughing so violently that Jane wondered if she was going to pop a lung.
“Wasn’t it precarious for you to travel, given your illness?”
Louise wiped her mouth with the linen hankie tucked under her cardigan. “You can say it… terminal liver cancer. Yes. But I told my doctors in Newark to fuck off.” She chuckled a low laugh. “Forty years ago, I’d never have said such a thing. I might have thought it, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have said it. But ever since the cancer took hold of my liver, I find myself more impulsive, more direct, more
bile
. Cancer seems to extract the bitch in me that’s been buried for years.” Her tired eyes, lids heavy, gazed off to the side. “You know what cancer has taught me, detective? It’s taught me that life is a shit hole into which you sink deeper and deeper until the excrement smothers you and chokes the life from your throat.”
“That’s visual.”
“That’s
real
, sweetheart! You come into this world and you have such fantasies that life is fair and you’ll marry the man of your dreams and you’ll have the house and the kids and holidays on the coast. And then you find out that life is about duty and obligations to those around you who you can’t stand but you put up with. Pretty soon, you’ve forgotten who you are and what you wanted because you’re drowning in other’s people’s
nightmares. But who gives a shit, right? You do what you have to do to keep up…”
“The status quo,” Jane interjected.
Louise’s weary face studied Jane. “Yes. You understand, don’t you?”
“I understand that people do it. But I don’t understand why.”
She chuckled again but it was edged with scorn. “How lucky you are, dear. You have the luxury of integrity.”
“Kind of goes with my job description.”
“Oh, Christ, give me a break. As if there aren’t dirty cops out there. You still believe in honesty because you still believe that people are good. Once you learn that people are inherently evil and that goodness is just an illusion to draw others into one’s scheme, then you’ll release the shackles of your integrity and join the rest of us.”
Jane considered what Louise said. Wasn’t she already there in many ways? Wasn’t she knee deep in that shit hole and waiting for more crap to get dumped on her?
Good God,
she thought, was she staring at that moment into the bleak eyes of her near future? A future rife with bitterness and misery where every breath and thought revolves around how fucking miserable life is as you wait to die? The more Jane looked at Louise, the more she hated her. She hated her because she was looking at part of herself—the part that was old before her time and resentful that any happiness in her life had been subjugated to serve a greater need. Here was a woman who had willingly given up her opinions, her options and her voice in favor of whatever she was told to do. And now, with the specter of death enveloping her, she was finally speaking up with the hard carpet of anger underneath each word.
What’s to say that all those years of suffocating her feelings didn’t invite the cancer into her body that was chewing on her liver? What’s to say that if Louise had had the guts to speak up years ago that she wouldn’t be destroyed right now, waiting for
the death rattle? Jane couldn’t help but wonder if the simple act of speaking up and seeking one’s truth was the liberating factor in this equation? She’d never had a problem speaking her mind, but facing the truth of her life and her past was still difficult to process. It required forgiveness and vulnerability—two attributes that felt so damn dangerous to her. Forgiveness required releasing the engine of hate; vulnerability could leave her wide open for an attack. It was easier to continue in the way she’d always operated. It was safer. “
Illusions die hard and the status quo dies even harder
,” she remembered Jordan telling her. “
Who wants to face their shadowed truth when it’s so much easier to keep the ball rolling that feeds the machine and makes one’s life a false existence?
” he’d stressed.
Jane scrutinized Louise seated in her wheelchair, the fading ember of her cigarette pointed toward the cold concrete. The woman seemed to be growing tired quickly. Her body appeared crumpled under her crisp, starched shirt. Her advice to Jane to “release the shackles” of her integrity and “join the rest of us” carried the echo of every malevolent proposition ever uttered on this earth. It held the same oily tenor of the pornographer when he lures an ignorant girl into his trap; it seized the same devious intention of the meth dealer who promises a sweet escape to those who want to disappear. Without even realizing it, Jane was already on the highway, going full throttle, unconsciously “joining the rest of us,” and she felt sick. This was not a club she had any conscious intention of joining. For a moment, she forgot the reason she came to the Van Gorden’s house. She forgot that Jake was somewhere out there at the mercy of God knows who. This case had suddenly become personal and the players in it had become nauseating reflections of her own inadequacies. A fire of indignation erupted in Jane’s belly. “You know, I kind of like the illusion of integrity, Louise. It tends to create an environment where the reality of subversion can be revealed.”