“For God’s sake, Carol. It’s all right.”
“No, no! I shouldn’t let it affect me like this. She’s right! I should have more control.” She started to rock back and forth against the rim of the sink. “I need to focus, focus, focus…”
Jane regarded Carol with an apprehensive stare. It seemed the woman was losing her mind in front of Jane. “Carol,” Jane said softly, almost in a whisper, “was something delivered here from the kidnapper… something that you didn’t give us?”
Tears poured down Carol’s face as she continued to rock back and forth. “I’ve got to focus, focus, focus…”
“Carol?” Jane said, slightly stressed. “You can tell me and I’ll keep it a secret.” Carol turned to Jane with a frightening daze. “
I’ll keep it a secret
.” Carol studied Jane in her stupor. “Is it the engraved silver cigarette case in Bailey’s office? The one with the paper clips in it?” Carol swallowed hard, a sign to Jane that something about that silver case triggered fear. “Is that what the kidnapper delivered?” Carol shook her head slightly. “Okay,” Jane said, keeping her voice low and modulated. “Then what was it?”
“Carol!” Louise yelled from the living room. “What are you doing?!”
Carol turned toward Louise’s voice in fear.
Jane gently touched her tear-stained face, bringing her
focal point back to Jane. “Carol? Tell me what they delivered here…”
“
Carol
!
Come here
!
Now
!” Louise screamed.
Carol stared at Jane, almost hypnotized. In an obvious directive, Carol looked off to the side toward the left of the sink where a partially filled, clear trash bag was propped against the cabinet. “Over there?” Jane asked.
Carol nodded almost imperceptibly, but it was enough of an acknowledgment for Jane. Still disconnected, Carol wiped the tears from her cheeks and headed out of the kitchen toward Louise’s screaming voice.
Jane dove toward the trash bag, its contents opaquely exposed through the plastic, and picked it up. She quickly relocated herself in the large pantry several feet from the sink, closing the louvered doors behind her and opened the trash bag. She heard heavy footsteps head into the kitchen. Looking through the wooden slats on the door, she saw Bo.
“Jane?” he gruffly said. She held her breath and stayed still. “Goddamnit!” he growled, exiting the kitchen and moving back into the house.
With only the filtered light from the outside windows, Jane opened the bag of trash. There were several discarded soup cans and kitchen scraps, but she recognized the empty box and packing materials immediately. They were identical to what she’d spied in the corner of Bailey’s office; the same corner Carol crept backward toward when Jane questioned her. Jane didn’t realize it then, but she now knew that Carol was physically backing up into a clue. It was at once covering it up, but also pointing it out to anyone with eyes to see the way we unconsciously reveal our deceptions. Jane ripped the large address label off the box. It simply said
BAWY!,
but this time, with an exclamation point. The same uncancelled Packard stamp was affixed to the label—a single stamp to mail a large box that was hand-delivered. Okay, Jane figured, now the Packard stamp was germane to the other clues and worthy of closer inspection.
Jane secured the address label in her jacket pocket and lifted the box out of the bag, taking care to be as quiet as possible. It seemed heavier than it should for a box that just held packing material. She removed the reams of bubble wrap and paper and touched something soft and pliable. Jane lifted the item closer to the louvered door. It was a well-worn, child’s teddy bear, measuring about eight inches tall and wearing a faded blue jumper. The front of the bear’s jumper was crusted with an old, brown and white stain. Jane sniffed it. Her highly tuned sensory mechanism detected a sour stench, akin to vomit or urine.
“Jane?” Weyler called out from the entry hall.
Jane quickly wrapped the stuffed bear in a piece of packing paper and wedged it under her leather jacket, buttoning her jacket around it. She crammed the contents back into the trash bag, carefully opened the pantry and placed the bag where she found it. Walking into the entry hall, she found Weyler, Bo, Carol and Louise waiting. “I had to use the bathroom,” Jane offered. Carol looked at Jane with abject fear while Louise regarded her with heightened suspicion.
“Mr. Van Gorden had to take a business call, so he won’t be seeing us out.” Weyler informed Jane.
Jane’s antenna immediately perked up. If the cash drop occurred the day before at the remote strip club, was this the call to pick up Jake’s body? She nodded and followed Weyler and Bo out to the patrol car. It wasn’t until they were almost back to town that Jane recalled the non-sequitur clue that had fueled her suspicion regarding the Van Gordens holding something back from them. Now the ostensibly misspelled clue made sense:
I BEARED MY SOUL AND STILL YOU IGNORE ME???
CHAPTER 25
Jane tried to get Weyler’s attention when they returned to town, but Bo was monopolizing his time. She needed to show him the teddy bear and confess her forensic sin of swiping the Chesterfield cigarette evidence from the forested crime scene. But it would have to wait until they could talk privately.
She rushed up the stairs of the B&B, removed her jacket and laid the teddy bear on the table. Examining it, she noted that a portion of stuffing had fallen out of the back seam and been re-sewn several times with an unsightly whipstitch. The bear’s face looked old-fashioned; certainly not in the style of teddy bears that had been manufactured in the last twenty years. The size of the bear was curious in that it wasn’t the typical larger size that was relegated to being displayed on a bed but, rather, small enough to be carried around as a toy for a youngster. It certainly was well worn and, possibly, well loved. The right ear was half gone and the left arm of the bear was visibly battered, leading Jane to believe that whoever owned this bear carried it by its arm.
The more Jane inspected the stuffed animal, the more she believed it was a source of security for its owner. Jane couldn’t ignore the swath of what she now believed to be vomit across the front of the bear’s blue jumper. This bear had been everywhere with its owner, through sickness and in health. She also understood that this clue had serious meaning. Otherwise, the Van Gordens wouldn’t have kept it from law enforcement. If Jane’s memory served, it would have been after the receipt of the bear that they unexplainably retracted their reward offer. The stuffed animal must have caused quite a visceral reaction for them to do such a thing. In keeping with all things clandestine, they opted to cram it into the trash, bury it deeply and will it from their consciousness.
She debated where to hide the missing clue and opted for the most reliable location—under the bed. Jane touched the
edge of the photo album as she placed the bear and removed the large book. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she opened it and found a series of heavy black cardboard pages filled with glued family photos of both Sara and Aaron from their respective childhood pictorials. Jane skimmed through the dizzying assortment of both black-and-white and color shots. Someone had written the corresponding years at the top of each page. Jane skipped forward in the book, finding a section someone called
The Good Ol’ Days
. The date at the top read
1988
. The first page was a collection of Polaroid prints showing Sara and Aaron in the first blush of love, arms entwined around each other and looking lovingly at each other. Sara was around nineteen and Aaron in his mid-twenties. He looked decidedly like a hippie with his long hair down his back and an unkempt beard and mustache. Sara, in turn, shared the groovy vibe with her long hair parted in the middle and two braids, each secured with a small feather and string. Jane had to smile, realizing that sometimes the most religious people started out as free spirits.
Jane turned the page. At first, it didn’t register. But she stared at the series of Polaroids on the page and the next page and the one after that. She looked even closer at the details in the photos and realized that,
yes
, she
was
seeing what she thought she was seeing. Outside, she heard the sound of a car roll into the driveway. She leapt toward the side window and saw Aaron and Sara in his sedan. Jane slid the photo album into her satchel and ran down the stairs and out the front door. Aaron was still retrieving items from the backseat when she met Sara.
“Hey, there,” Jane replied.
“Well, that’s a coincidence. Mollie’s got a T-shirt just like that!” Sara said, staring at the
I LIKE BOYZ
shirt.
Jane looked down, completely forgetting she was wearing the ridiculous outfit. Nevertheless, it wasn’t going to thwart her present objective. Sara excused herself and walked inside while Aaron continued to avoid eye contact with Jane. She sauntered around the car to the driver’s side where Aaron was still seated.
“You know, even though it’s Sunday, I’m still on duty. And the law says that if I see illegal activity, even when I’m technically off the clock, I can make an arrest or issue a ticket.” Jane was being honest, however, she hadn’t issued a ticket to a citizen since she got off patrol duty as a rookie over fifteen years ago.
Aaron looked at her with uncertainty. “What are you talking about?”
“Where do I start, Aaron? I noticed your front headlight is busted. You also came to a
sushi stop
at the corner…”
“A
sushi stop
?”
“A California Roll? You didn’t stop at the stop sign.”
“I didn’t?”
“Not completely. Then, there’s the LTO…”
Aaron grew suspicious. “LTO?”
“Lying To an Officer. Now, as far as the B&B, the fire exits are not clearly marked and the smoke detector doesn’t seem to be working in my room. I can come up with a bunch of other code violations in no time.”
“This is not going to work.” He got out of the car and closed the door. “I told you what Bailey said to me was confidential. I have ministerial privilege.”
“And I have your little red book of
inspiration
.” Jane withdrew the album from her satchel.
Aaron’s face turned ashen. His pupils looked like giant black orbs. “Holy shit.”
Jane nodded. “Holy shit, indeed, preacher.”
He glanced toward the B&B and then out to the street. “Let’s walk,” he told her, motioning toward the sidewalk.
They turned left outside the gate and walked in silence for fifty feet.
“Give me the album, Detective.”
“Give me the information I asked you for.”
“Detective…”
Jane stopped. “Or I will tell everyone in your congregation that before you were God-fearing Christians you liked to take
Polaroids of each other, posing provocatively…while naked and roaming through your exceptionally lush garden of marijuana.”
Aaron stopped in his tracks and looked at Jane. It was as if he waiting for more. “That’s what you got, huh?”
“I think they’ll be especially interested in the close-up shots of you covering your penis with a pot leaf and Sara exposing that classic rose tattoo she had inked under her pubic hair.” Jane realized at that moment that Mollie just happened to chose a few inches above her pubic bone for her dragonfly tattoo. It was as if the kid instinctively copied the memory of her mother’s youthful expression.
Aaron buried his face in his hand. “Good Lord.”
“Lord’s not gonna get you out of this one, Aaron.”
“You don’t understand, Detective…” His eyes pleaded. “Please give me the album.” With that, Aaron attempted to snatch the album out of Jane’s hand. But Jane held onto it firmly. “For God’s sake, give it to me!” His sheer size won the battle, but as he recovered the book, three of the older black-and-white prints of Sara’s grandfather were dislodged from the album. “No!” he yelled, his eyes panicked.
Jane touched her Glock, never intending to bring it out of the holster. “Stand back, Aaron.”
“
Please
. I beg you. Don’t do this.” He was shaking as his worst fear was coming to fruition.
Jane kneeled down, keeping an eye on him, and picked up the photos. She backed up several feet to gain more distance. He was crumbling emotionally before her. She looked at the photos. One showed Sara’s grandfather and his wife wearing bathing suits and posing at the beach. The other two were shots of the old man from the waist up. He was waving at the camera in both shots, his left arm raised. The tattoo on his left forearm was easy to see but it wasn’t from the military or his wife’s name. It was a series of numbers. Jane looked up at Aaron. “He said ‘I will be all right and one day I will die.’ You said he had great courage and that he overcame fear.” Aaron nodded, tears falling
down his face. “How many years was he in the camp?”
“Two,” Aaron said softly.
“Is that where he met his wife?”
“No. They met and married in Israel a few months after the end of the war. That’s where Sara’s mother was born. Shortly afterward, they relocated to the United States.”
“So, you married a Jewish woman who converted.”
Aaron took a deep breath. “We both converted.”
Jane looked at the photo. “Was being Jewish too dangerous?”
“It’s hard to explain. We felt greater serenity with the Christian faith. But we weren’t afraid of being Jews.”
“Then why not acknowledge it? It’s your blood.”
Aaron dropped his head. “I know. Both of our parents downplayed their Jewish past. You know? The persecution complex? Don’t advertise it. Blend in.”
“And yet, the more you bury something… the more you suppress who you are…the more it finds a way to the surface…” Jane realized she sounded a little too much like Jordan.
“Yes. I know what you mean.”
“Mollie…”
He looked up at Jane. “Exactly. Her sudden interest in the Jewish faith was startling, to say the least. We thought it was just a fad but it’s not.”