“What did he say to you that made you change your opinion?”
The first words that came to her mind were—
the truth
. But Jane wasn’t about to admit it. “I’m just tired. I want this to end. I’ve got my own health issues I have to deal with.” Jane started inside the gate. “Hey, you said Bo lost his wife to cancer last year? Did they ever have any kids? Maybe a son?”
“I never heard of any kids. Why?”
“Out there on the highway, he said something about how a man has to accept when his son isn’t right and when he’s never coming back. The way he said it…it was a little too close to home.”
A deluxe dark blue sedan slowed to a crawl in front of the B&B. The male driver, the only occupant in the car, squinted toward the B&B sign and then parked several spaces away from Jane’s Mustang. Jane noted the yellow rental stickers on the front window of the sedan. A wiry gentleman in his mid-eighties got out of the car and retrieved his small suitcase from the back seat. He was attired in a three-piece, striped suit and was impeccably put together, down to the watch fob and polished dress shoes. His black wool overcoat set off his carefully coiffed grey hair. Stern eyes peered from his narrow-rimmed spectacles as he read the
Fuck You, Jane!
message.
“Good God,” he muttered, turning away from the profanity. He quickly sized up both Weyler and Jane in an elitist manner. When he saw the butt of Jane’s Glock in her shoulder holster fastened across her
Groovy
T-shirt, his left eyebrow arched ever so slightly. “I assume this is
still
the only bed and breakfast in town?” When he spoke, he regarded them over the top gold rim of his eyeglasses, as if he were at a cheese-tasting mixer and was examining the placards on two rounds of Brie.
“Yes, sir,” Weyler replied. “The Greens are inside. If you catch Sara, you could probably talk her into a late breakfast.”
He scowled. “Yes. Well, I’ve already eaten. And I’m only enduring this place one night.”
Weyler extended his hand. “I’m Morgan Weyler and this is Jane Perry.”
The elderly gentleman shook Weyler’s hand with little enthusiasm. There was a constant sense that he was so above them. He refrained from shaking Jane’s hand. “Jane?” He turned to her Mustang and the three-word bloody graphic. “So you’re the recipient of this declaration?”
Jane shifted uncomfortably in her cowboy boots. “Yes. That would be me.”
He glanced up and down her body, looking askance when he read her T-shirt. Jane suddenly felt like she was on the auction block, and this old guy wasn’t going to make an opening bid. “Is it a prank?”
“No, sir,” Jane replied. “It’s actually a crime scene.”
He put down his suitcase. “Is this part of the Copeland mess?” His thin tenor meant business.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Jane said, now her turn to judge his right to take up space on the street. “Why would that interest you?”
“Because I’m in charge of Jordan Copeland’s trust fund and I’m here to make an assessment in regard to the recent events that have taken place.”
Jane nodded. “Eddie…”
The man prickled. “Excuse me?”
“Edward Butterworth, right?” Jane asked. She realized immediately how much this East coast, stuffed shirt must bristle when Jordan called him “
Eddie.
”
“Yes,” Butterworth replied in a careful manner as he slid his thin body next to them and headed toward the B&B. “I really must be going.” He disappeared up the steps and into the building.
Jane turned to Weyler. “The Copelands’ cleanup man.”
CHAPTER 29
Jane grabbed another hot cup of coffee inside the B&B and some leftover bacon from the serving pan before walking down Main Street to the Midas Library. There was a little more action in the joint than on the day before, but it was still empty enough that she could turn any corner and fire her gun without hitting
a soul. She wandered to the section that displayed
MODERN LITERARY GREATS OF THE 20
TH
CENTURY
and scoured the shelves for anything about author, Thomas Wolfe. She was confident that Wolfe’s book, being the first clue, meant something more to the kidnapper. Jane uncovered a biography on Wolfe. Scanning the front pages, she learned that he was considered by some to be the “most overtly autobiographical novelist,” so much so that his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, banned his 1929 book,
Look Homeward, Angel
from the Asheville Public Library because the depictions of the characters were too “frank and realistic,” due to the fact that Wolfe apparently didn’t use enough “artistic license.” Flipping forward to the chapter on
You Can’t Go Home Again
, Jane read how it was published posthumously in 1940 and followed the life of George Webber, a man who seemed to mirror Wolfe’s own short life. Webber, a novelist, writes a successful book about his family and southern hometown only to find his life shattered by the voices of outrage that greet him. Jane found two passages intriguing. The first one spoke about how in the story, Webber’s family and friends,
felt naked and exposed by the truth they read in his book
. Jane looked up momentarily. “The truth…” she whispered. Returning to the book, she continued reading.
This is a story of a man who flees scandal and leaves the only town he knew to search the world for his own identity. When Webber returns to his humble hometown later, there is love for the distant memories but the sad revelation that… You can’t go home again.
Her thoughts turned to Jordan and his pattern of using those five fateful words in her company.
She considered what he said only hours ago, “I exist in this town like I’ve existed in every other town. I exist under a
modus vivendi
…a practical arrangement that allows conflicting people to coexist until a final settlement is reached. The final agreement is usually my removal from the town.” Since Jordan never felt at home anywhere in his life, did it make sense that he created an
event
that would release him from his fractured existence and return him to the safety of confinement? He wouldn’t be the
first ex-con to play that card. When you’ve spent more of your life in the slammer than out, freedom was like riding a wave of razors. Just as he claimed to have created a
situation
by hiding Daniel Marshall’s body and pleading guilty to his murder simply because living behind bars was more comfortable than his hometown of Short Hills.
Jane returned the book to the shelf and thought about the series of clues pinned on the clothesline in her room. Her belief that the kidnapper was telling a story��albeit one with hidden messages and even hazier motives—made more sense to her now,
if
he was using the platform of
You Can’t Go Home Again
to launch his message. George Webber exposed the truth and nakedness of people who wished to remain anonymous. Webber himself then goes on a search for his own identity only to realize that he’ll never be the same again. Thinking back on the voicemail messages left by the kidnapper in a disguised voice, it had always bothered Jane that he used the wrong tense when he said, “He cried like a baby and will never be a real man.” It should have been “he cries” since they heard the sound of a crying child in the background. Maybe she was nitpicking, Jane wondered, but she’d learned fast that the person behind these clues was a calculating master of the written word and knew how to manipulate it to his benefit. The mere fact that he spoofed the phone number on his throwaway cell phone of the house directly across from the Copelands’ home seemed to be jaggedly pointing to some relevant information. The pieces only briefly came together after Jane dialed David Sackett and found out that an eight-year-old, red-haired boy lived in the back house on that property with his Russian immigrant mother and then quickly left for unknown reasons. It was getting frustrating as hell to Jane because whatever story the kidnapper was telling was so confusing to those who were trying to solve this crime, that nobody in charge understood it. They almost needed a program to decode the clues.
But, wait a second, Jane reflected. The Van Gordens were
no Mensa minds, but both Louise and Bailey seemed to jointly react to the Ace of Spades playing card along with the Chesterfield cigarette when Bo laid them out on their living room table. Those two items triggered something within them almost simultaneously. Maybe, possibly,
they
had at least a part of that elusive program needed to decipher what the kidnapper was trying to say? It had to be the reason they held back the teddy bear with the
BAWY
note attached to its front bib. It represented something to them…something about Jake perhaps? And what in the hell did
BAWY
stand for?
Jane scooted over to the library’s computers and did a search for
BAWY
but came up with nothing. She tried every acronym tool she could find but nothing made sense. After nearly an hour, she got up and wandered back into the microfiche room, figuring she’d pull up that
Time
magazine article on the Copelands and re-examine the illustration of Jordan’s neighborhood. But when she opened the door to the windowless room, less than half the boxes remained. She spent nearly half an hour reading the outside label contents but couldn’t find the one that included the
Time
article. Jane tracked down the same harried librarian from the day before and inquired as to where she could find that specific microfiche document. It seemed that it was one of the first boxes shipped to Denver for digital transfer. Jane returned to the room and stared into the disheveled mess. The only copy she had of the illustration was blurred and streaked, and of little use.
Her eyes drifted across the stacks of brown cardboard, her brain picking up one word or so from each outside label. Suddenly, she spotted,
The Millburn Township Register
and quickly zoned in on the box. Millburn Township was the area where Short Hills, New Jersey, resided. Opening the box, Jane brought out a series of plastic boxes with microfiche reels, each holding several years of the weekly local newspaper. She located the reel that covered 1967 through 1969. Setting it into the microfiche viewer, she scanned reams of black-and-white pages, starting
in late 1967. It was fairly easy to skim through the slim daily offering since the meat of the paper was found within the first five pages and the rest of it was dedicated to advertisements and classifieds. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she figured that there might be some mention of Jordan Copeland in the local rag. By the time she reached the January 1
st
edition of 1968, her eyes were getting bleary, but she continued the dizzy turn of pages that revolved around holiday events, local awards and town council reports.
Then the headline words,
MISSING BOY
jumped out at her. Jane quickly spun the reel back to the page and sharpened the focus. It was a short article on page two, but the headline was gripping:
SEARCH IS ON FOR MISSING BOY
. The date was January 5
th
, 1968. The child’s name was mentioned at the top of the article but the transfer of the old paper to microfiche had compromised the integrity of many of the words on the page, including the kid’s name. No matter how much Jane twisted the
focus
button on the reel, the name of the child and many of the words in the short article kept warping so that they were illegible. One thing was clear—the boy was eight years old and was thought to have wandered off three days prior to the story being published. Outbuildings and ditches had been thoroughly searched while his mother prayed for his safe return. Since the paper was a weekly publication, they were a little late in reporting this time-critical event.
Jane quickly jumped to the following week’s edition for any update. On page three, she found another five-hundred-word article titled, “Missing Millburn Boy Feared Drowned.” This article theorized that police felt the boy, who loved to wander, may have fallen into an icy pond and died. The rest of the story was a virtual repetition of the information from the week before. Just as Jane was moving forward on the reel, the door opened and three guys wearing jumpsuits and carrying hand trucks walked in. They seemed surprised to see Jane.
“Hey, ma’am, we got to stack all this up and put it on the
truck for Denver right away,” the larger of the three stated.
“I’m in the middle of something kind of important…”
“So are we,” a second man added. “We’re already late on picking up the second load.”
They started stacking boxes one on top of the other. Jane connected the printer. Even though the quality left a lot to be desired, she wanted to have a hard copy document of what she’d discovered. While the men noisily worked around her, she printed off page after page, starting with the initial January 5
th
edition. When she had a good handful of pages, she scanned the reel to the following week, in search of any mention of the boy. But one by one, the pages became barely readable. This continued for nearly half of the year’s weekly editions.
“
Lady
,” one of the guys stated in a loud, impatient voice, “we gotta have that reel you’re lookin’ at.”
“Shit!” Jane exclaimed, sitting up and turning off the microfiche viewer. She removed the reel, put it back in the plastic box and handed it to one of the guys. As she turned around, all the men reacted to her holstered Glock strapped across her
Groovy
T-shirt.
“
Whoa, Nellie
!” the big guy exclaimed. “Is that gun for real?”
Jane kicked the chair under the table and headed out the door. “No. I just wear it to scare the horses and children.”
CHAPTER 30
Outside, the sky darkened with rain clouds, seemingly converging solely over Midas. The air had an ominous tang that did little to settle Jane’s churning gut. She secured the pages from the
Millburn Township Register
under her T-shirt. Pellets of rain began to fall as she headed back to the B&B. But the wind
whipped up suddenly, driving the rain harder and forcing Jane to make a quick detour to Town Hall, where she took refuge under the front awning. She heard a knock on the glass behind her and saw Vi motioning her to come inside. Once inside, Vi handed her a roll of paper towels to absorb the dripping water off Jane’s T-shirt. The place looked vacant, with only Vi and two tech guys in the background setting up more equipment. Jane carefully turned to Bo’s office.