If Bailey Van Gorden was really Jack Webber, what kind of hell did Jack Webber instigate to create a situation where his son was kidnapped? Was it a spurned male lover of Bailey’s? That thought didn’t seem to hold water with Jane as the tone of the clues seemed to indicate a feeling that leaned toward both exposure of a sin and, within that revelation, a chance for revenge from the person who was hurt. Since the name
Webber
was featured so prominently, perhaps, Jane thought, it had something
to do with Bailey’s past.
Jane re-read the transcripts of the two voicemail messages. Both talked about a child and how, “He
cried like a baby
and will never be a real man.”
The first transcript grabbed Jane. “Do you know what it’s like to feel as if you’re two seconds from your last breath?
DO YOU
? It feels just like this…” This was followed by the whimpering of what sounded like a child crying and then the words, “He pounds on the window and you do nothing.”
Jane wasn’t certain, but she wondered if the kidnapperturned-killer was talking about someone
else
besides Jake in that clue.
“Webber,” Jane said to herself. If she was going to link that name to the Van Gordens, she needed something solid to prove it. Her mind flashed on a very
solid
item—the silver cigarette case in Bailey’s office. The ornate
VG
lettering on top seemed very elaborate to Jane when she first saw it. While she didn’t have a perfect memory of the engraving, she now realized that it was in actuality a flamboyantly carved
W
. And the way that Carol grabbed the cigarette case, holding it to her chest and not wanting Jane to see it? Jane thought it was because of what was
inside
the case, not what was written on the
outside
. For whatever reason, when Bailey assumed a new identity, he couldn’t let go of that silver cigarette case. Maybe when you willingly lose so much of who you were, you need something tangible from the past—especially if killing that past wasn’t of your own making. Jane glanced to the lone Chesterfield cigarette protected in a plastic evidence bag. “Of course,” Jane realized. You have cigarettes, you need a place to put them. Chesterfield was a brand closely associated with the 1960s and before, and it was quite common back then for the upper class to serve cigarettes to their guests out of a case rather than the pack they came in.
But Bailey was forty-eight, which meant he was born in the early 1960s. The specific Chesterfield cigarette featured in the clues was the
101
brand. And Jane’s research showed that
that specific brand was launched in late 1967 and then faded into obscurity years later. In fact, the person behind the clues made a point of carefully outlining each cigarette with a black pen exactly one millimeter from the tip to stress that
101
brand. As Jane regarded the cigarette with new eyes, it was as if the kidnapper was also pointing with authority to either 1967 or 1968 when the
101
was first marketed. And since Bailey was born five to six years prior to that, Jane highly doubted that
he
was the one puffing on the Chesterfields.
Jane stood back and checked out the line of clues. She looked at the stack of pages she’d copied off the microfiche viewer from the
Millburn Township Register
. Unpinning the pages from the line, she checked the date on the first article—
January 5
th
, 1968
. The headline,
SEARCH IS ON FOR MISSING BOY
appeared beneath the date. Why in the hell was the year 1968 continuing to show up? It was the year Jordan was arrested, when David Sackett moved into the house across from the Copelands, when an eight-year-old boy went missing in the area and when Chesterfield 101 cigarettes had their first wave of popularity. The serendipitous dovetailing was far too much to ignore. The question for Jane was where did Jordan Copeland fit into it?
Jane carried the stack of pages copied from the Millburn paper to the bed and thumbed through them, in search of the second article. Page after page of advertisements fell to the floor and Jane kneeled down to collect them. One advertisement caught her eye. It was a quarter-page ad, bordered by a thick black line. At the top was a mock-up of a playing card—the Ace—but instead of the traditional symbol for the spade suit, there was a drawing of a digging spade in its place. The line below read,
Ace Builders
Family Owned and Operated Since 1926
Let Ace Builders design your dream home.
And their slogan?
It’s in the cards that we’re the right
builder for you!
There was a phone number listed. Jane dialed the number, expecting to get a message that it was no longer in service. But instead, a man answered. “Holgate Construction, John Holgate speaking.”
“Hello,” Jane said, not sure how to approach this. She introduced herself and gave her title, which instantly seemed to make Holgate take notice. “We’re working a cold case out here and your phone number looks like it’s associated with a company called Ace Builders that operated there in Short Hills in the late 1960s?”
“Ah, hang on, would you?” Jane heard Holgate close a door and sit back down. “I thought that was all behind us. We did our best to distance ourselves from the Ace name.”
“Could you please elaborate, Mr. Holgate?”
“We had to keep the number in order to maintain the customer base, but it took years to bury all the gossip…”
“Sir, I need you to be more specific. What gossip are you referring to?”
“I’d have to assume your cold case has something to do with Jack Webber.”
Jane felt her mouth go dry. “Yes,” she quickly recovered. “That’s exactly it. But I need you to tell me what you know before I proceed.”
“Shit,” he whispered, clearly uncomfortable. “I bought Ace Builders back in ’68 from the Webbers after they left the area…”
“Could you please verify for me the names of those family members?”
“Well, there was Jack, of course. And his wife…uh…it started with an
L
.”
“Louise?”
“Yeah, Louise Webber. They had one kid…a son…he was around six, I think.”
“Bailey?” Jane offered.
“Yeah, Bailey Webber. Small kid for his age. Really puny
looking.”
“Why did they leave?”
He hesitated. “What do you mean?”
Jane glanced down to the article in the
Millburn Township Register
. “The missing boy? The red-haired kid?” she asked, trying to remain as vague as possible.
“Yeah.” Holgate sounded suspicious. “But why are you calling him
missing
? They found him a couple weeks later.”
“Sir, I can’t go into a lot of detail about the angle we’re working here. That’s why you’ll have to bear with me and tell me what you remember.”
Holgate seemed more relaxed. “Yeah, okay. As I’m sure you already know, it couldn’t be proven that there was a connection between the Webber family cutting out of town and the Russian kid also leaving. But you know, there were a few whispers of what might have happened.”
Jane’s gut clenched. “This Russian kid? He lived in the back house at 43 Warwick Road in Short Hills?”
“I think that’s correct. I know it was right near where that crazy teenager lived who killed that retarded boy.”
“Jordan Copeland?”
“Yeah! Copeland. Must have been some bad
juju
going on in that neighborhood to have all three of them live there.”
“
Three
?”
“Well, yeah? The Russian kid, the Copeland boy and the Webber family.”
Jane felt the floor drop out from beneath her feet. She opened her computer. “Sir, could you hold one second please. I’ve got to take this call.” Jane buried the cell phone underneath a pillow on the bed and quickly entered the Russian kid’s address into the MapFind search engine. The page displayed, depicting a much more detailed overview than the artist’s illustration in
Time
magazine
.
Jane clicked on the boy’s address to include the immediate area around it. “Son-of-a-bitch,” she whispered as she noted the name of the street that ended in a cul-de-sac and
T-boned
right into 43 Warwick Road. It was
Wentworth Drive
. Jane grabbed the phone from under the pillow. “You said people whispered? What exactly did they whisper?”
Holgate sighed, not comfortable with the conversation. “Well…you know? That Jack Webber took the Russian kid and…you know…” His voice trailed off. “Hurt him?”
Jane thanked Holgate and hung up. She was just about to dial Weyler’s cell when he called her.
“Jane!” he said urgently. “I’m back here with Bo at town hall. I just got a call from CBI. They got a hit on the bloody fingerprint on the Ace of Spades. This doesn’t make any sense. It comes back to a missing boy from over forty years ago. His name is Samuel Kolenkoff.”
“Russian…” Jane murmured.
“Yeah. I did a quick background check using different aliases and I found a Sam Cole in the system… same heritage, same hair color, same birth date, same place of birth. He lives in Chicago and he drives a black Nissan pickup truck. He was picked up on several vagrancy charges ten years ago. But here’s where it gets macabre. On his employment history, it states that he worked exclusively at mortuaries and cemeteries.”
Jane looked at the photo of Jake’s dead body. She saw his blackened upturned fingers, his maggot-eaten feet and his mottled chest… His chest. She grabbed the loupe and held it close to the photo. “Jake…”
CHAPTER 35
The shades were drawn in Bailey’s office, lending a funereal mood to the room. It had been several hours after Weyler and Bo left the Van Gordens’ house. Bailey took off in his SUV to clear his head at the Midas gym, leaving Carol alone at home
to roam the massive house in shock. With such a large house, it was easy for someone to sneak in and sit in Bailey’s office chair, cowboy boots propped on his pristine desk and wait. And that’s just what Jane was doing when she heard Carol’s footsteps descend the stairs and cross to Bailey’s office to close the doors.
“Hello, Carol,” Jane quietly said.
Carol jumped and stepped into the room.
Jane rested her Glock on her right knee. “Close the door, Carol.”
“Please put the gun down,” Carol whispered.
Jane didn’t move an inch. “
Close the door
.” Carol did as she was told. “Sit down!” Jane’s voice was harsh.
Carol slid into the chair on the opposite side of Bailey’s desk. She looked like a trapped deer during hunting season. “What do you want?”
“When you look in your husband’s eyes, Carol, what do you see?”
Carol seemed taken aback, not expecting such a question. “ I…ah…”
“Do you see love?”
Her chin quivered as tears welled. “No.”
“Compassion?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Trust?”
The tears streamed down. She shook her head.
“What
do
you see?”
Her eyes brimmed with agony. “Distraction.”
“How does that make you feel?”
She lowered her head. Tears welled and fell to the carpet. “Forgotten…ignored…,” she whispered as a deep ache swelled in her heart.
Jane swung her feet off the desk, still holding the Glock. “How about when you looked at Louise? What did that feel like?”
“I’m not sure…”
“You never felt like you were looking in the mirror? Like you were the fresher version of her, dutifully acting out your appointed role of the passive, blind, numb mother and wife?”
Carol looked up at Jane. “We…we had an understanding.”
“Oh, I bet you did. You were perfect for the part. I bet she handpicked you for the job. She looked for the woman who could be her substitute. Someone who knew how to block out the obvious and turn away at the appropriate moments, pretending that everything was fine.” Jane leaned forward. “Isn’t that what
she
did when she was a young wife with her little son, Bailey? When her husband’s sordid indiscretions reared up, she just turned away. You know what I’m talking about. If I don’t see it, it ain’t there?” Jane got up, moving around the desk slowly in the dim light. “But her husband, Jack
Webber
, made it difficult to keep turning away.” Carol looked at Jane in shock when she heard the name,
Webber
. “Isn’t that right,
Mrs. Webber
?” Carol looked apoplectic. Jane drew the silver cigarette case toward her and tapped on the embellished engraved
W
on top. “Take a look at the only vestige of your married name, honey!
Right there
!” Jane emphasized, forcing Carol to really look at the case. “That’s where Jack
Webber
kept the Chesterfield 101s. And that…” Jane pointed to Bailey’s out of place, rough-at-the-seams desk chair, was the ol’ man’s office chair. I can see the pervert sitting in that chair, smoking his Chesterfields and reading his dirty European kiddie porn magazines. I bet he ordered them from one of those slimy little catalogs they used to have back in the day…the ones that promise you plenty of photographs of naked boys romping in the grass or playing in the stream. So innocent, right? To the untrained eye, it’s not obscene.” Jane stood behind Carol and leaned closer to her. “But to a pedophile like Jack
Webber
, it’s cotton candy, a bag of peanuts and a home run.” Carol turned away from Jane and covered her right ear with her hand. Jane leaned against Carol’s left side. “Does the word
pedophile
disturb your delicate senses, Mrs. Webber?”
Carol turned away again. “
Please…
”
“
Pedophile
, Carol! Your husband’s father was a pedophile! And your mother-in-law knew it, but she didn’t do anything about it! She just kept turning away because that’s the kind of dirty family secret you don’t talk about. She had her money, her nice house in Short Hills…no need to upset the applecart just because ol’ Jack has a compromising compulsion. So, Jack starts with photos and then…
then
it’s time for the first conquest.” Jane pulled up a chair and sat knee-to-knee with Carol. “Now, I wonder who he practiced on? Any ideas?” Tears fell from Carol’s eyes but she stayed silent. “Come on, Carol. The days of you keeping your damn mouth shut are over. Who do you think Jack used first?”