It took Carol almost half a minute before she whispered, “Bailey.”
“If the stats are correct, then you’re right—
Bailey.
Now, I don’t know what Jack did to Bailey. I don’t know how far it went with him. But I do know that Bailey either pissed him off, or he was done with him because Jack decided to look for another little boy. You see, that’s the way it works. They go just so far with the first one before their courage is bolstered and feel they can take it to the next level with the second kid.
Patterns
, Carol. The devil is in a criminal’s known patterns. Discover the pattern and you’ll know the next step of the crime,
unless
he gets caught. And Jack got caught, didn’t he? But as luck would have it, Jack was obscenely rich and the kid he stole and held in some location for…what…a couple weeks?
That
kid wasn’t rich. He was just a fuckin’ immigrant… and a
Russian
immigrant at that! In the late 1960s, no one gave a shit about a Commie immigrant. Maybe the kid’s mama wasn’t a citizen. Maybe ol’ Jack threatened her. Or, maybe…
yes
…his family paid the kid’s mother off and they left. Disappeared. Gone. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” Jane leaned closer. “But sometimes, Carol, those pesky little ghosts from the past who we like to pretend aren’t there, decide that they don’t like being ignored anymore. And they come out of the shadows and turn our lives upside down until
we finally acknowledge them.”
Jane reached over into the darkness and pulled the stack of plastic-covered clues across the desk. She laid Wolfe’s book down on the desk in front of Carol. “And they start to tell us their story.” Jane slapped down the first transcript. “They use words,” she said, following this with the magazine cutout of the boy wearing a red cap being dragged by his arm, “and they use pictures.” Jane angrily slammed the fourth clue of the second transcript on the desk. “Words!” She pounded her fist on the wood as she revealed the graphic drawing that implied sodomy. “And then more extreme pictures!” Carol turned away, but Jane reached over and turned the woman’s face back to the desk. “This is
real
, Carol! Don’t turn away!” Jane showed Carol the riddle about the Packard. “Sometimes they tease us with riddles,” Jane said before reaching across the desk to reveal the stuffed bear. “Or toys that meant something to them.” Jane pressed the front of the stuffed bear to Carol’s face. “You smell that, Carol? That’s vomit from a
long
time ago. That’s vomit from fear when that poor little Russian boy was being raped by Jack
Webber
!”
Carol weakly pushed the bear away and sobbed. “
Please
…
please
don’t…”
Jane stood up, towering over Carol’s submissive frame. “But you already know that,
don’t you
?! Because when Bailey found this clue in his mailbox, he knew
exactly
who in the hell it belonged to! He understood the story that was being told because he was there! He stupidly believed that if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist! But there, right there…” Jane said shaking the bear, “in three-dimensional reality was his worst fucking nightmare! The ghost he thought was long dead had resurrected and was regurgitating a past he thought his family had buried. All these clues that had arrived in your mailbox and didn’t make any sense, suddenly fell into place. Now I understand when Bailey slipped and referred to that ‘little shit,’ he wasn’t talking about Jordan or Jake. He was talking about the little kid from a long time ago because that’s the last time he saw him, so he’s still
a ‘little shit’ in Bailey’s mind. And, later, when Bailey smashed the vase against the wall and said, ‘Fuck him’
again
, he wasn’t talking about Jake!” Jane hovered over Carol’s chair. “So,
he
knew and
you
knew within days of Jake going missing who had him! And
that
is when Bailey made the decision to ignore everything! To pull the reward fund! To not deal with this pesky, buzzing creature who refused to stay dead. That’s when Bailey called in his mama… his frontline, old-guard defense. Maybe he was feeling a little unsure of himself, and he knew that mama Louise could be depended upon to remind him how important it was to bury the past.” Jane forced Carol to look at her. “And when she told him that some sacrifices had to be made and that those sacrifices included losing his only child, he accepted that, didn’t he?”
Carol collapsed on the desk, burying her face in her hands. “Oh, God, please, stop!”
Jane was relentless. “And you went along with it!” she screamed.
Carol raised her head. “What was I supposed to do?” she asked in a weak voice.
“I gave you every opportunity to talk to me! You and I were alone more than once. You could have used
me
to save Jake! But instead, you decided to keep playing the dumb, ignorant, victimized wife!”
“And I will suffer the rest of my life because of it!” Carol said, her voice finally showing some modicum of anger.
Jane sat back. “Well, you’re good at suffering so you shouldn’t have any problem handling that!”
“Why are you talking to me like this? What did I ever do to you?”
Jane shook her head. “Jesus, Carol. You really do have that victim mentality honed to perfection, don’t you?”
Carol reached out to Jane, clutching at Jane’s arm. “If I had Jake back for one minute, I’d tell him that I loved him more than life itself and that I was so sorry…”
Jane believed her. “You know, it’s too damn bad you can’t love yourself as much as you loved your son. If you did, you would have saved him.” Jane sat back. “But little Jake was pretty far gone before fate intervened. He could hear his ancestor screaming from the other side and he thought he was going crazy. But he kept being drawn to books and people who he thought might help shed some insight into all the questions that remained unanswered in his troubled head. His battle cry became,
Truth!
He even got a poster with that word and he put it up in his room so he would always be reminded of his ultimate objective. That poster must have pissed the shit out of Bailey. But the more Jake dug and tried to work out his feelings through his art, the more confused he became. The demons that were unleashed didn’t match the pretty little box that he lived in. And when he
really
started digging…to follow the trails and see where they led, he sure got one fucking eyeful.” Carol stared at Jane, obviously confused. “Oh, you didn’t know about that? He caught his daddy dipping his wick in unfamiliar territory.”
Carol’s mouth dropped open. “
Oh my God
!”
“I know that
you
knew about it. That was another one of those
understandings
you had. But it just didn’t set too well with Jake. I mean, he’s fifteen years old. He’s questioning his own sexuality and he looks in the mirror and he’s not exactly developed or masculine-looking. So, now, Jake is a mess. His entire reality is shot to hell and that damn ghost keeps haunting him from the past. Until one day, he thought that his only recourse was to hang himself. But I understand why he felt that way. It was programmed into his bloodline.” Jane leaned over the desk and slid Jake’s sketchpad to Carol. “And as long as we bury past deeds, we run the risk of unconsciously repeating those deeds over and over again” Jane opened the pad and flipped the pages in front of Carol several times. The woman’s eyes shone with astonishment and shock. “Just like Jake’s grandfather ended up stashed away in a mental hospital…it
was
a mental hospital, wasn’t it? I thought it was a prison cell at first, but I did a quick check and
there’s no record of Jack Webber going to prison. And of course, he didn’t! Because the crime was never reported! But that didn’t mean that the family wanted him around. He was a liability and so the decision was made to stash him away in an asylum because, remember Mrs. Webber…if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” Jane continued to flip the animated pages showing the old man stepping onto a chair and hanging himself. “So one day, Jack Webber, wearing his Palm Beach shirt and his fedora, stood up in his room in the asylum and tied his belt around a beam and hung himself.” Jane snapped the book shut. “Problem solved!” Carol jumped, startled.
“But, you know what, Carol? Patterns…patterns…patterns… They stalk us. Wonder how long it’ll take before Bailey hits rock bottom and finds a good piece of rope?” Carol looked at Jane incredulously. “Oh, yeah. It wouldn’t shock me one bit. Jake certainly got acquainted with a strong rope before he was rescued.”
“Rescued?” Carol asked.
“Yeah, rescued from the rope only to be held against his will. From the frying pan and into the fire. That’s pretty bad karma, wouldn’t you say?”
“But… how would he know where to find Jake?” she whimpered.
“His name is Samuel Kolenkof. He goes by Sam Cole. Did they ever tell you his name?” Carol shook her head. “Well, they probably figured the least said to you the better. So, how did Sam find Jake? I’m not sure. But I do know that when you want something badly enough, you figure out how to get it.”
Carol started to think. “What about Jordan Copeland? You arrested him.”
Jane pursed her lips. “It’s still up in the air as to how that one plays out.” Jane got up, gathering the clues together and stuffed them, save for the teddy bear, into Jake’s sketchpad. “You know, the best gift you can ever get is a good night’s sleep. How many years has it been since you’ve had one of those, Mrs. Webber?”
Carol stayed silent as Jane moved to the office doors.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Carol said, her voice hardly above a whisper. “The way you keep trying to make someone happy and you can’t do it. No matter how hard you try, they’re never satisfied. And the only reason you keep trying is because you want to be loved and feel safe.”
Jane considered her words. “Get off the cross, Carol.”
It was obvious that the town’s Twenty-first Century improvements hadn’t reached the Midas jail yet. Located behind Town Hall, the building housed three small cells and one interrogation room with an observation area on the other side. A tiny, secured front room held a desk and computer and a deputy whenever the cells were occupied. When Jane arrived in that front room, the deputy greeted her and asked if she wanted him to accompany her. She declined his offer, but before he buzzed her through the large door, she asked him one question.
“This area here, it’s still low-tech, right? No cameras on the cell block?”
“No, ma’am. Only camera is in the interrogation room.”
Jane followed the deputy down the short hallway that led to the first of the three cells. In her hand, she carried a small plastic trash bag filled with items. When she saw Jordan, her heart ached. He was seated on the cot with his back braced against the cement wall. He wore his usual oilcloth duster and still had the same unkempt appearance. But his face was bruised and his lip bloodied by the beating that Bo had given him. He wasn’t broken, but he was on the road to that location.
Jordan refused to look at Jane. She instructed the deputy to let her inside the cell. He vehemently tried to dissuade her, worried that Jordan was “half-cocked” and would harm her.
“I need to go into the cell, please,” Jane stressed. “If he tries anything,” she said in full voice, “I’ve got a gun and I’ll just shoot him.” The deputy was too stupid to realize that her tone of voice was purely sarcastic. But Jordan got it. She looked out the
corner of her eye and saw Jordan smirking.
The deputy unlocked the cell and let Jane inside, locking it behind her. He told her to call out whenever she needed him. Once the deputy was out of the area, Jordan broke the silence.
“I read once that the minute sheep are born, they’re looking for a place to die.” He turned to Jane, his face awash in a life that knew no soft edges. “I never thought of myself as a lamb before. But now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I can see that, like a lamb, I’m headed to slaughter.” He looked at Jane with hard eyes. “And you’re gonna take me there, aren’t you?”
Jane pulled up a folding chair from against the wall and set it in front of the cot. She sat down and placed the trash bag beside her.
“Let me ask you a question, Jane. Do you attend Women’s Empowerment Workshops?
“No, I do not.”
“And why is that?”
“Because no businesswoman worth her salt is going to give another woman the secret to success or any competitive edge when the playing field is clearly overcrowded.”
Jordan smiled broadly. “Oh, Jane. You are such a cynic.”
“I’m a realist. I understand how most people think. And I’m pretty good at figuring out people’s motives.”
“Well, we are just two peas in a very strange little pod, aren’t we?”
Jane opened the trash bag and pulled out Jordan’s boot with the tack in the sole. She held the boot sole up, pointing to the tack. “You know all the little tricks, don’t you?”
Jordan smiled a mischievous grin. “You never know what they’re gonna ask you. It helps to have something in your back pocket that you can quickly put in your shoe… just in case.”
“In case they ask you something simple like if you’re the son of Richard and Joanna Copeland?”
“Exactly.”
She set the boot on the floor. “You checked out Thomas
Wolfe’s book,
You Can’t Go Home Again
at the Midas Library.”
Jordan shrugged his shoulders. “I check out a lot of books. What’s the problem? Did I not return that particular one? You going to add a library fine to the charges?”
Jane rooted through the trash bag and pulled out the two telephones Weyler found in his cabin. “You said you didn’t have a phone.”
“I guess I should have been more specific. There is no
phone jack
in the cabin. Therefore, I don’t have a phone that operates in my domicile.”
“Why do you have these?”
“When
Eddie
sent my belongings to me after I got out, he included those phones in the boxes. But I’ve never used them and I just stuffed them away in the farthest corner I could find.”