Revelations (8 page)

The last clue was written in all capital letters:

“His parents got the sicko drawing with the blank sheet of paper,” Bo added. “The last two were delivered under the mat out front. This one,” he pointed to the
I BEARED MY SOUL
… clue, “showed up this mornin’!”

Jane stared at the graphic drawing of the young boy that implied sodomy. She’d seen a lot of perversion directed at children in the early days when she worked four hard years in assault but this sketch somehow seemed more explicit. She felt deep down in her gut that what was drawn on that page had indeed already occurred. Now, the idea of Jake being a runaway was starting to feel less likely
if
his “scrawny, shy, sensitive, artistic” description was indeed valid. And yet, the more Jane scanned the clues, the more she felt that there was a deeper
implied
message as well as an actual and quite
valid
threat to Jake’s family. She began to regret her knee-jerk phone call to Betty at the runaway shelter. It was now clear to her that this case would require some intense thought, and intense thought usually involved a pack of cigarettes. She pinched the skin between her eyes hard, realizing that she had never worked a case without nicotine fueling her adrenal glands. Suddenly, the idea of making any headway on this case seemed beyond comprehension.

“You got a problem?” Bo’s voice broke the silence.

Jane pulled herself out of her self-imposed mind fuck. “I’m good,” she said succinctly.

Bo searched his desk. “I got a fax somewhere around here from a
profiler
at Quantico…” Vi spotted the sheet on his desk and handed it to him. Jane immediately noted a strange apprehension in her movement as she put the fax in Bo’s hands. Bo pursed his lips as his eyes scanned the page. “Oh, hell!” he tossed the page toward Weyler, “I don’t have to read the goddamn thing again. See, I got it memorized. Suspect is a male
Caucasian, thirty-five to fifty-five years old, educated, social outcast, dissociative disorder due to early childhood trauma. Prefers to operate alone, rather than work with an accomplice. Based on handwriting, is exacting and seeks retribution for past wrongs. Likes order. Wants his message to be clearly heard. Has an overwhelming need to prove himself.”

Weyler finished reading the page. “You’ve still got a photographic memory, Bo.”

He turned his head slightly to Vi. “10-4. I sure do.” He shifted in his seat. “I called up the feller in Quantico and told him to let me know what kind of coffee the son-of-a-bitch likes so when I pick him up, I can have a cup ready.”

“I thought you liked Jordan Copeland for this,” Weyler asked.

“Oh, yeah. Trash Bag is definitely the
numero uno
pervert on my short list.”

“Trash Bag?” Jane said.

Bo leaned forward, looking weary as he explained himself. “I look at Copeland and I think of a trash bag…a big brown plastic trash bag. A human
blivet…
ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag. A walking, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound dingleberry…
a trash bag.
It follows!”

Jane stared at Bo, speechless. Jake Van Gorden was a
Juice Box
and Jordan Copeland was a
Trash Bag
. The visuals were stunning.

“Vi, why don’t you set up the video of Trash Bag’s interview with me.” Vi worked her way around the crowded office to a small monitor near the file cabinet. Jane noted how antiquated the system was versus what Denver Headquarters had installed. “Beanie,” Bo said to Weyler, “you give her the background on Copeland?” Weyler nodded. “What the paperwork don’t tell you is the high and mighty son-of-a-bitch he’s become! He don’t talk like a common criminal. Nah, he’s
educated
. He got himself not one but
two
college degrees while sittin’ in his cell.”

“What in?” Weyler asked.

Bo leaned forward to make his exaggerated point. “Philosophy and
esoteric
psychology. Our tax dollars at work! When I got wind that Copeland was comin’ to live here two years ago, I ’bout shit a brick. In the five years he’d been out at that time, he’d lived in no less than
six
places. Got run out of
all
six places. One of the towns he lived in, a bunch of teenagers damn near beat the crap out of him. It almost became an annual event to kick Jordan’s ass. Can’t blame ’em. Nobody wants a goddamn child killer or ‘Chester’ livin’ ’round them?”

Chester
was a word amalgamation of
child
and
molester.
“I didn’t know Jordan molested Daniel Marshall,” Jane offered.

“He didn’t,” Bo stated. “But you know as well as I do that child killers can graduate to molesting…especially when they’ve had thirty-four years to sit in a cell and think on how they want to get back at society.”

“So, Jordan picks a town known for its secrets, in hopes of getting better treatment?” Jane deduced.

“Maybe, but livin’ here ain’t no guarantee people like him will be safe,” Bo tartly replied. “I’m partly responsible for his two year streak livin’ here and not gettin’ a weekly beat-down. Let’s get one thing straight:
I don’t like Jordan Copeland
. He’s got a stink on him like cat piss on shag carpet. But my job is to protect the citizens of this town and that’s what I do. I’ve protected that child killer ever since he moved his sorry ass to Midas. People here keep to themselves but that doesn’t mean some citizens didn’t fantasize about tying him to the bumper of a trailer and taking him for a scrape down the road, or burnin’ down his little log cabin on the river…”

“Is that why he lives outside of town and doesn’t drive a car?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not his real estate agent. I’m just the guy who’s hired to make sure we don’t find him tits up, DRT on the side of the road.”

Jane hadn’t heard the cop term
DRT
for
dead right there
in a long time. “So you’ve protected him for two years,” Jane said.

“I protect everyone in this town.
Everyone
. People don’t move to Midas to live in the spotlight. They come here to lay low and live out their lives in peace and quiet. And it’s my job to make sure they
get
their peace and quiet!”

“Do you keep their secrets?” Jane asked.

Bo was caught off guard. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“One that could use an answer!” Jane wasn’t about to back down.

Bo stood up, leaning his large gut over his desk. “I
protect
people!”

Vi put her hand gently on Bo’s back to calm him down. “Bo…”

Bo retreated and sat back down, cringing as his large ass hit the chair. He snapped up his cigar and puffed several times on it. “You got that tape cued up, Vi?” Vi nodded. “Let ‘er rip.”

Vi depressed the
PLAY
button. The video between Jordan Copeland and Bo Lowry began. They sat across from each other at an empty table. Jordan appeared seriously disheveled. His straggly, curly salt-and-pepper hair was matted with cakes of dried mud; his grey beard and mustache sported the same filthy look. His face—although mostly hidden by his beard and mustache—looked ravaged by time and regular beatings. The crystal, enigmatic, nearly translucent blue eyes that stared back at Jane from the mug shot in 1968 were now dim, clouded by prison and a grim, lonely existence. He wore an oilcloth duster that brushed his mid-calf and was draped with threads of mud. While she couldn’t be certain, Jordan’s large hands looked to still have the remnants of the blood Weyler mentioned. As a whole, Jane had to admit that Jordan Copeland did indeed look like a giant human trash bag.

“It don’t look too good for you, Jordan,” Bo’s voice rang out tinny on the video. “Where’d the blood on your hands come from?”

Jane watched as Jordan’s body language reflected complete
condescension mixed with distrust of Bo. It was the way he pulled his shoulder away from Bo and the manner in which he glanced across the tiny room when he spoke to Bo instead of looking him in the eye.

“I told you,” Jordan stated in a
been here before
tenor, “I was running outside along the riverbank and I fell.”

“That explains the mud, Jordan. That don’t explain the blood.”

“Well, I know it
don’t.
” Jordan’s voice turned demeaning. “I can’t tell you where the blood came from…”

“
Can’t
tell me or
won’t
tell me?” Bo yelled.

“
I don’t know
,” Jordan replied in a surly fashion. “I must have cut myself when I was running.”

“Why were you runnin’ in the middle of a goddamn rainstorm? At
night
?”

Bo motioned for Vi to put the tape on
PAUSE
. “See, the thing is with ol’ Trash Bag here, he’s hardly ever
inside
his dingbat cave. He prefers to roam the woods around his property night and day.” He raised a judgmental eyebrow. “Reminds me of someone who’s been over-vaccinated!” Bo motioned for Vi to start the video again.

“Why were you runnin’, Jordan?” Bo repeated the question to Jordan on the video. Jordan sat motionless. “Did Jake slip out of the noose on the bridge and fall in the river? Did you find him, Jordan? You pull him out of the river? Was he dead? Or did you kill him like you killed that poor little, retarded Danny Marshall forty-one years ago?” Jordan turned his body away from Bo. “You hide Jake’s body on your property?
Are we gonna find that boy’s dead body under your goddamn bed
?”

Jordan looked like he wanted to jump across the table and kill Bo. Instead, the convicted felon just sat seething, his eyes purposely turned away from Lowry. “I…blacked…out…by… the…river.” Jordan said, in measured syncopation.

“
Blacked out
? Well, you sure picked one helluva time to do that, Jordan!”

Jordan collected his thoughts and turned to Bo. “I am the ruler of shovels. I have a double. I am as thin as a knife. I have a wife. What am I?”

On the tape, Bo sat back in his chair. “What in the hell are you jabberin’ about?”

Jordan let a smug snigger.

Bo looked at Weyler. “He’s just a bubble shy of bein’ level, eh, Beanie?” Bo asked Vi to fast forward to the section where Jordan is given a polygraph. “I was hopin’ that if I went knee-to-knee with him, I’d get a confession. But that was a big ol’ 10-74. So, we put him on the box.” Bo looked at Vi. “Ready?”

Vi nodded and hit the
PLAY
button again. Jordan was strapped to a lie detector. Across the table, a polygraph expert asked him questions and jotted down notes.

“Is your name Jordan Richard Copeland?” the man asked Jordan.

“Yes.” Jordan answered quietly.

“Do you live in Midas, Colorado?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a beard and mustache?”

Jordan shifted slightly in his chair. “Yes.”

Jane watched the tape carefully. The first questions were controls, used to ascertain a baseline response line that, when stressed, could determine a possible lie. The way that skilled criminals “beat the box” is to use the control questions so that the peak comparison values on later pertinent questions—questions that can determine guilt or innocence—don’t equate. This could be done a variety of ways: inserting a tack into your shoe and pressing your toe on it during a control question, squeezing your anus together on the question or varying one’s breathing techniques to create artificial stress. It was for this reason that Jane watched Jordan more closely when he shifted in his chair when he answered “yes” to a simple question about his beard and mustache.

“Are you the son of Richard and Joanna Copeland?”

“Yes.” Jordan stared straight ahead, his voice extremely modulated.

Jane leaned closer to the monitor, looking for a
tell
but the poor quality of the video didn’t allow for reading the minutia.

The questions continued with the expected, “Did you kidnap Jake Van Gorden?” “Did you have any knowledge of Jake Van Gorden’s kidnapping?” and “Are you connected in any way with Jake Van Gorden’s kidnapping?” The clincher came in the form of “Did you kill Jake Van Gorden?”

Bo motioned for Vi to shut off the video, thanked her for her help and then told her she could go. “So, see, between the fact that he beat the box and we didn’t find any dead bodies inside his little log shack or around his property, we had to cut the Trash Bag loose.” He sucked a hard drag off his cigar. “I could pick him up again on some trumped up charge. You know, aggravated mopery or P.O.P.O., but if I can’t get him to sing, it’s a goddamn waste of time!” Jane recognized P.O.P.O. as
Pissing Off the PO-lice
, a sometimes-common charge used by cock-of-thewalk cops who like to flaunt their muscle with a perp they don’t like but don’t have enough ammo to hang. Bo set the cigar in an ashtray, leaned forward, clasping his hands together and looked at Weyler. “This is a tough one, Beanie. Ain’t no way to
Gomez
this case away.”

“’Gomez?’” Jane said, incredulously. “I’ve never heard that one.”

Weyler turned to her, a sly look on his face. “Really? It’s an old school term.”

Bo shared a private glance with Weyler.

“My dad was a cop,” Jane offered. “I heard them all. But I never heard to
Gomez
something away.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you ain’t as smart as you think you are!” Bo chortled in a satisfied manner. “Back to ol’ Trash Bag, it’s worth mentionin’ that no clues were delivered while Jordan got his three hots and a cot. I also think it’s a tad odd that we got a bunch of clues that make no sense and one of them is a riddle
and this yahoo is jammerin’ on about
I am the ruler of the shovels.
I hear that shit and I’m thinkin’ he’s dug a hole on his property and buried the kid’s body!”

“He’s testing you,” Jane stated.

“Excuse me?”

“He’s an East Coast elitist and he doesn’t suffer fools.”

Bo’s face suddenly became extremely hard. “You sayin’ I’m stupid?”