Read Online Revelations by Laurel Dewey - Free Book Online

starts talking again. Wouldn’t there be whimpering and screaming in the background during the whole message for better effect?”
    “Hell, it’s a not a goddamn Hollywood movie here,” Bo said, irritated.
    “No, Jane’s got a good point,” Weyler nodded. “It’s too rehearsed. Too planned out. And the kid does sound much younger than fifteen.”
    Jane felt finally vindicated. “Like I said, Jake ran away and he’s pimping his parents with this shit! Look, I called…” She was just about to mention her conversation with Betty at the runaway shelter that morning when Bo interrupted.
    “But if it’s a setup, the kid’s not askin’ for money!” Bo argued. “So, if there’s no ransom, what’s the point of all this?
Scaring the shit out of your parents?”
    “Maybe so!” Jane replied. “Maybe he’s trying to teach them a lesson…”
    “10-74. That ain’t Jake’s style, see! He’s a quiet kid, a little offbeat perhaps. If I had to describe him in three words, I’d say, scrawny, shy and…artistic.”
    Jane noticed that when Bo said the word artistic, there was another word he wanted to use but chose not to. “What do you mean by offbeat ?”
    “He’s got a ponytail ‘bout seven inches long,” Bo emphasized this statement with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “Usually stuffs it inside these hats he likes to wear. You know? The hats from the 60s that those fellas in the Rat Pack used to sport.”
    “Fedoras?” Weyler asked.
    “Yeah, them. ’Round here, it’s either ball caps or a cowboy hat, but not fedoras. ” There was a slight mocking tone to Bo’s voice. “Nah, Jake’s the sensitive artist type. I mean, come on, he’s got a goddamn ponytail. No matter how pissed-off he might be at his folks, he’s not gonna go this far! He’d draw a picture before he did this!”
    “What kind of stuff does he draw?” Jane asked.
    “When we searched his room, we saw a bunch of sketch pads with doodles all over them. Nothin’ with guns or monsters. Just harmless doodles.” Bo turned to Vi. “Didn’t we start a file on little Juice Box?”
    Vi nodded and left the room momentarily to grab Jake’s file.
    Jane sat back in her chair, furtively glancing over her shoulder at Vi. Amazingly, she repeated the same pattern of removing the file from the cabinet, ripping off the sheet on the front of the file, securing that sheet in her drawer and then returning to Bo’s office. She handed the file to Bo.
    “See what I’m talkin’ about,” Bo stated, laying several pages on his cluttered desk.
    The drawings were hardly what Jane would call doodles.
They were well-executed drawings, mainly of cars, dirt bikes and fedoras. However, in the corner of the last page was a small but precise drawing of pretty girl’s three-quarter profile. Jane recalled what Betty at the runaway shelter mentioned about Jake leaving town to meet a girl. “Who’s that?” Jane asked, pointing to the girl on the page.
    Bo turned the page around. It didn’t take him long to respond. “That’s Mollie. Jake’s girlfriend. Daughter of the Methodist preacher in town. He and his wife also own the B&B you two are gonna be staying at. Jake was real smitten with Mollie.”
    “Was?” Jane asked.
    “Yeah, see, she broke up with him two weeks ago. He took it real hard.”
    “A reason to want to hang himself on the ol’ bridge?” Weyler proposed.
    “Or a reason to set it up like a suicide and then run away to gain sympathy,” Jane countered. “Did you find a suicide note in his room or at the bridge?”
    “No,” Bo answered curtly.
    “Well, if the suicide was spur of the moment, he might not have left a note. But most kids…most people…leave notes… if this is real. And you have to admit, the chances of Jake being kidnapped while in the process of attempting suicide is stretching the plausibility factor off the chart! We cannot categorically rule out that Jake is not involved in his own disappearance.”
    “Well, I