Authors: Rick Reed

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

The Coldest Fear (29 page)

BOOK: The Coldest Fear

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CHAPTER
SEVENTY-FIVE

The killer watched the morning edition of Channel Six news. It was a rehash of last night's stand-up spot with Claudine Setera.
“Reporting live from Shawneetown, Illinois,”
Claudine was saying into the microphone. The camera panned to a man in a police uniform.
It's that shit-kicker lieutenant from the Shawneetown PD,
the killer thought as he turned up the volume.

“Can you tell us the names of the victims, Lieutenant Johnson?” Claudine cooed.

The cop leaned into the camera, a serious look on his smooth, young face, and said, “I'm sorry, Ms. Setera. I'm not at liberty to release the names yet, pending notification of the next of kin.” He delivered this line as if he had rehearsed it all morning. Like it was his case and not the bailiwick of the Illinois State Police.
What a self-important little jerk,
the killer thought. But there was something familiar about the man's voice.

“Will you be working with the Illinois State Police on this investigation, Lieutenant?” Claudine asked.

“You betcha,” JJ said, and smiled proudly.

The killer felt a tingle of excitement.
Didn't the blackmailer use those words?
“You betcha,” the killer said out loud, and a satisfied smile crossed his lips. He'd killed three men to find this man and here he was on television. The news media is a wonderful thing.

CHAPTER
SEVENTY-SIX

Jack left Liddell at the house in Johnson Place, where Lenny Bange had gone out with a nightmarish splash. The attorney had suffered dozens of lacerations from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet and several broken bones, and his face had been removed and was missing.

The crime lab had called and said there were at least two blood types in the samples that Sergeant Walker had taken from the dog at the veterinarian clinic. Both were human blood, but it was possible that the dog had somehow gotten blood on him from Jon Samuels and the other victim at that scene. It was too early to get excited until that blood was compared by the Illinois State Police with samples from the two victims.

It was a Friday afternoon, and Halloween had turned out to be the nightmare Jack was afraid it would be. The vet's office called to remind him that he had to pick up Cinderella before the office closed for the day.

Driving down Lincoln Avenue toward downtown, Jack punched the speed dial for Susan's cell phone. It rang several times and he was about to disconnect when her voice came over the line.

“Hello, stranger. I thought you had forgotten me,” she said.

Jack smiled. “How could I forget you?” he said.

“So what kind of favor do you need?” she asked.

“I'm hurt that you would think I only call you to ask for a favor, Suze.”

“So you don't want a favor?” she asked.

“I do need something, now that you ask,” he admitted. “But, I'm still hurt that you jumped to that conclusion. What kind of man do you think I am?”

“You're a man. Enough said,” she chided.

“Thank you for noticing. Now, about the favor,” he said, and explained what he wanted. After she agreed, he punched the off button and concentrated on the next task. This one would not be so easy. It was time to lock himself in the war room and try to make sense of this case.

He would like to have Liddell involved in this, but someone had to stay with the Bange case and no one was better qualified to do that than his partner. An idea struck him and he dialed a number on his cell phone.

“Agent Tunney,” said the voice from the other end.

Jack explained his idea and then stepped down hard on the accelerator.

Jack made one more call before arriving at police headquarters, this one to Captain Franklin to update him on the new twist in events. Franklin had offered to move the war room to Two-Jakes Marina for more privacy, but things had happened so fast that never took place. The basement of police headquarters was a pain in the backside, but it was what they had.

Jack made his way to the basement of police headquarters, but this time he used a little-known entrance near the traffic meter maids' office. At the end of a long hallway he used a key he had begged from one of the maintenance crew and entered an unmarked door. On the other side he was in the main hallway of the basement near the department classroom that was used for press conferences. He cracked the door and listened to be sure he was alone before he entered. Only he and Liddell knew of this entrance, and he planned on keeping it that way.

He rounded a corner and almost ran into Special Agent Frank Tunney, who was waiting for him.

“Agent Tunney,” Jack said. “Thanks for getting here so quick.”

“Jack,” Tunney said, “I think we need to talk.”

Jack reached for the handle to the war-room door and Tunney blocked his hand. “I mean âwe' need to talk. Alone.”

Jack saw something was bothering the man. “Okay. We can use the department classroom. There was no one in it when I came by there.”

Tunney followed Jack down the hall. They entered the department classroom and made sure they were alone, then shut the door behind them. “Okay. You go first,” Jack said, and sat on the edge of one of the tables.

Tunney paced in that distracted way he had when he was thinking of the appropriate words to use. Finally he said, “I wanted to tell you this, but I don't want it to influence your investigation.”

“Well,” Jack said. “Tell me.”

Tunney paced again, and this time Jack reached out and stopped him. “Come on, Frank,” Jack said, skipping the formalities. “Say what's on your mind. You're killing me with suspense.”

“I think I know who the killer is,” Tunney said.

CHAPTER
SEVENTY-SEVEN

Detective Larry Jansen stood perfectly still. The noise had come from upstairs somewhere. It could have been the creaking of a bedspring, but he wasn't sure. He glanced at the hand axe that was lying on the chair in front of him. It was partially wrapped in a white dish towel that had reddish stains on it.

He listened for the noise to come again. It might be the old lady. Maybe she had heard him come in and had gotten up to investigate? Maybe it was Arnold? Maybe he was still in the house somewhere and had hidden when he heard Jansen making noise at the back door?

He peeked around the corner and looked down the hallway that led to the stairs and up to the second floor and the old lady's bedroom. Arnold's bedroom was past the stairs on the first floor. He could see that the door was shut to that room. There was a bathroom and a storage closet off that hallway, and both those doors were shut as well.

Larry craned his head around the other direction and saw the living room and entryway. Nothing. The house was surprisingly neat. Arnold had even kept the plastic covers on the couch, loveseat, and chair in the living room. The throw rug looked freshly vacuumed. No dirty dishes, no discarded food wrappers, no magazines or newspapers or any of the detritus that you would expect to find in a single man's house.
I got a housekeeper and my place ain't this clean,
Jansen thought.

The noise didn't come again, so he decided to continue his little walk-through of Arnold's house. He would leave the axe where it was for now. He knew the murders Murphy and Blanchard were looking into involved something like a hand axe. But Arnold? No way!

The hallway was devoid of any photos, paintings, wall sconces, any type of decoration. Jansen could see square outlines on the walls, indicating that at one time the walls had been decorated.

When he reached the door of Arnold's bedroom he was surprised to find there was a Schlage lock on the door knob.
Why would Arnold put a lock on his bedroom?
Jansen wondered. He tried the knob. It was locked.
People don't lock interior doors unless there's something inside they don't want you to find,
he thought.

He pulled out the leather wallet that contained his lock picks. The celluloid wouldn't work on this door. He would need the metal picks, and it had been a while since he'd used them.

Jansen inserted the longer pick that ended with a small curve at the end and felt gently along the inside. There were five tumblers in this lock. He located each one and then inserted a second tool in the lock opening. This one was straight and stiff and was only needed to keep tension on the plate that would allow him to turn the barrel that contained the tumblers.

Keeping pressure on the tension bar, and twisting it to the right, he again dragged the other pick across the tumblers. He was rewarded with a soft
snick
as the barrel turned to the right. The door popped open.

He was about to enter the bedroom when the noise came from upstairs again. He braced himself, expecting Arnold's mother to call out. But nothing happened. As much as he hated to, he decided that he needed to go up the stairs.

He pulled Arnold's bedroom door almost closed. He had never been upstairs before, but he knew that Arnold always talked about his mother being on the second floor.

He took the steps, carefully at first, and then realizing that he was not making any noise on the thick carpet, he quickened his pace. At the top, a small landing led to two doorways. The one on the left was shut, but the one on the right led to a pink-tiled bathroom.

Jansen stepped into the bathroom and noticed the smell of something burnt. He looked in the sink and saw wet ashes and bits and scraps of paper. The faucet had been left dripping. He turned the water off without thinking. Then he heard the sound again. This time it was coming from across the landing. From the other room. The one that must belong to Arnold's mother.

I know I'm gonna regret this,
he thought, and walked to the closed door.

“You've got to be kidding me,” Jack said. “How do you figure Blake James for the killer?”

“Think it through, Jack,” Tunney said. “How long has he been in Evansville? And what do you really know about him? Where did he come from? Family? Friends? There are a lot of questions, but I know in my gut it's him.”

“You have a hunch is what you're saying?” Jack asked. “And what am I supposed to do with your hunch?”

“I'm just saying we need to check it out,” Tunney said.

“Agent Tunney. I'm in the middle of an investigation, and I don't have shit for evidence. If I start looking into this guy's background and he finds out, a shit storm will come down on this department that even the FBI wouldn't be able to save us from.”

“So you won't check it out,” Tunney said.

“No. I'll check it out. So happens I don't like the jerk anyway. But I'll have to run it by the captain and the chief first.”

Tunney scoffed. “You think they will let you make calls on a media darling's background?” He shook his head. “And I thought the FBI was supposed to be the weak ninnies.”

Jack knew that Tunney was right. The chief of police needed to be left out of this. Plausible deniability and all that horse rot.

Tunney read Jack's silence for agreement. “So who do you trust?” Tunney asked.

“Let's go see Garcia.”

CHAPTER
SEVENTY-EIGHT

JJ looked around his office at the police department and wondered how he had allowed himself to get involved in all this trouble.
It's all Cordelia's fault,
he thought. But he knew that he had made the choice to pursue the people in her diary. It had seemed like a good idea.

He flipped through the single police report that had come in that weekâa domestic violenceâand not even all that violent. A woman slapped her drunk husband around a little. JJ knew the guy and he deserved more than a slapping.
What kind of guy files charges against his wife?

His thoughts turned to the two murders at the apartment complex. The sight of Jon Samuels's nearly decapitated body had made him nauseous. But the headless, handless corpse just inside the front door was even more of a gut-wrenching sight. Still, it was exciting. He couldn't wait to get on with another police department. A big one, where he could make detective.

That cute little female reporter Claudine had interviewed him and then she had given him her private telephone number.
Man, I'd like to bite me a piece of that off,
he thought, remembering how her blouse had swelled to overflowing. If he was a big-city detective he'd have more of that stuff than he could handle.

But he still had a problem to deal with. Jon's murder couldn't have been coincidental, no matter what his Uncle Bob said. Bob had been a cop almost all of his life, and he thought that he knew everything.

Uncle Bob had decided that Jon was killed because he was a homosexual. When JJ tried to argue that no one had ever been killed for something like thatâat least not in Shawneetown, Illinoisâthe chief had argued that it was because of Cordelia living a life of sin and that with the additional negative influence of Samuels being a “homo” that it was “bound to happen.”

Such a hypocrite,
JJ thought.
Uncle Bob's name is in Cordelia's diary, too. So I guess the Lord will smite him eventually.
But he didn't think that a serial killer would be doing God's bidding, and then there was the fact that Uncle Bob didn't know about Cordelia's diary. He also didn't have a clue that JJ had been making calls to people that were in it.

When JJ saw Jon Samuels carved up on the couch, his face missing, and the man on the floor, a jolt had shaken him like a lightning strike. Those were not random murders. He didn't understand what the big man was doing at Jon's place, but maybe the chief was right about that part of it. Maybe that guy was just one of Jon's friends? Or maybe it was someone looking for Cordelia who didn't know she was dead? But it didn't feel that way to him. It felt like some big badass killer had come to Shawneetown to seek vengeance.

JJ wondered if he was next in line because of the calls he had made, but he had been very careful to make the calls from pay phones, and only when he was out of town. There was no way anyone would connect these deaths back to him. No way that the killer would know about JJ Johnson. He was safe as long as he kept his head down and quit making phone calls.

He wadded up the domestic-violence police report and tossed it, one handed, across the trailer, where it swished through the plastic basketball hoop he had affixed to the wall. He jumped from his seat and raised his arms overhead doing a little victory dance, when the phone rang on his desk.

“Lieutenant JJ Johnson, Shawneetown Police Department,” he said into the receiver.

“We need to meet,” the voice said.

JJ felt his knees go weak.

BOOK: The Coldest Fear

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