The Cruelest Cut (10 page)

Because Two-Jakes was set out over the Ohio River, travelers along the waterway could tie off at the restaurant's floating dock and enjoy fine dining and an assortment of imported and local beers that would make an Irishman weep with joy.

One reason Jack wanted to go to Two-Jakes was because his father had been one of the original Jakes. Jack had inherited half ownership upon his father's death a few years ago. The other reason was the food.

Jack and Liddell drove separately with the idea of eating a late supper and then calling it a night. Jack had called the charge nurse at St. Mary's Hospital and was informed Elaine Lamar was still heavily sedated. Maybe they could talk to her in the morning. So far, police records had yielded zip information on a next of kin for Timothy Ryan. Juvenile Division thought they might have a lead on the mother's last boyfriend who was supposed to be caring for Timmy, but so far that had gone nowhere. Tomorrow Jack would have the additional help the captain had promised. Sleep was what was needed now.

Correction. Food first, and then sleep.

On his way to the restaurant Jack called Susan Summers.

“I was just heading home,” she said.

“Your home or mine?” Jack asked.

When he had first come home from the hospital, Susan had stayed at his cabin for several nights, only going back to her own home to do laundry and pay bills. But as he got back on his feet, she spent more nights at her own home than with him.

“Mine,” she answered. “I thought you would be tied up on this case.”

He was surprised to feel disappointed that she wouldn't be at the cabin tonight, not that he would be any kind of company. He looked at his watch. It was almost nine o'clock.

“Kind of at a dead end until the morning,” he admitted. “How about dinner? On me.”

“That sounds lovely,” Susan said. “Two-Jakes?”

“Ah, you know me well,” Jack said. “We're going to meet Liddell there, too, if that's okay?”

“Of course it's okay,” she said. “You know I like big, strong men.”

“You don't have to kiss up to me. I already said I was buying,” he said, and she chuckled.

“You don't have a jealous bone in your body, do you?” Susan asked in a feigned hurt tone.

“I think I broke that one, too,” Jack responded. “See you in a few minutes.”

“I can hardly wait,” she said and hung up.

The parking lot was almost full when he arrived, which was a good thing, and Jack spotted Liddell standing at the side door. As he walked up Liddell hooked a thumb toward the business and said, “You got to be making a fortune.”

“Yeah, that's me. Daddy Warbucks,” Jack said. “Susan's coming.”

“You old dog.” Liddell playfully punched Jack on the shoulder. It hurt.

“It's the least I could do,” Jack said, rubbing his shoulder. “I mean, she is helping with these cases.”

“And she's beautiful and sexy, too. Right?”

“I hadn't noticed,” Jack lied. “Have you called Marcie today?”

“Yeah. She said to tell you to be careful.”

“You're the one Marcie should be worried about, Bigfoot. I have a pure heart, and therefore, am impervious to evil, whereas, you have very big feet and seem to step in it up to your fat head.”

“So, that begs the question, why is this asshole trying to get at you and not me?” Liddell said. It was a fair question.

After the hullabaloo at the station late last night, Maddy had given up and gone home exhausted. It had been nearly impossible to drag out of bed at five o'clock in the morning, but the first thing she did was check her answering machine and her e-mail.
Nothing.

She turned on the radio in the bathroom and stripped off her nightgown, stepping into the shower and turning it as hot as she could stand it. In her mind, she went over a list of things to do today.

She had managed to sneak in to the Lamar woman's room last night, but the nurse had given the woman something so strong that all she could do was grunt. Then when she got back to the station, Detective Jansen was being led out by an angry Captain Franklin. She wasn't present during all the excitement, but several employees told her that Jansen and Lois Hensley had gotten into a verbal knock-down, drag-out fight. In a way, she felt a little sorry for Detective Jansen. Although he could be very crude, he had been a good source of info for her at times. But calling Lois a nosy old biddy was just plain stupid.

She looked in her closet and laid out clothes appropriate for the morning's tasks. She planned on going directly to the police department first, to see what progress they had made. She knew they were upset with her for last night's story, but they surely didn't expect her to keep it quiet that there was a serial killer loose in Evansville. Well, maybe she had stretched things a little calling the killer “Mother Goose,” but that was her job. She was doing a public service.

She selected a black skirt, short enough to complement her long legs, and a silk blouse. Now, all she had to do was slip on a jacket, and she was ready to go on air.

She looked for the high heels she'd worn yesterday and remembered she'd thrown them away. She made a mental note to have the station reimburse her.

She quickly dressed, touched up her makeup, and wondered, not for the first time, what life would have been like if she had stayed in Atlanta. The news station she worked for there was much larger, the pay had been better, and she had been closer to her family. Of course, in Atlanta, she had been just another pretty face among even more beautiful and aspiring news women. After two years of hard work and ass-kissing she had only gotten as far as writing for the talking heads. At that rate she would be sixty before she landed an anchor position.

Here in Evansville she was better looking than most, and had needed to kiss fewer butts to get ahead. In less than a year she had moved into a co-anchor position. She hoped this story would send her over the top. Then she could think about going back to Atlanta on her own terms.

She walked out of her back door, still immersed in thoughts of Atlanta, when she sensed his presence. Before she could turn, a hand covered her mouth, and a strong arm wrapped around her throat, choking off any possibility of screaming.

“Don't scream, pretty lady,” the voice whispered in her ear. “I got a present for you.” As he said this she was slammed against the vehicle's trunk and thrown to the ground, where she was pinned by her attacker's weight.

Her mind raced, and she thought of the little can of pepper spray she kept on her key chain. But her keys had been knocked from her hand and she couldn't see them. She tried to struggle, but he was too strong, and he was slowly squeezing the air out of her. She began to feel light-headed.

“Don't scream and I'll let you breathe,” he said.

She could feel the spittle from his lips and could sense his excitement, but she knew she had no options. She nodded her head slightly and felt the arm loosen from her throat.

She sucked in grateful gulps of air.

“There. All better now,” he said, and she did feel better. Angry now, she said, “Get off of me! What do you want?”

“Told you, Maddy. I got you a present,” he said, and reached down behind her, his hand slowly moving across her back and buttocks, until she thought she would scream. But then the hand stopped and came back up to her face. He held something in his hand.

“Open your mouth,” he ordered.

She could feel his breath in her ear, and the hardness in the front of his pants. “How do you know my name?” she asked, hoping to stall him, hoping he wouldn't kill her. The other murders ran through her mind. The attacks, the notes.

As if he had read her mind, he said, “I'm not goin' to hurt you, girl. If I was goin' to kill ya I'd of already done it, know what I mean?” He shoved his crotch down against her buttocks, and his voice became threatening. “I got something for you, dammit. Now open your mouth.”

She did as told, and he stuffed something into her mouth. He whispered in her ear, and then he told her to nod if she understood. She did. And then he was gone.

She didn't know how long she lay on the ground beside her car, but eventually she realized he was gone.
I'm alive!
She tried to get on her feet, but her muscles wouldn't cooperate. The best she could do was to drag herself into a sitting position with the note still in her mouth. She suddenly gagged and spat it out, feeling bile rising in her throat. She rolled over just in time.

“Nine-one-one,” the Dubois County Sheriff's Department dispatcher said. “Do you have an emergency?”

There were sounds of crying, then, “I want to report a murder.”

“Did you say a
murder
?” the dispatcher asked.

“She's dead. Someone killed her. In the cabin.”

Gladys had been a dispatcher for the Dubois County Sheriff's Department for twenty-three years. She looked at her display screen, and then did a double take. She wrote the incoming telephone number on a piece of scrap paper, and then waved it at the young deputy who had been injured and was working in a “light duty” capacity in dispatch. He looked up from his
Field & Stream
magazine and lazily took the note. Gladys put the caller on speakerphone.

“Didn't you hear me?” the panicked voice of a young-sounding woman cried. “She's dead! She's been murdered!”

The deputy looked at the note, where Gladys had written:
Get the Sheriff. This call is from Evansville.

“Just calm down, hon. Tell me where you are,” Gladys said soothingly.

When Liddell arrived on Chestnut Street, Maddy Brooks was sitting on the bumper of an ambulance arguing with the medical crew. An older gentleman in a gray suit with gray hair was trying to calm her down. Maddy saw Liddell approaching.

“The bastard!”

“Are you okay, Maddy?” Liddell asked. She turned on him like a wounded animal.

“Do I look like I'm O-KAY?”

He ignored her tone of voice. “Yeah,” he said, looking her over. “Your makeup's a little messy, but you look nice.”

Jack pulled up in his personal car and got out next to the ambulance. “What happened? Who did this, Maddy?”

Maddy's eyes looked frightened, but her voice remained angry. She was running on pure adrenaline right now. But Jack knew that when the adrenaline rush was over she was going to crash.

The man in the gray suit and gray hair stepped up to introduce himself. “I'm Bill Goldberg, the station manager at Channel Six,” he said.

“I was coming out to my car, and he grabbed me,” Maddy said, ignoring Goldberg. She pulled her thin suit jacket closer around her. “I thought someone was behind me. When I started to turn around, he grabbed me and threw me down.” She was too humiliated to tell the men that he had felt her up and humped her like a horny teenager.

Jack looked around, but there was just the usual throng of curious onlookers. No one he recognized, anyway. “Tell me the rest,” he said.

“Don't you think you should wait for our lawyers, Maddy?” Goldberg said. Maddy gave him an angry look, and then remembered something. “Excuse us, Bill,” she said, and motioned for Jack and Liddell to follow her.

The detectives followed her down the side of her rental house toward where her car was still parked.

“When he stuck the note in my mouth, I was so afraid that I just froze. I couldn't move.”

“What note?” Liddell asked, but she started trembling and didn't answer.

“Why didn't he kill me, Jack?”

“You think it was our guy?” Jack asked, and then noticed that she was barely able to stand. He put an arm around her and led her to the back steps, where he helped her sit. She was shivering as if freezing.
May be going into shock.

“I'll get the ambulance guys,” Liddell said, and took off around the house.

Jack put his jacket around her shoulders and sat by her, rubbing her arms and gently holding her. He could feel her breathing deeply, as her muscles trembled and she cried so softly that it was barely audible, and he wondered why she thought she had to be so tough. She couldn't just let go and bawl her eyes out like a normal woman.

When her shaking lessened, he gently asked, “You said there was a note, Maddy?”

She looked up at him and said, “I'm not normally this emotional.”

“Aw, Maddy. You did just fine.”

“Don't say you would have done the same thing, Jack Murphy, or I'll brain you,” she said, as she regained her icy self-control. Liddell came back with the paramedics, but she waved them away, saying, “I'm okay now.”

She stood up and walked to her car, opened the front door, and took something from the front seat. “Sorry. I've handled it,” she said, and handed Jack a crumpled piece of paper.

“It's all right,” he said and slipped a pair of powder-free, nitrile gloves from his pocket before he took it. Smoothing it out with the gloves, he saw that it was written in red crayon.

 

Jack
the right answer is

Little Nancy Etticoat

Mother Goose

 

“Have you looked at this?” Jack asked, thinking that the killer was now calling himself “Mother Goose,” thinking that the killer must be following the news, but more particularly, following Maddy Brooks.

“Yes. It must have something to do with the other rhymes, or maybe with the last one, the riddle. Maybe it's the answer to the riddle,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” Jack said, but it didn't seem to fit. For if he remembered his nursery rhymes correctly, “Jack Be Nimble” referred to a candlestick, but more particularly was about time. He'd never heard the Little Nancy Etticoat thing.

“It looks like the other notes,” Liddell said. “I'll call Crime Scene.”

After he got off his phone he said, “Franklin is on his way out here. He said he would notify the chief and Double Dick.”

Maddy gave him a curious look, and he corrected himself, “I meant Deputy Chief Dick.”

“Don't worry, Detective,” Maddy said with a sardonic smile. “I know you all call him Double Dick.”

Liddell looked away. “I don't know what you're talking about, Miss Brooks.”

Maddy looked at Jack, and he held his hands up. “Leave me out of this.”

 

Eddie had spotted the big detective arriving and decided it was time to hit the road. He had a knife with him, but it wouldn't do to take the one called Blanchard out this early in the game. Besides, he looked like he would be a handful in a fight. He'd have to take him from behind. That was something he'd learned in prison.
Maybe later
, he thought.

He drove slowly away from the area, turning into the parking lot of the Evansville Museum. A bicycle path and several footpaths ran down the levee behind the museum. It was barely light out, but the parking lot was already full of cars and SUVs that sported bicycle carriers. His old van blended in well here. He climbed in the back of the van to think, leaving Bobby asleep in the passenger seat.

How can he sleep through all this?
Eddie wondered.
Man, I got a woody that won't quit,
he thought, and lay on the floor with his hands shoved down the front of his jeans, touching it. When he finished, he drifted off to sleep with the smell of Maddy Brooks's hair still in his mind.

 

Franklin was talking to the station manager, Bill Goldberg, when the two detectives brought Maddy Brooks back to the ambulance. She had finally agreed to let the paramedics check her over.

Franklin and Bill Goldberg were talking and laughing comfortably like old friends.

“If we were caught on camera at a serious crime scene laughing, the news media would castrate us,” Liddell observed.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “But how would that affect you, Bigfoot?”

“Hey!” Liddell exclaimed. “There's no need to get nasty. Besides, I bet I get laid more than you do.”

Jack ignored the challenge, because he knew Liddell was probably right.

Maddy was finally released by the medical crew and came over to them with the station manager in tow.

“This is Bill Goldberg,” she said, seeming to forget that they had already been introduced. They all shook hands.

Jack whistled at one of the crime scene techs. “Can you bring a Tyvek blanket over here?” he asked the tech, then to Maddy and her boss said, “Maddy, we'll need to take your clothes for evidence.”

She looked at the station manager, and Jack realized how much her life was controlled by station policy, just as his own was controlled by department policy.

“It's okay, Maddy,” Goldberg said. “What's important is to catch the guy that did this to you.”

She leaned in and whispered something to Goldberg, who nodded, and then he whispered something back to her. Just then the crime scene tech arrived with a white Tyvek blanket, wrapped it around Maddy's shoulders, and shuffled her toward her door.

“Try to remember what you can and we'll talk in a little while,” Jack said, and she turned slightly and smiled. He knew that victims of trauma sometimes had a temporary loss of memory just after the incident, and that it wasn't unusual for them to remember things hours or even days later. He believed it must have something to do with the mind protecting itself. But it was just as likely that she would try to hold out some information from them because that was what newspeople did.

 

Maddy came out of her house wearing a faded pair of blue jeans, a baggy purple sweatshirt with the Channel Six logo, and fluorescent yellow flip-flops. Liddell looked her over and gave her a thumbs-up. She gave him her middle finger, but was smiling while she did so.

“She wants me,” Liddell said to Jack.

“Do you really need my clothes?” Maddy said to no one in particular. “And my shoes? Or are you merely trying to humiliate me?”

“Oh, we're trying to humiliate you. Big-time!” Liddell said with a grin.

“Well, it's working,” she said to Jack. “Where'd you get this guy anyway?” she asked and hooked a thumb at Liddell.

“Believe it or not, when he was little someone stuffed him in my mail slot and I didn't have the heart to get rid of him,” Jack said.

Maddy giggled and sat down on her back steps.

“I don't believe he's ever been little,” she said.

“Thank you,” Liddell said, and Maddy turned red.

“Are you feeling like answering some more questions?” Jack asked.

“If you don't mind talking to someone in a purple top with yellow flip-flops.”

Jack gave her a serious look. “I want you to close your eyes.”

Maddy stared at him.

“Just humor me,” he said.

She let out a breath and closed her eyes. “Okay, now what?”

“This might be unpleasant, Maddy, but in your mind I want you to picture leaving your house. Like a movie, but seen through your eyes.”

“You're kidding, right?” she asked, opening her eyes again.

“I told you she wouldn't do it,” Liddell remarked.

Maddy shot him an angry look and closed her eyes again. “I'm leaving the kitchen,” she said.

Liddell and Jack exchanged a smile.

“What is the first thing you remember seeing?” Jack asked.

“What kind of question—” Maddy started.

Jack interrupted her, and said, “For God's sake, just answer the question, Maddy.”

She took a few breaths, slowly letting them out, eyes closed. “Okay. I'm facing toward the backyard.” She opened her eyes and said, “It might be easier if I just go back and walk through this again.”

“Are you sure you're up to it?” Liddell asked.

“No,” she admitted. “But I need to do this. Will you guys go with me?”

“I could never turn down a woman in yellow flip-flops,” Liddell said.

True to her word, Maddy reenacted leaving her house and hesitated at the part where she was grabbed from behind, but then continued like a real trouper. Jack knew this must be draining her emotionally, but she did remember a surprising amount of details this way.

Although she hadn't really seen her assailant's face, she could tell the men that he was a white male, maybe twenty-five to thirty years old, taller than Jack but not as tall as Liddell, thin but not skinny, and his breath smelled peppery, like Dentyne gum or licorice or something. Being alone with the two men, she confided that he had rubbed his hands over her breasts and other places she didn't want to talk about.

Jack could sense that she was holding something back, but he knew that asking her now was a waste of time. She had told them everything she was going to.

“What about hair length?” Liddell asked.

“Have you not been listening? I was attacked from behind. I didn't see his hair.”

Jack said, “What did his face feel like? Facial hair? Anything else you can remember, Maddy.”

She closed her eyes again for a minute or so, and then opened them. “His hair was long!” she said excitedly. “And he needed a shave and a bath, but he didn't have a beard or mustache. At least I don't think so. But I do remember his hair falling across the side of my face when he was whispering in my ear.”

She looked at Jack with admiration, and said, “How do you do that?”

Liddell snickered, and said, “Because his heart is pure and chaste.”

Maddy looked curiously at Jack. “Don't ask,” he said.

“What did he whisper?” Jack asked, and a look came into Maddy's expression like someone pulling down blinds.

Just then, a Jeep Liberty with Channel Six News markings pulled up, and Bill Goldberg spoke to the driver. In moments, the Jeep sped off, and Jack noticed that Maddy carefully looked the other way.

What was that about?
he wondered.