The Coldest Fear Page 15

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Brenda Lincoln’s body had been found at nine o’clock that morning, but it had taken almost five hours to recover the body and get a search warrant for her house. If Sergeant Walker was correct about the time her body was suspended from the bridge, it meant the killer had a substantial head start on them.

  Captain Franklin had made arrangements to have the witnesses from the creek brought to police headquarters to be interviewed by other detectives while Jack and Liddell continued to work the scene.

  Liddell was directing the team of rescue divers in their search of the creek around where the body was recovered, in particular the mouth of the creek where it fed into the Ohio River. Garcia had discovered that Brenda Lincoln owned a new Big Bird–yellow Hummer, and a quick check of the victim’s residence by Vanderburgh County officers had determined the vehicle was not at her house.

  Jack was coordinating the uniformed officers who had been pulled in to secure the scene and help search a wide area around both sides of the creek when one of the divers yelled, “I got something.”

  Steel cables creaked and sang, and the Hummer made a sucking noise as it was winched from the mud at the mouth of the creek. Jack and Liddell stood beside the wrecker driver watching as the vehicle was pulled onto dry land.

  “Hold it,” Jack said to the wrecker driver, and the man flipped a lever that stopped the winch.

  “What is it, pod’na?” Liddell asked.

  “Something’s in the front seat,” Jack said.

  According to the manager at Case Security Agency where Charlie Birger had worked as a security guard for the last five years, Charlie had just turned seventy-three and was planning on driving to Sarasota, Florida, to visit fishing buddies that weekend. But he had agreed to fill in for another employee who had called in sick, and that was how he came to be working the gate at Oak Meadow Country Club. Liddell had interviewed the manager over the telephone and was reading from his notes to Jack and Lilly Caskins as they watched the body of the man being taken from the front seat of the Hummer and placed on a gurney. Moving the man had been tricky because his head had almost been severed from his body.

  “Any family?” Little Casket asked Liddell.

  Liddell looked at his notes. “A son, daughter-in-law, and two grandkids in Alabama,” he said. “Wife died three years ago from cancer. The son is on his way to your office.”

  “Well, let’s get him down to the office then,” Lilly said and turned away.

  “We have to go to the other victim’s house and serve a search warrant,” Jack said to her retreating figure.

  Without looking back, she said, “I’ll call you with the results.”

  Liddell watched her walk away and said, “I already know the results. Someone cut his head off his body.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “But why?”

  Liddell was watching the two rescue boats still on the water, their dive teams busily searching grids along the bottom of the creek. “If there’s a weapon out there I don’t think we’ll ever find it.”

  “He didn’t throw the axe away, Bigfoot,” Jack said. “He likes it too much.”

  Garcia had given them the address and vehicle information for Brenda Lincoln within minutes of Jack’s telephone call. A bright yellow H3 Hummer would have been fairly easy to spot, and so Jack could understand the killer dumping the vehicle in the creek, wanting to ditch the vehicle in a way that it wouldn’t be found. What he couldn’t understand was why the killer had taken the victim’s vehicle in the first place.

  The reason became clear as he and Liddell drove up to the guard shack at the gated entrance of Oak Meadow Country Club. A video camera was mounted directly over the top of the door, pointing out toward the entrance from Browning Road. One of Sergeant Walker’s crime scene techs was just coming out of the shack with a balding man right on his heels. The man’s mouth was drawn into a tight line and his forehead was pale, but his cheeks were bright red.

  Jack stopped the car far enough to the side of the entrance to allow traffic to pass. He and Liddell walked over to where the tech and the man were engaged in a heated conversation.

  “You have no right to come into this property,” the man was saying to the tech, who looked relieved to see Jack approaching.

  “I explained to the gentleman that we have a search warrant,” the tech said to Jack and rolled his eyes.

  “Now who is this?” the man asked, unable to keep the anger out of his voice.

  “I’m Detective Murphy,” Jack said, and showed the man his police credentials.

  The man examined them longer than necessary, and Jack was sure he was doing so in order to give himself a moment to defuse. Jack sized him up as the security manager for Case Security Company. He looked fit, although a little ragged around the edges as if he drank too much. Ex-cop. But not a local, Jack thought.

  “Sorry,” the man said and handed Jack’s badge case to him. “Tom Shettle,” he said and extended his hand. Jack took it. “I’m the owner of the security company here.”

  “Where were you a cop?” Jack asked.

  “Still shows, huh?” Shettle said with a grin. “I was a detective with Detroit PD.”

  Shettle pulled business cards from his wallet and handed them to Jack and Liddell. “I’ve been doing this for thirteen years and never had any shit like this happen.”

  “How much do you know?” Jack asked.

  Shettle shook his head. “No one has told me squat. Just came in and started taking things and asking questions. I don’t suppose you can fill me in?”

  Jack laughed at the man’s directness. “I can tell you that we are investigating four murders that may or may not be related. Your guard is one of them.”

  “Christ!” Shettle said and leaned against the wall of the guard shack.

  “So we’d appreciate any help you can give us,” Liddell said.

  “Sure. Of course,” Shettle said. “Will this be in the paper? I don’t need any negative publicity.”

  “What do you think?” Jack said.

  Shettle looked at the sky and muttered an expletive.

  “Any chance that video camera works?” Jack asked.

  Now Shettle laughed. “What do you think?” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  So far all of the victims had come from addresses close to downtown. This one was in a gated community ten miles north of city limits. It was still in Vanderburgh County, but out here in God’s country, Jack and Liddell were outside their jurisdiction.

  County mounties had secured the front and back of the victim’s house, and marked sheriff ’s cars were sitting at both ends of the street, only allowing the residents through. A Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Department detective had been called to the scene, and now walked up to Jack and Liddell. Jack had spoken to the man on the telephone numerous times, but this was the first time he’d met him. He was trying to remember if the phone conversations were pleasant or if he’d been an asshole.

  “I heard’a you,” VCS Detective Robbins said, shaking Jack’s hand.

  Jack looked at Robbins. The man was probably less than five and a half feet tall, thin running on skeletal, with a face so craggy that he could make commercials for Marlboro cigarettes, a pack of which was sticking out of the detective’s shirt pocket.

  “I heard’a you too,” Jack said. “Tim Robbins’s kid, right?”

  “Oh, ha-ha. I never heard that one before,” Robbins said sarcastically. “I heard you was a handful.”

  “Two hands full,” Liddell added.

  “And this big drink a water must be the Cajun,” Robbins said and shook hands with Liddell.

  Robbins leaned in close to Liddell and Jack and said, “Look, you and I both know that this should be your investigation,” and he paused while the men nodded. “So, if you tell me what you need from me, I’ll try to stay outta your way.”

  Jack grinned. Liddell said, “You could have one of your guys get us some donuts.”

&n
bsp; Robbins chuckled. “You want coffee too?”

  “Yeah,” both Jack and Liddell said in unison, and Robbins walked away shaking his head.

  “Hey, Tommy,” Robbins said to one of the deputies, “go down to Honey Fluff on the highway and pick up three coffees and a half dozen glazed.” He turned and saw the hurt look on Liddell’s face and added, “Make it a couple dozen.”

  The deputy called Tommy was wearing wraparound Oakley sunglasses so it was impossible to read his eyes, but Jack could read the expression. Tommy got in his car and peeled out on a Code-Three donut run.

  “You get a warrant?” Robbins asked.

  “Got it right here,” Liddell said, lifting his right foot and showing his size-thirteen-triple-E shoe.

  “He’s not house-trained yet,” Jack said, and handed the real search warrant to Detective Robbins.

  Robbins flipped through to the pages that explained the probable cause for searching the residence. “Looks good to me. Good to be careful,” he said, “but you could’a saved yourself some time and paper if you’d a called me first.”

  “Why’s that?” Jack asked.

  “ ’Cause I live right there,” he said, and pointed to a two-story brick home with a thirty-foot day cruiser sitting on a trailer in the long driveway. “I know this lady has no family or children, unless you want to count her two Yorkies. So no one will be giving you any shit about going in there.”

  “You got a key?” Liddell asked.

  Robbins had been holding the key in his hand during the entire conversation. He handed it to Liddell. “I’ll go in with you to corral the animals. Those little Yorkies will eat your shit up.”

  “Okay, you go first,” Liddell said to Robbins, and handed the key back to him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The information Garcia found on the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles database showed that Brenda Lincoln owned only the one vehicle, the yellow Hummer. The information that Detective Robbins gave them was that Brenda lived alone with two dogs. She had very little social life.

  “I don’t think she ever had visitors,” Robbins explained as they walked through the living room behind Sergeant Walker. “She didn’t say so, but I had the feeling she was never married. Never talked about a man at any rate.”

  The inside of the house was spotless. The dogs put up a good defense, but Robbins soon herded them into the softside carrier that Brenda must have used for transporting them. He excused himself and took them across the street to be taken care of by his wife.

  When Robbins returned they resumed the walk-through of Brenda Lincoln’s home. Even though he had given the investigation over to Jack and Liddell, in the eyes of the law, Robbins was still the jurisdictional officer.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” Robbins said, though in fact he had only been gone about three minutes. “The wife is pretty upset about Brenda. They weren’t close, but Nita, my wife, used to come over and take care of the animals when Brenda was out of town.”

  “Was she out of town much?” Liddell asked.

  Walker passed out latex gloves to the three men and donned a pair of his own. “Don’t touch anything,” he reminded them.

  “You mean I shouldn’t have taken the guns away from the Yorkies?” Robbins said, and Liddell chuckled. Walker and Jack gave each other a knowing look.

  “To answer your question, my very large friend,” Robbins said to Liddell, “no, she didn’t take many trips. But once a year she went to Mexico. Probably would have been going again in a few weeks. She fancied a place called Aventura Spa Palace. Maybe we should all go down there and see if it has anything to do with this case,” Robbins said, and winked at them.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “I’m sure my chief and your sheriff would pay for a few days at a resort in Mexico.”

  “Just a thought,” Robbins said.

  They moved down a hallway, where Walker opened each closed door. They discovered a walk-in closet on the left, a bedroom with adjoining bath on the right that Robbins said was the victim’s, another bedroom on the left that had numerous tattered stuffed animals and bowls of dry dog food on the floor, and the last door led to the garage.

  When Walker opened the garage door all four men let out a gasp. The scene before them was shocking even to seasoned detectives. A bloody carpenter’s claw hammer had been driven into the drywall directly across and at eye level to the doorway where they stood. Hanging from it was a grotesque mask that must have been the face of Brenda Lincoln. Blood sprays and pools of red covered the concrete floor, and throw-off droplets of blood ran in all directions across the ceiling and walls. The attack had been both savage and prolonged.

  Detective Jackie Robbins stood in the middle of the street, outside the yellow tape, and lit a cigarette from the remains of the last one. He looked up at Murphy with red-rimmed eyes and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs.

  “You okay?” Jack asked.

  Robbins looked around at the hustle of white-clad men moving back and forth with cameras and plastic cases, and then down the street at the tiny cluster of people—his neighbors—who had gathered into a curious knot near his own front yard, some of them pointing.

  “I been a deputy sheriff for twenty-three years. And I was in Iraq for two tours.” He paused and took another pull from the cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs for what seemed an impossible time before expelling the gas and continuing in a weak voice. “I seen some shit. Lots of dead people. Guys blown to bits from IEDs. Babies with their guts on the outside. Civilians castrated and beheaded by religious zealots. But this . . .”

  Jack didn’t know what to say. He was never good at this part. Consoling people was Liddell’s forte. The big man had a way about him that made people feel better. Jack only knew one thing. Get in, get the bastard, get out. He tried not to carry the details around with him any longer than necessary.

  “We’ll get him,” Jack said in a voice so quiet and calm that Robbins looked up at him again.

  “I seen your kind before, too,” Robbins said. He dropped his cigarette onto the concrete and crushed it out. He was thinking about the special ops teams who had cleared buildings in Baghdad before the ground grunts were allowed to enter. The stories he had heard about Jack Murphy were similar. “Don’t take this wrong, Jack. We need guys like you. But you scare the shit out of me.”

  Jack turned his head away. He knew what Robbins meant. He scared himself sometimes.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Arnold rushed home and slammed his bedroom door, shutting out his mother’s incessant complaining. The note that had been stuck in his hand in the crush of bodies in the hallway at the police station was from the same person who had been leaving messages for him since this all began. There were just too many people crammed into the small space for him to see where the note came from.

  At first he’d thought it was Detective Jansen who was giving him the information, but then Jansen had gone in the hospital and there was no way he could have left some of the messages.

  His skin crawled with electric excitement, fear and exhilaration fighting for control of his thoughts. Somewhere in the back of his mind he still believed that someone at the newspaper was merely playing a joke on him. After all, why would someone be sending me notes like this? he wondered, and looked down at the note that lay on top of his small writing desk.

  The first note had come just after Arnold’s headline story about the death of Cordelia Morse. He’d found it stuck under the windshield wiper of his Gremlin in the parking lot by the newspaper offices and had almost wadded it up and thrown it away thinking it was an advertising flyer. He hated it when he found things stuck to his windshield.

  But he hadn’t thrown it away for some reason. He unfolded the sheet of typing paper and read the typed message. The writer was very complimentary of Arnold’s story and was suggesting that Arnold had all the talent he needed to “write a book about the murders to come.”

  Those were the exact words the note used, continuing, Y
ou are in a unique position. You have the talent—and I will supply the information.

  And then the second note had appeared. This time it had turned up in his in-box on his desk at work. Like the first, this one was also typed on a computer so there was no way of tracing it. This note instructed Arnold to see Jon Samuels for an exclusive story. And that had turned out to be a great story. Jon had given him what he needed for yet another front-page news article, and if it wasn’t for those tips Arnold would never have made the front page of the newspaper.

  After the second note he had followed the instructions of the mystery man and started to write the book. He reasoned that even if the notes were from some jokester at work, it wouldn’t matter if he put all of this sensational material down into a fictionalized story. He wouldn’t use real names, or addresses, or anything that would embarrass the families of the deceased. It was just for fun. He enjoyed writing. He never intended to show it to anyone or have it published, so what was the harm?

  And then, today, Sergeant Taylor had come into the room to speak to Murphy and all hell broke loose. No one had to say anything. It was obvious that there had been another murder. All the reporters had tried to get out of the little classroom at the same time, and Arnold had been caught in the stampede. He had been pushed this way and that until he came to rest against a wall near the men’s restroom, and sometime during the melee someone had shoved the folded note into his hands.

  He had looked up and down the halls at the retreating figures of the newsmen and uniformed officers, but he didn’t know where the slip of paper had come from. It had to be one of the people who had been in the media conference, but there were several uniformed and plainclothes officers in the area, too.

  Arnold had gone into the men’s room and shut himself into a stall before unfolding the sheet of typing paper with great trepidation. This note was telling him what the police were going to find under the Ohio Street Bridge. It gave him the name of the victim, Brenda Lincoln. It told him where she worked, and what the police were going to discover when they went to her house. It even mentioned that she owned two Yorkies and said, It was all I could do to keep from wringing their necks.