The Coldest Fear Page 16

  Arnold felt like he was standing on high heels when he was able to get up from the toilet seat. Why had the killer picked him? And what was he supposed to do now?

  He had decided to go to the location that the note instructed. See if the letter was true. When he drove down Ohio Street, the smell of the river filled his car. He saw the flashing lights, the ambulance, and the blue-clad figures rushing around in the area of the old bridge.

  He had almost given the note to Liddell Blanchard on the Ohio Street Bridge today, but it seemed so surreal. And besides, how would he explain any of this? How would he admit that he had two other notes that he had failed to turn over to the police? And even worse, how would he tell his boss, Bob Robertson, that he was sitting on top of a gold mine and had just given the deed to the cops without a fight? A good newsman never gave away his sources.

  It could still be a joke, and then he, Arnold, would look like a fool to the one man who ever took him anywhere near serious. Liddell was his friend. Liddell never made fun of him. And of course there was Bernice to consider.

  If it proves to be real, I’ll give it to Liddell, he thought. Right now there was a story to be written.

  Jon Samuels watched the television with fascination. Another murder in Evansville. This time it was an older woman. A nurse.

  Jon nuzzled the dog, which seemed to like laying its thirty pounds of weight across his meager lap. “What’s the world coming to, Cinderella?” he asked the dog. Cinderella cocked her shaggy head in that way that animals do when they seem to want to answer your question, but then they consider humans beneath them.

  He’d found his apartment in a complete mess when he’d come back to it. He didn’t remember the police doing that, but maybe they had. Having all those people in his apartment had been very upsetting. He didn’t like being around large groups of people. That was one of the reasons that he had moved into the country.

  After the police left, he had to get out of the apartment for a while. He went to see friends and had a couple of margaritas. He could remember the looks on the police officers’ faces when they found all those Victoria’s Secret items in his closet. The snickering that was just below the surface rankled him.

  Jon had discovered he was gay at an early age, but it still bothered him when people looked down at him. He wasn’t “damaged” or “mental.” He was just who he was.

  Now, sitting in his living room, on the same couch where he and Cordelia had so often sat and talked, it all seemed so unreal. Cordelia was dead and he was taking a cocktail of medications to combat a deadly illness. He didn’t feel safe anymore. And for some reason he thought about calling JJ. He would feel safe with JJ around. After all, they had been friends since they were children.

  But since JJ had taken the job with the police department things had changed. JJ’s uncle was the police chief, and there was never a more homophobic individual born than Bob Johnson. JJ was a different person when he was in the presence of his uncle. Lately he had been less friendly even when the chief wasn’t around.

  “Oh, Cordelia,” Jon said softly and began to cry. Cinderella laid her head on his leg.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “I’ve got the stories on Dennis Morse’s death,” Garcia announced, and placed a stack of Xerox copies on top of Jack’s desk.

  Liddell got up and they all gathered around as she summarized what she had found.

  “Some of this was on the Internet,” she said. “You guys should really make use of this site. It’s called Browning Genealogy, but there’s a lot of stuff in here going all the way back to the late 1800s in some cases. Plus they have some pictures of people that the newspaper morgue doesn’t have. I don’t know where they got all this stuff, but it’s amazing.”

  Jack looked at Liddell and said, “Take a note, Bigfoot. Sign us up for Browning Genealogy.” Then he turned to Garcia and said, “Now can we have the information?”

  “Okay, smart-ass,” she said with a smirk, “But one day you’ll thank me for that.”

  She spread the papers across the desktop where they could all see and continued, “Dennis Morse was a union pipe-fitter. No police record outside a minor drug-possession charge when he was eighteen, but he was in plenty of local punch-ups in the bars around Shawneetown, Illinois. I found his name mentioned in at least three news articles in the Democrat back in that time. Usually part of a bar brawl, but no arrests.”

  “According to the Gallatin County Clerk’s Office, he was married to a Brenda Bockstege on January third, nineteen eighty-six.” She flipped through a few pages on the desk and laid two documents on top.

  “These are the copies of birth certificates for Cordelia Morse and Cody Morse.”

  Jack and Liddell looked at the records. Both children had been born at the hospital in Eldorado, Illinois.

  Garcia sorted through the pages and put two more papers on top of the others, saying, “Here is the first story about Dennis Morse. It’s a short article about his unit being deployed to Desert Storm. The other sheet is the one where his unit came home. He was gone a little over a year.”

  Jack looked at the dates of the articles and the date that Dennis Morse had returned home from Desert Storm. There was no way that he could have fathered Cordelia. Unless of course he was given a leave and came home for a few days during that time. But that was unlikely from what Jack knew of those days.

  “And there’s more,” Garcia went on. She pointed to a Xerox copy of a newspaper story from the Evansville newspaper.

  The headline read, MAN MURDERED BY SON. The story got their attention.

  When they were finished reading the article Liddell looked at them and said, “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Jack raised his eyebrows and Garcia held up a hand.

  “Wait, there’s more. One last juicy piece,” she said, and laid another sheet of paper on the desktop.

  Jack and Liddell stared at the document. Liddell said, “So Brenda Bockstege is actually Brenda Lincoln. Our last victim ?”

  “Bingo,” Garcia said, barely able to contain her excitement.

  “We’d better call Captain Franklin,” Jack said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Lying across the bed in his apartment, Lieutenant Johnson closed the diary and let out a deep tequila-enhanced sigh. This stuff is dynamite, he thought. I never really knew Cordelia at all. Could she really have been tumbling in the hay with all these guys?

  He’d stayed up most of the night reading the diary and looking at the list of names that Cordelia had carefully penned into the last ten pages of the book. One thing all the men had in common was their social status. There wasn’t a single name in the book that didn’t hold some significance. Doctors, lawyers, judges, a congressman, the fire department chief of the neighboring county, and of course, Uncle Bob. That was the most surprising of all because JJ knew how Bob felt about prostitutes—and truthfully, that’s what Cordelia was—and so he was stunned that Uncle Bob would be on that list.

  JJ thought maybe Bob was just on the list because he was someone who she may have had designs on, but then on the last couple of pages of the diary he found an entry Cordelia had written that made it clear that Bob was more than a possibility. She had said, Like laying with a pig.

  JJ laughed every time he thought about that remark. “Like doing a pig,” he said out loud and laughed again. Cordelia had a sense of humor, he’d give her that.

  There were thirty-two names on Cordelia’s list. Most of them had been mentioned in her diary in a way that would make them unmistakable if their little secret were ever to see daylight. Was she planning on blackmailing them? he wondered. Had she already started? He looked at the book again, and had noticed that there were checkmarks by some of the names. Including Uncle Bob. What does that checkmark mean?

  One name in particular had really caught his attention. He had never met this man, but was very familiar with his work. He was a fan, so to speak, and would have loved meeting this guy even if the book
hadn’t come into his hands. But now, given the fact that his name was so prominent in the book, JJ felt that he had no choice but to contact him. The thought of talking to someone so famous made him tingle with excitement.

  JJ stood up and drew up to his full height. He was going to be an important man. Cordelia had made that possible for him. And he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity she had given him.

  Another thought struck him. The book was the only piece of evidence he had that linked Cordelia to these men. It might be enough to threaten some of them with exposure by just telling them what was in her diary, but there were others who would demand something more. Some proof that they were anything more than fertile soil for a young girl’s imagination. What he needed were tapes or video or pictures. Something solid.

  He had to go back to Jon’s and search again. He didn’t cherish the idea of doing that, but it had to be done. He’d have to find a way to get in without confronting Jon. Besides, he didn’t want Jon to know anything about this little part of what Cordelia had been up to. Jon obviously didn’t know or he would have spilled the beans when he gave up all the Victoria’s Secret clothes. If Jon found out now, he might tell that damn nosy detective from Evansville, and that would put an end to JJ’s plans to blackmail the people on the list. The end of JJ’s chance to get out of this dump of a town and become someone important. He couldn’t let that happen.

  There might be a better person to begin with, he thought. Lenny Bange was apparently more than just Cordelia’s attorney. Maybe he can give me some information. Hell, maybe he’s in on this with Cordelia? Maybe one of the people on this list killed her to keep her quiet about something?

  Making himself think like a cop, he put together a possible scenario. Cordelia is blackmailing people on her list when one of them takes offense. Maybe the guy has something more to hide than the fact that he was getting a little hoochie on the side. Maybe Cordelia starts feeling pressure from the guy, or he starts threatening her and so she goes to see Lenny Bange.

  JJ wasn’t sure what Jack Murphy knew about Lenny Bange, but in Shawneetown the man had a reputation of being a big-time gambler and drug user. JJ had picked him up in bar fights more than once and was ready to throw the book at him until Uncle Bob stepped in and treated the guy like he was visiting royalty.

  Now that JJ thought about it, that kind of made sense. Maybe Lenny was in on this game with Cordelia. Maybe he knew about Cordelia doing the naked cha-cha with Uncle Bob. It was obvious now that Bange had something on the chief. Something that was big enough to bring the chief running anytime Bange got his tit in a wringer.

  Yeah, better think this through, JJ, he thought. There’s no hurry. No hurry t’all.

  Captain Franklin sat and listened until Jack and Liddell were finished. Then he leaned forward and said, “So we have two members of a family murdered. The guard was coincidental ?”

  Jack nodded. “He saw the killer.”

  Franklin continued. “The woman from the projects doesn’t fit the pattern. What’s the motive for that one?”

  “Louise Brigham has no connection to any of this, except for the chain of body parts the killer is swapping,” Jack said. “I guess it’s possible that the mother-daughter connection between Cordelia and Brenda Lincoln could be coincidental, but I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  Franklin leaned back in his chair, trying to solve that part of the puzzle. He hated loose ends. “There has to be some reason that he picked Louise Brigham,” he said.

  “That’s what we have, Captain,” Jack said. “The question now is, did the killer know they were mother and daughter? It seems that Cordelia was in the process of trying to find her real mother and brother. We know that she had an appointment with Lenny Bange, and I’ve assumed that it may have had something to do with her search for family.”

  Franklin said, “So did she find her mother? Did she already know who she was before she made the appointment with Lenny? What exactly did she want Lenny to do for her? And of course, what does any of this have to do with her being killed?”

  Liddell stood and paced the room. “What if the murder of Louise Brigham is just to make us think we have a serial killer?” Liddell said. “What if the targets were always Cordelia and Brenda? What if the murder of Brigham was just a feint? The killer is trying to throw us off ?”

  “Why would he want to kill Cordelia and her mother?” Jack asked, picking up the thread.

  “Whatever the reason,” Liddell said, “you can tell he really had it in for them. I mean, he destroyed their faces. Now that’s hatred!”

  Jack thought about what Liddell said. It made sense. The killer had a personal reason for killing those two women.

  “The violence done to Louise Brigham was all wrong,” Jack said, giving voice to his thoughts. “It didn’t feel like the same rage the killer displayed at the other two scenes.”

  “She had her eyes cut out, Jack! That’s not enough rage?” Franklin said, but Liddell was picking up what his partner was getting at.

  “I think he’s right, Captain,” Liddell said. “For one thing, look at the damage done to the faces of Cordelia and Brenda. It was like the killer was focusing on their faces—trying to destroy them. Louise Brigham’s face was removed, and he took her eyes, but it felt antiseptic.” He could see he wasn’t explaining himself very well.

  “Maybe he destroys what offends him? Or threatens him,” Jack added. “Something Louise Brigham saw. Maybe she knew the killer.”

  Captain Franklin scoffed. “You two are scaring me. You’re starting to sound like television detectives. Just get out there and catch this bastard before he kills again.”

  When they got outside Jack turned to his partner. “That was pretty good reasoning for a Yeti.”

  “That really hurts,” Liddell said.

  Lenny Bange cracked his door and yelled, “Lucy, hold all my calls.”

  “Okay,” she yelled back.

  Lenny sat at his desk, willing the prepaid cell phone that he had purchased during lunch to ring. It was only his instincts as an attorney that saved him from calling Las Vegas on his desk phone.

  He planted his feet firmly on each side of his twenty-two-hundred-dollar desk chair, as if in preparation for headlong flight. How in the hell did this all go bad? he thought.

  First, Cordelia gets it in her head to try and find her long-lost mother and brother. Then she tries to recruit Lenny to use his resources in her search. She had no idea how much that would cost him. In time and in money, and those were two things that Lenny never gave away.

  Then Cordelia decides that she will blackmail Lenny if he won’t help her. That was unforgivable. He’d worked hard over the last ten years building up his lucrative flesh business. Cordelia had been a favorite of his rich clients. Not only was she beautiful, young, and sexy, but she was smart. He should have known better than to bring a smart girl in on the business.

  And now she was dead. Murdered! But that wasn’t the worst of it. He had always suspected that Cordelia kept a diary, but the phone call he’d received today confirmed it. The male caller had even read some excerpts from the diary, and given Lenny dates, names, and times.

  The man seemed to think that Lenny was just one of Cordelia’s clients, though, so he must not have been a confidant of Cordelia’s. Still, the man had possession of her diary.

  Lenny had offered to buy the diary, but the caller was too slick for that. He counter-offered to keep his mouth shut about Lenny’s “side activities” if Lenny would cough up some serious bread.

  He has no idea what he’s gotten into, Lenny thought.

  The call he was waiting for would take care of this problem. Cubby was connected. Lenny had first met him during a trip to Las Vegas a few years back and had held on to the telephone number. When Lenny called and told Cubby about the predicament he was in, the man had actually laughed.

  The payment for his services was phenomenal, but Lenny had reluctantly agreed. What else could he do? You didn’t
call a guy like this and ask for help and then dicker with him. Whatever it was the man wanted, Lenny would just have to bite the bullet and produce. Or he could bite a real bullet.

  Lenny pulled up a file on his computer titled CM Client. Cubby had requested the names. It would mean that Lenny may not be able to do business with these men again, but there was no alternative.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The early-morning call had taken the killer by surprise.

  “I have possession of some information that you might like to know about,” the male voice said.

  The killer pegged the voice as that of a male, probably in his twenties or thirties, very confident like he was used to telling people what to do. The accent was that of a shit-kicker, but the caller had been careful to block the call so he wasn’t that stupid.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, buddy,” the killer said.

  The caller chuckled, then the voice grew serious. “I have her diary. Cordelia’s diary. She names you in the book—buddy.”

  “What is it that you want?” the killer asked.

  “Why, money of course.”

  “Why don’t you meet me and I’ll pay you for the diary,” the killer suggested.

  “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” the voice asked.

  Yes. I think you are dangerously stupid, the killer thought, but he said, “Of course I don’t think you’re stupid. But how do I know you really have a diary? What proof can you give me?”

  “You want proof?” Loud laughter came over the telephone line. “Okay. I’ll give you proof,” he said. “You betcha I will. You betcha.”

  “Okay. Okay,” the killer said. “What do you want and how do I deliver?”