The Coldest Fear Read online

  The fact that there was a dead body just down the hall necessitated a quick entry. There was no time to get a search warrant. And no need.

  Jack mouthed to his cover officer, “On three.”

  The officer nodded and Jack soundlessly mouthed, One, two . . . On three they both kicked a foot into the door beside the locking mechanism. The door slammed inward.

  Jack moved low to the right into the room and the uniformed officer moved to the left, both men’s pistols extended, sweeping the room. The blinds to the room were drawn, the only light seeping in from the shattered hallway door.

  Jack and the officer checked the obvious places where a person could lie in wait for an ambush, but the room was empty. Jack was beginning to feel foolish and could feel the stare of the officer who had made entry with him. But then he spotted something on the foot of the bed.

  “How about some lights?” he said to the officer.

  The lights came on and Jack could see what was on the foot of the bed. It was a newspaper. The front-page story was one Jack recognized. On top of the newspaper was an object that looked like a bloody eyeball.

  “Better get crime scene in here,” Jack said. Both men retraced their steps, making a careful retreat from the room.

  The newspaper was three months old and had a front-page story about one of Jack’s previous cases. It was a sensational case and had been on the front page for several days. This particular story was not very supportive of Jack and had in fact hinted that he was a gun-happy cowboy.

  The eye was probably from the victim, Cordelia Morse, but that would have to be determined by the medical examiner.

  Lilly Caskins told them the autopsy would be sometime after noon, so he had a little time to play with. But not too much.

  He took out the business card that he had found in Cordelia’s rental car. Lenny Bange, Esquire, of Bange, Bange and Bange, Attorneys at Law. The business card depicted a smiling Lenny Bange wearing a cowboy hat, the brim pushed back with the smoking barrel of a six-gun. The logo read: Get more Bange for your Buck.

  It was actually quite a catchy advertisement. There were several billboards around town that showed a posed picture of the three brothers, wearing old-west attire complete with gun belts and pistols. The words on one billboard stated, BANGE BANGE BANGE, and below the picture of the three brothers dressed as cowboys the caption read, WE SUE DRUNK DRIVERS.

  It should say, “We sue everyone,” Jack thought.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The offices of Bange, Bange and Bange were in the Court Building downtown. It wasn’t actually the building where trials were held, but had been named that because it was directly across the street from the old county courthouse once upon a time. When the new court building had been built on property directly behind the Civic Center on Main Street, the Court Building and the Old Courthouse had found use as office space for several companies, but mostly for lawyers.

  Jack rode the elevator to the eleventh floor with a young guy in a very expensive suit who was trying hard to look grown up. Jack had seen him around the courthouse before. He was tall and thin, with a scraggly mustache that was more peach fuzz than whisker, but the suit was top shelf. Apparently he was making some pretty good bread.

  “How long have you worked for Lenny?” Jack asked, trying to be polite.

  “You’re Jack Murphy, aren’t you?” the young man said.

  Jack put his hands up in mock surrender. “You got me.”

  The man grinned and put out his hand. “How do you know I work for Lenny?”

  “You’re going to the eleventh floor. That entire floor belongs to the Bange brothers,” Jack said, shaking his hand.

  The young man nodded. “Name’s Manny. Manny Bange.”

  Jack looked the youngster over more closely. He didn’t remotely resemble the Bange brothers. They were all short and squat, with wide heads shoved on top of muscled necks and shoulders.

  Manny noticed the look and said, “Lenny is my adoptive father.”

  “You have my condolences,” Jack said, and this brought a smile.

  The doors opened on the eleventh floor, and Manny stepped out, motioning for Jack to follow him. “Who are you here for?” he asked, and added, “Not me, I hope.”

  “Lenny,” Jack said.

  “I’m heading that way. I’ll sneak you past his secretary.”

  “She’s pretty fierce?” Jack asked.

  “Gestapo,” Manny said with a smile. “We got her after her tour at Guantanamo Bay.”

  Jack had to laugh.

  “You seem like a nice guy,” Jack said.

  “So why am I an attorney?” Manny finished, and both of them chuckled. “Heard that one a few times.”

  Cordelia Morse, Liddell thought. He’d run the name through their local system and came up with no record. He’d run her in IDACS, the Indiana Data and Communication System that contained criminal records for all of Indiana and had come up with zilch, also. He’d even run her through NCIC, the National Crime Index Center that was maintained by the FBI, and still nothing. Of course, that didn’t mean much. Women legally changed names easier than he changed his underwear, and if they didn’t commit a new crime under the new name they could avoid being found in the computer.

  He was luckier with the Illinois driver’s license, but it didn’t tell him much except for the post-office box number in Shawneetown, Illinois. Jonathan Samuels had nothing in the local database either, and without a date of birth or Social Security number to put with it he could go no further.

  It was beginning to look like he and Jack would be taking a trip to Shawneetown. From what some of the other detectives were saying, that town was just a spot in the road. Backwoods. Countrified to the nth degree. And then they had made gestures as if they were picking a banjo.

  Liddell himself was born and raised in a little town in Louisiana called Placquemine, and he had spent six years at the Iberville Parish Sheriff Department before meeting his wife, Marcie, and then moving to Evansville so that she could be near her family. The guys in the detective office would undoubtedly consider Liddell’s hometown to be a spot in the road, too, but he knew they would never make banjo-picking remarks to his face.

  He didn’t mind being called “Cajun” because people in Indiana seemed to think that anyone coming from Louisiana was a Cajun. But in fact, his side of the family had been mostly Creole, which was a mix of native Indian and blacks. As cracker white as Liddell’s skin looked, no one would ever guess that his great-great grandpa was as black as the ace of spades. Not Negro, not Indian, just Creole.

  The autopsy on Cordelia Morse was scheduled for this morning, and he had nothing to show for an hour of work except a driver’s license status and a post-office box number in Shawneetown, Illinois.

  His cell phone rang. Recognizing the caller’s number he answered, saying, “Doctor Love’s House of Pain.”

  Marcie Blanchard was prepared for this. “When’s the doctor coming home?” she asked.

  “Don’t know,” Liddell said. “Autopsy’s this morning sometime, and Jack’s talking to some attorney.”

  “Oh dear! Is he in trouble again?” she asked.

  Liddell laughed. “Nothing that Doctor Love can’t get him out of, babykins. What’s for supper tonight?”

  “Depends on whether Doctor Love gets home before it gets cold.” She said this in a whispery voice that made his heart melt.

  “Love you, Marcie,” he said.

  “You keep Doctor Love safe. Call me when you can.”

  He promised to keep in touch and hung up.

  His thoughts turned to his partner. Jack was the best friend Liddell could imagine. They were more like brothers than partners. Liddell had been there when Jack and Katie were married, and he’d been there when they divorced. He’d watched his partner go through hell over the divorce, and still could not understand why they had split up. But it was Jack’s life, his own business. Still, he wished that his partner could be as happy as he was with M
arcie.

  His desk phone rang.

  “Evansville Police Department,” Liddell said into the receiver, then listened for a moment and hung up. It was time to go to the morgue.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jack had concluded his meeting with Lenny Bange and was waiting at the coroner’s office entrance when Liddell arrived.

  “Any luck?” Jack asked. Liddell shook his head.

  “She has no record under the name we have for her,” Liddell said. “Nothing local on Samuels. I didn’t have time to check with narcotics yet, but I’ll get them after the autopsy.” Then he asked, “Any luck with the shyster?”

  “He said Cordelia made an appointment over the phone, and was supposed to meet with him tomorrow. He said he’s never met her and didn’t know where she got his business card.”

  “Maybe she found it in the back of an ambulance,” Liddell suggested.

  “Anyway,” Jack continued, “Lenny specializes in civil law, but he didn’t have a clue what she wanted. His secretary took the call and she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—remember anything about the woman who made the appointment, except that she was sure it was a woman’s voice.”

  “Think she was going to sue someone, and was killed for it?”

  Jack just shrugged. “We’ll have to wait until we have more questions before we bother Lenny again. He was very defensive considering the simple questions I was asking.”

  “He is an attorney, Jack. They’re used to getting paid for their time,” Liddell said with a grin.

  “Did you get a street address in Shawneetown?” Jack asked.

  “All we have is a post-office box.”

  “We need someone to identify the body,” Jack said. “I think Shawneetown is only about an hour’s drive away.”

  “The way you drive it will be ten minutes, pod’na. We need to call Captain Franklin.”

  The men looked at each other.

  So far they had a dead woman who seemed to have no reason to be in Evansville, much less a reason to be dead. They would have to depend on another police agency, the Shawneetown Police Department, to assist them in getting information. They didn’t even know how long she had been in Evansville, just that she had been in the room for two nights and had paid up for the rest of the week. But they did have the name of the person who had rented the car for her. Jonathan Samuels. Maybe he could help them with their inquiries.

  “No one at the Marriott remembered her. I talked to guests, maintenance, and management. No one remembers her receiving any visitors,” Liddell said.

  “Did we check the outgoing phone calls?”

  “We did. No calls,” Liddell said. “Of course, she could have received calls and they wouldn’t have a record because they all come in on a trunk line and no one remembers any.”

  “And she didn’t have a cell phone,” Jack said. “What young woman doesn’t have a cell phone these days?” Something else to ask in Shawneetown, Jack thought.

  “She still had four days to go, and an appointment with Lenny Bange scheduled for tomorrow,” Liddell said. “If she took a room for a week, it’s reasonable to believe that she was here to do something. I mean, Evansville is not exactly a touristy place.”

  “Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Still, I guess we should get uniforms to pass her picture around. Maybe even take it to the security people at the Blue Star,” he said, meaning the Blue Star Casino, a local riverboat. “Maybe she was a gambler?”

  “Well, let’s get this over with and then I’ll let you drive me to Shawneetown,” Jack said.

  “Wow! You mean I can drive?”

  “You betcha, Bigfoot. I might even let you buy me some coffee on the way, too.”

  “By the way, that was a pretty good catch on the stuff in room three seventy-five today, pod’na,” Liddell said.

  “Crime scene rushed the newspaper to the State Police Crime Lab to see what they can get off it,” Jack said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some fingerprints.”

  Liddell laughed. “Yeah, and maybe the killer wrote his name and address on it, too.”

  “I hear you, Bigfoot,” Jack said. He had worked hundreds, if not thousands of cases, and had only found fingerprint evidence meaningful in a handful.

  “We need to get Angelina in on this,” Liddell said. Angelina Garcia, a civilian employee of the police department, worked in their computer section. She was currently on loan to the vice squad, and was helping break an encrypted computer program from a seized computer. Everyone on the department knew that Angelina was the best when it came to computers or putting data together to make it mean something.

  “You think the captain will get her for us?” Liddell asked.

  “Maybe if you ask. He doesn’t like me.”

  “He likes you okay,” Liddell said. “He just thinks you’re a smart-ass.”

  “Hey. I resemble that remark,” Jack said.

  “This guy really likes to cut people, don’t he?” Liddell offered.

  “Seems that way,” Jack agreed. “What he did to that poor girl’s face . . .”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The forensic pathologist, Dr. John Carmodi, known simply as Dr. John, had already prepped the body of Cordelia Morse and was dictating his initial observations into the microphone that was suspended by a boom over the stainless-steel autopsy table. Foot pedals located on each side of the table, allowed the pathologist to take hands-free, real-time taped notes during the autopsy.

  “Greetings and salutations, my Yeti brother,” Dr. John said through his green face mask as Liddell and Jack entered the room.

  “I hope that wasn’t on the tape,” Jack said.

  “Is he gonna be a party pooper?” Dr. John asked Liddell.

  Jack hurriedly changed the subject. “What can you tell us about the wounds to the face?”

  A magnifying lamp on wheels was pulled over and Dr. John examined the victim’s face. “The face was cut off with something very sharp or very heavy . . . or both,” he said. “The cut starts at the frontal bone and whatever the weapon was, it sliced down along the superciliary ridge, fracturing the supraorbital ridge and taking skin, muscle, cartilage, and part of the nasal bone, continuing down through the anterior nasal spine and almost cutting into the palate and alveolar arch.”

  “Pretend you’re talking to Liddell, Dr. John, and say that in English,” Jack said.

  “Okay,” Dr. John said and made a chopping motion with his hand. “The killer used something heavy and sharp and chopped her face off with one stroke.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Liddell said.

  “Any idea what kind of weapon?” Jack asked.

  Dr. John shook his head. “Something big, heavy, and sharp.”

  “Like a hatchet?” Liddell offered.

  “Think bigger. And heavier,” Dr. John said.

  “You mean like an axe?” Liddell said.

  Dr. John threw gloves to the detectives. “Put these on and help me turn her body over,” he said.

  Jack and Liddell gloved up and helped Dr. John roll the body onto its side. Dr. John pulled the hair away from the back of the neck.

  “See that?” Dr. John asked, pointing to some bruising at the base of the neck, and again at a spot in the middle of the back between the scapula. The men nodded.

  “I’m betting that the killer put a knee in her back and held her facedown on the floor. With her head tilted back and her chin propped against the floor, her face would be at the right angle for a blow from a heavy hand axe to do the damage.”

  He pointed to the bruises at the base of the neck. “See how this bruise on the left side of the neck is bigger than the others?” he said and held his left hand out as if he were gripping the victim’s neck. “Our killer is left handed. He held her with his right hand and used the left to deliver the blow from the weapon.”

  Jack felt a knot forming in his stomach. “Was this done before or after she was dead?”

  “Definitely after,” Dr. John answered. “I can t
ell you right now that the blow to the face didn’t cause her death. Of course I’ll have to finish the autopsy to give you the cause of death. But I can tell you off the record that it is probably going to be due to exsanguination.”

  “Excuse me?” Liddell said.

  “Total hypovolemia,” Dr. John explained.

  “Once again?” Liddell queried.

  “She bled to death, Bigfoot,” Jack said.

  The men rolled the body back onto her back and Dr. John continued his examination. “I’ll do a rape kit, but there are no outward signs of a sexual assault.”

  Jack didn’t think the victim would care at this point. Let’s see, Jack thought. Do I want to be raped and then have someone cut my face off? Or do I just want to have my throat slashed? But it would be nice if the killer had left some DNA behind.

  Dr. John tilted the victim’s head back and to the right and exposed the wound to the bright overhead lamps. The killer had nearly cut her head from her body. “If my theory about the killer is correct, and he is left handed, then this blow was delivered from behind. It could be the same type weapon. Maybe we’ll find some trace evidence when I get tissue samples from inside the wound.”

  Jack looked at the gaping chasm that opened in the neck of the victim. He imagined the scene and could see the killer standing behind Cordelia. She could have been lying with her back to him, or sitting. If she was standing the killer must be extremely tall to have delivered an upward blow without striking her shoulder. It made more sense if she was seated and the killer stood behind her. He could then grab her by the hair and pull her head to the right while driving the blade of the weapon at an upward angle, slicing through muscle, tendons, and arteries on the left side of her neck.

  Jack ran that scenario past Dr. John, who nodded and probed inside the wound. “Carotid is severed cleanly,” Dr. John said. “Only one blow.” He moved the portable light closer to see deeper inside. “He was either very lucky or knew what he was doing.”