The Coldest Fear Page 7

  He flipped the television off and thought about what Jansen had said. It was almost a repeat—word for word—of what Setera had said. Had Jansen called her before he called Arnold?

  Regardless, Claudine Setera hadn’t mentioned the severed hand found at the Sweetser scene. Nor did she seem to know about the eyes taken from the first and second victim, or that an eye was left behind at the second murder, and that one of the crime scene techs said it was blue, and that the second victim didn’t have blue eyes.

  It wasn’t much, and it was his day off. He really didn’t want to go in to work. But then, maybe this was just the right kind of story to get Bernice to notice him more.

  Arnold knew a lot of cops, and so he picked up the telephone and began calling. An hour later he was depressed. Getting information was harder than he had imagined, even for him. Both of these were Jack Murphy’s cases, and no one wanted to step on the wrong side of him. But at least he had verified a few key pieces of information. Enough that he believed his editor, Bob Robertson, would run with the story in the evening paper.

  He picked up the phone one more time and had begun to dial the newspaper when he heard his mother breathing on the extension in her room.

  “Mother. Please hang up the phone.”

  “I need turned, Arnold,” came his mother’s cracked voice.

  I really need to get her a full-time nurse, Arnold thought for the millionth time.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Lilly Caskins had shown up with a deputy coroner who looked like a pro football player. His arms were as big as Jack’s thighs. Liddell asked, “Think Lilly hired him in case the Suburban breaks down?”

  “He’s big enough to carry you around like a sack of potatoes, Bigfoot,” Jack said.

  The man must have heard the remark because he turned toward the detective and flexed his biceps at them and smiled.

  “That’s really scary, pod’na,” Liddell said.

  “What’s so scary?”

  “Lilly hired someone with a sense of humor. That’s not like her,” Liddell said. “And earlier she apologized to you,” he reminded Jack. “What’s going on?”

  “Maybe she’s just mellowing,” Jack suggested. “It comes with age, buddy.”

  “Nah. As old as Little Casket is, the only thing she could do is petrify.”

  “I heard that,” Lilly’s voice came from behind them.

  “Sorry, Lilly,” Liddell said.

  Lilly ignored him and directed the body’s preparation to be removed from the scene and taken to the morgue. When she had left the apartment Jack leaned over and whispered to Liddell, “When you die, you should do it in another county.”

  Liddell nodded agreement.

  There was nothing else for the men to do at the scene, so they agreed to meet at police headquarters. They still needed to brief Captain Franklin and the chief on the two murders. Jack knew the news media was breathing down the chief ’s neck wanting a news update. Jack had also heard that Claudine Setera was calling the second murder “the work of a serial killer.” Where she got this information he wasn’t sure.

  The inside of Chief Marlin Pope’s office was tiny compared to the outer office where guests were greeted by his secretary. The Civic Center’s Building Authority couldn’t believe it when Pope—a newly appointed chief of police at the time—had asked them to downsize his personal office space to make more room for visitors.

  His naysayers said it showed his lack of understanding of his job as police chief, and even his friends thought it was a mistake to show a weakness. Pope had ignored all the hubbub, electing instead to get on with the business of policing Evansville.

  Marlin Pope was used to people questioning his wisdom. The fact that he was one of a handful of black men ever to work for the Evansville Police Department was always the first thing that people noticed about him. The second thing was that he was the first black person ever to attain the rank of deputy chief, and the only one ever appointed by a mayor as chief of police.

  Pope was standing at the bank of windows behind his desk, looking out onto SE Seventh Street toward the downtown walkway. He kept his back to them as he said, “Talk to me.”

  For the next ten minutes, Jack and Liddell told the chief everything they knew about the two murders committed that day—the similarities, the differences, and the glaring connections. When they were finished talking, Pope turned toward them and let out a sigh.

  “So. It’s happening again,” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Arnold Byrum was waiting inside his green 1972 Pontiac Gremlin when Jack and Liddell pulled into the parking lot at the Vanderburgh County Coroner’s Office for the second time that day.

  “Barney’s here,” Liddell said.

  “Who yanked his chain?” Jack asked.

  “Probably the same asshole that called Blake James, ya think?”

  Jack shifted the car into park and wondered why Arnold would be waiting for them at the morgue. Even though Channel Six was hinting at a serial killer, no one knew about the connection between the two deaths except for Crime Scene, the chief of detectives, and the chief of police. Well, except for Little Casket, and it was a sure bet that she wasn’t telling.

  Arnold spotted the detectives and pushed open the door to his car. It made a loud groan as if it was ready to fall off onto the ground, but Arnold didn’t seem to notice.

  “Hey, guys,” Arnold said, his expression somewhere between serious and a smile.

  “Gomer says hi, Barney,” Liddell said to the little man.

  “Be nice, Bigfoot,” Jack said out the corner of his mouth.

  Arnold genuinely smiled now. “Ah, that’s okay. I don’t mind being teased. You know I’m one of you.”

  Jack knew he meant it too. It was hard to be mean to Arnold. He was like family. Always there, and always rooting for the blue team. He had never once written a derogatory article about the police department, and had often written glowing stories about “Jack Murphy—Superhero.”

  “What can you do for us, Arnold?” Jack asked, causing Arnold to giggle.

  “Is that a giggle I hear?” Liddell said, and grabbed Arnold, wrapped him up in a bear hug, and gave him what they used to call a noogie on top of his head. That was when someone would use their middle-finger knuckle to rub the top of your head until it burned your scalp.

  Arnold pulled away, still giggling, and Jack just watched in fascination at how grown men, especially his partner, could turn into children at the drop of a hat. He liked Arnold, but business was business, and he was going to have to cut Arnold off at the knees if he was looking into the recent murders.

  “You two get a room,” Jack said.

  “Aw, he ain’t hurtin’ me,” Arnold said.

  “We have something to do, Bigfoot,” Jack reminded Liddell.

  “Yeah?” Arnold asked. “Anything you want to tell me? Something I can write?”

  Liddell leaned down and whispered, “Jack is hot for Lilly Caskins. She’s going to have his love child.”

  “I’ve got work to do,” Jack said, and stomped in the front door of the coroner’s office. He wasn’t mad, he just wanted an excuse to extricate himself from Arnold. He hoped his partner would take the hint and get rid of the reporter.

  “Hello, Lilly,” Jack said, and waited at the open doorway. You didn’t just walk into her office. “Just wanted to let you know that we still don’t have a next of kin on the Morse woman. We found a cousin for Brigham. Nancy Marx. She’s on her way to pick the victim’s kids up from school and will then come here to identify the body.”

  “Where’s the Cajun?” she asked.

  “He’s out front with Arnold Byrum, the guy from the newspapers.”

  “I know who he is,” she snapped. “Don’t you think I know who Barney is? I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been shitting solid.”

  Jack threw his hands up in surrender and stood. He’d seen this side of Little Casket before. This was about a five-megaton att
itude, which was mild, but he didn’t want to be in the blast radius when she exploded.

  When Liddell entered the autopsy room in the back area of the coroner’s office Dr. John was examining the hand that had been found at Louise Brigham’s crime scene. The body of Cordelia Morse was in an open body bag on a gurney near the autopsy table.

  “Captain on deck,” the forensic pathologist, Dr. John Carmodi, quipped, and came to mock attention, which earned him a scathing look from Lilly Caskins.

  In the next breath Dr. John was in full professional mode and dictating into the microphone that hung above the autopsy table.

  “Addendum to the autopsy record on Cordelia Morse from this morning,” he said, and then continued to describe the reason for the reexamination of the body.

  When he was finished taping he looked at Jack and Liddell. “It’s a match. The hand that you found at the second murder scene belongs to this poor girl. Do you have someone comparing fingerprints?”

  Jack nodded in the affirmative. “Walker did a cursory look before we came over, and he said it was a good possibility. We wanted to let you look at the hand before we took prints from it.”

  “I will wait on the fingerprint results before I give my official opinion, if you don’t mind.”

  Liddell grinned at Dr. John. “You mean you’re not omnipotent?”

  “You mean impotent?” Lilly chimed in.

  Dr. John feigned a look of shock, and said, “Why, Lilly. You made a joke.”

  Lilly kept her head down and marched toward the door to the freezers where they kept the bodies that were either being preserved for autopsy or waiting to go to funeral parlors. “I’ll get Brigham,” she said.

  Ten minutes later, Dr. John had dictated his observations and was preparing the body for the autopsy.

  “Her clothing doesn’t appear to have been messed with,” Liddell said.

  “We’ll do a rape kit anyway,” Dr. John said as he and a crime scene tech began removing the clothing, photographing it, and then bagging each piece separately. It would all be examined more carefully at the crime lab.

  With that task completed, Dr. John and the tech performed another cursory examination of the unclad body.

  “Look at this,” Dr. John said, and pointed to a location almost directly in the middle of the victim’s back. Brigham’s skin complexion was so dark it was difficult for Jack to see what Dr. John was pointing to. But as the pathologist angled the overhead light he could make out a slightly darker discoloration of the tissue in the center of the back between the scapula.

  It was almost a perfect circle, darker than the surrounding tissue, and about four inches in diameter.

  “This is just like the injuries on the Morse girl. The killer put a knee in her back and held her head back, chin down hard on the floor, and then chopped her face off.”

  He pointed to the same bruising at the base of the neck that they had seen on Cordelia Morse. “See how this bruise on the left side of the neck is bigger than the others?”

  He held his left hand out as if he were gripping the victim’s neck. “Our killer is definitely left handed. He held her with his right hand and used the left to deliver the blow from the weapon.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The bold headline of the evening newspaper proclaimed, SERIAL KILLER, and the subtitle, in only slightly smaller font, read, POLICE COVER-UP.

  Chief Marlin Pope threw the newspaper across the office, and then slammed a meaty hand on the top of his desk. “I’m going to geld him!”

  He wasn’t referring to Arnold Byrum. No one in the room had to ask who he was referring to.

  “I want Jansen in my office in five minutes,” Pope demanded of Captain Chuck Franklin.

  Captain Franklin was only slightly less angry than the chief of police. What Detective Larry Jansen had done could not be repaired.

  “I’ve already reached out for him,” Franklin stated. “He’s not answering at home, or on his cell, and his radio must be turned off.”

  “Is he on duty?” Pope asked.

  “Yes.”

  Pope took a couple of deep breaths. The fact that Jansen was out of touch while on duty was enough for an immediate suspension, but then Pope would have to risk that fact getting in the news as well. He promised himself that when this current situation was resolved that he would make a permanent solution of Larry Jansen, no matter what it cost.

  “Jack, I want this leak contained,” Franklin said to Murphy.

  Jack wanted badly to say something like, “You want me to shoot him?” Instead, he said, “What are we doing about the media?”

  Jack thought about the current newspaper article. Few people knew that one of the victim’s hands was missing from the first crime scene. Even fewer knew that hand had been recovered at the second crime scene. But only a couple of people knew that the hand had been deliberately placed near the body as a message. He could still see the little hand sitting on the floor beside the victim’s head. At least Arnold didn’t report about the newspaper left in room 375 at the Marriott, or my initials written in blood by Brigham’s body.

  Pope was shaking his head. “I thought Arnold Byrum was one of the good ones.”

  Jack noticed Liddell looked uncomfortable, and said, “Well, Chief, I guess we’d better get back to work.”

  Pope seemed preoccupied and didn’t look up. The captain just nodded at them and said, “Go ahead. I’ll deal with Jansen. You just make sure . . . never mind. Just go.”

  In the hallway Jack stopped Liddell. “Tell me.”

  Liddell’s face reddened.

  Detective Larry Jansen sat in his car on the top level of the casino parking garage. The top deck was always deserted because it was out in the weather, and the gamblers were too lazy to walk the hundred or so yards to get to the elevator banks. It was Jansen’s favorite hiding spot when he didn’t want to be found.

  Captain Franklin was looking for him, and that hadn’t figured in to his plans. He’d disabled the police radio in his car by pulling the antennae cable loose in the trunk, but that would only give him an excuse for not answering the radio. He’d been out of communication most of the day now, and had even screened his police-department-issued cell phone calls. Eight attempts already by the chief ’s secretary, and if she was calling he was in deep shit.

  From his vantage point he could look down along the riverfront and across the Ohio River and on into Kentucky on the other side of the river. Off to his right, the festively painted smokestacks of the floating casino rose thirty feet into the air. Every day’s a party, he thought. That was Blue Star Casino’s slogan. Well, this day has been no damn party.

  On the street below him he could hear the occasional traffic, voices raised in merriment or anger, and the mind-numbing pounding coming from someone’s car stereo. In the old days he would have been able to go down there and yank the stereo out of the car and lob it into the river. But these weren’t the old days.

  Because of all the lawyers and bleeding hearts in this town he wouldn’t even get away with writing the noisemaker a ticket for disturbing the peace. It was too bad really. A little ass-kicking by the police had never hurt anyone. And back then, people respected the police.

  But all this reminiscing was just delaying the inevitable. He needed to go downtown and face the music. The only thing that would save him now was a heart attack or a stroke or something.

  Heart attack, he thought. No, a stroke. He started his car and drove down the descending set of concrete ramps to the exit. Welborn Hospital was only six blocks away.

  “Sorry, Jack.”

  Liddell and Jack were in the hallway of the Civic Center as Liddell explained what was bothering him. “I forgot to tell you that Arnold had been asking some strange questions back at the morgue.”

  “What do you mean, strange?”

  “You know? Stuff like, ‘Is this a serial killer?’ and ‘So you and Jack are working both of these?’ You know. That kind of stuff.” Liddell shrugged.
“It didn’t seem important at the time. Just questions any reporter might ask.”

  Jack relaxed. “Well, you can’t be a mind reader, you know.”

  Liddell was still tense and Jack could tell he was angry with himself.

  “Forget it, Bigfoot,” he said. “You’ve messed up a lot of things, but this wasn’t your fault.”

  That drew a grin from the big man. “Gee, thanks, pod’na. It’s good to know you’re in my corner. But in my own defense, I have to tell you that I didn’t spill any of that stuff in his story. I didn’t give him anything.”

  They grew serious. Someone had given away their investigation big-time, and they both hoped that it was Jansen. It sure seemed like it had to be him, but there was the worry that maybe someone else was playing the game now. And if that was true they were in for a rough ride.

  Just down the block from Louise Brigham’s tiny apartment, the killer sat in his car and watched the circus taking place. Cops had taped off a good portion of the block, but the news media were still bellied up to the crime scene barriers, pushing for a sound bite, or to shoot ten minutes of video that would end up as less than two seconds of television time. Even being here was a great waste of his time, but all things considered, it was fun to watch.

  The evening edition of the Evansville Courier lay unread on the front seat of his SUV. This paper was a definite keeper. The story was flawless. Well, almost flawless, because it didn’t tell who the killer was. But that would be premature , he thought. Don’t want to ruin the surprise. What fun would that be?

  Right now he had other duties to attend to. His mother had always said, “Idle hands are the devil’s playground.” And that thought made him chuckle.

  What would she think of that saying now? he wondered. His hands hadn’t been idle, but the things he’d done in the last twelve hours would surely be considered the “devil’s playground.”