by Rick Reed
He grumbled and excused himself to go to the restroom.
Liddell started to pick up the other pile, but she put a restraining hand on his arm. “I’m quite capable of doing this work, Detective. You catch this bastard and leave the paperwork to me.”
“If Jansen gives you any problems, call me,” he said.
Garcia threw her hair back and laughed. “I can take care of that pip-squeak, Detective Blanchard,” she said confidently.
He could get to like this little dynamo. “Okay, Garcia. You can call me Liddell.”
She smiled and then ignored him totally as she lit up her monitor and got to work.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jack had entered the lake region, but it took him almost five minutes to locate the sign that pointed left to Panther Creek. He took this road for about a hundred yards, and when he turned into the lot he got a clear view of part of the lake. The water was deep blue and green, and the sun sparkled off its surface. He pulled up behind a brown and tan Jeep Cherokee marked DUBOIS COUNTY SHERIFF and came to a stop.
The man inside pulled himself from the Jeep, and it rose several inches. Sheriff Tanner Crowley was a big man. He wasn’t fat. He might have been in his fifties, but he looked strong and fit.
Jack rolled his window down as the big man came up to his car.
“Murphy?”
“You got me,” Jack said. “You Sheriff Crowley?”
The sheriff nodded his head and grinned a little. “Your captain said you were a smart-ass. Is that right?”
“Guilty as charged, your honor,” Jack said.
“You ’n’ me’ll get along just fine,” Crowley said. “Call me Tanner.” He put out a large hand, and Jack shook it.
“You will want to ride with me. Some of these roads are not fit for travel except in a four-wheel drive, and we got a little piece to go to get to the cabin.”
Jack got in the passenger side of the Jeep and was surprised at how roomy it was even with all the radio equipment and a computer mounted between the seats. A 12-gauge Winchester pump shotgun was mounted above their heads in an electronically locked quick-release carrier above the windshield. A half-dozen pairs of handcuffs and ankle cuffs stood up in a wooden box between the seats.
The sheriff saw Jack eyeing the box of handcuffs and said, “It’s a quiet little county most of time. At least until a bunch of drunked-up fishermen start tearing the place apart.” Jack could understand that. He was an avid fisherman himself and was known to have a drink or two—or twenty—when he was out on the water.
Tanner drove expertly down a path that led into the woods and back out onto a gravel road. “Shortcut,” he said as they bounced over some small downed trees. He consulted a GPS mounted to his dash and said, “We should just about be there,” and cut the wheels sharply off the gravel road and into the woods. They traveled uphill a hundred yards or so and made a sharp right turn, traveling along a shallow stream and coming out below a gravel parking area. Jack could see two other sheriff department SUVs and a huge, white Ford pickup with monster tires parked in the lot.
As Tanner parked, a deputy ran up to the car. This one was as big as Tanner but younger. They talked for a minute, and Tanner introduced them.
“This is detective Murphy from Evansville,” he said to the deputy, then to Jack, “This is my chief deputy, Mark Crowley.” Tanner saw Jack’s expression and said, “Yeah, he’s my son. You gonna say something smart-ass about it?”
“I just want to get back to the road before the banjos start playing,” Jack said with a grin.
“Hear that, Mark?” Tanner said.
“Yeah, Sheriff, he’s a hoot,” the younger Crowley said.
“Why don’t you fill him in on the way, Bubba?” Crowley said to his son.
He actually called him Bubba, Jack thought, but didn’t interrupt.
They walked up a gravel path. The sheriff had said it was about fifty yards to the cabin, and Jack wondered why they had parked so distant from the crime scene. As they walked farther down the path and into the woods, it became clear to him. He’d seen an SUV with K-9 markings parked in the outer perimeter. They must have brought the dog out to see if they could get a direction of travel on the killer.
“Dog do any good?” Jack asked.
Mark Crowley answered, his voice sounding hollow. “Dad’ll fill you in on that. You probably should look at the scene first.”
They arrived at the front, wraparound deck of the cabin. An older deputy stood just outside the front door with a notebook in his hand. The deputy’s uniform was faded to the point it was almost colorless, but Jack was impressed to see he was wearing a Glock .45 in a Class III retention holster.
The older deputy’s name tag read VODKA WILSON, and although Jack thought that was quite a remarkable name, he was glad the older man wasn’t Grandpa Crowley. Even nepotism had to have limits.
They walked onto the deck, and Vodka was already writing in his notebook. “This the guy, Sheriff?” Vodka asked without looking up.
“It wasn’t me. I got witnesses,” Jack said, holding his hands in the air, to which the older deputy chuckled, then coughed into his cupped hands like he would spit out a lung.
“Gotta quit smoking,” Vodka said when he recovered enough to speak; then to the Crowleys he said, “His captain was right, Sheriff. He’s a real smart-ass.” He then wiped his right hand on his pant leg and held it out to greet the newcomer.
Jack would have liked to glove up first, but he reluctantly took the offered hand. He was a guest here, so it wouldn’t do to be rude. As he shook hands, Jack wondered how many people the captain had talked to. Probably everyone on the lake knew he was a smart-ass by now. I’m going to have to talk to Captain Franklin about this slander when I get back, Jack thought.
Every light in the cabin was on in addition to several work lights on tripods set up to illuminate the body. The lights were so glaringly bright, the body so badly abused, that Jack winced at the grisly scene. During the ride to the cabin the sheriff had informed him that the victim was a white female about twenty-five years old and that she had been employed by St. Mary’s Hospital in Evansville. She was found by a female friend who had come to visit her at the cabin at about three o’clock that morning.
“This is exactly how her friend found her,” Mark Crowley said.
“Is she still here? The friend?” Jack asked. He hoped she was available to answer a few questions. Like, why was she going to the cabin at three o’clock in the morning?
“Well, that’s part of the weirdness we got here,” Mark answered. “Our office got the call from a pay phone in Evansville at four thirty-five this morning. A female caller. Said she wanted to report a murder. She wouldn’t give her name at first, but the deputy finally convinced her we needed to talk to her, and she agreed to talk to you.”
“Me?” Jack said, surprised. “Why me?”
“Her name is Janet Parson. She’s a nurse, a physical therapist of some type. Works at the same hospital as the victim. She says she knows you,” Mark answered.
The name sounded familiar to Jack, and then he remembered that when he had been in the hospital, his physical therapist was named Janet. Her name tag had read JANET: R.N., and he had kidded Liddell that the R.N. stood for “Retired Nazi.” Liddell thought she had a cute butt, but Jack was so busy screaming profanities during the treatments that he hadn’t noticed.
“So why did she leave the scene and drive all the way back to Evansville?” Jack wondered out loud. Both Crowleys just shrugged.
“She’s on her way back here,” the sheriff said. Just then they heard tires crunching in the gravel, and Deputy Vodka Wilson stuck his head in the doorway.
“Sheriff,” he said in his gravelly tone, “I think that ‘friend’ a’ hers is here.” He made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers when he said “friend.”
Sheriff Crowley told him to have someone hold her at the outer perimeter until they were done inside and they would talk to
her. The deputy relayed the sheriff’s orders to someone, and the door closed again.
The men went back to examining the body.
“We got a name on the victim yet?” Jack asked. It occurred to him that he hadn’t asked yet.
“Yeah,” Mark Crowley said. “Her name is Tisha Carter. She’s a nurse. Unmarried, no kids. A deputy is trying to run down family and history, but you know how it is when you have to go through another agency to get info.” Jack nodded. He knew how bureaucracy slowed things down to a death rattle.
The body was in the center of the one-room cabin, hanged by the neck from a wood ceiling beam in a kneeling position. She was facing away from the door. Her hands were tied behind her back with a cord that looked similar to the one around her neck, and she was partially clothed in a bloodstained white garment that might have been the top of her nursing uniform. Long bloodstained gashes in the clothing suggested she had been slashed with some type of long-bladed instrument. The skull showed through several gashes in the top of her scalp. She was naked from the waist down. Her feet were bare, and the soles of her feet had gashes in them.
Just like the Lamar child, Jack thought. He pointed to the blood pooled around the body. “It looks like she was overpowered right here. Maybe strung up before she was killed, because all the blood is beneath her.”
“Yeah, that’s what we figured, too,” Mark Crowley said. “The killer hacked her to death while she was hanging. Some kinda sword or something. Then he gutted her.”
Sheriff Crowley looked pallid. “She was probably dead before most of this was done, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, but he didn’t believe it. For one thing, her pants were gone, suggesting a sexual assault before the murder. But he didn’t want to suggest that yet without more evidence.
Mark Crowley squatted down and pointed to some marks in the pool of blood that encircled the body. “There are some spots here that look like bare footprints.” Jack looked at where Mark was pointing and thought he could make out some depressions that would be consistent with a set of toes and maybe a heel.
“The size of that print is bigger than this little gal’s foot,” Sheriff Crowley said. Mark nodded in agreement.
“I found several more, I think,” Mark said. “It looked like someone was walking around the body barefoot.”
“Admiring his work,” Sheriff Crowley offered.
Jack inched his way around to the front of the body and had to get on his knees to look up into the victim’s face. It was remarkably free of blood except for the tip of her nose.
The sheriff nodded and said, “Remember I told you that there were a couple of things really strange about this?”
Jack nodded, wondering how much stranger the sheriff imagined things could get.
“There are a couple more things.” He pointed at the wall behind them.
Jack stood up and saw a forty-two-inch, flat-screen television mounted on the wall. It was turned on, and something was smeared on the screen. Jack walked over to it and saw that there were words written in something red and sticky. He could make out the words:
You killed her
Jack
Without taking his eyes from the screen, Jack asked the two men, “How’d you know I was the right Jack? It wasn’t just because the victim was from Evansville. Or because the witness wanted to talk to me. Was it?”
The younger Crowley pulled a small, plastic envelope from his pocket. Inside was a business card and the back of it was smeared with blood. The front of the card read Detective Jack Murphy. It was his business card.
“Where?” Jack asked.
“Stuck to the television screen.”
“So, I’m a suspect?” Jack said, only half-jokingly.
Sheriff Crowley leaned in and said in a low voice, “I’ve heard stories about you, Murphy, and I know you’re a hard man. But you better be careful.” He and his son looked at each other, and then Tanner said, “This kind of shit don’t happen in my county. It’s a quiet place.”
“Except for drunken fishermen,” Jack corrected.
“Yeah. Except for them,” Tanner Crowley said, shaking his head. “But the state police will take this scene over pretty soon, and if they found this,” he said, nodding toward the business card, “they’d tie you up in so much red tape you wouldn’t be able to do what you do best.”
“I haven’t been doing too hot, so far,” Jack said.
Mark Crowley looked at the television screen. “Whatever you’re doing—or whatever you’ve done—is pissing this guy off. I’d say he wants to kill you or get you to kill him, you know?” He opened the front door, and they walked onto the porch.
Sheriff Crowley let out a long sigh and looked at the sky. “Cheese ’n’ crackers,” he muttered, and put a big hand on Jack’s shoulder. “This guy has probably hightailed it back to your neck of the woods. I got no problem with however you plan on handling him in your own county. Hell, I wish you’d kill the son of a bitch if you want the truth.”
“What are you going to tell the state police?” Jack asked.
“Hell, boy, they think we’re a bunch of dumb rednecks down he’ah,” he said with an exaggerated hillbilly accent. “I ain’t telling ’em shit. It’ll be their case soon, so fuck a bunch of state cops.”
Jack looked down at the sheriff’s SUVs on the perimeter and a familiar face peered out of one of the windows. Janet. Retired Nazi, he thought, and walked down the steps.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Hi, honey.” Marcie said into the phone. She knew that if he was calling her at this hour in the day that he was either going to be late, or may not be home at all that evening. Being a policeman’s wife, she was used to it. But it was neither.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” Liddell said.
She could tell there was something bothering him, but she would wait for him to tell it in his own way.
Finally he said, “This isn’t going too good, babe.”
“Tell me,” she said gently, and he did. He told her about the whole frustrating mess, and how Jack was in Dubois County checking out another murder that might be, probably was, related to the recent ones. He told her how the killer was sending these messages to Jack, seemingly taunting him. He was worried about his partner and knew that Jack would likely go after this guy alone.
And Marcie, good wife that she was, listened. She didn’t offer advice because she knew he wasn’t asking for any. He was using her as a sounding board to work this out in his own mind. And it was okay with her. It was okay because Liddell was calling her, and not anyone else. That meant a lot. When he was through he told her, “Sorry for bending your ear, hon.”
“Liddell,” she said, “you can bend anything I’ve got,” and heard him chuckling on the other end.
“Love you, hon,” she said.
“Back at cha,” he said, and slowly hung up.
Marcie held the line open until she heard his end go dead; then she hung up and dialed another number.
The phone was answered on the second ring. “Hello,” Katie Murphy said.
Eddie finished writing the notes and laid them on the console. The map of Mother Goose Land lay open on the dash, and a new character had been marked.
“When are we gonna do the cop, Bobby?”
Bobby shook his head. “When you gonna learn, Eddie?”
“I know. I know. First we gotta make him pay. But I’m getting tired of this shit, Bobby, and you ain’t done much since we started except give me orders.”
Bobby said nothing, and so Eddie looked at the map again. He had to admit that Bobby had a pretty cool plan. So far, all of the murders, except the nurse, had followed the map. The nurse would have fit perfectly, too, if she hadn’t taken it in her head to drive way the hell out to that lake. What was the bitch doing out there anyway? Eddie thought. She had someone coming out there, I just know it.
Eddie had wanted to stay and see who it was. Maybe have a little fun. But Bobby wanted to lea
ve right after they did her. “Stick to the plan, Eddie. Stick to the plan.” That’s all he ever says.
Well, Eddie was getting sick of being bossed around and doing all the work to boot. He’d do this next one, but then he was going to have some fun.
“Bobby, I don’t understand all this shit. I just want to get even.”
“We are getting even, Eddie. First, we destroy the man’s reputation, and then we destroy everything he cares about. When we’re done with him, he’ll be begging us to kill him. Trust me, Eddie.”
“I do trust you, Bobby. I trust you with my life, man.” Eddie smiled, but Bobby didn’t smile back.
Maddy Brooks was putting the finishing touches on the script that would be sent to her TelePrompTer in the newsroom when they televised her “Breaking News Special” this morning. The police department would have a fit, but she couldn’t keep this under wraps any longer. The killer had made that very clear.
She shuddered when she remembered his lips pressed against her neck, whispering the most awful things to her, giving her instructions that had dire consequences if she disobeyed, but promising to keep in touch if she did what he said. She didn’t shudder because of fear, but from disgust. The man exuded rot and decay, and even taking a scalding hot shower hadn’t erased the feeling he left behind.
But, in truth, this was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. She was in the driver’s seat, and even the police didn’t have the right to stop her from telling—no, warning—the public about this freak.
She smiled. The station’s ratings would go through the roof, and with the higher ratings would come a promotion for the woman that made it possible.
The station manager, Bill Goldberg, stuck his head in her office where she was touching up her makeup. “You ready, tiger?”
“You got it covered with the lawyers?” she asked, but didn’t really care. She just wanted to sound concerned for the station. Show that she was a team player.