The Coldest Fear

by Rick Reed

  The black SUV turned south toward Kentucky, and then jigged across a field and onto a side road that paralleled Lynn Road, but on the opposite side of the Ohio River.

  The killer slowed to a crawl and watched the opposite bank. He couldn’t sit there long, but he wanted to see the curling snake of emergency lights as the police cars and medical crews headed toward Jack’s place. From his position he would be able to see them coming down Highway 41 in plenty of time to allow him to run the back county roads in Kentucky and come back out on the main stretch that runs through the middle of Henderson.

  Murphy is one lucky man, he thought as he watched the first of the flashing emergency lights speeding south on Highway 41. Well, he didn’t get the axe tonight, but someone else did. He chuckled at his own humor. Besides, he had another place to go tonight. He’d planned on two killings tonight. He would still meet that goal. Murphy just wouldn’t be one of them.

  He didn’t know who the young man who had come across him on the gravel road was, but he seemed to be someone in authority. The way he handled himself, the way he tried to take cover behind his truck door, the weak attempt at defending himself. Probably a cop, he thought.

  As he watched, a procession of vehicles with rotating beacons headed in the direction from which he had just come. Time to go visit the next one.

  Jon Samuels was conflicted. Should I wear the Calvin Klein jeans and the ribbed T-shirt or the white capri-style pants with the white linen shirt with a thin blue vertical stripe? Not that it really mattered since this wasn’t a date. It was just that the man’s voice on the telephone had sounded so . . . suggestive.

  He had almost not answered the telephone when he saw that the number had been blocked by the caller, but it was something he might do himself if he was dialing a telephone number and wasn’t sure of the reception he would get. It sure as hell wouldn’t be the police.

  The man had sounded hesitant at first, but then his tone became warmer and more enthusiastic as he spoke of his relationship with Cordelia. It had surprised Jon that one of Cordelia’s old boyfriends would call to give condolences. He warmed to the stranger’s thoughtfulness.

  By the end of the conversation, he had asked the man to come by and have coffee. Or did he ask me? he thought. It didn’t matter now because the man would be arriving any minute and he still had to decide on an outfit. He didn’t want to look uninterested, but he didn’t want to look like a skank either. It had been a long time since he’d felt excited by the prospect of friendship and companionship.

  He looked at the clothes lying on the bed. He’d split the difference and wear one of each piece. The Calvin Kleins and the linen shirt. The white shirt would hide his paleness.

  Cinderella lay on her side on the bed giving him a look of indifference.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  It was early Friday morning. The day before Halloween. The administrative areas of the police department looked like a ghost town. A few uniformed officers roamed the halls carrying out routines that were much like assembly line work in a factory. Pick up this form, carry it to that office; get this signature, time-stamp that sheet, write a note or two; and then carry the form back to another office where it would go into a basket and slide off into the black hole of the computer system called PAMIS, which stood for Police Automated Management Information Systems. Jack knew that most of the cops called the computer system PENIS for obvious reasons.

  Jack left Sergeant Walker at the coroner’s office, where the autopsy of John “Kooky” Kuhlenschmidt was being delayed until his parents and would-be fiancée could be notified. He came in the back door of police headquarters and walked down a flight of stairs to the basement. The quiet was tangible.

  Only four o’clock in the morning, but word had gotten out quickly of Kooky’s murder. Officers who had not been requested to come in early were out in their own cars looking for the killer. Jack felt the same shock and anger as the others, but the person they were looking for would not be standing on a street corner with a sign saying WILL KILL FOR FUN.

  He couldn’t get the sight of Kooky’s mangled face out of his mind. And what was Kooky doing on the drive that led only to Jack’s cabin? Was he coming to see Jack? Did he know something about the killer that got him killed?

  He had to trace Kooky’s last movements that led him to his death. Although they hadn’t officially determined this, Officer Kooky Kuhlenschmidt, just hours after completing his probationary period, had become the fifth victim of the killer. Jack was as certain of this as he was of his own name.

  Entering the war room, Jack noticed his partner was looking very rumpled and sleepy from being roused from bed after only two hours’ sleep in the last twenty-four. He’d made the death notification to Kuhlenschmidt’s parents. Legally, one of them would have had the duty to formally identify the body, but there wasn’t enough left of the young officer’s face to identify. He didn’t have any scars or other marks, but Jack had found a pay stub in his shirt pocket along with a small gray velvet box containing an engagement ring.

  “The engagement ring you found was going to be given to Ellen DeSoto tomorrow night,” Liddell said.

  “That’s horrible,” Garcia said.

  “The parents said they would notify the fiancée, but I went with them or I would have been back here sooner.”

  “Did they have any idea why he was on the drive to my cabin?” Jack asked.

  “Not a clue,” Liddell answered. “But I talked to Timmons and he said they’d been drinking at the FOP Club, celebrating Kooky’s getting off probation, and he up and told them about the engagement. According to Timmons, some of the guys tried to talk Kooky into having a police wedding and he was supposed to ask you to play bagpipes for him.”

  “At two o’clock in the morning?” Jack said.

  “Timmons said they left the club about that time and he didn’t think Kooky was that drunk, but he figured Kooky was coming to see you.”

  “Awww, Christ!” Jack said.

  “Hey, boss, it’s not your fault,” Garcia said and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder.

  Jack knew there was nothing he could have done to stop what happened, but he also knew that Kooky had been killed because he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The killer had been there for him, not Kooky.

  “I know what you’re thinking, pod’na,” Liddell said, “But just let it go. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t make this personal.”

  “What are you saying?” Jack said through clenched teeth. “I’m not making it personal. That’s already been done.”

  Detective Larry Jansen sat in a corner of Duffy’s Tavern where the lights were dim and the women were even dimmer. The bar had closed an hour ago, but the regulars were allowed to stay and finish their drinks. He had nowhere else to go so he continued to watch the woman wipe the foamy suds from her lips after she took a gallon-sized drag from a fishbowl of beer.

  She wasn’t exactly pretty, but her tits were the size of watermelons and he was in the mood for some very casual sex. He figured he would wait until she finished the beer she was drinking and he would offer to buy the next round. She was already getting that rubbery inebriated laughter and talking way too loud.

  But even watching the drunken woman’s melons jiggle was losing his interest. For some reason he kept thinking about the murders that Murphy was investigating. There was something that he had seen, or been told by someone that he could feel was important. He was tempted to go back to headquarters and have some coffee—clear his head and see if he could resolve whatever it was that was in the back of his mind. But just then the woman spilled half a fishbowl down her thin blouse and Larry’s mind was made up for him.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Jon Samuels opened the door and a smile spread across his face.

  “Come in,” he said, and held Cinderella’s collar so she wouldn’t turn aggressive like she always did when a straight guy came into the apartment. He didn’t know how the dog knew the difference. It w
as uncanny.

  “Behave yourself, Cinderella,” he managed to say before the visitor’s foot came up hard in the dog’s ribs, driving her across the floor and into the wall next to the sofa where she lay still.

  Jon looked up, no longer smiling.

  Lenny Bange had given Cubby Crispino a list of possible suspects when he had called Las Vegas. Cubby wasn’t interested in Lenny’s list. He hated attorneys. But he decided that to save time he would run down some of the names for himself to see if any of them could be the one that was trying to blackmail the scumbag lawyer.

  The first name on the list was Jonathan Samuels, who lived just across the Indiana state line in a shithole of a town called Shawneetown. The only reason it got his attention was because, number one, it sounded like some kind of Indian name, and number two, Jon Samuels was a fag and used to live with the little hooker who had started all this trouble in the first place. Maybe he’d pay a visit and rough the little noodle dick up and see what he could find out.

  He smiled at the thought. It would at least fill up some of his time, and there sure wasn’t anything else to do in Evansville, Indiana. Even their casino was a disappointment. Now, Vegas—there was where the action was.

  He looked the directions up on his laptop. Almost two hours to get there, twenty minutes of kicking ass, then another two hours back to the Drury Inn. There was a HBO movie on that evening that he didn’t want to miss. The timing worked perfect.

  He pulled his jacket back on to hide his pistol and checked himself out in the mirror. “Hello, Jon,” he said to himself. “I’m Mr. Wackadoodle, and I’m here to whack your noodle.” This might be fun.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Cubby made his way silently up the stairs and down to the door of Jonathan Samuels’s apartment. He turned the handle and found the door was unlocked. This’ll be easier than I thought. When Lenny Bange had called him and asked him to find out who was blackmailing him, he had almost turned down the job because he didn’t like to do what he considered grunt work. He wasn’t a private eye. He was muscle.

  But he could hear the fear in Lenny Bange’s voice on the telephone, and that made him feel good. Besides, he wasn’t doing much and could use the five large he had intimidated Bange into paying. Five grand to slap some sense into this little prick was easy money.

  He looked around the apartment grounds. No other lights were on and there were only two other vehicles in the parking lot. One of them was probably Jon Samuels’s car, and Cubby guessed it would be the bright purple Pontiac Vibe. The other, an SUV, might have belonged to the chick that Jon used to share the apartment with. The newspapers were saying she was whacked by a serial killer, but Cubby knew that the girl was hustling for Lenny, so he figured it was more likely one of her clients was pissed off over something she’d done.

  Maybe Bange did her himself, he thought, but dismissed the idea, remembering how scared the lawyer was when he’d called. And even if it was Bange, it was nothing to him. He was being paid to find the blackmailer and shut him up. The rest was someone else’s problem.

  He pushed the door open just a crack and listened. It was silent. Almost too silent. A finger of apprehension bore into his spine, but he quickly dismissed the feeling. Cubby Crispino, six foot two with a hundred ninety-five pounds of muscle, against a fag. What could possibly go wrong? He pushed the door open and then stood wide-eyed at the scene in front of him.

  Murphy had too much information. And he was tenacious. The killer’s plans to eliminate Murphy were thwarted by the untimely arrival of that young dude in the truck, and for a few moments he had considered cutting his losses and leaving town. He already had excuses ready for his boss and anyone else who might question the timing of his departure, but then the memory of the naked Murphy coming busting ass down that gravel drive, gun in hand, ready to kill him, had made him want to stay and finish what he had started.

  When he made the decision not to leave town it had been like being freed from chains. Almost as freeing as the feeling he’d had the day they had released him from the mental asylum. All better now, Mr. Morse, the shrink had assured him. All better. It had taken him twelve years to learn exactly what to say, how to act, to create the illusion that the doctors wanted to see.

  He’d learned the hard way. But he was always a smart kid. The shrinks weren’t stupid. They’d caught him a couple of times when he’d tried too hard to convince them he was “all better.” But eventually he’d gotten so good at pretending, that he began to believe his own bullshit. In a way, it was those doctors who created me. Always pushing, questioning, wanting me to understand why I killed my father.

  The doctors believed that if he could confront the part of him that had killed his father, his other self—the gentle side of him—would once again gain control. In fact, what happened was that when the rational side of Cody Morse met the feral personality that dwelled inside him—the one that newspapers all over the country had come to call The Cleaver—the reality of what he’d done to his father destroyed the good boy. All that was left was The Cleaver.

  But the introspection those doctors had forced him through had made something else very clear to him. He hated bullies. Hated anyone who used his position, size, or perceived authority to make other people humble themselves. Hated anyone who pushed him. And these types of people had become the victims that The Cleaver sought out. Men or women . . . it was all the same to him.

  He stood, now, just down at the end of the second-floor porch where only yesterday Jack Murphy and Jon Samuels had been sitting in chairs and having a nice little chat. He watched the big man push open the door to Samuels’s apartment and freeze in the doorway. He didn’t know who the man was, but he was as big as Cody himself, and looked every bit as strong.

  Cody wondered if this man could shed any light on the telephone call he had received. Samuels had known nothing. He’d made sure Samuels had no information for him before he ended the poor little man’s existence. He had even been surprised to feel a little hesitation before he had swung the bone axe into Samuels’s throat. Maybe it was because—once again—this wasn’t the type of victim he would normally seek out. Samuels was no bully. If anything he was a victim.

  But somewhere out there was a blackmailer who had his name in a diary. His name was there because she had discovered he was her brother and not because he was one of her clients. Eventually the truth would come out. And that would tie him to Cordelia, and then to the others, and then he would be locked up again.

  The Cleaver would never go back inside again. Young Cody Morse had felt relief being inside the hospital. He felt safe, and cared for, and had even begun to like some of the staff and patients. The Cleaver had felt rage. The Cleaver wanted out. He hated everyone who stood in the way of his freedom. If he could have gotten to his bone axe back then he would have gotten out of the hospital much sooner. But, he was “all better now.”

  He felt the weight of the short-handled axe in his hand and it calmed him. He’d used it to cleave most of the meat from his father’s face and skull after delivering the killing blow to the man’s neck. When he was eight years old the axe had required all of the strength of both of his arms to chop his father’s head free from his neck.

  During the years that he had been regularly beaten by the bully that he called his father, he had endured verbal and psychological abuse that was nothing near the quick death he had given the man. The old saying about “sticks and stones” was bullshit. He had almost forgotten his real name as a child because the only one he heard come from his father’s mouth was “bastard” or “you worthless piece of shit” or his all-time favorite, “faggot son of a bitch.”

  These words had damaged his self-worth, according to the doctors at St. Francis Institution where he had been “admitted” and kept prisoner all those years. But the words didn’t damage his self-worth. They only changed his soul, piece by piece, from a child, into someone who laughed at the doctors and their ignorance of who they really had before the
m.

  The first thing he’d done upon release from St. Francis was to go back to Shawneetown and find the axe. He wasn’t surprised that it was still in its hiding place. If he had believed in God he would have believed that God had kept it safe for him. But he believed in something bigger than God. He believed in vengeance.

  The axe empowered him. It was like waking from a long sleep. He felt no fear, no pain, and no guilt at being left behind by his mother. It was as if his sister didn’t exist in all of this. The only bond he had to her was that they had both been abandoned. He had no earlier memories of her. Couldn’t remember one event, a birthday, a conversation, or a game. One day she’d been a skinny two-year-old and the next time he saw her he killed her.

  That one act had led to all of this unplanned bloodshed, and this was not to his liking. He picked his victims for a reason. He stalked them like game, and then he put them down like the animals they were. But killing his sister had set off a storm that didn’t seem to have an end.

  He knew he could have packed up and walked away from Evansville. Still didn’t know exactly why he had taken a job so close to Shawneetown in the first place. But he knew he would not leave until he’d finished his mission.

  He clutched the bone axe to his side and moved silently down the porch toward Jon Samuels’s doorway. Maybe the visitor there had some information. If he did, he would give it to The Cleaver. There was no alternative.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Detective Jansen sat in his car in the back parking lot of Duffy’s Tavern in a disappointed and angry state. The woman with the casaba-melon breasts had turned down his advances and left the bar, being half carried by a little guy with no front teeth. He was glad now that he hadn’t wasted two bucks buying her another damn beer.