The Coldest Fear

by Rick Reed

  Both Jack and Tunney were interested now. This was new information to both men.

  “So, anyway, Alice said that the mother was just as abusive to the little boy as the father.” Garcia turned to the last page she had written on and said, “So she is sending the case documents of the death of Dennis Morse, and also the paternity suit information. She hoped this would help us.”

  “Did she have any idea where Cody Morse might be now?” Jack asked. Garcia shook her head.

  “I know where he is,” Tunney said, and he and Jack exchanged a knowing look.

  Jansen stood paralyzed by the sight in front of him. Arnold’s mother—if that’s who the body belonged to—lay on the bed with the covers pulled up to her chest. Her head was propped against a large pillow, her arms down at her sides. Her graying hair, which had once been carefully brushed out, was matted with blood. The entire top of the bed was covered in blood. Her face was gone, and the skeletal remains peered at him with sightless eyes.

  He stared wide-eyed at the thing that had been making the noise that had drawn him to the room. The window next to the bed had been left open and a large black crow was perched beside her head. Its pecking beak, making contact with the face of the corpse, went snick-snick-snick.

  Trancelike, he moved forward to shoo the crow away, but it didn’t seem to want to leave its meal. Instead, the crow turned one dark eye toward Jansen that seemed to say, “Hey, pal, there’s plenty to go around.”

  Outside the window, Jansen noticed a car on the street below. It was rusted and green and Jansen recognized it at the same moment that he heard a high-pitched keening coming from behind him.

  Jansen turned from the window, toward the new noise, blinked, and his life went into slow motion.

  Standing in the open doorway was someone familiar, except the face was twisted into a grimace of rage, and one hand was holding the hand axe that had been downstairs by the kitchen table. The man was screaming something as he advanced, but the sound was muffled by the roar in Jansen’s ears from his pounding heart. All he could see were the twisted lips, the spittle flying from them, and the axe raising into the air.

  Jansen’s semiautomatic .45-caliber pistol appeared in his hand, and his finger squeezed the trigger. Jansen barely noticed the blowback as the pistol discharged, but he did feel the sharp pain that seemed to grow outwardly from his eyes and down his shoulders and chest into his arms.

  From five feet away, Jansen watched as Arnold Byrum stopped his approach, one hand clamped over the rose-red color blooming on his shirt, the other hand dropping the hand axe to the floor. Jansen clutched at his own chest at the sharp pain that thundered there. His last conscious thought was that he heard sirens.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  Captain Franklin stood on the street and tried to keep his face turned away from the news media that had gathered behind the yellow cordons. Jack spoke on the phone and then, putting it away, approached the captain.

  “I filled Garcia in on what we’ve got here,” Jack said, then, “Where’s Liddell?”

  Captain Franklin nodded toward the house. “He’s still in there. It’ll take us a week to sort this mess out.”

  Jack understood what he meant. The hand axe, Jansen’s shooting of Arnold, Jansen’s heart attack, the mother’s face being removed just like the other cases.

  “How is Jansen doing?” Liddell asked.

  “He won’t be answering questions for a while,” Franklin said. “I don’t believe any of this.”

  “I agree. There is no way that Arnold is the serial killer—The Cleaver.”

  Franklin shook his head. “This is all too easy.”

  Jack was thinking the same thing. Plus, he was sure there was no way Jansen would have been smart enough, or even lucky enough, to have stumbled upon the real killer. From what he and Tunney had discovered with the help of Garcia, they were very sure who the real killer was, and both he and Captain Franklin had been scanning the crowd since their arrival at the scene. If the killer doesn’t know his cover is blown, he’ll show up here. How could he not? Jack thought.

  Franklin said, “Have you heard anything on Arnold’s condition ?”

  “Ambulance driver didn’t give him good odds,” Jack said, “but he made it to St. Mary’s Hospital. They have good surgeons there.” As he said this his hand unconsciously moved to the scar that traversed a large area of his chest and neck.

  “About time,” Franklin said, as a black Crown Vic was admitted under the yellow crime scene tape.

  “Who is it?” Jack asked.

  “It had better be our search warrant,” Franklin said angrily. They had been waiting for almost an hour for one of the detectives to get a legal description of Arnold’s house and then hot-foot it back to the prosecutor’s office and get a search warrant prepared. Up until this point the only entry they had been able to make was based on a 911 call made by Arnold Byrum to police dispatch stating that someone was breaking into his house. A second call, less than a minute later, came from a neighbor who heard a gunshot come from inside the house.

  The cops were only allowed to enter parts of the house where someone could be lying dying or dead, or hiding. To Jack, this was infuriating. But it was the law.

  Jack hadn’t told the captain or anyone else yet about the telephone call he had received from the uniformed officer who accompanied Detective Jansen in the ambulance to the hospital. The officer had called Jack’s personal cell phone and told him that while a nurse at St. Mary’s hospital was bagging Jansen’s personal property, a small leather case had fallen out of his jacket pocket. The officer had looked in the case and found it contained what he described as “burglary tools.”

  Jack had told the officer to keep the leather kit, and keep his mouth shut. Now he was sorry he hadn’t shared this with Franklin. He would tell Liddell as soon as he caught up with the Cajun. Then he would decide what to do about it.

  It looked like Jansen had been doing a little unauthorized B and E. Which led to the question of why? Jansen was a sneak, but mostly he was such a worthless detective that Jack had to question what could have gotten under his skin to cause him to break into Arnold’s house. Jansen would normally walk by a mugging without a backward glance. Could Arnold have called him to the house? But then why would Arnold call in a burglary to the police? And if Arnold had something to hide, why would he want the police at his house? None of it made sense.

  Liddell stepped out of the front door and said, “Pod’na. You gotta see this,” and then he disappeared back in the house.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  Cody drove south from Old Shawneetown, keeping his car at a distance from the Firebird being driven by Lieutenant Johnson. When he had called JJ to offer to buy the diary, he was surprised that JJ didn’t know who he was talking to. JJ was so shocked, he hung up twice before finally agreeing to talk to him.

  JJ’s denial of any knowledge of the diary ceased when Cody reminded him that JJ had called Cody trying to blackmail him. Then he offered to leave the diary in a secluded spot and then call and tell him where it was, but Cody had silenced him.

  “Stop,” he had told JJ. And JJ had shut up immediately.

  And now JJ was doing everything but going to the meeting place as agreed to. Tch tch tch, Cody thought. Shame on you, JJ. You little liar.

  Cody shadowed Lieutenant JJ Johnson for another hour before he realized the young officer was driving aimlessly and would probably never go to roost anywhere. He had already followed JJ’s car across the Wabash River from Illinois into Kentucky and then back again. Now the lieutenant was driving like a bat out of hell down the main highway that led back to Shawneetown from a small town in Kentucky called “The Rocks.” Cody didn’t want to let him reach home.

  He was working against the clock. Every minute the cop was alive was another minute that the cop might realize that the only chance he had to live was to go to the Evansville police and confess what he had been doing. Cody prayed that the cop’s pride and fear woul
dn’t let him do so, but he knew that eventually, self-preservation would take over.

  He had hoped to catch JJ alone, but the roads that he was traveling on didn’t lend themselves to a covert tailing. If JJ didn’t stop soon he planned to catch up to the souped-up Pontiac Firebird and find a way to run him off the road. Looking at the twin exhaust pipes and the low-slung carriage of the Pontiac, Cody thought this might prove a daunting task. His own Honda SUV might not even be able to catch the Pontiac on a straight stretch of road.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  Jack followed Liddell through the house and upstairs to the bathroom, where a crime scene tech was working over the sink with a plastic bag and tweezers, picking up some dark material.

  “Smell that?” Liddell asked.

  “Something burnt in here?” Jack asked.

  “Not completely,” the tech answered, and showed the detectives what she had been collecting. Inside the clear plastic Baggie were several scraps of paper with burnt edges.

  The tech was the same one who had worked the Brenda Lincoln scene at Pigeon Creek. She seemed to turn up everywhere.

  “What is it?” Jack asked her.

  “Printer paper,” she said. “Let me show you something.” She led the men downstairs to a small bedroom. There was a twin-size bed with a well-worn and almost colorless comforter and a worn-flat pillow, a cheap dresser, and a writing table with a rickety chair. On top of the table sat a laptop. On the table next to it was a stack of printed paper.

  “Apparently Mr. Byrum is writing a book,” the tech remarked.

  “Can we look at what he wrote?” Jack asked.

  Sergeant Walker answered from the doorway. “Yes, you can look, but use gloves and don’t touch anything else.”

  “Don’t sneak up on a guy like that,” Liddell complained.

  Walker handed Jack and Liddell latex gloves.

  Jack scanned down the first page and then handed it to Liddell and read the second page. “I’ll be damned,” he said and skipped to the last page.

  Jack gave the manuscript to Sergeant Walker, saying, “Show this to Captain Franklin right now, Tony. We have to go.”

  “What?” Liddell said, but handed the sheet he’d been reading to Walker.

  “Just come on,” Jack said over his shoulder on his way out of the bedroom.

  Liddell moved fast for a man his size, but Jack was already in the car and putting it in gear by the time Liddell slid into the passenger seat. Jack gritted his teeth as he eased the unmarked car out of the crime scene, waiting impatiently for reporters and gawkers to move out of the way so that he could pick up some speed.

  Jack almost drove over a television cameraman who stepped in front of their car to get a close-up shot of the two detectives. The man jumped out of the way at the last moment and yelled, “Hey, watch it!”

  “You gonna fill me in or am I just a witness to the mayhem you’re planning out here?” Liddell said. “Jesus, Jack, you almost hit that guy.”

  “Yeah, I did,” Jack said, and picked up speed as the way cleared before them. Once out of the side streets and on a good four-lane he opened the Crown Vic up, gripping the wheel.

  Liddell leaned over and turned on the siren and emergency lights. In less than five minutes they had crossed from the east side of Evansville to the far west and were leaving Vanderburgh County. Jack set the cruise control and the muscles in his jaw eased. He took out his cell phone and then put it down. “What’s JJ’s cell phone number?”

  Liddell flipped through his notes and asked, “What’s up with JJ?”

  “The page I was reading from Arnold’s story back there—” Jack said.

  “What about it?” Liddell asked. He had read some of the manuscript, too, but it was a description of the landscape around Shawneetown.

  “The page I read described the murder of the next victim,” Jack said. “He’s going to kill JJ.” Jack waited to let this soak in and then added, “He is planning on killing Lieutenant Johnson because Johnson has something the killer wants. He didn’t say what it was that JJ had, but no matter what JJ does, he’s a dead man. Call him!”

  “How do you know that from reading one page, pod’na?” Liddell asked. He dialed JJ’s cell number with one hand and held on to the dash with the other as Jack rounded a corner high speed.

  Jack said, “Damn! I wish we had that manuscript.”

  “You mean this manuscript,” Liddell said.

  Jack took his eyes from the road for a split second to see that Liddell had the pile of papers on his lap and was still wearing his latex gloves.

  Jack grinned and said, “You know Walker is going to kill you, Bigfoot.”

  “Yeah?” Liddell said with a grin. “But you love me . . . don’t you, pod’na?”

  The Firebird’s throaty exhaust bounced back from the trees on both sides of the road as JJ gripped the wheel and tried to hold the car steady in the winding curves. The SUV was only inches from his bumper but struggling to keep up with the Firebird’s lower center of gravity and handling ability. The driver of the SUV was a pro, there was no doubt about that. JJ had been through EVOC, Emergency Vehicle Operator’s Course, and completed the one hundred hours required with flying colors.

  JJ glanced in his mirror and was shocked to see the driver was Blake James, the reporter. A sense of dread ran through him. JJ had called Blake under the impression that this was one of Cordelia’s customers. He had obviously been mistaken. Blake must be the killer.

  JJ’s car should have smoked the little SUV, but James was a damn good driver. JJ knew that in a mile or so the road would straighten out and it would be a flat-out race that the Firebird would win hands down.

  But then what? Was the crazy bastard going to follow him into Old Shawneetown? Was he armed? He felt a chill run through him at the remembrance of Jon Samuels sitting upright on the couch, his face missing, the top of his skull caved in. And the body of the other man—a big man, too—on the floor without a head or hands.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Liddell flipped back to the beginning of Arnold’s manuscript and read out loud. “She sat on the edge of the bed, while I stood in front of her. Her eyes pleaded with me to understand why she had to find me. Why she needed to know who I was. What she hadn’t understood was that it didn’t matter who I was—only who I had become. And the only ones that know who I have become are no longer able to tell anyone.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Liddell said, then flipped forward a few pages, and continued reading aloud.

  “I could feel the axe handle sticking through the belt in back of my pants. I’m not sure why I brought it. Maybe it was just the idea of having something familiar with me when I had to confront my long-lost sister.”

  “Is this about Cordelia?” Liddell asked.

  Jack was concentrating on driving, but he nodded. “That’s what it sounds like to me.” They reached St. Phillips Road, the extreme edge of Vanderburgh County, and Jack turned off the unmarked vehicle’s siren and dash lights. There was no traffic out here. “Read the last page,” he said to his partner.

  Liddell rustled the pages and read the last page to himself. “Holy shit!” he said, and read the page again. “Is this where we’re headed?”

  In response, Jack stepped down even harder on the accelerator. Liddell picked up the radio microphone and called in to dispatch. “One-David-Seven,” Liddell said.

  “One-David-Seven,” the voice on the radio answered.

  “Please contact Indiana State Police, Posey County Sheriff Department, and the Illinois State Police. Advise them that One-David-Seven is traveling Code-Three west on State Route Sixty-Two en route to Shawneetown, Illinois. We are requesting Illinois State Police intercept and escort us into town. One-David-Six is with me,” Liddell said, telling dispatch that Jack was also in the car.

  The dispatcher’s voice remained calm, as if Liddell had just ordered a cup of coffee. “Understood, One-David-Seven. I have a message from One-David-One.”


  One-David-One was Captain Franklin’s radio call sign. “Go ahead for One-David-Seven,” Liddell said.

  The dispatcher relayed the message. “One-David-One advises to call as soon as possible.”

  “Understood, One-David-Seven out,” Liddell said and slipped the microphone back into the dash-mounted holder.

  “Hey, Bigfoot,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, pod’na.”

  “Did I ever tell you how hot you make me when you talk on the radio, all police-like?”

  Liddell laughed and tightened his seat belt. “Did I ever tell you how bad of a driver you are?”

  Liddell was still reading Arnold Byrum’s manuscript as their car neared Mount Vernon, Indiana. They had picked up an Indiana State Police escort two miles back near the Mead Johnson Pharmaceutical factory and hadn’t even stopped for the light at Highway 62 and Highway 69.

  The driver of the state police unit looked to be seventeen years old and had a death grip on the steering wheel of his cruiser as he blew Jack’s doors in. Jack was doing over one hundred miles per hour at the time and wasn’t comforted by anyone that drove more recklessly than did he. He just hoped the kid wouldn’t get them killed driving through Mount Vernon, but to the trooper’s credit he cleared the path ahead without creating too much chaos on the narrow downtown streets.

  On the other side of town Jack stomped the accelerator and flew past his escort without a backward glance. In a few miles he would pass the toll booth that separates Indiana and Illinois. Apparently the Evansville radio dispatcher had called ahead because as Jack’s car approached the tollbooth, the operator was standing outside it and waving them through. Jack politely slowed to eighty miles per hour as he flew through the narrow opening.