The Fiercest Enemy

by Rick Reed

  Chapter 30

  “I’ll make my famous chicken and noodle soup,” Rosie said. “It’s always good for what ails you.” She headed for the kitchen and Sergeant Ditterline loped off after her, insisting that he help.

  Shaunda eased into a chair with Pen’s wheelchair pulled close beside her.

  Liddell excused himself to make some phone calls. Jack dragged a chair up next to Penelope. He found the photo of Anderson on his cell phone. “Penelope, is this the guy that came by your house a week ago?”

  She took the phone. “That’s the guy. Is he the one that hurt Mom?”

  “Take another look at the picture. Are you sure this is the guy that came to your house?” Jack asked.

  Shaunda said, “She already said it was. Leave her alone. He’s the one. It’s over. What else do you need?”

  Jack calmly said, “I’ll need to write a report and I want to cover all the bases. Have you ever been involved in something like this before?”

  “No. I never want to again,” Shaunda said. “End of subject.”

  “Well, I have been.” He cleared his throat. “Can we talk alone for a few minutes.”

  Shaunda put a hand on Penelope’s. “Why don’t you help your aunt Rosie in the kitchen?”

  Pen started toward the kitchen. “Yeah. I know. The grownups need to talk.”

  “That’s right. Now git,” Shaunda said.

  When she was out of earshot Jack said, “Chief Lynch, I’m sure there will be some kind of investigation into the shooting.”

  Shaunda protectively put her hand over the bandage on her right side. “What do you think this is? He stabbed me. I protected myself. It was self-defense and no one can prove any different.”

  What she said bothered Jack. No one can prove any different was a statement that was made by many a guilty person. It was like starting a sentence with “I swear to God” or “I’m not lying” or “To tell the truth.” It was a dare to Jack to prove she had done something. In Shaunda’s case, she might have felt his incredulity at the scene. He had a niggling doubt that her story was the way things really happened but now she’d turned it up a notch.

  He’d spent most of the day with her, but he really didn’t know what made her tick. Outside of her daughter and her friend, what meant the most to her? Did getting beaten up put her on the dark path of revenge? Or someone threatening her daughter? He supposed, if he was in her place he might be out for blood. She had stated she was going to make the guy sorry. She’d just had a life or death situation and here he was asking questions. It’s normal to be defensive. She was in law enforcement. She should know there would be questions.

  Shaunda winced as she got up and said to Jack, “You won’t be the one investigating the shooting. Why do you care? I read up on you. Jack Murphy. The hero who saved hundreds of lives on the Blue Star floating casino. How many people did you kill that day, Jack? Did you wait until they killed someone else before you put them down like the nasty turds they were? After all that you shot a fourteen-year-old girl. Three years younger than my Pen. And I’m just getting started.”

  Jack couldn’t defend any of those incidents, except to say they were necessary, and who was to say Shaunda’s shooting wasn’t. Why hadn’t she stayed with Bigfoot? And when she saw the suspect why didn’t she just keep him in sight and call for backup. She knew the area. She knew the woods ended at Black Creek. They would have caught him there. Or they could have set a perimeter and found him. If she wasn’t so convinced the hitchhiker was the serial killer would she still feel justified?

  “You’re ready for this to be over, aren’t you?” Jack said, not rising to her bait.

  “Damn right I am,” she said. “I want a win. I want the murders to stop. I’m sick of all of this.”

  Jack saw desperation in her eyes and something else too. Rage. A fire was burning inside her and she was trying to put it out. He imagined he’d had the same look when the heat of battle made common sense, uncommon. When reason was on vacation. When stopping the fear and pain was all that was left inside. At the end of a warrior’s mental rope is pure seething rage because that’s all that will serve you.

  He changed the subject. “I’m going to call Chief Jerrell and see how they’re doing out there. You shouldn’t be at the autopsy. You shouldn’t go back to the scene. You do understand?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said and started for the kitchen. “I’m done. I’m all in. I’m going to eat some miracle chicken soup and crash for twenty-four hours. I worked last night and all day.”

  Chapter 31

  Jack and Liddell opted to skip the food. They said their goodbyes and assured Rosie they would be spending the night.

  “Think she’ll double the rate now, pod’na?” Liddell asked as they drove away.

  Jack checked the rearview mirror and saw Ditty’s car was still in the parking lot. Ditty was no longer on guard duty. He wondered why Jerrell wasn’t calling all his troops back to the scene. He had the uneasy thought that Jerrell believed the investigation was at an end.

  “Call Jerrell,” Jack said. Liddell did and put it on speakerphone.

  When Jerrell came on Jack said, “Hi Chief. We’re just leaving Rosie’s. Where we at on the scene?”

  The line was silent too long and Jack looked at the screen to see if he’d lost the connection. Jerrell said, “We found a campsite.”

  Jack noticed Jerrell said “a” campsite and not “the” campsite. “It that good or bad news, Chief?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.” Jerrell gave them directions from the railway tracks to where they were setting up a second crime scene perimeter and ended the call.

  “Maybe he’s found some evidence,” Liddell suggested.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. In his gut he believed it was more than that. Jerrell sounded disappointed and hurt.

  * * * *

  Jack drove down the side of the railroad tracks heading to the place they’d entered the woods earlier. If the flags were still in place they could easily find their way back to the shooting scene. From there he watched for a glow in the woods from the floodlights Crime Scene would need.

  Jack felt a cold spot in his chest, anxiety maybe. Neither Jerrell nor Shaunda seemed to be on board with Jack and Liddell running the investigation. It had been like pulling teeth to get information from them. They appeared to cooperate but he felt their resentment.

  When Jack was still just a detective he always hated it when the feds horned in on one of his cases. He had resisted and gone around them most times. This felt different. It was almost like they didn’t want these murders solved. Like they were just putting on a show and the FBI’s computer analyst was all they wanted. Jerrell wanted to use Angelina to catch whoever had murdered his boy.

  “Did you get the feeling from Jerrell and Shaunda that we were a surprise when we showed up?” Jack asked.

  “They knew we were coming, so no.”

  “But when we first got there we had to engage in a high-speed chase with Jerrell.”

  “That was odd, I’ll admit that. We have to remember his kid was killed the week before and he thought Shaunda had screwed up the investigation. I’m telling you pod’na, even if Anderson is the right guy, if he’d lived and gotten himself a half decent lawyer, they’d never make any of these cases stick.”

  Jack was silent.

  “What are you thinking Oh Wise One?” Liddell asked.

  “Nothing,” Jack lied.

  “C’mon. I know you. What?”

  “I just think it’s a little too convenient. Too much coincidence. We’re pursuing a serial killer that’s evaded police for seven years. They didn’t even know they had a serial killer until Angelina got involved.”

  “They don’t have our resources, pod’na. Give them a break.”

  “It’s not just that. We barely get here and there’s anothe
r murder. This time they find the victim’s vehicle almost immediately.”

  “Luck.”

  “I don’t believe in luck. I believe in what I can prove. We can’t prove this guy did anything except have a cell phone that belonged to a dead guy and likes to live in the woods.

  “You found the big coal mine drill bit. It matches the marks on the victims’ heads. It even matches Shaunda’s. That’s evidence.”

  Jack stopped when they spotted the red marker flags. They got out and followed the flags until they met Officer Barr back at the shooting scene. Officer Barr pointed over the top of the fallen tree. “If you want the chief, he’s up that way. Just before you get to Black Creek. Rusty put out flags for you city boys.”

  Jack and Liddell made their way around the massive root cluster of the downed tree and saw two sets of flags, one red, Shaunda’s, the other yellow, Anderson’s. The yellow flags led south deeper into the woods. The red flags stopped behind the tree. Liddell was the better tracker of the two but even he would not have found the campsite were it not for the flags.

  Jerrell was alone, sitting on the ground, knees bent, army boots planted firmly, lit up by the crime scene floodlights. His attention was on something in his hand. “It belonged to my boy. His mother gave it to him when he turned thirteen years old. She sent me one while I was overseas.”

  Jack stood closer and saw that Jerrell held a gold chain with a gold pendant swinging from the end. The pendant was a soaring eagle. Jerrell reached in his shirt front and lifted out a gold chain with the same pendant.

  “Where did you find it, Chief?”

  Jerrell ignored the question. “I joined the Army when I was seventeen. My mom and dad had to sign me in because you had to be eighteen. Before I left for boot camp I gave my high school sweetheart a present. Troy Junior. When I found out Peggy, that was her name, was pregnant I married her. Troy was born on the base at Fort Campbell. Hell, we were still kids ourselves when we had him. Neither of us thought a thing about packing up and traipsing all over the country from one year to the next, one posting to the next.”

  “She finally had enough and moved herself and Troy back here to Linton. Said Army posts weren’t a place where a kid should grow up. I stayed in the Army. He almost got a full ride to Notre Dame. My wife said he was one hell of a baseball player. I missed most of his games growing up because I was deployed. Always in some godforsaken country dealing with other people’s problems, and not a clue what was going on at home. Troy started getting in trouble at school. Fighting. Drinking. Girls. He lost the scholarship, moved into his own place. I didn’t know that for a couple of years. I was a horrible father. She got us matching necklaces one Christmas, I guess it was right before he moved out, maybe hoping it would make him stay home. I don’t know. She said the necklaces were so we’d never forget we were connected. Troy never took his off. He still wore it up to when he…”

  He looked at Jack and Liddell. “You don’t want to hear all of this.”

  “We’re really sorry for your loss, Chief,” Liddell said.

  “Now that you know my life story you can call me Troy. Not in front of my men,” Jerrell said, the military man had reasserted himself.

  Jack scanned the immediate area. He saw a place where the pine needles were matted down under a huge pine tree. It could have been a campsite, or the beginnings of one, or where deer had bedded down overnight. There was nothing to show a person had been here at all were it not for the yellow flags stuck in the ground. The campsite they’d found near Rosie’s had a burnt-out campfire. There were no remains of a fire here. No backpack. No clothes, or food wrappers, or cigarette butts. If Anderson had come back here he maybe intended to bed down for the night but didn’t get the chance before he was shot and killed.

  “Did you find that here?” Jack asked Jerrell again.

  “No. Barr found it in his pocket.”

  Jack wanted to remind him that was a piece of evidence and should have been collected and processed but the man was in no shape to even care.

  Jerrell pocketed the necklace and got to his feet. “I was hoping we’d find something back here, but there’s nothing. He was just setting up camp. He had some junk food in his jacket pocket and a pack of cigarettes and matches in his jeans. He must have been on his way back here when Shauny came up on him.”

  “She’s at Rosie’s with her daughter,” Jack told him.

  “Hardheaded. That woman is a danger to herself,” Jerrell said.

  “I don’t think we need to stay here,” Jack said. “Your guys already took pictures and collected whatever they could, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Jerrell said. “Guess I should have let Barr take that, but it won’t matter. We got this guy nine ways from Sunday.”

  “You have another problem,” Jack said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Now you’ve got another death to investigate. We have to find definitive evidence Anderson killed the others.”

  “I don’t believe you just said that. I’ve got the proof in my pocket. He attacked Shaunda at Dugger Lake and he tried to kill her here. He’s got my boy’s neck chain in his pocket. What more do you want?”

  “I want what you want Troy. I want to catch the killer. Or killers. I don’t want this psycho to stay free to kill again. I want to clear Shaunda of any wrongdoing on the shooting. I want all that done with no doubt in anyone’s mind.”

  Jerrell remained quiet.

  “We’re going to continue with our investigation,” Jack said. “You’re free to believe whatever you want, Chief, but I don’t believe this is our guy. At least not the guy for all the murders. He was in town according to Penelope around the same time your son was killed. He was here when Brandon Dillingham was killed. He had Brandon’s cell phone. Your son’s necklace was found in his pocket. We know he was in a deadly confrontation with Shaunda Lynch. That’s all we know right now. We haven’t talked to anyone that might be able to alibi him for the times of these murders and we know he was in Angola for at least three of them. Shaunda didn’t see who hit her from behind or wrote on her shirt.”

  Jerrell’s fists were clenching and Jack could tell he was about to go nuclear.

  “To be frank, Chief, this crime scene doesn’t explain some things. We need to take a statement from Shaunda. What she said back at the ambulance doesn’t jibe with what’s here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your K-9 officer marked our movements with flags,” Jack said and paused. “If the dog is right, Shaunda was behind the tree at some point. That’s not what she said. She said she caught up with him from behind and it all happened in front of the tree.”

  Jerrell hurriedly said, “Maybe she didn’t tell us everything.”

  “You may be right. Until I know for sure we can’t rule out that she shot him out of anger. Revenge. She truly believes he’s the guy that hurt her and threatened her family. You heard what she said she was going to do when she caught up with him.”

  “She was stabbed,” Jerrell protested. “Do you think…are you telling me she stabbed herself?”

  “I’m not saying that.” Jack had seen crazier things. “This doesn’t end till the fat lady sings. Let it end with Shaunda being the hero, instead of a cop under suspicion.”

  Jerrell let out a breath and stood. “I can handle it from here. Thanks for your help. You’re done here. I’ll call your boss and take full responsibility.”

  “Not going to happen, Chief,” Jack said.

  Chapter 32

  They left Officer Barr to work the crime scenes—the shooting location and the campsite—and hiked back to their vehicles. With Jerrell leading the way it took no time at all before they were pulling in front of the gray brick building that served as the Greene County morgue. Officer Rudy Pitzer, one of the Crime Scene officers, was waiting for them, holding the door open. He had followed the c
oroner’s wagon that brought the body in.

  “I didn’t think you could get Dr. Daniels back in here tonight,” Rudy said. “You feds must have some tall to get an autopsy that quick.” ‘Tall’ is a term police use to mean influence.

  Jack didn’t tell Rudy that he’d called Director Toomey after they’d left Rosie’s to update him. Toomey wanted the autopsy done pronto, and Toomey got what Toomey wanted.

  Rudy led them into the autopsy room with a seemingly endless stream of chatter. “We already got him X-rayed and I collected the clothes and went through them. Did Chief Jerrell tell you about the necklace? Of course, he did. There wasn’t any chance of getting fingerprints off something like that and it had special meaning to the chief.” Rudy pulled a receipt pad from his shirt pocket and flashed it at Jack and Liddell. It was no doubt a receipt for the necklace containing the signature of Chief Jerrell. “I’ll put that in my report. Just like it says.”

  They said nothing and Jerrell pushed past Rudy without commenting on the receipt.

  Dr. Daniels was slipping X-ray films onto the lightbox. She motioned the men over. The deceased was laid out on one of the steel autopsy tables, the back of his neck propped up on a block of wood, arms at his sides. The back of his skull was ragged pieces of scalp and hair. Whatever evidence there was on his body or clothes had already been collected and bagged by Rudy. Several paper grocery sacks were folded closed and sat out of the way against a wall.

  “Your boss can be a very convincing guy,” Lacy Daniels said to Jack. She wasn’t smiling.

  “Welcome to the club,” Jack said. “Is this guy going to live?”

  “Very funny, Agent Murphy. She pointed to a side view of the skull in the X-ray. “About four inches diameter of skull was blown out, and maybe a third of his brain went bye-bye with it.”

  “Where we work, losing thirty-three percent of your brain would make him a captain,” Liddell said. No one smiled but Rudy.