The Coldest Fear (14 page)

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Authors: Rick Reed

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: The Coldest Fear
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CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Shawneetown Police Lieutenant JJ Johnson put the binoculars on the seat beside him and started the engine of his police cruiser. He'd watched the Evansville police officers and Uncle Bob going in and out of Cordelia and Jon's apartment. They had come away empty-handed.
Then he watched Uncle Bob reading the riot act to Jon, and the whole time Jon just kept his eyes on the ground with his fists clenching and unclenching. JJ had hoped to see Jon haul off and pop Uncle Bob in the kisser, but he'd known Jon since grade school and there was no way he would do something like that.
JJ then parked on a side lane and waited for everyone to leave. Uncle Bob and the Evansville guys left, but Samuels was still in his apartment. JJ hoped Jon would be pissed and take off just to get away, and he was right. A few minutes after Uncle Bob had driven by, he spotted Jon Samuels's little purple Pontiac Vibe pull out onto the road that ran back into Old Shawneetown. The dog was riding shotgun with its head stuck as far out the window as possible.
He didn't know how long Jon would be gone, but he would have to make the best of it if he was going to get a chance to look around that apartment on his own.
He parked in front and hurried up the stairs to Jon's door. He'd been here many times as a friend and even if someone did see his car outside it wouldn't mean anything. The key was under the mat like it always was and he used it to open the door, then put the key back.
JJ stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He knew Cordelia's bedroom was on the left and Jon's on the right, but what he was looking for wouldn't be in a bedroom. Cordelia was too smart for that. And she was too smart to tell Jon everything she was up to.
Those Evansville detectives seemed pretty sharp, but then Jon knew a thing or two about searching, too. He knew because he was good at hiding things of his own, and had been doing so since he was a youngster. For example, there was an ounce of weed hidden in the police station that Uncle Bob had never found. JJ was careful to smoke it outside, and only then when he knew where his uncle was located, but the fact that his fat-ass uncle had never sniffed it out told JJ that he was a better cop than Bob would ever be.
You gotta think like 'em to catch 'em,
he always said.
So now, if Cordelia had something important, where would she have hid it?
he asked himself.
He looked under the throw rug in the living room and found some old rolling papers. Pocketing these, he checked the bathroom. He reached his hand into the toilet trap, but there wasn't anything hidden there. He looked inside the toilet tank and again nothing. He checked under the sink, shook out all the towels and washrags and even dumped the talcum powder. Nothing.
He went back to the living room and was about to leave when he noticed it was awfully cold in the apartment. The air conditioner was on high and it was only seventy degrees outside.
The air conditioner,
he thought, and went to the a/c unit that was fitted into the wall under the living-room windows. He looked at the frame and saw that it wasn't stuck down too tight. JJ pulled out a penknife and pried at one side of the frame until it popped off the wall.
At first he didn't see anything but the air conditioner unit and the metal housing that held it in place. He took a small powerful flashlight from his pocket and shone it around the edges of the unit. There was something underneath that looked like a piece of cloth.
JJ used the penknife to snag the cloth and pull it free from the housing. The material was wrapped around something and when he pulled it free, a small paperback book fell to the floor. He picked it up and looked at it more closely and realized it wasn't a novel. He opened it and looked at the first page of handwriting.
“Hot damn!” he said.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
The clock on the wall over the detective sergeant's desk said it was three-thirty in the afternoon. Only a few of the second-shift detectives were still in the office. Most had reported in at three and then got the hell out before Sergeant Mattingly could assign them more work. The ones that were left in the office had been conscripted into helping with the telephones and they were none too happy with Jack and Liddell.
Not that they blamed Jack and Liddell for the onslaught of telephone calls since the news release of the murders, but they did think that Jack and Liddell should answer their own phones. Jack didn't blame them. Answering calls from every crackpot in the city definitely sucked.
Jack made it to the back of the room, where he expected to find a foot-tall stack of messages regarding the murders, but was surprised to find his desk had been cleaned off.
“You're stuff's been taken by Homeland Security,” Sergeant Mattingly yelled at him from across the room. “Something about it being considered toxic waste and declared an issue of national security.”
“Where am I supposed to work, Sarge?” Jack asked.
“You have a new office in the basement, Jack. The old ‘training' office,” Mattingly said, a grin plastered on his face.
“Yeah, the toilet-training office!” one of the detectives said loudly, and everyone laughed.
Jack knew where the old training office was located. He also knew it had been vacated by the training unit because it was considered a health hazard. The police department was housed in the Civic Center, on the same branch of the building as the sheriff 's department. The police department had most of the first floor and basement, while the sheriff 's department and jail were housed on the second and third floors.
The inmates had figured this out and would routinely stuff clothing or sheets into their toilets to cause them to back up into the walls and plumbing chases. The waste would eventually find its way through the ceiling of the police department.
“Better take a raincoat,” someone yelled at Jack as he left the office.
 
 
JJ sat at the breakfast bar in Jon Samuels's apartment. The little book he'd found hidden in the air-conditioning unit lay open on the cigarette-burned Formica countertop. There was no name or other identifying marks on the covers of the book, but he was pretty sure it had belonged to Cordelia. It was a combination diary, address book, and appointment book.
He recognized several of the names listed in that little book, and they belonged to some pretty important people. He was pretty sure the other names were fat cats as well.
So this was Cordelia's client book,
he thought.
I never would've believed she was doing all these guys.
The Cordelia who JJ remembered while growing up was very quiet and kept to herself. She was a looker for sure, but because he had grown up in the same house with her, he had never thought of her as a woman. But after reading some of the entries here he had a whole new view of who Cordelia had been.
He had always wondered why she had taken the apartment with Jon, and way out in the cornfields away from everyone. But now it kind of made sense. She and Jon both had things about their lives they didn't want to parade in front of the public. Everyone knew Jon was as gay as a Care Bear, but outside of the local names in this notebook, probably no one in Shawneetown had any idea that Cordelia was a hooker.
Uncle Bob had taken a chunk out of his ass after those Evansville detectives complained about him talking to that reporter. But now JJ had something that would eliminate that from ever happening again.
Uncle Bob and Cordelia!
he mused.
Who'da ever thunk it?
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
“Hey, Garcia?” Liddell said from his desk in their temporary office. There was room for exactly three desks in the cramped quarters that used to be the “training office” in the basement of the police station. It smelled of wet dog and more unpleasant things. The concrete walls were covered with cracked and peeling puke-green paint and stains.
Garcia was removing laptops, extra monitors, and other electrical equipment from three banker's boxes stacked on a large table that ran across the back of the room. “What is it, Cajun?” she replied. She didn't bother to look up. She knew that Blanchard was up to some stupid joke.
He probably has pencils sticking out of his nose or something,
she thought, and then couldn't help but smile at the thought.
He's just a big kid.
Liddell's mouth was full of the Styrofoam peanuts that some of Garcia's equipment had been packed with, and he couldn't call her name again, so he just grunted.
Garcia sighed and looked up.
Liddell began shooting the Styrofoam peanuts out of his mouth, just as Jack came into the office.
“If we don't look, will he quit?” she asked, and Jack shrugged.
“Nah. He's not out of peanuts,” Jack said. “Which desk is mine?”
Garcia pointed to the remaining desks and said, “Take your pick. Your stuff is in the little storage room over there.” She hooked a thumb behind her at another door. The storage room was actually a tiny closet that held a stack of boxes.
Liddell was now cleaning the top of his desk with Lysol and a rag.
“I didn't know you were such a good housekeeper,” Garcia said.
“That's because you haven't been here long enough to know the history of this office,” Liddell said to her. He then filled her in on the flooding and pestilence that could come from above at any time, and she stopped unpacking and began putting things back in the boxes.
“Jesus,” she said, and crossed herself.
“Won't help,” Liddell quipped. “Only Lysol helps.” He tossed the can to her.
“Am I interrupting anything?” said a voice from the doorway.
Jack looked up to see Susan Summers standing in the open doorway, holding a box of pastries from Donut Bank Bakery. She looked very smart in her navy pantsuit. It fit so well that he wondered where she was carrying her gun.
Liddell was up and relieving Susan of her burden before Jack could even say hello.
“So this is the new digs?” Susan asked, looking around at the World War II–era desks, the stained concrete floor, and the open ceiling showing plumbing and rusty vent pipes.
“Jack's moving down in the world,” Liddell said around half a powdered-sugar donut that crusted the outside of his mouth.
“Sergeant Mattingly was kind enough to show me the way,” she said. “He laughed the whole way here. Now I think I understand what was so funny.”
“It's temporary,” Jack said, and walked over to embrace her.
“I thought Chief Pope liked you?” Susan said.
Jack looked defeated, and said, “Deputy Chief Dick is in charge of office-space assignment.”
Susan nodded. There was a long-standing feud between Jack and Deputy Chief Richard Dick. Somehow the deputy chief had been nicknamed “Double Dick” and his ego had demanded retribution.
“I'm glad you came,” Jack said.
“I called my friend and he said he would be contacting you,” she said.
“Apparently Don Juan is out of the country with a new girlfriend,” Jack said to Garcia. To Susan, he asked, “So who is the friend?”
“It's a surprise, but you'll be glad to hear from him,” Susan said. “What else can I do to help?”
“Here's a list of names involved in the case so far,” Garcia said, and handed a printout to Susan. “Can you see if they come up on any of the parole or prison databases?”
Susan glanced down the list and looked at Jack. “I had an idea last night.”
“I'll bet Jack did, too,” Liddell said, grinning.
Susan laughed and said, “I wondered if I could call a friend of mine with the Illinois Department of Child Welfare Services.”
Jack hadn't thought of that. It would be easy for that department to trace records of Dennis Morse and his family. They might even have information on Cordelia's brother, Cody.
“That's a great idea, Susan,” Garcia said. “Wish I'd have thought of that.”
Jack gave Susan a hug. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”
“So now you love me for my mind?”
“Hell no!” Jack said. “I mean, there's lots of reasons.”
“Might as well shut up, boss,” Garcia said.
“Okay,” Jack said. “So when can you crank up your computer ?” he asked Susan.
“I'll call my secretary and get her started,” she said and picked up one of the desk phones.
“Smart, sexy, and she carries a gun,” Liddell whispered to Jack.
“It's the last part that scares me, buddy,” Jack said.
She noticed him watching her as she spoke on the telephone and gave him a wink. She hung up the phone and said, “Ms. Heddings is running the list. I should have something for you in a day or so. Maybe sooner.”
She caught Jack's eye again and smiled at the undisguised look of affection he gave her. “Well, I have to get back to work. See you tonight then?”
Jack smiled sheepishly and shrugged.
She stood on tiptoes and planted a lingering kiss on his cheek. “There's more where that came from,” she said, and then hurried down the hallway toward the stairs.

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