The Coldest Fear (3 page)

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Authors: Rick Reed

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: The Coldest Fear
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C
HAPTER
F
OUR
Blake James finished running four miles along the riverfront and was leaning against a marble column of the Four Freedoms Monument to stretch. This morning's run had been shorter than he would have liked, but he had to get to work, and he had not been late a day in the last three years since taking over as the news anchor for Channel Six television. At twenty-six years old he was the youngest anchor in the history of the station. Since he ran religiously he was in the best shape he had ever been in. His muscles sang with the exertion he had just put them through, but he was on a runner's high and when his phone rang it didn't surprise him. He was on call twenty-four hours a day. It was probably the station.
He looked at the display and groaned out loud. Two icons appeared on the screen: DECLINE and ANSWER. His thumb hesitated over the DECLINE icon for a few rings, but then he pressed ANSWER and said, “Hello, Detective Jansen. What can I do for you so early in the morning?”
“Ask not what you can do for Larry Jansen, but what Larry Jansen can do for you,” the detective said with a chuckle. His intention was to quote the late, great President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It was a game he and Blake played. Blake was somewhat of a historian.
“Friday, January twentieth, 1961, the inaugural speech of John F. Kennedy,” Blake said. “Outgoing President Eisenhower was present at the inauguration. In fact, Kennedy had attended Holy Trinity Church earlier and rode to Congress with Eisenhower. Snow had fallen the night before and there were thoughts of cancelling the speech. The elections had been close, but the senator from Massachusetts had beaten the incumbent vice president, Richard Nixon, and was anxious to start the arduous task of gathering support for his agenda. Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the oath of office and a poem was read by none other than Robert Frost.” Blake hesitated and then asked, “Do you know what the poem was, Detective?”
As always, Jansen had a short fuse. “Nah. I don't know what the poem was, Blake. But I got something real hot for you. Do you want it or not?”
“The answer is ‘The Gift Outright,' Larry. Of course, the handwritten poem he had composed for the presidential occasion was actually ‘Dedication,' but no one really knows why he read the shorter poem in place of it. Both poems spoke to the same human conditions—those of power and control and abuse of the lower classes.” Blake delivered this narrative as if he had been present during this oration by Robert Frost.
“Okay, Blake. I'm a dumbass! Is that what you want to hear? Well, screw you very much and I'll give my tip to someone else.”
Blake James laughed and the sound was infectious. Jansen could no more be mad at this man than he could be mad at himself. It was no wonder someone with the personality of Blake James was the most popular news anchor in Evansville media history. Jansen started laughing, too.
“We still friends, Larry?” Blake asked.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Then all is well with the world,” Blake said, and laughed again.
“I got a murder for ya,” Jansen said.
“Oh? Are you the lead investigator?” Blake asked.
The line was silent for a moment; then Jansen said, “No, Blake. I'm not the lead investigator. Why's that matter?”
“Is Murphy the lead?”
The line was silent much longer this time. Blake could imagine Jansen struggling with his anger. It was no secret that he hated Murphy. It was also no secret that Jansen was a horrible detective and could screw up a confession.
“Okay, you're right. It doesn't matter, Larry. Tell me about it. And don't leave anything out.” Blake slipped into news-anchor talking-head mode, all business.
Blake had Jansen repeat the whole story twice to be sure he hadn't left anything out, and then ended the call. Blake then punched in the number for the newsroom at Channel Six. His co-anchor, Claudine Setera, answered on the first ring.
 
 
Larry Jansen looked at the business card he had kept in his wallet for the best part of a week now. He wondered if he should have called her instead of Blake. But then he thought about his wife and a momentary fit of conscience struck him.
He remembered when his wife was young and beautiful and desirable. Not as desirable as Claudine Setera, but nice. Real nice. Back then the smell of her hair was like fresh flowers, the taste of her lips—and other parts as well—was like a drug that made him shake with need. But since she had become ill she smelled like dried urine and he didn't dare breathe when he gave her a quick peck on the cheek before going to work. He wondered how things had gotten so messed up.
C
HAPTER
F
IVE
Lilly Caskins looked on with consternation as Blake James pulled into the parking lot. He slid his athletic body from his vehicle and smoothed his long dark hair back out of his eyes. He reminded her of Antonio Banderas. She normally didn't like reporters, but Blake was cute. Even an old dame like her could see that he had a cute butt. But she didn't like her name in the news, didn't like seeing herself on television, and absolutely hated the way the cameramen seemed to deliberately catch shots of her when she was standing next to the tallest policemen, thereby making her look like a fussy old dwarf.
“Hello, Lilly,” Blake said. Coming up quickly, he gave her a firm hug, enveloping her diminutive form into the folds of his clothing like Count Alucard in the old Dracula movies.
“Hmmpf. Hello yourself,” she muttered, but didn't try to extricate herself too strenuously. He smelled of sweat and cologne and man scent. She backed up a step and had to crane her neck to look him in the eye.
“Why, Lilly, you're blushing,” he said with a smirk.
She could feel her face flush and looked around the parking lot to be sure that no one else had noticed. Behind her she saw Claudine Setera, a smarmy smile pasted to her face, and a Channel Six cameraman pointing the camera lens her way.
The bitch filmed the whole thing,
Lilly thought as she stormed away and back into the safety of the Marriott.
“What do we need that shot for?” the cameraman asked.
Claudine ignored him and approached Blake. “What was that all about?”
Blake's expression turned to ice. “Just watch me work, little girl,” he said and strode away toward the front entrance of the Marriott.
Claudine and the cameraman trotted along behind.
 
 
Lilly Caskins entered the hotel room and headed straight for Jack.
“The jackals are at the door,” she said.
“Yeah? Well, I guess they were bound to show up sooner or later, eh?” Jack said.
“That damned Jansen,” Liddell muttered.
Jack looked at him and shook his head.
Jansen. Which means the “jackal” Lilly is referring to is Blake James. Jansen talks about Blake like he's the best thing since sliced bread,
he thought
.
“Blake James's down there,” Lilly said, confirming Jack's thoughts. “And he's got that little Italian honey you guys have been ogling.”
Liddell straightened his tie, smoothed his hair, and popped a piece of gum into his mouth. “I guess I'd better go talk to her—them, I mean,” he said.
“You're married, Bigfoot,” Lilly reminded him. “Better send Jack. It's just a matter of time before that parole-officer gal kicks him to the curb.”
Jack gave her a severe look. “Her name is Susan. She's not a ‘parole-officer gal,' she's the chief parole officer in Evansville, and I didn't get kicked to the curb yet.”
Liddell smirked. There was going to be a fight. Six-foot-tall, hard-as-nails Jack Murphy, against four-foot-five, skinny-as-a-rail, and old-as-a-redwood Lilly Caskins. Murphy didn't stand a chance.
“Sorry, Jack,” Lilly said, “I didn't mean it that way. Just having a bad day.”
Liddell swallowed his gum and choked as it went down the wrong way. Neither Jack nor Lilly made a move to help him, suspecting he was just putting on a show.
Liddell coughed into his hand a few times and excused himself to go and meet the press.
“You need to keep him on a leash,” Lilly said, coming as close to a grin as Jack had ever seen.
“He's all right, Lilly. Give him a break.” Jack looked back toward the bathroom, where the crime scene techs were lifting the body from the bathtub. A body bag was open on a gurney near the tub. The techs gently lowered the body into the black plastic bag. Jack stopped them before they zipped it shut.
“Just a minute,” he said, and both he and Lilly took another look at the victim.
“Destroyed the face,” Lilly said, and then added, “She knew her killer.”
Jack looked at her. He was thinking the same thing, but he was curious why Lilly thought so. “Have you seen something like this before?”
“Yeah,” she said. “When I was in Vegas at a medicolegal death-investigation school. They showed photos of a woman with her face smashed in with a brick. In that case it was an ex-husband that was smashing what he could no longer have. What he couldn't stand to look at.”
“But have you ever seen a face removed?” Jack asked. Lilly shook her head.
Jack was still gloved up. He looked down on the grisly thing that was once a human head and carefully moved the face to the side. Long red hair fell across the gaping wound in the slender neck. Her head had almost been severed from her body.
So that explains all the blood in the bedroom,
he thought.
The face was flattened, as if something heavy had been slammed into it, smashing it down and crushing the bones. But when he looked closer he didn't see bone fragments, or the radial fractures that you would expect from a blow that came straight into the face. He wasn't a medical examiner, but Jack could tell the direction of the blow was from above the face and down to the chin.
He lifted the left arm gently by the wrist and could feel the coldness of the flesh even through the gloves. Rigor was beginning to set in, and the muscles were becoming rigid. He wondered why only one had been removed.
Not trying to hide her identity,
Jack thought.
So why cut the face off and smash out the teeth?
Lilly got a funny look on her face. “Jack. Look at the top of her head.”
Jack remembered noticing the cuts on the scalp when he had first viewed the scene. “What about them?”
“What do those cuts look like to you?” she asked, impatiently.
Jack moved the hair to get a better look at the deep cuts, then gave Lilly an inquiring look. The cuts looked like numbers.
“Three seventy-five?” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Lilly agreed. “That's what it looks like to me, too.”
 
 
Little Casket was in charge of the body now. A couple of techs would escort her to the parking lot, where they would load it into the cargo area of the coroner's wagon. And then Lilly, like Charon, the ferryman of Hades, would carry the soul of the newly deceased across the river Styx into the world of the dead.
This is death in all its glory
, Jack thought. He stood beside the doorway to the bathroom, where techs were finishing collecting evidence, and pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Hi, handsome,” Susan said, answering the call.
“I just wondered what you were doing,” he said in a low voice.
“What color panties am I wearing? Is that what you mean, honey?” she said and giggled.
“Well, I was actually going to tell you what I'm not wearing,” he said. The crime scene tech in the bathroom yelled, “Get a room.”
“What was that?” Susan asked.
“Nothing,” Jack said, and pointed a finger at the grinning tech.
“I'm going to have to go into a meeting in a minute,” Susan said, and Jack could hear someone calling to her.
“How about meeting at Two-Jakes later for supper?” Jack asked. It was a date he hoped he would be able to keep.
Susan sighed contentedly. “At least you're still asking.”
“I promise that I'll try to be there,” Jack said, feeling a little defensive. Her birthday was just four days away and he needed to pick her brains about what she wanted. He was thinking of a jogging outfit.
“Then the answer is yes. Gotta go,” she said, and they hung up.
For a moment he wondered what it would be like to have a normal life. To not have to get up to his elbows in the messes that anyone in their right mind would run away from.
Is this any kind of life to offer a woman?
he thought.
When he'd married his ex-wife, Katie, he'd been a policeman for a just few years, but he already had a pretty good idea what their life would be like. His father had been a cop, and he, his younger brother, and his younger sister had always felt that the only parent in their lives was their mother. His dad was always unavailable, either sleeping, working, or on some other type of police activity.
Katie's life had been different. Her father was a high school teacher, her mother a stay-at-home mom. Katie only had good family memories. Vacations, holidays, visiting relatives, all the things that a well-adjusted family would experience. But then, she was an only child, and the worst problem her father had to deal with might be an unruly student.
Jack's family life was much different and he had been made to grow up very fast. He still remembered his mother telling him, “I depend on you, Jack. It's your duty to look out for the little ones.” And he had been doing that his whole life. His brother and sister were both happily married with families of their own now, but Jack still did his best to protect them. Maybe that was why he had become a cop like his father. He had grown up protecting people who were weaker.
He knew Katie had wanted children, and he wished he could have given her the two-point-three children that every family in the United States boasted. But he had always been held back by the reality of evil in the world. How could he bring children into that, knowing that he might not be home if they needed him?
And that led him to another thought. Did Susan want kids? They'd never talked about it.
He looked at his watch and wondered what was taking Liddell so long. The man had only gone down to the front desk to get a list of employees and guests who were in the hotel last night.
He was absentmindedly leaning in the bathroom doorway when the tech said, “Got something here, Jack.”
The tech used a pair of plastic tweezers to pick something out of the bloody water that remained in the bathtub and held it up. Jack stepped into the small bathroom and shut the door behind them.
Both men looked at the item. It was obviously fleshy and Jack put words to his thoughts, “Is that a tongue?”
The tech nodded, and said, “Yeah. I think so.”
Officer Morris had been with Crime Scene Unit for seven years now and had seen some crazy shit in his day, but this was up there in the top five. “I pulled the stopper and when the water wouldn't drain I felt around. This was stuck in the drain under the plug.”
“Her tongue?” Jack asked.
Morris shrugged. “I don't know if anyone looked in her mouth.”
“Anyone else see this yet?”
Morris shook his head. “I just found it.”
Jack knew that something like this wouldn't remain secret long. “
You
collect this,” Jack said, “and not a word to anyone outside of Sergeant Walker, Liddell, and me.”
With Jansen showing up at the scene like he did, Jack didn't want to take a chance that this would leak before they could even verify that the tongue—if that's what it was—belonged to the victim.
“You, me, Liddell, and Walker,” Jack said. “Put nothing in the computer yet.”
Morris cocked his head.
Jack said, “I'm going to get Walker. Keep the door shut.”
 
 
The killer was in the catbird seat. Evansville Police cars were everywhere, and uniformed officers stood at all the entrances to the Marriott. He knew they would be inside as well, guarding all the stairways, asking questions, checking to see if there was video and all the other things that policemen were apt to do. But nothing they did would trip him up. He was too good at this.
Better at my job than they are at theirs
, he mused.
Five years and countless bodies had given him the upper hand. He was like a wind, or a fleeting thought. There one moment, and gone the next. This was the seventh state he had chosen to visit, and he had left a slew of bodies in his trail. In one state he was called The Axe Man. In another he had been dubbed The Handy Man. Yet another, probably more aptly, described him as The Cleaver.

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