The Coldest Fear (27 page)

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Authors: Rick Reed

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: The Coldest Fear
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CHAPTER
SEVENTY
The dog was still in Liddell's car. With keys in hand, Jack exited the back doors of the detective's office. The plan was to have the dog examined by a vet, but now that he thought of it, maybe he should have someone from crime scene on hand to collect evidence. He had only mentioned the possibility of DNA to get Chief Johnson to let the dog live, but the more he thought of it on the way to Evansville, the more it sounded plausible that the dog may have bitten the killer.
He thumbed his cell phone to the listing for Sergeant Tony Walker.
Walker answered on the first ring. “Where do you want me to meet you?” Walker said before Jack could say anything.
“What makes you think I want you to meet me?” Jack asked.
“Well, because you have a dog that you took from the crime scene in Shawneetown, and I am surmising you want me to be present while you have a vet examine the dog.”
“Sherlock Holmes has nothing on you,” Jack said. “Okay, I'm going to Branson's Vet Clinic over by Fendrich Golf Course. You know it?”
“I'm close. I'll meet you there,” Walker answered, and Jack disconnected.
He took the keys he'd borrowed from Liddell and unlocked the door to Liddell's unmarked car. The dog was spread across the backseat and appeared to be asleep but came alive when the door lock clicked, and was now emitting a menacing growl.
“What was I thinking?” Jack said out loud. But
in for a penny, in for a pound,
as his father used to say. He opened the door and climbed into the driver's seat. By the time he straightened up from putting the keys in the ignition, he could feel a warm breath beside his right ear.
“Sit!” he ordered, and to his surprise the dog obeyed. He risked a glance back and saw the dog sitting behind him. Her nose was covered with something crusty and dark, and her eyes looked clouded and unfocused. He felt a stab of pity for the poor animal, knowing she must have tried to defend her master.
“Let's get you to the vet and see what he thinks,” he said to the dog, and looking in the rearview mirror saw the dog's ears lift and her head cock to the side. “I'm not keeping you so don't start acting cute,” he added. The dog lay down and let out a soft yelp.
Jack reversed out of the parking spot and turned onto Sycamore Street heading south to the Lloyd Expressway. He pulled his cell phone out again and found the listing for Branson's Veterinary Clinic.
A pleasant female voice answered. “Branson's Clinic, Julie speaking.”
Jack asked for Brent. He and Brent Branson had known each other since high school. Where Branson was a straight-A student, Jack was always in some kind of trouble. He always knew that Branson would make something of himself. Just as he knew that he would become a cop someday, like his father. In high school Jack had always been the jock, whereas Branson had been a skinny six-foot teen with a shock of unruly red hair. After high school Branson had gone on to Purdue to become a veterinarian. When he came home he had grown another inch and put on about a hundred pounds of pure muscle.
Must've been something in the water at Purdue,
Jack thought as he waited for his friend to come on the line.
“No. I don't want to buy any policeman's balls tickets,” Branson's voice came over the phone.
Jack chuckled. “You know policemen don't have balls,” he responded as he was supposed to.
“Glad to hear you admit it, buddy,” Branson said.
“You coming here?”
“I'll be there in just a couple of minutes. I have an animal I need you to look at.”
“Dead or alive?” Branson said.
Jack looked at the dog, who had raised her head and bared her teeth at him. “That's up to the dog,” he said, and heard Branson chuckling.
He broke the connection and concentrated on his driving. Only a mile or so to the vet's office, but he felt he needed to hurry. The killer wasn't on a clock. He stepped down hard on the gas.
 
 
Larry Jansen left his back door and walked three blocks to where he had parked his unmarked car. The Internal Affairs sergeant had been knocking on his door about every half hour this morning.
Bastard,
he thought.
Who would work for IA?
He had never known Kooky Kuhlenschmidt, but the fact that one of their own had been killed changed things. Jansen knew the department would pull out all the stops now, and that also meant that they would be coming after him. He knew his own reputation as a news snitch, and that was not what you wanted to be at this particular juncture.
Why did he have to go and get himself killed?
Jansen thought.
He hurried down the alley and then down a cross alley to the next block. The reporter's house was on the other side of town, but he could make it if he stayed off the major thoroughfares and away from the convenience stores and hamburger joints where cops tended to hang out.
Time to pay Arnold a visit.
CHAPTER
SEVENTY-ONE
“Need some help with the dog?” Walker said. He had come up beside Jack's car door stealthily. The dog twisted toward him and tried to bark but yelped in pain.
Jack rolled his window down, and said, “Could you go in and see if one of the girls will come out and get the dog?” Walker looked at him questioningly, and Jack added, “The dog hates straight men.”
Walker grinned and headed toward the gray wood-sided structure that used to be a two-story home and was now the Branson Veterinary Clinic. As he reached the front door, it opened and one of the doctor's assistants named Julie came out with a leash.
“Thought you might need this, Jack,” she said and opened the back door of his car.
The dog began a keening noise and put her shaggy head down between her paws, dark eyes locked on Julie.
“Oh, you poor baby,” she said, and connected the leash to the dog's collar. She felt around the collar and located the tags. Reading the tags she said, “Cinderella. That's your name, isn't it, sweetie pie?”
The dog came alive at the sound of her name and crawled across the backseat toward Julie. “Come on, Cinderella,” Julie coaxed, and helped the dog out onto the ground.
“The doctor will fix you up, baby,” she cooed, and led the limping dog across the lot toward the front doors.
Jack got out of the car and stood with Walker, admiring the ease with which Julie had taken control.
“She's single,” Walker said.
Jack, who was tired of his friends trying to fix him up, said, “Who, Julie or Cinderella?”
“C'mon, Jack. She's cute, and she likes you.”
Jack shut his door and turned his back on Walker, saying, “Get your kit.”
Inside the building, the men were directed to a treatment room, where Brent Branson was examining Cinderella.
“What'd you do to this dog?” Branson said to Jack.
“I didn't do anything.”
“Well, she probably has some broken ribs and has a small cut on her head,” Branson said, and he sounded a little testy.
Before Jack could protest further, Walker stepped in with his camera. “Mind if I get a few shots of the cut?”
Branson held the dog's head while Julie stroked its back, and Walker snapped several digital close-ups of the wound. He then handed Branson some collection swabs and envelopes and Branson collected blood and hair samples from the area of the wound and more from the muzzle.
“Looking for DNA?” Branson asked.
“Fingers crossed,” Walker said.
Cinderella looked at Jack and bared her teeth.
“Why am I the only one she doesn't like?” Jack said, noticing the dog hadn't growled at either Brent or Walker.
“Dogs have a keen sense of goodness,” Walker offered.
“And a keen sense of smell,” Brent added.
“Why do I bother?” Jack said and sat on the only chair in the small examining room.
Cody stood in his bathroom, right leg propped on the side of the antique claw-foot tub, and dabbed at the wound on his lower calf—four jagged tears in a pattern about three inches square—that were now bright red with the skin swollen and oozing a reddish fluid. The dog had come out of nowhere and latched on to his leg just as he was raising his axe to finish the job on Jon Samuels.
He'd swung wide and missed the dog's head by less than an inch, and the damn mangy mutt had released his leg and lunged at his nuts. Cody was barely able to turn sideways to avoid being neutered by the beast. He had kicked the dog so hard when he first entered the small apartment he thought it would stay away from him. But the ugly mutt had rallied like an angry hornet and come at him again. He had aimed a kick at the dog's head, but connected with its chest, flipping it into the air. He had swung the axe again, but the dog was too fast.
The bite wounds on his leg didn't hurt until now.
Should have killed the damn dog,
he thought. He poured hydrogen peroxide over the torn skin and watched the liquid turn frothy as it came into contact with his bloody tissue. The sight was fascinating. He had seen a lot of blood over the years, but never his own.
A doctor was out because Murphy might go sniffing around about someone being treated for dog bites and then he would have some explaining to do. He could always drive to another city and go to a MEC Center, pay cash, and make up a name and story to go with it. But right now he had another job to do.
CHAPTER
SEVENTY-TWO
Jack talked Branson into putting Cinderella in one of the kennel spaces, but was ticked off that he had to pay for the dog's upkeep.
Twenty dollars a day for a dog that hates me,
he thought as he pulled into the back parking lot of the detectives' squad room. But then, he had also agreed to pay for the dog's medical care, which looked like it was going to be several hundred dollars. Branson said the dog had several broken ribs and would need stitches in the wound on top of her head. He would give Jack some pain pills and antibiotics for Cinderella.
Branson's assistant, Julie, suggested that Jack use chunky peanut butter to hide the pills when he gave them to Cinderella.
He made his way downstairs to the war room and was surprised to see Captain Franklin in the room with Garcia and Liddell.
“ 'Bout time you got back,” Liddell said.
“Any news with the dog?” Captain Franklin asked.
“There was blood. Walker took some swabbings, but you know how that goes. It could be from Jon Samuels,” Jack said. He decided not to tell them that he was having the dog treated by the veterinarian.
“And speaking of blood,” Liddell said, and then looked at Garcia. “Go ahead, Angelina. You got the news. You tell him.”
“Tell me what?” Jack asked, and Angelina Garcia looked like she was about to burst with excitement.
“We have a DNA match, Jack!” she said.
 
 
“Mitochondrial DNA is what gave them the match,” Garcia said. “It is a better indicator in females because there are one hundred thousand to one million markers in a woman's egg, where there are only one hundred to one thousand in a man's sperm.”
“Let's not get personal,” Liddell said.
Garcia ignored his attempt at humor. “Let's put it this way. Sometimes there is not enough of a DNA sample for a comparison, but by looking at only the mitochondrial part of the DNA they can get a maternal match. It basically eliminates the male part of the DNA sample and tests only for the female DNA.”
“I'm dying here,” Jack said. “What's the punch line? What did you get a match on?”
Garcia took a deep breath before saying, “We have a DNA match from the blood found on Cinderella.”
Jack felt a shiver run through him. “So you're saying . . . what?”
“The match was with Brenda Lincoln. Whoever the dog bit is a relative of Brenda's.”
 
 
Jack got off the phone with Sergeant Walker in CSU and asked Garcia for the file photos of Brenda Lincoln and Cordelia Morse.
“There is a slight resemblance,” he said, looking at the two black-and-white photos. “Where's Tunney?”
Liddell spoke up. “He's in the chief 's office. He has gotten the go-ahead of the FBI to assist us on this case.”
Jack smirked and asked, “So are we going to be submerged in little FBI guys now?”
Liddell laughed. “He promised they would only ‘assist' us.”
“At least until we solve the case,” Garcia said sarcastically, causing both men to look at her. “I mean until you guys solve the case,” she added. “Us girls don't count.”
Liddell was about to say something, but she beat him to the punch, saying, “And no, it's not my time of month. And yes, Mark and I have a full sex life.”
Liddell's mouth clamped shut and Jack laughed.
“It's worth a month's pay to see someone shut him up,” Jack said.
“I feel violated,” Liddell quipped, and bumped knuckles with Garcia. “You go, girl.”
“Let's go see the chief,” Captain Franklin suggested.

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