The Coldest Fear (32 page)

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Authors: Rick Reed

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: The Coldest Fear
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CHAPTER
EIGHTY-SIX
Jack could see smoke in the distance and wondered what was burning. Then Detective Zimmer put his emergency lights and siren in operation and they were off and running toward the fire.
It took about four minutes to cover the distance. As they came over the top of a hill they could see acres of dry cornfield burning, and in the center of the conflagration a flaming car lay upside down.
“That's JJ's car,” Jack said, jumping from his car. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the trunk and sprayed a path through the burning stalks.
Zimmer came up beside him. “I've called fire and rescue,” he said, and deployed his own extinguisher in a sweeping motion as the two men moved forward to the burning vehicle.
“I can see him,” Jack said.
Ignoring the flames he reached into the wreck and pulled its driver away from the vehicle and onto the scorched ground. Detective Zimmer used the remains of his extinguisher to create a path away from the fire and onto the road. He then helped Jack drag the smoking body the rest of the way out of the fire.
By the time the men reached the roadway they could hear sirens coming from both the east and the west. Jack looked down at the prone figure he had dragged out of the flames and thought that JJ—if it was JJ—was surely dead. No one could have lived through the inferno that had been made of the Firebird.
The victim's clothing was charred but looked almost silvery, and then Jack realized that he had wrapped himself in a fire blanket. A retching noise came from under the blanket. Lieutenant JJ Johnson threw the blanket open and gulped in lungs full of fresh air.
JJ tried to get up, but Jack knelt and helped him into a sitting position as the sirens came closer. Liddell retrieved a blanket from the trunk of the car and put it around JJ, who was now shivering. Liddell looked at the man's feet and knew they were beyond saving. The fire blanket had protected his upper body from most of the flames, but his boots had melted along with most of the flesh and muscles of his feet.
CHAPTER
EIGHTY-SEVEN
At police headquarters Angelina, Captain Franklin and Agent Tunney were in the war room, reading through the files that Judge Hudgins's secretary had faxed. They were excited. All the pieces of the puzzle were coming together.
When Captain Franklin put the file down, Angelina asked, “How is Detective Jansen?” It wasn't that she was really concerned for his health, because Jansen was an insufferable jerk, and he had hit on her a couple of times, but it was the polite thing to do.
“He'll live,” Franklin said. “Arnold might be another matter.”
“Arnold was shot twice in the face and lived through it,” Tunney said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“One bullet entered his sinus cavity on the right side and went out the neck without any damage,” Franklin explained to Garcia, “but the other one must have nicked an artery or something and Arnold's brain was oxygen deprived for quite some time. He's in a coma and the doctors don't expect him to be able to talk when—or if—he comes around.”
“Did Jansen have an embedded news crew in his hospital room?” Garcia asked sarcastically, causing Franklin to laugh out loud.
“Let's put it this way,” Franklin said. “He thinks he caught the serial killer.”
“Looks to me like Garcia will get the credit on this one,” Tunney said.
Franklin looked at her seriously and said, “You did some great work on this, Angelina. What made you think of it?”
She felt her face redden, although it was nice to be praised for her work. “I didn't do much, Captain,” she said. “I just checked out some things that we had all talked about and got lucky. And Susan came up with some tidbits from her sources with the Illinois Welfare Department.”
“Listen to her, Frank,” Captain Franklin said. “Brilliant, and modest.”
“Well, Miss Garcia,” Frank Tunney said, “thanks to you I think we will be able to put a face and name on The Cleaver, and make it stick.”
The telephone rang and Garcia picked up the receiver.
“Angelina, this is Jack.”
He sounded stressed, and she said, “Jack, is everything okay?”
“I know who the killer is,” Jack said, and she could hear someone coughing in the background.
“Jack, who is that? Is Bigfoot okay?” She felt a sudden heaviness in her chest.
“Bigfoot is fine. We're with Detective Zimmer in Kentucky. Lieutenant Johnson has been hurt badly and we're assisting. But listen, I need you to dig up everything you can on Blake James. The news guy at Channel Six.”
Garcia held the phone away from her face and stared at it.
He's psychic.
“Jack, that's what I was going to tell you. Blake James is really Cody Fenton Morse. He's Cordelia's brother.”
CHAPTER
EIGHTY-EIGHT
Jack told Liddell and Zimmer what Garcia had found.
“Let me get this straight,” Zimmer said. “This Cody Morse guy came to Evansville just after a string of murders in Atlanta. And those murders were the suspected work of the guy the feds are calling The Cleaver?”
Jack nodded.
Zimmer said, “Then the same type of murders started in Evansville recently and that's what brought Special Agent Tunney to our neighborhood? And now you think that this Blake James, a Channel Six anchorman, is actually the serial killer known as The Cleaver. AND”—he drew the word out before continuing—“you think he is the one that just tried to toast Lieutenant Johnson?”
Jack and Liddell looked at each other and both nodded.
Zimmer put his hands in his pockets and said, “Okay. Sounds good to me. So how do we catch him?”
They were all looking at the ground, until Jack said, “I have an idea.”
Claudine Setera couldn't believe her ears when Elliott Turner, the station manager at Channel Six, called her into his office.
“Look, Elliott, about the remarks I made last time—” she began.
“Shut up,” he said. “If you were in trouble the station attorney would be here. As you can see, we're alone.”
It dawned on her that he was probably going to try to make her perform some disgusting sexual act in return for keeping her job. She was tired of men thinking that was the only thing she was good at. She was a fine journalist and if that was his idea, she
would
get an attorney and
sue
.
“Jack Murphy just called. Grab a ‘live' van and get out there. Here's the GPS coordinates,” Elliott said and handed her a piece of scrap paper.
“What is this?” she asked, not able to change gears so quickly.
“It's your big break, Claudine,” he said and his smile seemed genuine. “Now hurry over there before the fire department puts the fire out. If you hurry you might be able to catch up with Lieutenant Johnson and get a live interview.”
She snatched the paper from his hand and ran for the back parking lot, yelling for her driver and cameraman.
“If he's still alive when you get there,” Elliott said under his breath to her retreating figure. He thought about how quickly Claudine had come up at the station. She had the looks and the talent, and people tended to trust and like her. If this worked out for her she would probably get Blake's spot as lead anchor.
He shook his head at the idea of Claudine upstaging Blake and thought,
Blake will be one pissed-off guy
. But, Murphy had asked specifically for Claudine. What was a manager to do?
At the Alpine Motel the clientele were as anonymous as the homeless. Sitting on wooded acreage on the northwestern outskirts of Evansville, it was frequented by those who could only afford daily rates. Cody had read a book about a serial killer named Joseph Weldon Brown who had stayed at this very same motel for a week while on a seven-state killing spree about ten years ago. In his job as Blake James, he'd found the stories in the news archives at the television station. The idea that another of his kind had been here gave him comfort.
Cody had always thought of himself as more of an avenging angel rather than a serial killer. Definitely not as the man the FBI had dubbed “The Cleaver.”
How unimaginative,
he thought, not for the first time.
After all, I only took what rightly belonged to me.
The people he had killed each had two faces. The one they showed to the public. The kind, hardworking, caring type of face. And then there was the other face. The one that was their true nature. Evil, degenerate, violent child abusers, child molesters, bullies. Like his father. And so, he had taken those untrue faces away from them to let the world see their true ugliness—see them for what they really were.
He wrapped the cloth around the bone axe he had used as a child to kill the man who started all this. The axe had served him well over the last several years—had taken the faces of more than fifty two-faced liars. Wielded by a righteous man of conviction, it had the power to strip even the most powerful enemies of their disguise.
He sat on the edge of the sprung mattress in the twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot room at the Alpine Motel and leaned his head against the streaked wall. The room didn't bother him. He'd been in much worse. The years he'd spent in that asylum after killing his father had taught him to appreciate the present and not worry what comforts he no longer had. Not that he'd had much in the way of comforts before killing his father.
Those years were the only real memories he had. The memories of threats and verbal abuse followed by beatings that left him lying in his own urine, unable to move, afraid to cry. Worse than that, the certainty that he was a coward because he was unable to protect his little sister from even worse abuse at the hands of the man who was supposed to love them, care for them. It didn't matter that he was only six years old at the time. It was his job to protect his sister. And he had failed.
When Cordelia was born, their mother had abandoned them both. From that day it had been just him and Cordelia, locked in a bond of fear and abuse. The beatings had come almost daily by the time he had turned six. Cordelia, although she was barely walking, was no less a target of their deranged father. He had thought back then that his father had blamed them for his mother's disappearance, but now he knew the truth. She, too, had been the subject of the abuse, and she had in turn abused Cody, until Cordelia was born and she saw her chance at escape. Cody didn't blame her for leaving, but he hated her for not taking him with her.
He had lain on the small bed in the room that he shared with his little sister and listened to the moans of his father and the screams of pain from the little girl. He didn't understand what his father was doing until much later in his life. All he knew was that man was somehow hurting his sister and that he, Cody, should be standing up for her. But he was too scared to even look, because if his father thought he was awake and listening he would be beaten again.
He remembered one night, sneaking out of bed, going to the kitchen and eating a slice of dry bread to try and quell the grumbling of his little stomach. The next morning he had awakened to the sound of his father screaming, “You little bastard. I'll kill you.” Somehow his father knew he had eaten the bread. The beating that ensued had caused his bowels to loosen and he had defecated on the floor, causing a renewed rage in his still drunken father, who had then dragged him to the bathroom and threatened to “cut his head off ” for stealing from him.
Cody closed his eyes.
The sound of his father's work boots on the tiled floor of the bathroom. The sound of a tap being turned on in the old claw-foot tub, steam rising from the scalding water. The hand gripping the back of his neck, bringing tears to his eyes and making his nose run. Then the pain in his side and stomach as the heavy boot came down on him, again and again, finally kicking him almost completely under the old cast-iron tub. The rage that came from some part of him that had been awakened. To his surprise, he scrambled to a crouched position and leaped into the man's chest and face, hands in front of him twisted into claws.
He remembered his father going down on his back and striking his head on the side of the sink. The man lay on the white tile flooring, dazed, unable to do more than moan, and in that moan came the memories of nights in his room when his little sister had screamed.
Cody had run to the kitchen and pulled open the cabinets under the sink, grabbing the thing that would make all of this go away forever. A voice within him said,
DO it.
The weight of the bone axe was almost too much for his skinny arms, but he carried it to the bathroom and stood over the man who had caused all of the pain in his short life. Somehow he found the strength to raise it over his head and drive it down in the center of his father's forehead with enough force to bury the axe blade in the skull. He had to work the handle back and forth to free the blade. When he pulled it loose, he raised it again and again, until there was little left of the man's head, the face completely destroyed.
The voice that told him to do it had saved him. It had protected him when he was taken into police custody and had nourished him during his long stay in the asylum. Pretty soon Cody the victim was gone. All that remained was the voice.
When he was little his mother had told him that angels looked over him. Guardian angels, she had called them. The voice that spoke to him had given him the strength to live.
He had become an angel. And it was time for Murphy to meet the angel.

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