by Rick Reed
A marked police car pulled into the parking lot and a police officer who was at least as big as her little car stepped from his vehicle.
“Is this the offender’s car, Detective?” the officer asked.
“Tow-away zone, Officer. Unless it has a Coroner’s Department sticker in the window—which I doubt that it does—have it taken to impound.” The officer turned and walked toward Claudine’s car, ticket book in hand.
“You can’t get away with this, Murphy,” was all Claudine Setera could think of to say, before Jack turned and reentered the morgue, leaving her to argue with the uniformed officer. While she was doing so, Agent Tunney and Captain Franklin were being spirited out the back door of the coroner’s office to an unmarked vehicle that Murphy had quietly instructed them to take.
Jack and Franklin had agreed that this was only a temporary reprieve, but there was no way they could allow the news media to catch them all at the morgue. It was obvious that someone had given Setera some very private information. But if she couldn’t verify any of it, she was dead in the water until she could.
Jack smiled as he came back in the conference room.
Lilly Caskins’s face was unreadable as she asked, “You really gonna tow that reporter’s car?”
Liddell was grinning too. “Nah, he just wants to shake her up a little. The officer’s been told to give her a stern warning in about ten minutes and let her leave. That’ll give Captain Franklin time to find somewhere safe to stash Agent Tunney.”
Lilly cracked a grin, and on her it looked like a caricature of an evil pumpkin. “You guys are da bomb,” she said and bumped knuckles with Liddell. Lilly was thinking of her earlier encounter in front of the Marriott with Blake James, who was wrapping her in an embrace while this bimbo filmed it all. “I owe you one, Murphy,” she said.
“Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, Lilly,” Jack answered.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
During the hastily arranged exit from the morgue, Captain Franklin had made an executive decision to hide Agent Tunney. Franklin and Tunney were headed to Two-Jakes Marina for a clandestine meeting with Jack and Liddell.
“Sorry for the media reception, Agent Tunney,” Captain Franklin said. He was embarrassed that his department’s information leaks had been exposed.
“Not a problem, Captain,” Tunney assured him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to hide.”
“Jack and Liddell will meet us there and we’ll find a suitable place for you to stay while you’re here,” Franklin added.
“Murphy thinks on the fly, doesn’t he?” Tunney observed.
“That can be a problem sometimes,” Franklin said. “But, yes, he is quick on his feet. It’s not the first time he’s butted heads with the media. Sometimes it doesn’t go so well for him, but he’s the man I’d want working this case. He never gives up.”
“I can see that,” Tunney said.
Arnold looked at the typed note. It was from the same person, he was sure of that. But there was something different about it. It frightened him. He was sure that another murder was taking place. And this time, it was happening to someone who Arnold was familiar with. Jonathan Samuels was as good as dead.
Cubby stepped into the apartment and stared at what had been a human being not long ago. The body was probably Jon Samuels according to the description he’d gotten from Lenny Bange, but even his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him now. For one thing, the face and part of the scalp had been removed from the body, and a skull now stared at Cubby with sightless eyes.
Had Lenny Bange also hired someone else to take care of his problem? No—he was sure that the gutless attorney wouldn’t dare to disrespect him that way. That meant that Jon Samuels must have pissed someone else off enough to get hacked up and scalped. And that probably meant that Samuels was the guy, the one who was blackmailing Bange.
Whoever had done this had saved Cubby some trouble, but now there was the issue of his fee. He could claim to Lenny that he was the one who had taken care of Samuels, but this was not Cubby’s style of taking care of things. Cubby was a mean son of a bitch, and he was not to be messed with. He would break bones, maybe kneecap someone, but he left them alive if it was possible, dead if it suited him. In his whole life he had never done anything like what he was seeing here. Whoever did this was in a league of his own.
He had brought a small pry bar with him that served two purposes. He had planned to use it to force entry into the apartment if necessary, and then it doubled as a negotiating tool in case Samuels wasn’t forthcoming with information. He slipped the twelve-inch tool into the waistband at the back of his pants since the situation had not called for the tool’s use.
He took one more look at the hacked-up corpse that was propped up on the couch and said, “Well, you got lucky it wasn’t me that got to you first.” He laughed at his own witticism and turned to get out of there when he noticed something running down into his eyes. Cubby put his hand to his face and felt the substance. It was definitely blood, but where was it coming from? Then as if in answer to his unspoken question the bone axe came crashing down into the back of his skull.
The man the FBI had dubbed The Cleaver was slightly surprised by the ability of the large man not only to turn around with the blade of the bone axe buried deep in the back of his head, but also to lift his arm and touch the blood that was flowing down the side of his face. The puzzled look was almost entertaining.
Now he had two bodies to deal with and that wasn’t in the plan. This whole thing has been a disaster since the beginning, he thought. First Cordelia tracks him down, and then someone tries to blackmail him.
He had thought about not killing this man, but the guy was large and looked powerful. The first rule of killing is “don’t lose the fight.” He had watched the man put a metal bar in his back waistband. It was likely that he had other more deadly weapons on his person.
He pulled Cubby’s body into the apartment and shut the door behind them. No more company tonight please, he thought, and searched Cubby’s clothing for identification.
The guy was wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans, and a black shirt. “Oh my God!” he said softly. “I’ve killed Johnny Cash.” He chuckled and reached inside the jacket pocket of the dead man, finding a business card.
Lenny Bange, Esq., the card read. And under that was printed, Get more Bange for your buck.
“Well, you certainly did,” the killer said to the body at his feet. “And now . . . so have I.”
Also in the pocket was a small leather business card holder. The killer opened it and found several credit cards and a Nevada driver’s license for a man named Crispino out of Las Vegas. Cody checked the man’s jeans pockets and in the right pocket found a money clip holding three thousand dollars in large bills.
He patted the body down and felt a hard object in the middle of the back waistband. He reached under the jacket and removed a nine-millimeter Beretta pistol that had been tucked away. It was massive, but the man was able to cover it with his bulk. He laid the pistol on the floor. Not his weapon of choice. He liked to be up close when doing business.
The pry bar was sticking out of the man’s back pocket. He slid it out and saw that it had been well used. So the man had come prepared to break into the apartment. He was carrying a lot of cash and carrying a loose business card for an Evansville attorney. He looked like a tough guy. A leg breaker. Was Lenny Bange trying to recover money from Samuels? It didn’t make sense. Samuels had nothing. Why would an attorney be sending a hired thug to the apartment of some small-town gay guy?
Bange is being blackmailed, too, he thought. But Samuels wasn’t the blackmailer. Now he wished he could have kept the big man alive. There were probably a lot of questions he could have answered. But the big man might have gone for the gun and it would have been even messier.
So that left Lenny Bange. He would have to pay Lenny a visit. What a surprise the attorney would get when he found out that Samue
ls had been slaughtered, and that the body of another man, an unidentified body of course, was found in the apartment.
He went to the kitchen area of the apartment and retrieved some plastic trash bags. He would need something to put the hands and head in. He stuffed the bags in his back pocket and went back to the body of Cubby Crispino and knelt next to the upper torso. Hefting the bone axe high over his head, he swung down and with one expert blow severed the head from the body. Then came the hands.
He tossed the severed body parts in the plastic trash bag and dropped the pistol in after it. He tied it shut with the handy drawstring top. He would take all the money and identification, but leave the clothes. He didn’t want to make it impossible for the police to identify this guy, just tie them up awhile and get them off their pace.
He looked around to be sure he’d left nothing of his own behind when he spotted the pry bar on the floor. He decided to leave it. Maybe one little present for Jack. This was getting to be fun.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Arnold had spent a luxurious twenty minutes in the shower, the water as hot as he could stand it, and now put the finishing touches on his story. It was a good piece. Sure to be front page. He’d stayed up all night working on it.
Arnold called Bob Robertson, his editor, at home. It was a little after five o’clock in the morning, but Robertson answered on the first ring.
“This had better be damned important,” Robertson said.
“Sir, this is Arnold Byrum,” Arnold said in a weak voice. Mr. Robertson could be a very intimidating man.
“I know who it is, idiot! What have you got?”
“I have a story, sir.”
“Tell me,” Robertson demanded.
Jack was on his way to Two-Jakes Marina to meet with Captain Franklin and Agent Tunney when he received the telephone call from Chief Bob Johnson in Shawneetown.
“Murphy,” he said into his cell phone.
The chief was so upset he was slurring his words like a drunk. The gist of what he had to say was that Jon Samuels was dead.
“Chief Johnson,” Jack said, “I can’t help but wonder why you’re calling me about this?”
“Because of the other dead sucker laying in Jon’s front room,” Johnson said, as if that should clear everything up nicely.
“Slow down a little, Chief, and tell me what you need me for.”
“I don’t give a fudgesicle in hell what you’re doing, Murphy. You get your ass over here and help me sort this out. I swear to God, boy, I ain’t never seen nothing like this. Jon’s face is gone and the other guy ain’t got no head or hands.”
Jack could hear Chief Johnson take a deep breath and let it out shakily. “None of this shit happened before you came over here asking your damn questions.”
Jack said, “I have to pick up my partner, but I’ll be there in less than an hour.” The line went dead, and Jack said to no one, “Don’t bother thanking me.”
He called Liddell and arranged to meet in the parking lot of the museum downtown near the river. He then called Captain Franklin and explained what was going on.
“I’ll call him and see if I can get any more information from him,” Franklin said, and Jack gave the captain the cell phone number for Chief Johnson. “Come by and pick up Agent Tunney. He wants to go and see this one for himself. You say he told you that Samuels’s face had been taken off ?”
“Yeah. And don’t forget the headless guy.”
“I’ll see if he has an identification on the other guy.”
Jack didn’t think the killer took the head and hands to make it that easy and he said so.
“May not be related,” Franklin said, “but Tunney wants to see it, and I agree.”
“Be there in five,” Jack said, and swung his Jeep into the parking lot of the museum near the levee.
Liddell was sitting on the hood of his unmarked car sipping something from a Styrofoam cup. “Am I driving?” he asked.
Jack nodded. “Follow me to Two-Jakes. We’re picking Tunney up. I’ll leave my car there.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Chief Bob Johnson stood on the porch outside Samuels’s apartment and took gulping breaths of air. He had called JJ ten minutes ago and the numb-nuts still hadn’t shown up in that fancied-up Firebird he called a police car.
His chest hurt and he could feel pain settling into his shoulders. He hoped Murphy stepped on the gas and got there quick. This was his kind of stuff, not an old man’s job at all. Especially one with a bad ticker and a hundred extra pounds on him.
He walked unsteadily to the stairs. He needed to get some yellow crime scene tape out of his trunk and then block the entrance to the gravel drive leading to the apartments. If that idiot nephew of his would get out here, he had things for him to do as well.
County coroner’s office is taking their time, Johnson thought, just as he saw a cloud of dust rising at the entrance of the drive out near the main road. Better be you, JJ!
JJ could see all the lights on in Samuels’s apartment. He knew his uncle was going to be pissed at him, but he couldn’t get there any quicker. He was over in Kentucky with a “friend” and had broken every speed limit to get here, all the while praying that one of the Kentucky state troopers wouldn’t spot him.
Pulling up to his uncle’s police cruiser, he shut down his engine, but his mind was in overdrive. He sincerely hoped this had nothing to do with his breaking into Samuels’s place. Or with the two phone calls he’d made to people over in Evansville. Surely neither of those guys would have anything to do with a murder. But the thought that Samuels had been killed within a day of his making those calls caused a finger of fear to shoot up JJ’s spine.
“Sorry, Uncle Bob,” JJ said, getting out of the car. “What do you want me to do?”
Chief Johnson was sitting against the back trunk of his marked police car. When he stood up the car’s rear end lifted a good four inches.
“Listen here, son,” Johnson said, putting a meaty arm around the younger man’s shoulders. “When I gave you this job I went to bat for you with the city council. I told them you’d do the job.”
JJ had heard this speech before. It was best just to keep quiet and let his uncle vent, but he wanted to know what happened here. Wanted to see it for himself. See if it had anything to do with Cordelia’s diary or the phone calls he’d made.
“Can I go up and look?” he asked.
His uncle looked at him for a long time, then shook his head as if he was battling a lost cause and said, “Go on up, then get down here and help me secure this scene.”
JJ looked around and wondered what they were securing an empty parking lot for, but he kept his mouth shut and headed up the stairs. He was about halfway up when his uncle called to him.
“Don’t go inside, JJ. You can see all you need to from the doorway.”
JJ took two more steps before his uncle called out again, saying, “And don’t touch the door or anything. I got a call in to the coroner and the state police. I don’t want the scene compromised.”
JJ ran up the remaining stairs. He already knew that his fingerprints were going to be all over the door and inside of the apartment. He could explain them, except for the ones he might have left on the inside of the air-conditioning unit’s casing. But then, the police team from Evansville had already searched the apartment once and didn’t look in the a/c unit that time. Maybe the state cops wouldn’t look, either.
He stopped inside the doorway like his uncle had told him, but that warning was needless. JJ couldn’t have gone in that apartment if his pants were on fire and there was a bucket of water inside the door. The sight before him left him paralyzed.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Agent Tunney sat in the back passenger side of Liddell Blanchard’s unmarked unit behind Jack Murphy. Murphy had offered him the front seat, but this seating arrangement was the only way he could get legroom for his six-foot-three frame. Liddell wasn’t wasting any time and, at five o’clock in the morning,
was only slowing at the toll bridge to pay the fee. There was little traffic on the road anyway. At the point where Highway 62 becomes Illinois Highway 141, Liddell took a hard left onto Big Hill Road.
An Illinois state trooper passed Liddell going south and Liddell looked at his speedometer. “He’s doing over a hundred, Jack,” Liddell observed.
“You drive like a girl,” Jack said.
“Do not.”
“C’mon, Bigfoot. Catch that mother,” Jack said.
“Are you going to pay the ticket?” Liddell asked.
“I’ll pay the ticket,” Tunney said from the backseat.
Liddell stomped the gas pedal down and the car rocketed forward. “Oh well, I can’t ignore an order from the FBI,” Liddell said.
Jack said to Liddell, “And you always say that FBI agents don’t have any balls.”
“I never say that,” Liddell protested. Jack sat quietly. Liddell looked back at Agent Tunney and said, “I never say that.”
“Eyes on the road please,” Tunney said. “I don’t want my balls splattered all over some cow pasture.”
“Where did you get this information?” Bob Robertson was sitting behind his desk, with Arnold squirming in a seat across the room.
“I have a source,” Arnold said.
“What?” Robertson shouted. “You have a source. You think that’s all I’m going to have to explain when we run with a story that the police just now got involved with?”
Arnold didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t reveal his source.
“I called Chief Johnson and he confirmed they’re working a homicide involving Jon Samuels as the victim, but he didn’t want to go on record,” Robertson said, but he wasn’t really talking to Arnold. He was trying to come up with an angle to use the story. It was a great one, and they would once again have the scoop on the television stations. He didn’t really give a damn who Arnold’s source was.