The Cruelest Cut (34 page)

Back in the war room, Jack and Liddell met with the team, including an anxious Dr. Don Shull, but minus Susan Summers.

“Let's see where we're at,” Jack said, and pointed to the map of Mother Goose Land on the wall. “We finally figured out there was a pattern, but now Eddie has seemingly abandoned that. Doctor?”

Shull was standing in front of the map, arms crossed, looking at each scene marker. “I've never seen someone so confused. And that's saying a lot.”

He pointed to the first murder scene. “Anne and Don Lewis. It seemingly started there, with the murder of his court-ordered psychiatrist.” He looked at the photos and descriptions of the victims.

“Anne was very good at what she did, Jack. If she had a chance to talk to Eddie, she probably would have been able to talk him down. That fits with what you told me of the scene. The unprovoked attack on the husband and then the savage killing and staging of the scene. I would say he probably displayed her husband's dead body to her. The rage was controlled until the actual killing occurred. The killing was animalistic. However, the initial attacks were ritual. Planned. Well thought out. And that's what is most confusing still.”

Shull looked at each person in the room, and then continued. “There are two minds at work. One planning and one killing. Until the killing of Maddy Brooks, it appeared that the planning mind was in control. That would be Bobby. Now Eddie is in control. He has become strong enough to resist what he thinks Bobby would do.”

“This is taking us backwards, Doc,” Liddell complained.

“No. It is deciphering the mind of your killer,” Shull replied. “Maybe I can explain it this way. Eddie was so lost without his brother's guidance that he invented his brother. Like a kid with a secret friend that no one else can see. It was Bobby's influence that kept him from killing Jack. He's probably still holding on to his brother's memories, discussing his moves with the imaginary brother. But make no mistake, Eddie is in charge now.”

“How do we know that for sure?” Crowley asked.

“We don't know anything for sure,” Shull replied. “But from what you've all told me, Bobby wasn't suicidal. Some of the things that Eddie has done recently indicate a death wish.”

“Are you saying he wants to be killed?” said Liddell.

“Well, yes and no,” Shull answered.

“Typical psychiatrist answer,” Crowley said.

Shull grinned and said, “Typical police interpretation.”

Liddell cringed. “Ouch! I think he got you there, Mark.”

Crowley apologized and said, “Okay, so what does your answer mean, Doctor?”

Shull looked at the map again, and said without facing the others, “He wants to die, but he just won't admit it to himself. And in particular, he wants Jack to do it. If he can.”

“Oh, I can,” Jack said, matter-of-factly. “So. How do we find him?”

“That's the point I'm making, Jack. I think he will be the one finding you.”

They looked at each other, and were all wondering the same thing that Shull now voiced. “He's likely to come here if he doesn't lure you somewhere alone.”

Liddell leaned in toward Jack's ear and said, “We've gotta talk. Now!”

“I'll handcuff myself to you if that's what it takes to make you do this the right way,” Liddell was saying heatedly. A couple of uniformed officers, who had been standing in the hallway chatting, moved off quickly. Liddell was the size of a gorilla and just as strong. You didn't want to be in this man's face when he was mad.

“It's not about me, Cajun,” Jack said as forcefully as his angry partner. “He's got Katie and Susan, and every minute we play patty-cake here he's spending with them!” Jack had tried not to think about what might be happening to the women, but he had not realized the full extent of Eddie's sickness until Shull brought it to his attention. Now he couldn't get it out of his mind. They must be frightened beyond fear by now.
If they're not dead,
he finished the thought. And with that thought he rushed back into the war room.

Shull was talking to Mark and Angelina when Jack interrupted. “Hey, Doc,” Jack said, and then told Shull his idea.

 

Bill Goldberg was angry. Not because of the death of his reporter, but because he was being ordered by the station's owners to participate in what he viewed as a highly illegal, not to mention legally liable, act by the police department. Who the hell did this detective Murphy think he was, anyway?

“I'll do it,” he said to the station's attorney, David Wires. “But you'd better remember, that when this goes to hell, and it will, that I was against the idea.” Wires was tired of listening to the manager vent and decided the conversation was over. The line went dead in Goldberg's ear.

“Damn! Damn! Shit!” Goldberg said into the empty line and slammed the phone into its cradle. “Get the Bobbsey Twins in here!” he yelled at his secretary, referring to anchors Clark Jameson and Tonya Simpson.

 

Everything had been put together in a rush, but Jack was confident that this would get the results he wanted. Shull had given him the idea when he said that Eddie was still talking to his brother, Bobby. If that was so, he hoped Eddie was still watching the news reports on the case. He had a surprise for Eddie.

 

It was already five o'clock, and Jack was sitting in the same chair he had occupied when Maddy Brooks had interviewed him a week ago. But now, Tonya Simpson sat across from him, patting and prodding stray hairs into place as she practiced her smile.
They actually practice smiling,
Jack thought.

Somehow it hadn't sunk in that the chopped-up mess they had found tied to the STAR radio tower was all that was left of Maddy Brooks. She had been a beautiful woman once, but her pride and curiosity had gotten her killed. He hoped that same pride and curiosity would be Eddie Solazzo's undoing, as well.

The newsroom lights brightened, and Clark Jameson looked into camera one, as the cameraman gave him the countdown. Jameson came in on his cue, did the agreed spiel. Jack was sickened by the idea of using the deaths of these innocents to draw Eddie into a trap. But he reminded himself why he was here, and thought about how Double Dick had denied taking evidence from a crime scene. Jack would never understand how someone supposedly of leadership caliber could just up and piss a career away like that. But before he could complete the thought, the light over camera two came on.
Nearly showtime,
he thought.

 

Tonya Simpson looked into her camera, showing more teeth than a great white shark, and said, “We have with us Detective Jack Murphy, the lead investigator on the recent series of murders committed by the man that has been dubbed ‘Mother Goose.'”

As planned, Jack interrupted her before she could ask a question. Only Bill Goldberg and Dave Wires had been informed about the content of what Jack was going to say. Jack needed Tonya Simpson and Clark Jameson to look startled. He just hoped that they wouldn't blurt something out before he was finished.

“Tonya, I'm not here to answer questions,” Jack said, leaning forward into the camera. “I'm here to give a message to Eddie and Bobby Solazzo.”

Tonya Simpson looked confused. Bobby Solazzo was dead. What was Murphy up to this time? “But Detective, isn't Bobby Solazzo—” she got out before Jack interrupted her again.

“Bobby Solazzo has always been the brains of that crew. Eddie couldn't take a dump without consulting Bobby. So it's clear to me that Bobby is behind all of these recent killings. Eddie's not smart enough to come up with something like this.” Jack stood and walked toward the camera with a threatening look on his face. “I just want Eddie to know that he's in the clear if he'll turn himself in. I'll personally meet him anywhere, anytime. Alone! Bobby Solazzo is the killer. He's the one we want.”

“But, Detective Murphy,” Tonya tried to speak but saw her camera light go out. Looking over, she saw Bill Goldberg motioning for the camera crew to cut to a commercial. “Bill, what the hell is going on?” she yelled across the stage, and when she turned back to Murphy she found an empty seat.

As soon as the camera light went out, Jack had yanked the tiny mike off his jacket and thrown it down in the chair. He hoped that Shull was right and that Eddie was a crazy as he thought. His plan had been to get Eddie so worked up that he would come after him. The problem being, that even if it worked, there was no guarantee that he wouldn't kill the women first.

“I hope I never lay eyes on you again,” Bill Goldberg said to Jack as he walked across the newsroom stage to where Liddell and Crowley were waiting.

“You'd better hope that's true,” Jack said menacingly, and Goldberg cringed back like a typical bully.

Liddell slapped Jack on the shoulder, saying, “Great job, pod'na. Now what kind of jobs are we going to be looking for when this all goes to shit?”

Jack said, “You wanted to know what the next move was. Well, the next move is Eddie's now. If Shull is right, I've just caused some dissension in the ranks of the Solazzo boys. Eddie will have to show his brother that he is a man by killing me.”

“Great plan, Jack,” Crowley said.

They followed Crowley outside to a white panel van with smoked windows. Crowley opened the back, and Liddell said, “Holy shit, Batman! Where did you get all this stuff?”

Jack looked inside the van's cargo area. Every square inch of wall space was taken up with electronic equipment, and then he noticed the tall antennae on top of the vehicle. Crowley reached inside the front driver's door and pulled out two large magnetic signs and stuck one on the side of the driver's door, the other to the rear door. The van now looked like a
Channel Six News
van, complete with tower antennae.

“Your friend from CID loaned you all this?” Jack said.

“Cool stuff, huh?” Crowley answered.

“Hell, yeah!” Liddell shouted. “Know how to use any of it?”

Crowley climbed in the back of the van, dropped into one of two roll-around chairs, and reached out to Jack, saying, “Give me your cell phone.”

Jack handed him the phone, and Crowley wedged it into a holder on one of the control panels. He punched a couple of buttons, and everything powered up. Lights subdued, and a screen that looked like a sonar screen from television came to life. “I can handle everything from here, Jack,” he said, and reached in his pocket, coming out with a tiny ear plug. “Put this in your ear,” he said.

Jack put the flesh-colored earbud into his ear. “What's this for?” Suddenly he could hear Liddell chuckling as if he were right in his face.

Crowley said, “I can control the volume from here, and it's two-way so we can hear you talk even if you whisper. It also has a sound enhancer that will enable you to hear things more clearly at a distance. My friend said this is an outdated system, so he didn't have a problem loaning it to me for a few days.”

“For the taxes I pay, I would expect something newer,” Liddell joked, but no one laughed. “Hey, that was a pretty good joke,” he complained.

“Won't I need my phone?” Jack asked.

Crowley smiled, saying, “That's another cool thing about this getup. I plugged your phone into the computer system. All you have to do is say a series of numbers and your phone will dial it for you.” Liddell reached in to touch something, and Mark smacked his hand. “Don't touch anything. I don't know what half of it does.”

“And you're just now telling us this?” Liddell said.

“Look, I know how to operate the parts we need. I can trace any phone call that's made to Jack's phone back to the originating phone. I even had my friend program in Maddy's, Susan's, and Katie's phones as well. Believe me, when he calls, we'll be able to track him,” Mark said.

“If he calls,” Liddell grumped, and the men settled down to wait for the call, Jack in the back with Crowley and Liddell driving. Liddell pulled out of the station parking lot and headed for the downtown area since that was the last place that Eddie had used the cell phone.

The flickering of the television was the only light in the cabin. Eddie sat in a comfortable recliner, the corn knife with its razor-sharp edge lying across his legs. His eyes were closed as if he was asleep, but he wasn't. He had been asleep most of his life, but now his eyes had been opened. He knew exactly what he had to do. How things would end. With or without Bobby's help.

He opened his eyes and looked at the women bound to wooden chairs in front of the kitchen entrance. “Murphy shouldn't have fucked with me, Bobby!” he shouted, leaping from the chair and swinging the knife through the air. Both women cringed as the blade smashed into the wood of the door frame, mere inches from Katie's head. Then he stood rigidly, looking across the darkened room at nothing, and yelled, “I'm in charge here, Bobby,” and spittle flew from his mouth. “I'm in charge!”

Susan managed to twist her head enough to see Katie's bruised and battered face. One of Katie's eyes was swollen shut and the other was wide with fear. Duct tape wound tightly around both of their faces, completely covering their mouths, but Eddie had been careful not to cover their eyes.

Susan knew this wasn't a good sign. If he planned on keeping them alive, he wouldn't want them to be able to recognize him, and she sure as hell knew who he was. The look on Katie's face said that she had guessed their fate as well.

She had felt something wrong in the alleyway before Eddie grabbed her. But she had let her guard down. She wondered what had happened to the intuition that had served her so well in the past. But it didn't matter now. She and Katie were going to be killed by this raving lunatic, and there wasn't anything they could do about it.

Susan tried again to loosen her bonds, but Eddie had not only tied them up with rope but also used rolls of duct tape. Suddenly her head was roughly yanked up by the hair, and a fist came down into her face. She was dazed and felt her mouth filling with blood.

“I told you not to move, bitch!” Eddie struck her again, this time so hard that she lost consciousness. He continued to beat her.

Katie sat still, facing forward, and felt shame that she was too afraid to even watch as her friend was beaten senseless.
Where is Jack?
she wondered.
Jack, please come for us!
And even though she hadn't moved, it was her turn next.

 

“Eddie, you son of a bitch, where the hell are you?” Jack muttered.

Mark checked all of the equipment settings for the hundredth time. Jack had done his thing at Channel Six around five o'clock, and it was now going on seven o'clock. It felt like they had been driving for hours, and he could feel a gloom settling over them. He had never met Katie, but he knew Susan to be a good and brave soul. The cop side of him vowed that Eddie would never make it to jail, and he knew Jack felt the same. He wasn't so sure about the Cajun. Liddell didn't have the killer in him that he felt in Jack. Mark had spent some time in Desert Storm and knew the look of someone who has killed. Jack had that look.

“He'll call, Jack,” Mark said.

But Jack wasn't listening. He was staring out the darkened rear window at the receding businesses along Main Street. Just down the street was the little jewelry store where he and Katie had picked out wedding rings. He remembered how her eyes had widened and then sparkled when she found “the one.” And he wondered why he hadn't tried harder. But he knew the answer. His work had always been more important to him than anything else. He always had some case, or some bad guy, or a murder to solve, and he would get around to his friends and his life later. That included his wife.

For some reason, he had always expected her to just be there. His mother had always been there for his dad, and his father had been a cop for almost forty years. So, how had they put up with each other for all that time? He remembered his father missing most of his birthdays and ball games when he was growing up, but he had always loved his father. Maybe if he and Katie had had children it would be different.

Something beeped on the control panel in front of Jack, and a green light came on. He looked excitedly at Crowley, who was busy flipping switches.

“We got a signal,” Crowley said, looking at one of the screens. “He's turned on Katie's phone.”

“Where?” Jack asked through clenched teeth.

“I'm not sure I can tell you,” Crowley responded.

“Goddamn it, why not?”

Crowley looked offended. “Because it seems to be coming from the Ohio River.”

Jack looked at the screen. “Where on the Ohio?” he asked, and Crowley told him. Jack pounded on the back of the partition separating them from Liddell and yelled, “Stop!” Liddell hit the brakes, and the van lurched to a halt. Before Crowley could stop him, Jack grabbed his cell phone from the control panel and bailed out, disappearing in the darkness.

Liddell slid a panel aside and looked through it into the back of the van. “What's going on?” he asked, and then saw the back doors hanging open. “Jack, you dumb shit!” he yelled and jumped from the van. He came around to meet Crowley, who was standing behind the van and looking down the street for a sign of Jack.

“We got a signal,” he explained to Liddell, “from Katie's phone. It came from somewhere along the river, east of here. Jack just dived out!”

“See if you can pin it down any better,” Liddell said, and Crowley climbed back in the van. Liddell pulled out his cell phone and dialed Captain Franklin.

“Aw shit!” Crowley said.

“What is it?”

“Jack took his phone.”

“Well, can you track his phone?” Liddell asked.

“I can try,” Crowley said uncertainly.

“Shit!” Liddell said out loud, and then into the cell phone, “No, not you, Captain. It's about Jack,” he said, and then told the captain their situation.

 

The van was less than a mile from Two-Jakes, and Jack was headed there at a dead run. If he could get there quickly, he had a plan that might work. He stopped to catch his breath and looked at the luminous hands on his watch. It was just after seven o'clock. If Eddie had told the truth, he still had five hours. But his little stunt on television might have pushed Eddie over the edge. Pissing Eddie off was a risk, but he'd had to flush the bastard out somehow.

He sprinted again. It would have been much faster to have gone there in the van, but then he would have had to tell Crowley and Liddell what he was doing. Then they would know that he planned on meeting Eddie alone, and he didn't want half the police department and the SWAT team breathing down his neck. He didn't like leaving Liddell and Mark with their dicks hanging out, but if he didn't, he would be putting them in the position of having to lie for him.

It took almost five minutes at a full run to reach the inlet area at Two-Jakes where people stored their boats. He was puffing like a steam engine when he let himself into the locked gate that separated the inland marina from the parking area.

Since he was part-owner of the business, he kept his own boat docked here when he needed it serviced. He prayed that the service crew was finished and had put it back in the water. He ran down the dock to the last slip on the left and was relieved to see that his boat, a twenty-five-foot Day-cruiser called the
Miss Fit
, was tied up there.

He untied the lines and jumped aboard, fired up the two large inboard engines, and pulled out of the dock. He was going too fast and narrowly missed the end of a barge tied up outside the inlet, but then he was on the river, running the big engines to their capacity. The cloud cover was thick, and the river was as black as the sky. He thought about running without lights, but he couldn't risk running into half-submerged debris in the pitch blackness that spread before him. The current in the Ohio was famous for carrying whole trees downriver, and even in daylight he had to keep his eyes peeled for any obstacles.

He made his way upriver a couple of miles, thinking his cabin was just around the next bend in the river. He cut his lights and navigated by memory, staying close to the bank. The shore began to look familiar, and he knew he would have to depend on his instinct now. He would have to time this just right, or he would run aground and alert Eddie that he had arrived.

He throttled back and then let the boat glide forward. The boat slipped quietly in beside the floating dock at the bottom of his property.

If he was right, Katie and Susan were inside. And so was Eddie. But if he was wrong, he may have doomed any chance they had of finding the women before time ran out.

He had spent most of his summers as a boy here, fishing with his granddad and his dad, so he knew every inch of the surrounding terrain. He jumped to the dock, and without taking time to tie the boat off, moved silently across the deck and up the riprap to the bottom steps of his cabin, where he paused.

There was no light coming from inside his cabin, and even though he had been careful in his approach, he knew someone had turned off the outside lights that were on motion sensors. He listened, and at first the only sound was that of water lapping against the shore. But then he heard a voice, or a moan, or both, and it seemed very nearby. He looked around in the dark and saw nothing. Then he remembered the earbud that Crowley had him wear. Crowley had said it would enhance his hearing. Were the sounds coming from inside his cabin?

He had to get closer. He eased up the side of the bank, ignoring the steps that led up to his porch, and scrabbled up the gritty bank to the base of his cabin.

Huge pilings had been driven into the clay for the foundation, and to keep the cabin higher than the flood stages of the river. As he lay against a piling and tried to steady his breathing, he thought that Eddie had to be totally mad to bring Katie and Susan to this particular cabin. But, in a crazy sort of way, it made sense. Eddie wanted to “beard the lion in his own den.” He was doing just what Don Shull had predicted. Bringing Jack to him.

Jack's eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he surveyed the surrounding area looking for any sign of light escaping from the cabin. There was none. He had a feeling of dread that maybe he was too late. Katie and Susan could be dead. But then he heard the soft moan again and again a loud thud.

Jack crawled farther under the cabin and lay motionless, listening, waiting, and was rewarded by the sound of someone walking across the floor toward the door that led onto the porch. If Eddie was looking outside, he was probably seeing only darkness. Jack knew there was no way to make out the boat from that distance. He still had the element of surprise. Then he remembered that he had the cell phone with him.

Oh, shit!
he silently mouthed. If the phone rang, he was directly beneath Eddie. He reached for the phone, hoping he had left it on vibrate, but it rang in his hand.

He knew that if he didn't answer, Eddie might kill the women. If he did answer, Eddie might hear him and kill the women. “Fuck it,” he said under his breath and slid out from under the cabin and walked up the steps and onto his porch. He sensed, more than saw, the movement inside the cabin as he reached out and tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed the door open and said, “Eddie, I'm coming in. I'm alone.”

He wasn't sure he'd been heard and was about to repeat himself when he heard a whimper from inside. He stepped into his front room just as a bright light shined into his eyes.