C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
They now had a name for the victim at the Marriott. Cordelia Morse. It said so on her Illinois driver's license and on a library card for the Gallatin County Public Library. The address on the driver's license was for a post-office box in Shawneetown, Illinois. Jack had heard of the town, and the things he'd heard weren't flattering.
Her purse was found in the hotel room's closet along with a lightweight jacket. The jacket pockets contained the usual itemsâa travel pack of Kleenex, some change, and a small scrap of paper with nothing on it. The purse, however, was a gold mine.
Crime scene would be at the Marriott for the rest of the day, but by eight o'clock that morning, Jack and Liddell decided to split up to follow up on the scant information they had extracted from the scene. This case promised to be challenging. Not only because the victim was from another state, but because the amount of violence done to the body indicated so many things.
The killing could be a domestic homicide, a husband or boyfriend thing where he catches her in Evansville seeing someone else and snaps. But she had registered at the Marriott for a week, and there had been no calls to or from her room, so that kind of eliminated the domestic issues.
Of course, the lack of calls could mean that she had used a cell phone, although no cell phone was found at the scene. But why would the killer take the phone and nothing else?
The killer did take something,
Jack reminded himself.
He took her face and her eyes and her hand. The tongue was another matter. What did that mean?
One of the crime scene techs had also found a set of keys on the floor under the bedâan electronic key that was probably a car key, and two or three well-worn keys.
Maybe dropped by the victim and ended up under the bed during the struggle,
Jack thought. The keys were attached to a faux-diamond-studded letter
C. C for Cordelia, the name on the driver's license?
Jack stepped out of the back foyer of the hotel and into the parking lot. Black clouds moved to the north and thunder rumbled in the distance. It was unusual to have thunderstorms this late in October. He hoped the rain would hold off at least until he could find the victim's car and have it secured by Crime Scene.
Holding the black plastic key in the air, he pressed the red rectangular button. Twenty or so yards away a car alarm went off. Jack followed the sound until he spotted the red Toyota whose lights were flashing. He silenced the alarm and called Sergeant Walker's cell phone.
“Found her car,” he said when Tony came on the phone.
“I heard,” Tony said. “I'll send someone.”
A few minutes later a female crime scene tech pulled up in a marked car. She was as tall as Jack, strongly built, and he imagined that if her hair wasn't pulled back into a tight ponytail, she would be a knockout. She looked like a bodybuilder, her face angular and sharp but pretty.
“Hello, Detective Murphy,” she said, and they shook hands.
Jack had been expecting someone who was already on scene to come out of the hotel and process the vehicle.
She noticed his hesitance and said, “Officer Martin.” Her voice was deep and pleasant, almost sultry, but she was all business. When he still didn't speak, she said, “Don't worry, Detective Murphy. I may be newâand a womanâbut I'm very competent.”
“I have no doubt,” Jack said, a little offended by her attitude. Maybe more offended that she was slightly on target about his thought process. “I just wondered how much you know about what is going on here, Officer Martin.”
Instead of answering right away she slipped on a pair of gloves and pulled a digital camera from her vehicle. “You'll tell me what I need to know. So what are we looking for, sir?” She offered Jack a pair of gloves, but he declined.
“The car should be fingerprinted first before we open it,” he said, and walked a little away and called Sergeant Walker.
“Tony, Officer Martin is here, but I think she may need another pair of hands.”
“Sorry, Jack. I'm out of officers. You'll have to be her backup.”
Jack put the phone back in his pocket and walked back to the young tech. “It appears that I'm your backup.”
She grinned and offered him the gloves again. “Well then, let's get to it.”
For the next fifteen minutes Jack alternately watched and/or handed Officer Martin fingerprint brushes, print-lift kits, and her various cameras, until she declared the car securely fingerprinted on the outside and pertinent areas inside. Jack had to admit that she was very competent, and probably more thorough than some of the more experienced crime scene officers that he knew. He had to resist the impulse to tell her that she had done excellent work, for fear that this might be taken as a gender-biased remark.
“What now?” he asked.
She opened the driver's door of the Toyota. “You can look inside, but not get inside. Please don't disturb anything,” she said, and then seeing the look on his face, added, “sir.”
There was nothing in plain view inside the vehicle, or in the trunk, but in the glove box he found the rental agreement. Otherwise, the car was so clean and tidy it didn't appear to have been driven. Jack doubted the killer had been in it, but it would still be towed to storage for a thorough examination by Walker's crew.
Jack straightened up and stretched his back, and said, “Thanks for the assistance, Officer Martin.”
“I'll have it towed to our garage. We'll call you when it's been processed, sir.”
Jack slipped off the latex gloves and stuck them in his pocket, then pulled out his notebook and wrote down the description of the car, including license plates and location in the parking lot.
The rental agreement was from Alamo Rent A Car at Evansville Dress Regional Airport, less than a mile away.
Why would she rent a car from there?
he wondered. The answer might be at Alamo. His next stop.
Â
Â
Jack called Liddell from Alamo's rental office inside the airport.
“The red Toyota I found in the parking lot was paid for by a guy named Jonathan Samuels,” Jack said. “Same post-office box number in Shawneetown, Illinois, as our victim. Are you back at headquarters?”
“Yeah,” Liddell said. “I'm running Cordelia Morse through the system. Whoever killed her wasn't after money. There was almost three thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills in the purse.”
“The injuries weren't to hide her identity,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Liddell agreed.
“Check her out with narcotics,” Jack said.
“You think she was dealing?” Liddell asked.
“She left her own car behind at Alamo when she picked up the Toyota,” Jack said. “There was a small bag of marijuana tucked under the driver's seat.”
“But not three grand worth?”
“No,” Jack admitted. “But it's possible she was going to buy drugs and use the rental car to transport. That would keep her personal car free from possibly being seized by the government if she were caught.”
“So it could be a drug deal gone bad?” Liddell asked.
Jack didn't think someone would go to the extremes that were evident in the death of Cordelia Morse for three thousand dollars. And then not even take the money. Something else was going on here.
“I don't have a clue yet, but when I get it all figured out I'll let you take all the credit as usual, Bigfoot,” Jack said with a smile.
“You are so good to me,” Liddell said.
“I found something else,” Jack said, becoming serious again. “There was a business card for one of the Bange brothers. Lenny Bange. It was on the floor of her rental car.”
“Bange, Bange, Bange,” Liddell said. He was very familiar with the three brothers. All were attorneys and ran a lucrative practice in the downtown area.
“Run Lenny Bange and Jonathan Samuels of Shawneetown, Illinois, too,” Jack said.
“I'm running down the names of people who stayed at the hotel last night and calling them. Is there anything else you'd like me to do? Like maybe solve the world's food-shortage problem, and bring about world peace while I'm not busy?”
“That would be nice, Bigfoot.”
“Speaking of food, where we going to eat?” Liddell asked.
Jack felt a little hungry, too, but he wanted to keep going while he had something to work on. And Lenny Bange was the next lead. “I'll grab a sandwich on my way to Lenny Bange's office.”
“I'll order a pizza then,” Liddell said.
Jack knew that meant two large kitchen-sink pizzas from Turoni's were about to meet their death at the hands of the Cajun-ator.
They hung up and Jack sat in his car looking at Lenny Bange's card and the small plastic Baggie of marijuana. Room 316 at the Marriott, where Cordelia Morse was found hacked to death, had been paid for by a credit card. That card belonged to Lenny Bange. The car she had at the hotel was paid for by a man named Jonathan Samuels.
Very curious,
he thought. Cordelia Morse seemed to have a knack for getting guys to pay her bills.
He wondered what other talents she had.
C
HAPTER
E
IGHT
Three uniformed officers stood in the hallway, guns drawn, expressions chiseled out of granite, as Jack and another officer stood on each side of the door to room 375. The killer would have to be stupid or suicidal to have left such a clue and then to hang around to be caught. But the fact was that room 316, where Cordelia Morse was found butchered, was at the opposite end of the hall from room 375. And the killer had carved the number 375 into her scalp.
The fact that there was a dead body just down the hall necessitated a quick entry. There was no time to get a search warrant. And no need.
Jack mouthed to his cover officer, “On three.”
The officer nodded and Jack soundlessly mouthed,
One, two . . .
On three they both kicked a foot into the door beside the locking mechanism. The door slammed inward.
Jack moved low to the right into the room and the uniformed officer moved to the left, both men's pistols extended, sweeping the room. The blinds to the room were drawn, the only light seeping in from the shattered hallway door.
Jack and the officer checked the obvious places where a person could lie in wait for an ambush, but the room was empty. Jack was beginning to feel foolish and could feel the stare of the officer who had made entry with him. But then he spotted something on the foot of the bed.
“How about some lights?” he said to the officer.
The lights came on and Jack could see what was on the foot of the bed. It was a newspaper. The front-page story was one Jack recognized. On top of the newspaper was an object that looked like a bloody eyeball.
“Better get crime scene in here,” Jack said. Both men retraced their steps, making a careful retreat from the room.
Â
Â
The newspaper was three months old and had a front-page story about one of Jack's previous cases. It was a sensational case and had been on the front page for several days. This particular story was not very supportive of Jack and had in fact hinted that he was a gun-happy cowboy.
The eye was probably from the victim, Cordelia Morse, but that would have to be determined by the medical examiner.
Lilly Caskins told them the autopsy would be sometime after noon, so he had a little time to play with. But not too much.
He took out the business card that he had found in Cordelia's rental car. Lenny Bange, Esquire, of Bange, Bange and Bange, Attorneys at Law. The business card depicted a smiling Lenny Bange wearing a cowboy hat, the brim pushed back with the smoking barrel of a six-gun. The logo read:
Get more Bange for your Buck.
It was actually quite a catchy advertisement. There were several billboards around town that showed a posed picture of the three brothers, wearing old-west attire complete with gun belts and pistols. The words on one billboard stated,
BANGE BANGE BANGE
, and below the picture of the three brothers dressed as cowboys the caption read,
WE SUE DRUNK DRIVERS
.
It should say, “We sue everyone,”
Jack thought.