Murder with a Twist (11 page)

“Not so far,” Duncan said, shooting me a look. I knew he was thinking of the earlier case we had.

“Either way, the kid must be scared to death,” Cora said, looking concerned.

“I wonder if that's what caused that nasty taste I had there,” I said.

The noisy silence I experience filled the room as everyone turned to stare at me with questioning expressions.

“What taste?” Cora asked.

“I wasn't sure if it was significant or not, and I didn't understand it, so I didn't mention it. It was a horrible, foul taste, like biting into meat that's gone bad. But I didn't have it all the time, only in certain areas. I first tasted it as we were approaching the house, when I was still outside. At first I thought it might have been connected to the blood smell, and a real taste. But it wasn't present in Belinda's bedroom and if it had been related to the blood smell, it should have been.”

Cora scanned her computer screen and tapped a few keys. “So far when you've experienced a synesthetic taste, it's been triggered by either a touch or a sound. Were you touching anything when you had the taste?”

“I don't think so,” I said, thinking back. “I was careful not to touch anything. Besides, Duncan made me put on gloves.”

“Where in the house were you when you experienced the taste?” Cora asked.

“It was strongest in the boy's bedroom, the foyer, the hallway, and in the kitchen by the entrance from the hallway, next to the fridge. At first I thought it might be a smell from the fridge that was creating the funny taste, but Cora's right. A synesthetic taste is usually triggered by the lingering air waves from a sound, or from a touch. But when I notice strong smells, I have a tendency to mouth breathe to minimize them and that can lead to some odd tastes. Because of the blood smell, I was mouth breathing quite a bit and kept thinking that was causing the tastes.”

“Seems like you experienced it in all of the places in the house where the kid would have been,” Joe said, and his brother nodded in agreement.

“Maybe I smelled—and hence tasted—his fear,” I said. “People tend to change how they smell with certain emotions.”

“You mean, like pheromones?” Cora said.

“That, yes, but also just the way our body odor or our sweat smells when we're stressed, afraid, exhausted . . . that sort of thing. I don't know if it's the release of stress hormones that causes the change, or something else, but it exists. Plus, under those circumstances we tend to breathe harder and faster, emitting more of our smells into the air. If that little boy's fear left a distinctive smell in the air, I might've picked it up as both a smell and a taste since I was mouth breathing so much.”

Still tapping away, Cora said, “If you tasted the kid's fear as well as smelled it, the taste would have manifested itself as a tactile sensation or sound for you. Did you notice any correlation between the taste and any sounds or sensations?”

“I did. I felt a chill, like a cold draft was blowing on me whenever I experienced that taste. It was as if I had suddenly stepped in front of a window air conditioner, or was standing in front of an open refrigerator door. Of course, I was doing exactly that at one point, and the entire experience was chilling, so it's hard to know if the cold sensation was synesthetic or real.”

Still studying her computer, Cora said, “Emotional residue causes tactile sensations for you, too. So maybe the chill was caused by that.”

“Maybe. It's hard for me to know.” I turned and gave Duncan an exasperated look. “This is where I have my doubts about trying to help you. My confusion over these reactions may just muddle things even more for you.”

“Give it time,” Joe said. “The more practice you have with it, and the more things Cora can record, the easier it will get.”

I cast a suspicious eye at him. “Has Duncan been priming you?”

Joe shook his head and, at the same time, Duncan threw his hands up and said, “Hey, I'm innocent here . . . for once.”

“They're right, Mack,” Cora said. “You have to give it time.”

I knew in my heart that she and the others were right. But I also knew that there were lives at stake, and I didn't want to be responsible for anyone coming to harm. If I misinterpreted my reactions and led the police down the wrong trail, it might cost someone their life. It was a responsibility I wasn't sure I wanted to shoulder. Yet whenever Davey Cooper's smiling face flashed through my mind, I knew I had to do anything I could to help him. It left me in a dichotomous state of mind, one I feared I'd be living with for a long time to come.

O
ver the next half hour, we continued to discuss the case and my experiences in the house, with Cora recording any new synesthetic reactions I had in the database, and occasionally looking up some that we'd already recorded. A couple of my staff members poked their heads in for a few minutes, including Debra Landers, who is affectionately referred to as Ann from time to time due to her last name and her propensity for doling out advice to coworkers and customers.

Debra is in her forties, with two teenaged sons and a husband she doesn't talk about much. She's been working here for the past three years, hoping to augment her kids' college funds. She is adored by patrons and coworkers alike, not only for her quick wit and down-to-earth advice, but because she loves to bake and is always bringing in the fruits of her labors to give away to anyone willing to sample her wares. And there is never any shortage of those. She's a valuable employee to me not only because of her abilities and personality, but because of her flexibility. She's willing to work any hours, any days, and most times can come in at a moment's notice.

Everyone who poked their heads into my office knew about the case we were working on. It was all over the news because of the Amber Alert that had been issued. While the media still didn't have all of the details, Belinda Cooper's murder and the disappearance of her son was the top news story on every station.

No doubt Duncan and his cohorts were none too happy about this since the cops had barely had time to figure out who Belinda's next of kin were—her mother, father, and a brother all lived in Ohio—and notify them about her death before they heard about it on the news. There was also an ex-husband, a man by the name of Jamie Cooper, but so far no one had been able to find him. Until he turned up, I felt confident he would be suspect number one on Duncan's list. And Duncan was willing to share information with us if it might help find the guy.

“His driver's license still lists the house on Fourth Street where Belinda lived and we can't find any other known address for him, but the neighbors said he hasn't lived there for nearly two years,” he told the group. “One neighbor said he thought the guy was floating between friends' houses, bunking wherever he could, and another thought he'd left town. One thing they all agreed on was that the divorce was a messy one that included a bitter custody battle over Davey.”

“Belinda was given sole custody,” Cora said, reading from her laptop screen. “According to the court files, there were some allegations of abuse from Jamie. Looks like the cops were called to the Cooper residence a number of times because Jamie beat up on Belinda.”

Duncan stared at Cora with an expression I couldn't quite interpret. “How do you know all that?” he asked her.

She gave him an enigmatic smile. “Some of it is public information on the Circuit Court Access site,” she said. “And if you know how to get past the public parts into the more private parts, it's amazing what you can find. And I'm
very
good at getting into the private parts,” she added with a saucy tone and a flirtatious wink that made every man in the room squirm.

“How is it you can do that?” Duncan asked after a few seconds of awkward silence. The Signoriello brothers and Tad all looked to Cora, eager to see how she was going to answer the question. I was a little curious myself; would she stick with her double entendre, or answer Duncan seriously?

In the end, she did neither. “Do you really want me to answer that?” she asked in a teasing tone of voice.

Duncan narrowed his eyes in thought for a few seconds. “Come to think of it, no, I don't,” he said finally. “I should probably maintain some level of plausible deniability in case you're ever busted.”

“Smart man,” Cora said, winking at him and making him blush. “But don't you worry. I'm very careful to never leave a trail.” She waved a hand in front of her chest. “I promise you, this is the only bust I'll ever have to worry about.”

Though I didn't look at any of them, I knew that at that precise moment, every male eye in the room was focused on Cora's ample chest.

Duncan cleared his throat and that seemed to knock the men out of their reverie. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Signoriello brothers both shake their heads and raise their drinks, and Tad suddenly developed a keen interest in the last dregs of his drink at the bottom of his otherwise empty mug.

Duncan said, “Do you think you can work any of that computer magic of yours and find out where Jamie Cooper might be, Cora?”

“I'll see what I can do.”

With that, we broke up the little group in the office and headed back out to the main bar area, everyone except Duncan, who stayed in my office to make some phone calls and then left some ten minutes later.

The discounted drinks and the fun of trying to solve made-up or old crimes typically lent the place an air of joviality, but tonight, with the abduction of little Davey Cooper dominating the news, the crime solvers in the place had adopted a more serious attitude than usual.

After making rounds several times and assisting behind the bar for a while to be sure everyone was caught up and handling things okay, I made my way to a group that had congregated at the far end of the bar. Tad, Cora, and the Signoriello brothers were there, along with Holly, Carter, Alicia, and Sam. Included in the group were two uniformed cops, Steve and Mitch, who had just come in after finishing their shifts and were now fielding a barrage of questions from the group about the Cooper murder and kidnapping. Billy was leaning over the bar listening in, and Missy, though she tried to look like she was working, was hovering close by, eavesdropping as well.

The news about the Coopers had trumped the other murder that had occurred that day, that of Dan Thornton. That's partly because no one outside of the police and the ME's office knew Thornton's death was a murder, though now that the arrests had been made, I felt sure it would be in the newscasts later tonight and in the newspaper tomorrow morning. Still, the story of the Cooper boy and his mother would probably be more prominent.

“We think the person who took the kid is interested in keeping him alive,” I heard Steve say to the others at his table. “So there's hope of a happy ending here.”

“Assuming you can find him,” Holly said. “These days, kids seem to disappear in the blink of an eye and if anyone ever sees them alive again, it's often a decade or so later. Look at those three girls who were kept inside that creep's house in Cleveland for ten years, or Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard. Those poor kids were there one minute and gone the next.”

“There are some differences, ” Billy said, swiping a towel inside a glass he'd been drying for several minutes so he'd look busy while he eavesdropped. “Age for one, and gender for another. Name one little boy who has disappeared and then resurfaced alive years later.”

Several seconds of silence followed as everyone struggled to think of a single name or case. Finally Sam said, “There was one, a few years ago. But I can't recall his name. Shawn something, I think.”

“What do you guys think was the motive behind all this?” Carter asked, heading down the same trail our smaller group had earlier. “Was killing the Cooper woman the main objective, making the kid an incidental that had to be taken care of, or was the main objective to get the kid, making the mother someone who had to be taken care of?”

“Good question,” Holly said.

“Is there a husband in the picture?” Alicia asked. “Or was the Cooper woman single, like me?” With this last part, she looked over at Billy and gave him a sexy wink. Billy just smiled.

“There is an ex-husband,” Mitch said. “A guy named Jamie Cooper. We found out he worked as a car salesman over in Brookfield up until a month ago. Apparently he got fired for showing up drunk to work. His boss gave us an address out in Glendale, an apartment he thought Cooper was staying at, but the roommate there, Jason, said he hasn't seen Cooper for the past week. Jason said Cooper went on a bit of a bender after getting fired, couldn't come up with his overdue rent money, and then disappeared. So far we haven't been able to find him. He wasn't scheduled to work today and he isn't at home. The roommate figured he'd found someone else to mooch off of for a while.”

“Any idea who the new mooch victim might be?” Carter asked.

“Not sure,” Mitch said. “The roommate told us Cooper had recently started talking about a girl he met named Valeria Barnes, but he doesn't know if the two are now living together or not.”

Sam said, “Have you talked to this girl yet? It's not uncommon for a girlfriend to be jealous of the ex-wife and her connection to the ex because of their kid.”

“We haven't been able to find her, ” Mitch said. “There is no one with that name listed in the phone directories, the utility rosters, or with DMV. So either the name is one she made up, or she's someone who lives totally off the radar, which in this day and age is unlikely unless she's a homeless person. Based on the description of her that we got from the roommate, who only saw her once from a distance when she was outside waiting for Jamie, she is clean, well groomed, and nicely dressed. So I doubt she's homeless.”

“So no one has seen the ex-husband or his girlfriend for a week,” Carter summarized. “They sound like potential suspects to me.”

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “Until we can find them and question him, those two are at the top of our list.”

“But why would they kill the mother and take the kid?” Sam asked. “What's the motive? Did the father want custody bad enough to do something like this?”

Steve and Mitch both shrugged. “Don't know,” Mitch said, clearly the more talkative of the two cops. “We haven't had much time to work up a profile on the guy yet.”

Cora shared what she'd discovered earlier from the public area of the Circuit Court Access site. “The divorce between Belinda and Jamie wasn't a pleasant one,” she told the group. “They fought pretty bitterly over the kid and in the end Belinda got sole custody because of some allegations about a drinking problem and some abuse in Jamie's past.”

Sam, still in his psychologist mode, pushed his idea a little further. “Were there any signs that whoever killed her knew her? Was her face covered up? Was she stabbed in places that might suggest the killer had issues with her?”

I watched both Steve and Mitch closely as they fielded this one, knowing that they likely knew, as did I, about the attempted strangulation. But they were good. Their expressions gave nothing away. Once again it was Mitch who provided an answer. “Most of the wounds were on her torso and she was stabbed from behind.”

“Stabbed in the back?” Holly said with a grimace. “That might be a message.”

I knew that was unlikely based on what Duncan had told me, but it was something I didn't share. When the killer had tried to strangle Belinda, he or she had come at her from behind with the panty hose. But Belinda had fought hard enough to make the stranglehold ineffective, forcing the killer to grab a pair of scissors and stab her instead. From the way it appeared, stabbing her in the back had been more a matter of desperation than any sort of diabolical message. The weapon of choice was one other tidbit of information that the cops were holding back for now, to weed out the crazies who might try to confess to the crime merely for attention. As it stood now, the media had said that Belinda Cooper was stabbed to death, and the presumption on the part of the public was that a knife was used.

Still searching for motives, Sam asked, “Is there any family money involved? Might someone have kidnapped the kid for ransom?”

“But why kill the mother if that's the case?” Holly posed. “Why not just take the kid? I mean, who's going to pay the ransom if the parent is dead?”

Carter said, “Maybe killing the mother is the kidnapper's way of telling the rest of the family that the perpetrators are deadly serious,” Carter said. “It sends the message that they aren't fooling around. Meet their demands or else . . .”

The implied result made everyone in the group wince.

“So how about it, guys?” Sam asked the two cops. “Is there any family money?”

This time Steve answered. “We don't know, but it doesn't look like it. Based on what the cops in Ohio told us, Belinda's family appears to be average, lower- to middle-class folk. We don't know about Jamie's yet, but he can't be living high on the hog. His employer said he had the lowest sales of anyone on the payroll.”

“Was the kid's mother dating or seeing anyone?”

“Not that we've found,” Mitch said. “For all intents and purposes, her life revolved around her job and her kid. We haven't learned of any outside interests or activities she was involved in, nor does she have any family in the immediate area. Belinda and Davey Cooper pretty much kept to themselves.”

“Where did she work?” Holly asked.

“At a day care center over on the west side of town,” Mitch said. “She took her kid to work with her every day, so I'm guessing they weren't apart much.”

“Well, they're apart now,” I said, feeling sad as I recalled the adoring expression on Belinda's face in the photos. “Forever.”