Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

DEAD COLD BOX SET: BOOKS 9-12

Copyright © 2019 by Blake Banner

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BOOK 9 – FIRE FROM HEAVEN

BOOK 10 – TO KILL UPON A KISS

BOOK 11 – MURDER MOST SCOTTISH

BOOK 12 – THE BUTCHER OF WHITECHAPEL

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BOOK 9

FIRE FROM HEAVEN

One

It was sunny and warm, so we had the windows down in the Jag. We were following East Tremont all the way down to the East River. East Tremont is a very long avenue, so we were relaxing and cruising. Occasionally I would glance at Dehan. She was smiling behind her mirrored aviators, with strands of hair whipping across her face.

“Talk me through it,” I said.

“Well, as I see it,” she showed me a lot of teeth, “you’re Agent Mulder and I am Agent Scully…”

“Be serious. We’re almost there.”

“Be serious?” She raised an eyebrow. “OK. Danny Brown, aged twenty, found dead at the south end of Soundview Park, near the mouth of the Bronx River, on Monday, 8th June, 1998. Cause of death…” She fingered some strands of hair from her mouth and tied it into a knot at the back of her head. “The ME was unable to establish a cause of death because the body…” She raised her shades onto the top of her head like a medieval visor so that she could squint at me. “…had been incinerated from his ankles to his neck. I don’t get that.”

“Just keep going. We’ll have a chance to review the details.”

She sighed. “OK. His feet were not burned. They were standing, facing the river, in a pair of flip-flops.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Thongs.”

She shook her head. “No, Stone. A thong is something else. We have been over this. We are going to call them flip-flops.”

I grunted. “There was some burning around the ankles, but the thongs were un-melted, despite the heat needed to incinerate the body.”

“Who’s talking who through this?”

“Whom. You are. Me. You are talking me through it. Continue.”

“The ME said that the legs had been severed at the ankle with surgical precision. There was no damage to the cartilage or the joints, other than the singeing. The same was true of the head. This was lying on the grass about eighteen inches from the body, as though it had rolled. There was singeing on the cut, which was also surgical in precision, and there was no damage to the vertebrae—again, other than singeing. Finally, the genitals had also been surgically removed—or at least removed with surgical precision…”

“Correct. Good. We do not know that they were surgically removed, only that they were removed, in a way we do not know, with surgical precision.”

“That was my point, Stone. That’s why I said it.”

I grinned at her. “Good.”

“They too were singed and placed roughly in the correct position. The rest of his body was ash, with a few pieces of bone.”

I nodded. “Those bones corresponded to…”

She interrupted. “I was coming to that.” She closed her eyes. “Pieces of rib, collarbone, upper arm, thigh and tibia, suggesting the body had not burned at an even temperature. However, all the bits of bone were found in the correct location on the body. That would be consistent with the body’s having burned in situ.”

I turned right into Schurz Avenue, opposite the Marina del Rey, and asked, “Problems with that possibility?”

“Well, for a start, the heat needed to incinerate a body to little more than ash, in an open location, like a park, would be insane. Generating that kind of heat in a park would be almost impossible, plus, that kind of heat should have burned his feet, his head, and his balls, and all the grass around him.”

“Unless…?”

She sighed. “Unless it was a laser. Which we both know it wasn’t.”

“I don’t know that and neither do you.”

She ignored me. “Also, it rained on Sunday night, but there were no footprints approaching or leaving the location where the body was found. Stone, you cannot seriously be considering…”

“I am not seriously considering anything at the moment, Little Grasshopper. My mind is open. All I know, like Mr. Socrates, is that I know nothing.”

I turned right again into Brinsmade Avenue and pulled up outside Detective Arnaldo Ochoa’s house. It was a red brick box with a front lawn enclosed by a tubular metal fence with chicken wire