Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

Bob helped his wife bring in the tray, and between them they poured and distributed tea. Peter was looking at us like we had all gone insane. Maybe he was right. The setup had something of the Mad Hatter’s tea party about it.

Mrs. Luff said, “You took the children to your sister’s, Jenny?”

Jennifer nodded.

Mrs. Luff nodded back. “It was the only thing to do. They’ll be okay there. She’ll look after them.”

Bob cleared his throat. “So, how do you think we can help you, Detective Stone?”

I sipped my tea. It was perfect. I set the cup down on the table and sighed while I organized my thoughts.

“It has been a fascinating and challenging case. Definitely not run-of-the-mill. I will admit, and Detective Dehan will back me up on this, I think, that we made a fundamental mistake, right at the start, that set us on the wrong course. It was almost catastrophic, and almost cost Detective Dehan her life.”

Mrs. Luff tutted. “You were very lucky to have Detective Stone.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “The mistake we made was to call in one of the bureau’s profilers and set about seeking a serial killer who fit the classic profile.” I glanced at Peter. His eyes were like two needles with which he was trying to pin me to the chair. “Somebody who was methodical, meticulous, narcissistic, domineering…”

I glanced at Jennifer. She was staring hard at the hem of her cardigan, and I could see her lower lip curling.

“But our killer was a very different kind of man. He had what I described to Detective Dehan as a special kind of genius.”

Bob and Mrs. Luff were both staring, engrossed. This was not how they had expected to spend the morning. I could see Peter’s chest rising and falling. His face was flushed. I went on.

“His special genius was—is—to make everything seem to be what it is not. I first realized this when he sent us a photograph showing his supposed next victim. But in fact, he had reversed the photograph and the victim was not the woman who was highlighted in the picture, but the one concealed in the foreground.”

Bob and Mrs. Luff nodded in perfect unison. Peter had turned to stare at Dehan. I went on.

“And he kept drawing my attention to a clock, advising me that time was passing. So I rushed to Detective Dehan’s side. But again, it was an illusion. The abduction was timed for later, when I had relaxed my guard. All along…” I stood and walked to the window, to look out at Peter’s house. “All along, this killer’s aim has been to cast suspicion on other people—other people, all connected by just one thing. The lockups.”

I turned and set my ass on the windowsill. I shook my head, as though I still couldn’t work it out.

“It was when I realized that his genius lay in inverting things to make them look like the opposite of what they were that things started to drop into place. He had never made a mistake. Zak, like most people, believed that paper does not hold a fingerprint. But this guy knew that it did, and every note I received from him was as pure as the driven snow. So I was surprised when he started making careless mistakes.” I glanced at Peter. He and Jennifer were staring hard at each other. “Of course, the bureau profiler had told us that sometimes careful, organized killers will grow overconfident with successive, successful kills and start to make mistakes.”

Bob leaned forward, frowning. “But?”

Mrs. Luff looked at him and nodded, like that’s what she was going to ask.

“But he had already told me that he had been twelve years without killing. It was as though he had defeated the cops back then and had nowhere left to go. But when I turned up, nosing around, it fired him up again.

“The thing was, he had not killed for twelve years. So how could he become overconfident? He started out meticulous, and then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he became careless. And every act of carelessness pointed—just as the photograph pointed clearly and obviously at the wrong victim—every act of carelessness pointed at the wrong suspect.”

I paused. There was absolute silence in the room, and five pairs of eyes fixed on me.

“We were meant to get it wrong with David, and we were meant to realize we had got it wrong with David, so that we could then be sure we had got it right with Peter.”

Peter screwed up his face like his brain hurt, and Jennifer began to sob. Bob and Mrs. Luff were goggling, with eyes and mouths like six perfect zeroes. Peter exploded, “What the hell are you saying, Stone? It was David after all?”

I laughed. “Oh, we could have! We could have gone around the mulberry bush again! But the chances of David having a female accomplice were slim, to say the least. No, I realized I needed to back up and look at who was creating this picture. Who was the artist, the painter, or photographer, who did not appear in the picture?”

“What does that mean?”

I shrugged. “Well, the first thing, and this actually saved Detective Dehan’s life, was Schrödinger’s cat.”

Bob looked surprised. “Schrödinger’s cat?”

“Yes, you actually drew my attention to it on the first day, when we were visiting you. Schrödinger’s cat was a thought experiment, intended to illustrate that the Copenhagen interpretation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle was wrong. In this thought experiment, a cat is locked in a box with a device that at some unknown point will release a poison. If we follow the Copenhagen interpretation, until the box is opened, the cat is both alive and dead. Once we open it and we know, then the cat is either alive or dead. And you said to