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

He laughed out loud. “You are one crazy son of a bitch, Stone. How’d you figure that?”

“Well, for a start there is the circumstantial evidence.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Like the fact that Jimmy did not own a gun, and he was too timid and mild ever to have fired a gun. He was all talk, he was a fantasist, but there was no way on Earth that he was violent. He did not belong to a gun club and he did not own a gun.”

“That is bullshit and you know it. New York is full of dudes who own guns that are not registered.”

“Second, and a little more persuasive, is the fact that, in those photographs you helpfully left in the box, you can see clearly that Jimmy was right-handed. We can find a hundred witnesses to testify to that if we need to.” I studied his face. He was expressionless. Somewhere on the river a barge moaned. The orange moon was turning silver and her molten light warped on the black water. I shrugged. “I guess it must have been awkward. That was his spot on the sofa. That was where he always sat, with his right elbow on the arm. You couldn’t very well say to him, ‘Hey, Jimmy, you mind if I sit there and you sit here? Only, I have to shoot you in the right temple. So you banked, correctly as it happens, on the authorities’ willingness to turn a blind eye to small details, so long as they could report to the press that the Westchester Creek Strangler was no longer a threat.”

He grunted. “That is… odd. You might get some people scratchin’ their heads. But it ain’t conclusive, not by a long chalk.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. You know? It is really hard to shoot yourself in the temple, even with your dominant hand. There are all those autonomic responses that make your hand waver at the last minute, plus the recoil. Most people who try it wind up maiming themselves instead. To manage such a lethal shot with his left hand, that is almost impossible. But, you are right, it is not conclusive. To be conclusive I would need something that showed that you had definitely been at the apartment shortly before his body was found.”

He shook his head. “There ain’t no way in hell you ever going to prove that.”

I stared at him for a long moment. “You’re stupid, Wayne. And you know what makes you stupid? Your vanity and, above all, your laziness. You spend so much time thinking about how damn smart you are, you forget to actually be smart. Being smart, Wayne, is something you do, not something you are.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“Being smart means thinking. And thinking means learning, studying, knowing your subject. Not memorizing smart quotes that make you look and sound smart.”

“Cut to the chase, Stone.”

I laughed, “Dude, chill man, you have such a bad attitude.” I sat a moment, smiling at him, enjoying his discomfort. Eventually I said, “The glasses, Wayne. You should have dried them and put them away. For a start, why would he have two glasses there when everything else on the rack was a single item? One plate, one knife, one fork, but two glasses. On its own, that means almost nothing, but added to the left hand shot? It tells us there was somebody else in the apartment. The glasses were still wet, so they were used very recently, and whoever used them took the bottle away with them. What would make them do that? Well, the fact that they didn’t want me to know they drank rum. Careless and sloppy, Wayne. Very careless and very sloppy. But the most important thing? The really, really stupid thing?”

His face was as tight as a bowstring. He said, “Stop calling me stupid, Stone.”

I leaned forward. “What was really stupid, Wayne, was that after you washed off your fingerprints, you rinsed the glass under the tap and put the glasses on the rack. Leaving fresh prints.”

“They were wet. You can’t leave prints on a wet surface.”

“I don’t know where you got that gem, Wayne, but it’s bullshit, just like everything else in your head. Those prints are being processed right now. And you are going down for Jimmy’s murder, as well as Angela’s and all the others. You are not a genius, Wayne, you’re a moron.”

I was expecting it, but even so his size, his weight, his strength and the sheer rage of his attack overwhelmed me. I am not small, but he was a giant. He collided with me and threw me on my back. He straddled me, sitting on my belly. His massive hands fastened around my throat, he locked his elbows and his thumbs began to press into my windpipe. His face was twisted and contorted with rage and hatred.

My instinctive reaction was to grip at his wrists and his arms, but I knew that if I did that I would never have the strength to pull him off. I would be signing my own death warrant. My lungs were screaming for air and my heart was pounding in my ears. I groped for a rock, anything solid, but there was nothing there. I was going, slipping into darkness.

Then, it may have been panic, I don’t know, but a furious rage welled up inside me and I twisted and rammed my forearm savagely into his locked elbow, forcing the joint the wrong way. He didn’t let go, but he howled with pain and his grip slipped. I rammed again, twice and he stood, backing away, holding his arm, swearing. I was still suffocating, but I knew I could not give him time to recover. I scrambled and charged him, roaring like something demented, with a mixture of rage, fear and sheer relief at getting air into my