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

wailing across the Bronx. I heard the crackle of a radio. Then there was a uniform running toward me. The inspector’s voice in my ear: “John! John, are you there?”

“Sir?” The patrolman’s face was at the door of my car, peering at me. “Sir, the lights are on at your house, but nobody is answering.”

Wild panic was pounding in my chest. I shouted, “Blow out the lock! Smash the window! Get in there! Get in there now!”

I slammed the door. Fired up the engine, spun the wheel and went screaming north up Zerega. A voice in my head kept screaming at me that somehow he had got to Dehan. Somehow he had got to her. But how? That was the truth he had wanted to tell me. The one shred of hope I clung to was that her body had not been there. All his other victims had on that spot, by the river. That was where he killed.

All but one.

Then everything went into slow motion. Up ahead on the left I saw Teddy’s Late Night Bar. It was closed. I heard a horrible noise in my head and realized it was me, bellowing. I slammed on the brakes and careened across the road, my tires screaming on the blacktop. I hit the curb, mounted the sidewalk and, as the rage inside me took hold, I released the brake and stood on the gas pedal.

There was a shattering explosion. I was thrown forward in my seat and smashed my chest and forehead against the wooden wheel. All around me there were showers of jagged, sparkling, spinning shards of glass, shattering and bouncing off the hood. They were like the shafts of pain stabbing through my head and my chest. But somehow it all seemed to be happening to somebody else, somewhere else.

I shoved open the door and climbed out. There was an alarm bell jangling, lonely and ineffectual in the night. The Jag was half inside the bar. All around the hood was the shattered debris of glass, broken tables and chairs. I looked back down Zerega. I was six or seven hundred yards from the crime scene. And there was a bend in the road at the intersection with Randall. They would not have seen or heard anything.

The bar was still and silent after the explosion of glass. It was a one story building that sprawled back and to the right from the bar. There would be an office. There would be a kitchen. There might be living accommodation. I pulled the Smith & Wesson from under my arm, cocked the hammer and moved across the floor to the bar. There was a door behind it. I remembered Teddy had come out through there the afternoon we had come to talk to him. I lifted the flap, moved behind the bar and stepped up to it. It was locked.

I selected the screwdriver from my Swiss Army knife, rammed it in the lock and turned. By the dim light that filtered in through the plate glass windows, I saw a short passage. At the end of the passage I could make out a single door. There was no handle and no lock, but there was a spring-loaded arm at the top. My gut told me this was the kitchen. I inched forward and pulled the door open, holding it with my foot. Nothing happened. I crouched down and peered in. It was dark but for the odd reflection of cold blue light off steel pots and pans. I listened for movement or breathing. There was nothing.

I stood and flipped on the light. The kitchen was empty, but across the other side there was another door. In my mind’s eye I could see the layout of the building. I was at the right hand extreme of the one story section of the block. After this, it was two stories, and I was pretty sure that when I opened the door I would be in a stairwell. A stairwell is a death trap. But on the other side of that death trap was Dehan. There was no doubt in my mind about that.

I opened the door and peered in. The light was on. It was a narrow, straight flight of stairs. On the right it was wall all the way up. On the left it opened out into what seemed to be a room or a large landing. I flattened myself against the wall with my .45 held at arm’s length in both hands, aimed at the landing, and started moving up slowly, one step at a time. The steps were wood and made enough noise to start a zombie revolution, but I was committed and there was no going back. I kept climbing. My whole body was rigid, expecting to get shot at any moment. I realized I wasn’t breathing. I exhaled and took another step.

It wasn’t a landing. It was a room. It was stark and cold, with sparse, old furniture that exemplified the worst of the ’80s. There was a single, large window on the right. The drapes were open and the glass was black. Beneath the window there was a TV. It was off, angled across the room to a couple of couches set at right angles to each other around a nasty pine coffee table with a glass top. Teddy was sitting on the couch facing me. He was frozen, staring wide-eyed. I aimed the gun at his head and moved up the rest of the stairs. He watched me without speaking.

A passage ran down to my left, opposite the TV. In the passage, there were two doors. The one at the far end I guessed was the bathroom; the one half way down would be the bedroom. I looked back at Teddy. He looked terrified.

“Where is she?”

He didn’t answer. His breathing became heavier and he swallowed.

“Where is she, Teddy?”

When