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

“You mean like proof?” She shrugged and shook her head. “No, Cielito, I ain’t got nothing. She never had no computer, and her phone disappear with her. That day, she go to the church like always, and she never come back.”

She insisted we have coffee; we talked some more without making any progress, and finally made our way back to the car. I leaned on the roof and sighed. The morning was bright and optimistic, but I wasn’t.

Dehan opened her door, stopped, and leaned opposite me. We stared at each other. She said, “Everything confirms the same hypothesis. It’s simple and logical. Maybe we’re over-thinking it.”

“Maybe, but some concrete evidence would be nice. And I still don’t like Sean in a dumpster and Alicia vanishing without a trace. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.”

“Let’s see if the tech guys got anything from Sean’s computer, and let’s have a look through his papers. You never know, there might be something. I’d like to have a little more than theories and hearsay before I confront Hagan.”

She nodded and we got in.

Seven

Spring is real ugly and depressing when it’s on the other side of the glass and you’re sitting, wading through twelve-year-old legal notes about people getting evicted from their homes.

The only thing the tech guys were able to tell me at that stage was what I already suspected, the hard drive had been wiped clean. They were working on trying to recover some of the files, but they didn’t want to make any promises. Twelve years was a long time.

Most of the physical files he had stored in two large sports bags in his wardrobe, and most of them related to cases from the previous year. Hard as we looked, we could barely find a single reference to Tiffany Street, Conor Hagan, or squatters. Dehan spoke absently as she leafed slowly through a notebook.

“It’s negative, but even that is pointing in the same direction. They killed him and Alicia, then they went and took his files and wiped his PC.”

I took the last file from the bag. I had seen several like it. It was about Carolina, a child of thirteen. Her dad was unknown; her mother was a prostitute and a junkie. Her nationality was unknown and she apparently had no Social Security number. Cristina, twelve, wasn’t sure where her mother was. Sean was trying to get them both taken into care. He was also trying to get the authorities to recognize there was a crisis with this kind of child in the Bronx. Meanwhile, Father O’Neil was providing somewhere to sleep and somewhere to eat, and Alicia was providing lessons in basic literacy and numeracy.

I threw the file on the desk and rubbed my face with my hands.

“What am I not seeing, Dehan? What am I missing? Everything is perfect. We should just be looking for hard evidence, witnesses, forensics—but there is something missing.”

She nodded. “I agree.”

“What the hell did they do with Alicia, and for what purpose?” I stood and walked to the window, looking out resentfully at April having fun out there, budding all the almond trees. “Sean and Alicia… No, just Sean, who became a pain in Hagan’s ass. Alicia wasn’t. As far as we know, Dehan, Hagan doesn’t even know Alicia exists, and so he has a couple of his guys wait for Sean. They bundle him in the back of a car and take him to a building site or a warehouse. They put him on his knees and they shoot him.”

I paused, running through it again in my mind. Dehan closed the file she was reading and turned her chair so she could see me. I went on.

“So far it is a bog-standard, textbook gangland hit. But then, for some reason, they take all his clothes off, dress him up as a tramp, take him to their own dumpster and throw him in.”

Dehan sighed. “It’s a reach, Stone, but maybe Hagan wanted the locals to know about it, but, like we said before, he wanted it to go cold for the cops.”

I nodded. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense for now, but you’re right, it’s a reach.” I wandered back to my chair and stood looking down at the file on the desk, thinking of Alicia, and Carolina and Cristina and their junkie mom. “And then, for no apparent reason, they go and find Alicia, kill her, and dispose of the body in such a way that nobody will ever find it.” I turned and stared at her. “What the hell for?”

“As a warning?”

“To whom? Alicia was no threat to anybody. And you heard yourself, whatever else Hagan was, he also liked to play benefactor to the community, surely he would want to encourage people like Alicia, not kill them.” I shook my head. “No, he had a very particular reason to kill her, and to make her disappear.”

She thought about it.

“That’s a pretty strong statement, Sensei.”

“But it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

She sighed and threw her own file on the desk. “Well, we are going to have to find some evidence pretty soon, Stone, because we are hitting one dead end after another.” She stretched, arching her back over the back of the chair till I heard the vertebrae crack. “Maybe you should talk to Hagan.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to. It’s too soon. That guy is going to be tough and cool. I need something concrete before I go up against him.”

I picked up the empty bag off the floor, dumped it on the desk, and put a handful of files back in it. The weight was badly distributed; it overbalanced and slid to the floor. Dehan snorted and grinned. “One of those days.”

I bent and retrieved the bag. The files slid to the end. I put