Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [story read aloud .txt] 📗

mix of ugly buildings around us, “that functional is not necessarily beautiful, this stretch of Gleason Avenue is it.” I drew breath to answer, but she pulled a hand from her jeans pocket and gestured at the soulless structures. “Look at them! They fulfill every criterion for what is required for functional beauty: they perform their function, they are honest about the materials that are used, they don’t pretend to be anything they are not. And what they are is ugly cages for people who have been robbed of their dreams, and whose greatest artistic aspiration in life is to write graffiti…” She jerked her head at some fat letters on the wall across the road, “…that looks exactly like everybody else’s graffiti!”

“Yup.”

“Beauty is not a necessary consequence of functionality and honesty.”

“No…”

“Excrement is functional, and honest about the materials used. But it is not beautiful.”

“True.”

“Why are we here, Stone?”

“Dehan, can we save this discussion for tonight, in front of the fire with a glass of Bushmills?”

She frowned at me like I was crazy. “No, I mean why are we here, on Gleason Avenue, when I could be studying riverside premises? What do you hope to achieve with this?”

We had reached the playground and I stopped, looking up at the windows. “Remedios told us she was mad when she thought she’d seen a hooker standing on the corner, because this was not that kind of neighborhood, remember?”

She nodded. “So?”

“She said it was a nice neighborhood, in spite of your views on their soulless, functional architecture. So, at a little before nine on a Sunday night, we have a man assaulting a woman, on the street corner, in a nice neighborhood, and nobody sees or hears anything. That seems a little odd to me. Remedios told us she couldn’t hear them because she had triple glazing in her windows, but she said the woman was shouting. So there must have been plenty of other people around here who did not have triple or even double glazing, who must have heard Celeste screaming at her attacker. Logical?”

Dehan was staring at me with narrowed eyes. I smiled at her and crossed the road to go and stand under the giant chestnut trees that skirted the playground. She followed me as far as the tree where Remedios had said Celeste had disappeared. There, I stood staring up at the buildings facing me across Gleason and Rosedale.

On the other side of Gleason was Remedios’ block, and it was a fair bet her neighbors had not seen anything. She had told me nobody had discussed it with her, but I was pretty sure she had discussed it with just about everybody she’d met on the stairs and in the store at the time it had happened. I could always double-check later, but right now what I was interested in was the two red brick blocks on the other side of Rosedale.

“Look,” I said. “Those two uninspiring, functional buildings over there, on the corners, have a perfect, uninterrupted view of this corner. I make it four kitchen windows and a big living room bow window on that building.” I pointed. “And a living room window and two bedrooms on that building. How old would you say those buildings are?”

She shrugged, still looking bemused. “I don’t know. Seventy-five, eighty years old? Nineteen forties?”

I nodded. “Accurate.” I pointed at the building with the bow window. “That one might be older. In any case, those windows look like the original sash windows to me. They are not shiny, plastic casement windows.”

“Stone?”

“Yes?”

“I see where you’re going. You think old, non-double-glazed windows, nice neighborhood, somebody washing up at nine PM or settling down to watch TV might have heard Celeste screaming.”

“Yes.”

“But Lenny already canvassed the area.”

“Did he?”

I set off across the road. She watched me get halfway before she hurried to catch up.

“What are you suggesting Stone?”

“Where does it say in the report that he canvassed the area for witnesses?”

I paused at the gate to the tall, late ’30s box that overlooked the corner of the street. From here, I could see that the windows were indeed the original, wooden sash windows.

“It doesn’t,” she said, flatly. “But he spoke to Remedios, and it says there were no other witnesses. It would have been nothing short of a dereliction of duty to have the case go cold without canvassing the neighbors. Why would Lenny do that?”

“I don’t know, Dehan. I don’t even know if he did. It doesn’t say anything about interviewing neighbors in the report.” I pointed across the road toward Remedios’s block. “Remedios Borja came forward on her own. Nobody knocked on her door.”

I shrugged and pushed through the gate.

There were two blocks with six apartments per block. We struck gold after half an hour, when I knocked on the door of the apartment on the top floor, overlooking the corner of Gleason and Rosedale. Dehan was ringing on the bell across the landing, where she was getting no answer. The door I was knocking on was opened by a slim man in his mid thirties wearing a v-necked, dark blue cashmere sweater with his white shirt collar on the outside. His jeans were carefully ironed and his hair was carefully brushed. His eyes observed me, and Dehan over my shoulder, in turn, carefully.

“Yes?” He asked it as though there might be consequences.

I showed him my badge. “I’m Detective John Stone. That’s my partner, Detective Carmen Dehan.”

“Does she have a badge?”

I turned. Dehan showed him her badge.

He nodded once. “How can I help you, Detectives?”

A man’s voice called from inside, “Who is it, Richard?”

“It’s the police!”

“What do they want?”

He smiled at us without humor and shook his head. “If you’ll give us a chance, I’ll find out!”

“Forgive me for breathing, I’m sure!”