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

He picked up his Guinness and drained half of it. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“What about him?”

“How well do you know him?”

“Very well.”

“What’s your opinion of him?”

“He’s a gobshite. He wishes he was Mother Theresa but he hasn’t got the balls. Now have you got any more stupid questions for me? ’Cause I’m losing my patience.”

Dehan smiled. “What happens if you lose your patience, Conor?”

“I call the cops and have youse removed.”

Outside, we walked slowly toward the car. Spring was still trying to make things look beautiful, but it wasn’t doing a great job.

I looked up at the sky. It was very blue. “What do you make of him?”

“A showman. Underneath that noisy exterior, he’s a ruthless businessman. Whatever he says about how he would have enjoyed the trial, he did the numbers and saw it would be cheaper and more expedient to have Sean killed. He killed him.”

“Makes sense.”

She watched her feet as she walked for a bit. “He got upset when I told him the tramp had been identified as Sean.”

I nodded. “He did. That’s when he told us to leave.”

We came to the car and I sat on the trunk. I could see my face distorted in the lenses of her aviator shades. “The way it looks right now, Sean was threatening to expose a child prostitution ring run by Conor Hagan, with the possible collusion of Father O’Neil and three other people…”

She was shaking her head. “Run by Conor Hagan and Mick Harragan, with the possible collusion of Father O’Neil and two other people.”

“Okay, Conor warned him off, he wouldn’t listen, so he and Alicia were murdered.”

She nodded.

“Now, we have a problem, Dehan. The only piece of physical evidence we have points to a completely different person, and a completely different motive. Sonia Vincenzo, the jilted lover, and her rage and jealousy.”

I had told her about my meeting with Sonia on the way in the car. She sighed and thrust her hands into her pockets. “You don’t buy that, do you?”

“Right now I’m not buying anything but lunch. But the fact stands that that is our only piece of evidence.”

She nodded. “The Captain gave us two uniforms to help with tracking those kids, Stevens and Ortega. Let’s see if we’ve had any hits.”

Thirteen

While I was talking to Sonia Vincenzo, Dehan had got a complete list from the Parish Archive of the twelve girls who had been in Alicia’s class in January of 2005. Of the twelve, three had no national insurance number. Those three, and four others, were either orphans or presumed orphans, in that nobody knew where their parents were. Of the confirmed orphans, none of them had ever known their father, in four cases the mother had died of an overdose, and John had murdered one. In all cases—all twelve—the mothers were prostitutes. The five girls who were not orphans were theoretically in foster care, but three had escaped to go on the game and two had been kicked out for their violent behavior, and nobody had bothered to inform the agency or the court.

Dehan had gotten a large whiteboard and put it by the desk. Then she’d cropped the photographs so you could only see the face and taped them on the board, with their names written by the picture.

When we got back, that was all that was written by any of the pictures and Stevens and Ortega were packing up to leave the station. Stevens saw us approaching the desk and stood.

“Detectives, we have had consistently negative results on all the names and the NI numbers. The parish record lists the course as closing down on the 21st January, 2005. That is the last official record that we can find of those children. We have checked state and Federal databases, hospitals, FBI…” He shook his head and shrugged. Ortega rose and joined us, nodding his confirmation of what Stevens was saying. “There is just no record of any of these kids. They haven’t acquired driving licenses, they have no credit cards, they haven’t been sick, got married, died…”

Ortega shrugged with his eyebrows. “Not officially, anyway. So we were on our way to the neighborhood to canvass the homes around there, see if anybody remembers them.”

I nodded. “Good, good work.”

They left. We followed. Sometimes—often—that’s what detective work is, walking door to door, ringing on doorbells, stopping people in the street, and that’s what we did. We put up flyers, we handed out photographs, we knocked on doors and visited community centers.

In the Bronx, the cops are not everybody’s favorite people. So canvassing is often not a productive method of investigation. You tend to get blank stares, shrugs, and shaking heads. But when missing kids are involved, it’s different, especially with the women. We found plenty in the neighborhood of Tiffany Street and Lafayette who remembered one or more of the kids. Nobody knew where they were now, and nobody, not a single person, remembered seeing them after January 2005.

By half past seven, we gave it up and went back to the precinct. Stevens and Ortega came in shortly after us, reporting the same result. The kids were known. The kids were remembered, but nobody had seen them since those pictures were taken. I thanked them for their help and turned to Dehan.

“Let’s go see the captain.”

We climbed the stairs and knocked on his door.

“Come!”

We went in and he smiled broadly, like he thought we were amusing.

“Ah, Stone and Dehan, the Dynamic Duo, what can I do for you? Please, sit!”

We sat and I laid out the case for him. He frowned and listened without interrupting. When I had finished, he said, “And they missed the haircut and the nails back in the original investigation?”

“Yes, sir. To be honest,