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

and sat on the sofa with the other. I pulled one of my occasional tables around, stretched out, and put my feet up. The first sip of amber fire eased my muscles and I sighed. I was aware Dehan was excited, but figured she’d tell me why when she was ready. It didn’t take long.

She switched off the PC and came and joined me on the sofa, sitting at the far end with her back against the armrest.

“Robert Bellini, born Roberto Bellini in Rome, Italy, is the Bishop of the Diocese of St. Mary, which includes Lafayette and Father O’Neil’s church.”

I closed my eyes.

“Oh, Dehan, you just switched on the fan, lined up your cartload of shit and took your best shot, didn’t you?”

I opened my eyes and looked at her.

She grinned. “I figure, if you’re going to make a mess, may as well make a big one. Cheers, Big Ears.”

I raised my glass and we drank.

I studied the whiskey in my glass for a bit, thinking about each of our suspects in turn. I spoke to my drink.

“Leaving aside the evidence for a moment, not that we have much to leave aside, but what we have, forget it for now. Does your gut tell you that Father O’Neil is capable of murdering fourteen people, twelve of whom are young girls and children?”

She sipped her drink and sat staring into the middle distance, holding the drink in her mouth. After a bit, she swallowed and said, “That is so hard to answer. So many killers don’t look the part…”

“But that’s not what I’m asking you, I am asking you what your gut tells you.”

She shrugged and pulled a face. “My immediate reaction would have to be no. But it’s like that quote, you know the one? ‘All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’”

I curled my lip at my glass. “Edmund Burke. He never actually said it, but I get your point. Father O’Neil is the type to let sleeping dogs lie, and feeding dogs feast.”

She seemed to sag suddenly. “Can I take my boots off?”

“That depends. Did you wash your feet this month?” I closed my eyes. “How about Hagan?”

“Funny.” I heard her boots thud on the floor and felt her feet settle on the sofa beside me. “Does my gut think he could kill fourteen people? Yes, and fourteen hundred and fourteen thousand. That guy is a sociopath, he will do anything to achieve his ends.”

“How about getting involved in child prostitution in the first place?”

She was quiet so long I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was staring at the carpet and chewing her lip. She met my gaze and shook her head. “My gut would say no.”

“So Father O’Neil would get involved simply not to incur the wrath of the powerful, and Hagan would do the killing, but there is somebody missing who would act as a catalyst and actually make it happen in the first place. Somebody powerful enough to make Father O’Neil comply…”

“And to make Hagan do the killing…”

We stared at each other for a while. “Then there are Mick and Bishop Roberto Bellini, both of whom would have Father O’Neil dancing to their tune with no trouble. If we only had some physical evidence, something, to link one person to the girls or Sean.”

She frowned. “Have you noticed how everybody in this case is Irish except the bishop…”

“And Sonia Vincenzo.”

“They are both Italian.”

She drained her glass, slid down to rest her head on the armrest and closed her eyes. “An alliance of Catholic mobs to run child pornography? It seems a little far-fetched.”

I drained my glass too and closed my eyes. She was right, it did seem far-fetched; everything about this case seemed far-fetched. Mick Harragan’s ghost rising from the shadows of the past, his rape of Dehan’s mother, her sworn vengeance, honestly it all seemed a bit unreal. The twelve missing children, and Sean O’Conor dressed as a tramp, murdered, lying in a dumpster while his fiancée disappeared, along with the girls, all seemed excessive, like a nightmare that keeps getting darker and crazier. And in the background, in the shadows, the massive, wild form of Conor Hagan, lowering like some diabolical spawn from Hell, and behind him, backlit by dancing red flames, the laughing form of the bishop.

I opened my eyes. There was gray light filtering in through the window. My right leg was numb because Dehan’s socked feet were resting on it, cutting off the blood. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open. She was snoring softly and still gripping her whiskey glass in her hands. My glass had fallen on the floor. I looked at my watch, it read six twenty.

I carefully eased myself out from under her feet and limped to the toilet. I washed and combed my hair, and when I got back down she was still asleep, though she had changed her position.

The phone rang while I was making coffee and bacon.

“Frank, good morning.”

“Is it too early, Stone? Tell me to go to Hell if it’s too early, I have no sense of time.”

“It’s fine, Frank. I was up. I spent the night with a woman on the couch and had to get up because I had a cramp in my leg.”

There was a long silence. “Really?”

“Yup.”

“Wow…”

“Whatcha got, Frank?”

“Fingerprints on the photographs. They were very clear and well preserved, and the same prints were on every picture. Apart from your own, there are three sets. Thumbs on the front, index, middle and ring on the back, as you would expect. By the size, they are men.”

“You run them through IAFIS?”

“Natch, ol’ buddy, no matches. Whoever handled those pictures is not in the system.”

“What about the