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

answer for a moment, like her suggestion was inconvenient for some reason. I bit back the smile and said, “I can let you have a bedroom. If you promise not to make the sheets dirty, I can let you have a bed too.”

She looked out of the window, away from me. The rain had suddenly grown heavy, and the wipers were squeaking a sleepy rhythm. Red, amber, and green lights splashed in squalls across the windshield. She said, “Whatever.”

Seven

My appointment with Chen Zhu was at one in the afternoon. It was a five- or six-hour drive, so we got four hours’ sleep and were up and out by six a.m. Attica the prison is just outside Attica the town, and about the same size. It’s about a mile in length and about a quarter of a mile across at its widest point. There is a strange, eerie feel about the place, like it belongs in one of those late ’60s dystopian sci-fi movies, where the setting and the system are idyllic, it’s just the people that are wrong.

We parked in the lot, and fifteen minutes later we were sitting in a secure room, waiting for Chen Zhu to be shown in. There was a loud buzz and a clang. The door opened and two guards led in a man who, even chained hand and foot, was terrifying to behold.

It wasn’t just his size, though he was tall, muscular, and agile. It was his face, the complete absence of expression and the deadness of his eyes. They communicated just one thing: he could watch an unlimited amount of suffering and feel absolutely nothing.

He was placed in the chair opposite us, and his wrists were cuffed to the table. The guards told us they would be just outside and left us alone. He watched me a moment. He didn’t blink. Then he watched Dehan in the same way. After that he settled down to watching the wall behind us.

“Zhu, I am Detective Stone, and this is my partner, Detective Dehan. We need to ask you some questions about the murder ten years ago of Nelson Hernandez in the Bronx. I know you’re in for twenty to life. If you help us, that will help you, in the long run, to get parole. Are you willing to answer our questions?”

I got exactly the response I had expected. Nothing at all. I was pretty sure he had put himself into a trance. Dehan said, “You have nothing to lose, Zhu. No one is going to accuse you of a loss of honor or a loss of face. All we want is for you to fill in a few details on a cold case.”

Same response. I asked him, “Did you kill Nelson Hernandez ten years ago in the Bronx?”

He blinked, but it was probably just his time for blinking that month. It didn’t tell me anything. Dehan looked at me like she was wondering why I was taking so long. I was wondering myself. I guess I just didn’t like doing it, but Carmen was done waiting. She said, “Do you see much of your brother Zak? He ever come and visit you?” His gaze shifted from the wall to Dehan’s eyes. She went on, “He’s kinda the black sheep of the family, huh?”

I said, “Actually we bumped into him and some of his friends last night.” His eyes shifted to me, but all I could read there was that somehow, some day, he intended to kill us. I said, “Does the family know?” I gave a small laugh and spread my hands. “This is New York, in the new millennium. What’s a bit of homosexuality in the family? No big deal, right?”

His face went rigid, and all the color drained out of it. This was true rage, and unleashed it must have been a truly terrifying sight. I was glad he was chained. I stared him in the eye and said, “Oh, they don’t know?”

Dehan said, “You’re kidding me. Your grandfather, the head of the most powerful Triad gang in the eastern United States, does not know that his grandson is gay?” She looked at me, then back at him. “Well, what do you think would happen, Zhu, if he found out? I mean, I know that family is really important to you, and I think that a life choice as profound as this one is something he should share with the family, don’t you?”

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a large envelope. His gaze followed it onto the table. I shook out the photographs and spread them out in front of him. He turned away. I went on, “And I would say he was pretty committed to his life choice, wouldn’t you, Detective Dehan?”

She reached down and pulled my laptop out of her shoulder bag. She opened it up, hit Play, and spun it round for him to see the screen. I could hear the thumping and thudding of the music from the night before, and the shouts and screams. He refused to look. “You ought to have a look, Zhu. Because if you don’t start talking to me, the next people to see this will be your father and your grandfather.”

He spoke for the first time. I was surprised he had no accent.

“Turn it off. Take the pictures away.”

I left it playing. “Are you going to talk to us?”

He nodded. I turned the laptop around and turned it off, then collected up the pictures. “Did you kill Nelson Hernandez?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“What happened that night?”

“Mick Harragan contacted us a couple of weeks before. He said there was an opportunity for us to move in to Hunts Point. Till then our policy had been to stay around Chinatown in Manhattan. But things were changing, and some of the younger men favored the idea of expanding out.