Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

Cameron flushed and shouted, “No! Now get the fuck out of here!”

I ignored him and turned to the door. Brown’s bewildered, sleepy face had added itself to the throng along with the two girls. I said, “Brown, get me two freezer bags. Quick as you can.”

He shook his head, “What…?”

“Now!”

He hurried away. The major was helping Cameron get Pam to her feet. Sally came back with Cameron’s case, squeezed into the room and handed it to him. She said, “What can I do?”

He snarled, “You can get out’a my fuckin’ sight, is what you can do!”

She went pale and backed away. Cameron and the major took Pam to the en suite. I heard feet running up the stairs and a moment later one of the maids appeared, breathless and wide-eyed, and handed me a roll of freezer bags. I bagged the bottle and the glass and handed them to Dehan. She grabbed them and turned to the crowd.

“OK, guys, let’s let the Doc do his job.”

They backed away a step or two, jostling against each other. Bee had her hands over her mouth and was blinking back tears. She kept repeating, “I just came to see if she was all right…” Armstrong was peering over her head with a sullen twist to his mouth.

“How do we know he didn’t do ut hi’sen?”

Dehan said, “Just get out, Armstrong, and try not to talk for a while.”

“Fuck yous!”

I stepped over to him. “Hey, wiseass. You know what? We’re not in New York. You know what that means? It means if I smack you in that big mouth of yours, I don’t lose my job. Talk to my wife like that again and I’ll throw you over the damn banisters.”

He was going to tell me to try but decided against it and went away muttering. I looked around. I couldn’t see Gordon. I went back into the room. In the bathroom I could hear the sound of dry retching. My mind was racing. I looked at the decanter on the bedside table. In the bathroom I could hear Cameron saying, “We got to make her vomit… I don’t know why she won’t…”

There were more ugly, spasmodic noises. I kept staring at the decanter. It was almost full. I swore violently and went into the bathroom. They had Pam kneeling over the pan, trying to make her throw up the tablets. I stared at the soles of her feet.

I said, “She was injected.”

Cameron turned and stared at me. “What?”

I pointed. “There. On the sole of her foot. The decanter is full. The tablets were to make it look like suicide.”

Something close to panic twisted his face. “But, what the hell did he give her? How am I supposed…?”

“Whatever is missing from your bag! Where the hell is Gordon?”

I turned and ran. Dehan was ahead of me with Bee by her side, shouting, “At the end! On the left! At the end!”

She left Bee behind. She had her red dress hiked up around her hips and was speeding down the passage on her long legs and bare feet. She angled around the corner, collided with the wall and kept going toward the door at the end.

Behind me I could hear Sally running and screaming, “Oh, God, no! No!” and Bee panting close behind her. There were other voices, maybe Brown. Dehan grabbed the handle and shoved. It was not locked. She burst through and I came in just behind her. We stopped dead.

Behind me I heard a small gasp, then a short scream, followed by more short, hysterical screams.

Gordon looked shocked. He looked shocked because his eyes were bulging out of the sockets in his head. His tongue was huge and protruding and his face was bloated and had turned dark purple, like a giant, grotesquely deformed eggplant. There was blood on his dressing gown and on his pajamas, but not much, and only around the collar, where he had clawed at the dressing gown cord that was tied around his neck. The other end was tied to the frame of his four poster bed. His toes, barely touching the mattress, were still twitching.

EIGHTEEN

We cut him down and between me, Dehan and Brown we laid him out on the bed. He was dead and well beyond resuscitation. I told Brown, “Go and tell Dr. Cameron that Charles Gordon Sr. is dead, will you? Tell him to come here as soon as he can.”

Brown nodded, said, “Yes, sir,” and left the room. Outside, Sally was sobbing violently. She had her back against the wall and her face covered with her hands. Bee had come in and sat on a padded stool by the door, where she was just staring at the deformed monstrosity that had been the man she loved.

Dehan backed away from the bed and stood staring around at the room. She looked tired. She spread her hands. “It could be either…”

I shook my head. “It’s not suicide.”

“How can you be sure?”

I made a gesture to her to hang on a minute and turned to Bee. “Bee…?” She seemed not to hear me. I approached her and hunkered down in front of her, obscuring her view of the bed. “Bee, you can’t be here. It’s a crime scene.” I smiled. “You might be sitting on evidence. And in any case, it’s not a good place for you. This isn’t how you want to remember him.”

She gave a small smile and nodded, then she reached for my hand and held it, staring at it. “I only held his hand once or twice, you know. So many years ago. He had strong hands, like yours. I remember it as though it were yesterday. Or this morning.” She raised her eyes to mine again. “You can’t do it, you know?”