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

where Samuel works. We also need to filter out all the businesses along the river that are impossible dumping sites for one reason or another: there is no river bank at that spot, there is no access to the river, that kind of thing. Then we start cross referencing people connected with Celeste with people connected with that list of businesses, see if anything pings.”

“Good. We also find out how long Samuel has had that truck. If he only bought it last week, we have a problem.”

“Find out what Chad drives.”

I watched her lick ketchup from her fingers and nodded. “Yeah, there is something else, too.”

“Whamph?”

“Celeste’s phone records.”

“You said there was nothing we could do about that.”

“I’m wondering. Lenny said he’d look at home. I’m kind of betting he won’t find them. If he doesn’t, what else can we do?”

She pointed at me like a gun, then wagged her finger up and down. “I was going to say. We should be checking her email. Where the hell is her computer? Eighteen-year-old kid with no computer?”

“E-mail. Exactly. Any longer messages will be on Facebook or her email. I’ll talk to Reynolds today and see what happened to her computer.”

She was watching me, squinting and chewing her lip. “What do you plan to do about Lenny? His motives may not have been personal gain, but still, you can’t let a murderer walk free just because it will upset his dad. Lenny has to be brought to account.”

“I know. I agree. But I don’t want to spook him just yet. If he’s been concealing evidence and we spook him, we might lose any chance of ever recovering any of it.”

We finished our beer and made our way back to Fteley Avenue. As we were walking into the detectives’ room Lenny approached on rapid, short legs.

“Hey, Stone! How you doing, pal? Listen, you were right, I had the phone records at my house. I must have took the file home to study i—due diligence, right?” He laughed a nicotine laugh and slapped my arm. “And the damn page slipped out or whatever. I left it on your desk. How’s it going? Doing any better than I did?”

Dehan was watching him with narrowed eyes and her hands in her back pockets. It made her look like a hawk about to pounce.

I shrugged. “It’s a bit of a brick wall. I can see why it went cold.”

“Right?”

“But, listen, you said ‘page’?”

“Yuh.” He nodded vigorously. “The phone records.”

“Just one page?”

“Sure. How many pages you want?” He laughed again.

“Well, at least six months’ worth, Lenny. How many days did you get?”

“One. What the hell! I was only interested in who called her that night!”

Dehan stepped over, her face screwed up like she’d just bitten a lemon. “You asked the phone company for the records on one day? What were they doing, charging by the hour?”

“Hey, take it easy, Wonder Woman! And can the attitude! What? You accusing me of not doing my job?”

People had started to turn and look. I said, “Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Lenny. Relax. I was just hoping to go back over her calls leading up to that weekend. It’s no problem. Thanks.”

He scowled at Dehan and then at me. “Yeah,” he said. “Now I know why you’re both so damned popular! Accusing fellow officers ain’t cool. Don’t expect too much cooperation from me from now on. Screw you!”

Everyone who’d been watching turned away and got busy. Dehan gave me an eloquent look and we made our way to our desks. There was a slim manila folder on my laptop. I opened it and pulled out a single sheet of printed paper. I studied it a moment and saw the names of the people she had called, or who had called her, written in the margins. One number was listed simply as ‘burner’.

I glanced at the top of the page and then tossed it over to Dehan. “It’s a copy of a printed email document. Look at the top left corner. Those marks numbers he’s tried to blank out. This is page two of one hundred and eighty. He got the whole six months up to the day she died.”

She picked up the sheet, stared hard at it and then stared at me. “How stupid is he? How stupid does he think we are?”

“They are good questions, and ‘not very’ has to be the answer to both of them.”

“Huh?”

“That’s not stupidity, it’s panic.”

She raised an eyebrow, but I ignored her.

I thought for a while. “Let’s not focus too narrow just yet, Dehan. Let’s continue with the plan we had, but perhaps we need to spread our net a little wider.”

She sat forward and started typing. Absently, she said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I stood and went to look over Dehan’s shoulder as she worked. I smiled. “You think you haven’t,” I said. “But you have.”

“Yeah?” She looked up at me and grinned.

I winked at her. “Tell me if you get a hit, or what you find anyway. I’m going out to the car to talk to my pal at the DMV. And, Dehan?”

“What?”

“If you find something, try not to look triumphant.”

She nodded. “I hear you, Sensei.”

Out in my Jag, I slammed the door and sat thinking for a while. Finally, I called Mike, an acquaintance at the DMV who often helped me out. After greeting each other and reminding each other we had promised to grab a beer some time, he asked, “What can I do for you, John?”

“Oh, it’s just a couple of small things, Mike. They are a matter of public record, but you can find them in a matter of minutes and it would take me forever.”

He laughed. “You could always use the computer!”