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

this were something normal, you would have told me about it by now. Why the big mystery?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slow through puffed cheeks. “It’s what you’ve been asking me about since we got here, and what I have been avoiding talking about. Not…” I looked her in the eye. “Not because I don’t want you to know about it, but because it is hard for me to talk about. But I guess now we are going to have to, whether I want to or not.”

She frowned. “OK…”

Right on cue, Harry returned with the pints and set them on the table. He glanced at us both as he did it and said, “I’m assuming, John, that you have already told Carmen about The Butcher of Whitechapel…”

I sucked my teeth and shook my head.

His jaw sagged a little. “Nothing at all…?”

I shook my head again.

He looked at me with meaning. “Nothing…?”

“Nothing, Harry. Nothing at all.”

Dehan sighed. “OK, guys, I think we have understood that I have been told nothing at all about the Butcher of Whitechapel. How about we set that right and somebody starts telling me?”

Harry picked up his glass, raised his eyebrows at me and said, “Over to you, me old mucker.”

I nodded.

“This was about fifteen, sixteen years ago, around the time I came over. There was a series of killings, all in Whitechapel. They were all young women in their early twenties, all blonde, pretty, between five foot five and five eight. There were four of them, Cindy Rogers, Amy Porter, Sally-Anne Sterling and Kathleen Dodge. Kathleen Dodge was Canadian, the other three were American. They all worked at the Royal London Hospital, in Whitechapel.”

I paused and took a pull from my pint. As I set the glass down, I went on. “Each one of them had been crucified on the floor in her own apartment. They had been stabbed in the heart with a large kitchen knife, they had each had their womb removed, without skill, and each one had had her eyes perforated post mortem. All the mutilations were post mortem. Each of the women showed signs of having been raped, but presumably he used a condom, because there was no trace of semen. And, each one had a note stabbed into her left eye with a meat skewer, with that same line from American Pie.”

Harry was staring at me. I avoided his eye.

Dehan said, “I’m guessing you didn’t catch him.”

I nodded again. “The guys who were in charge of this end of the exchange program figured we have a lot more serial killers in the States than they have over here, which is true, and so they thought I should be on the task force. So Harry and I worked it together. We had a suspect…”

I hesitated, staring at Harry. He shook his head. “John was never convinced. It was an American chap, Brad Johnson. He was one of those white supremacy militia types. We have them over here too, but we haven’t got any Rocky Mountains where we can lose them and let them play Rambo. God alone knows what he was doing over here, but we’d been keeping an eye on him because he was hooking up with a few radical far right groups, and we were worried about possible terrorist attacks.”

I took over. “It turned out he knew Sally-Anne Sterling. They had met on a dating site. Apparently, after the first date, she didn’t want to know, and he got mad. He sent her a few ugly messages. When we found the emails, we went and had a talk with him. He mouthed off a lot, he was an ugly customer, but I never liked him for the murders. Harry and the rest of the team disagreed. The evidence was inconclusive. In fact there was no forensic evidence—or very little…”

Harry said, “We found Johnson’s prints at the scene, and traces of his DNA on her bed sheets…”

I nodded. “The forensics connected him to her, but we already knew that they were connected. What it didn’t do was connect him to the crime, or to the other girls. He could conceivably have known them, he had no alibi for the nights of the other three killings, he was in London at the time and he lived in the area. But none of that was enough, it was just ifs and maybes. He lawyered up, got a solicitor and a barrister, and shortly after the last killing, he returned to the U.S. After that, the killings stopped, and I returned to New York.”

Harry was staring hard at me. After a moment, he grunted and said, “But he’s back now.”

I frowned at him. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly. We’ve been keeping an eye on him, but as of today I’m going to request a twenty-four hour a day watch. He’s been here for just over three months, promoting some business he’s in or something. You were deeply invested in that case, John. You had a real feel for it.”

I sighed and shook my head. “We are not going to agree, Harry. I still don’t believe he’s our man.”

“I don’t care, you are the man for this job, and I would really appreciate your help.”

I hesitated. “I need to think it over.”

He stared me in the eye, but pointed at Dehan. “And, John, you need to discuss it with your wife. And I mean, everything!” He drained his glass and stood. “I’m going to go and attend to a few things. I will see you back here in about three quarters of an hour. Meanwhile, you ’fess up, me old mate.”

He walked out into the leaden, gray light of the late afternoon. I could feel Dehan staring at me, but I couldn’t meet her eye. Finally, she said, “What the hell is going on, Stone?”