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

a wooden board. I wandered into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge, watching her.

“So, Stone, for real. What’s the deal with you and women?”

I was surprised and let my face show it, but she was staring at the onions she was chopping and didn’t see me. After a moment, I shrugged.

“There is no deal…”

“That’s kind of my point.”

“It’s like I told you before. I was married. It didn’t work out. And as you know yourself, this job kind of gets in the way.”

She made a face. “For me it wasn’t the job. I just never met a guy who wasn’t a jerk.”

I smiled. “Maybe it’s the same for me. I never met a woman who wasn’t a jerk.”

She threw the onions into the olive oil, followed by garlic and red peppers, then added some fresh thyme. It smelled good.

“But,” she said and paused a moment, grinding black pepper into the meat, “don’t you ever miss having somebody? Like, you know, even just a companion. Hell! The sex! Don’t you miss the sex?”

“This is very personal, Dehan.”

“Do you mind?”

I shook my head, “No. No, I don’t mind.” I thought about it. “I guess the answer is, if I stop and think about it, yes, of course I do. But—” I laughed. “Thankfully I have a job that doesn’t give me much time to think about it.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything. She stirred the onions, then dropped in the meat and started breaking it up with the wooden spatula. I watched her a moment, then said, “Why do you ask, Carmen?”

She danced her head around a bit.

“We work together. We see into other people’s lives and tragedies probably more intimately than anybody else in their lives.” She paused, shrugged, and made a face. “You know a lot about me. More than anybody else alive, or dead! But I don’t know a lot about you.”

I stared into my whiskey. “Maybe there isn’t much to know.”

“Open the tins of tomatoes for me, would you? And just grind some black pepper into them.”

I smiled and did as she asked. As I was grinding the pepper, she said, “You do know, right, if you ever need to talk…”

I handed her the tomatoes, and as she poured them over the meat, I said, “I’m not gay.”

She laughed. It was a funny, infectious laugh that made me laugh too. She put her hand on my arm. “I know.”

We stared at each other a moment, smiling.

I said, “I’ll set the table.”

Twelve

We were up at five, and Dehan performed her ritual of frying bacon and eggs and making coffee. To me, breakfast is a slice of toasted rye and a large espresso, but I was beginning to enjoy the ritual as much as she obviously did, so I wasn’t about to complain.

By six, we were on the road, moving through a dark city that was yawning and stretching and fumbling its way to the bathroom. We took the Cross Bronx Expressway over the Alexander Hamilton and the George Washington, and then we followed the I-80 through endless suburbs, heading west and north. We didn’t say a word to each other until we had left Totowa behind us and we were driving among countryside and thick woodlands touched by the early morning sun.

Then I eased back in my seat and said, “We need to address the elephant in the room.”

She turned to look at me. “What?”

“It looks as though Baxter sent us on a wild goose chase. We have absolutely no reason to believe that Tamara Gunthersen had anything to do with Stephen’s murder. Or am I wrong?”

She grunted. After a bit, she said, “Her husband still has a Colt .38. She still probably came here to see Stephen.”

I glanced at her. “Did she shoot Ernesto Sanchez?” She shrugged. “This walking ray of divine sunshine shot a Sureño?”

Mindfuck was right.

We didn’t discuss it again until we reached Attica. We left the car in the parking lot, showed our badges at the gate, and a warden showed us across the yard into one of the wings. From there, we were taken to a secure interview room with concrete walls and no windows. A fluorescent strip on the ceiling gave a dead, stark light over a table and three chairs.

After five minutes, steel doors clanged and echoed, and Alfonso Sanchez was led in. He was seated opposite us and handcuffed to the table. He was in his thirties, but he looked older. He had a Fu Man Chu mustache and a tattooed face. He wasn’t somebody you’d want your daughter to date.

“We’ve been looking for your brother, Ernesto.”

He smiled. The question amused him. “You bin lookin’ for Ernesto? You found him?”

“He went off the radar two years ago.”

The smile faded and he shrugged. “What can I tell you, cop? I don’t know nothin’.” He gestured around him. “I’m inside. What do I know?”

Dehan said, “You could tell us if he’s dead. Is he dead, or was he just injured?”

He hissed through his teeth and looked away.

She pressed him. “Come on, Alfonso. I know you. I saw you every fuckin’ day when we were growing up. You went everywhere together. You did everything together. You want me to believe you weren’t there when he got shot?”

He was looking mad and scared at the same time. He didn’t know what we knew, and he was seeing his sentence shifting from two years to twenty for the murder of Stephen Springfellow.

I leaned across the table and spoke softly. “Did you and Ernesto murder Steve?”

“No! Uh-uh!” He was shaking his head.

I ignored him and went on. “Because right now, Ernesto’s blood and an eyewitness put you both at the scene of the murder.”

He was still shaking his head.