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

want to marry you.’ I mean messages in the stories he was writing, and in his banter. ‘Helena and me, we understand each other. Am I right, Helena? You an’ me, we got an understandin’, right?’ And she felt just like Everyman, or in her case Everywoman or even better, Everyperson, gathering up the lost to follow her to salvation. She thought she was transcending race, culture and gender to help a poor, lost black kid; and that is irony right there, because what she was really doing was bringing her own middle class white values and prejudices to a situation where they were woefully inadequate and inappropriate.”

“Shall I ask the waitress for a soapbox?”

“Sorry. Anyhow, the point is there was a total lack of communication. He was telling her, ‘You gonna be my bitch.’ She understood, ‘We have a deep, transcendent understanding and you are my guiding light.’ She told him, ‘I can lead you out of this hell you live in, to a better life,’ and he understood, ‘Yes, I am your bitch and you are my man.’”

“I am troubled by the assumptions you are making, and also the stereotypes you are employing, but do go on.”

“So, this miscommunication of intent…”

“Wait. Miscommunication of intent?”

“Yeah. He is telling her she is going to be his bitch. That is his intent. She is telling him she is going to save him. That’s her intent.”

“OK…”

“This miscommunication reaches a climax of some sort. I don’t know what, but clearly there comes a time when he wants to claim what is his. And she tells him he has got it wrong and she is in love with her husband. One way or another, that is conveyed to him. He is incensed and in his rage he goes out, finds his rival, cuts off his head and sends it to her.”

I sipped my Martini, smacked my lips and sighed. Then I nodded. “I know what you’re saying and in many ways I agree. But there are things that don’t work for me. Like, for example, the guy you’re describing. In my experience and in yours, he rapes her. He doesn’t waste time on the husband. If he wants to make her, as you put it, his bitch, then that is what he goes right ahead and does. We’re talking about a guy who decapitated a hooker because she was skimming off the top of his stash.”

She pursed her lips like she was kissing the air and watched the waitress bring the calamari and the fried cheese. We put both plates in the middle of the table and shared.

With her mouth full of cheese, she wagged her fork at me.

“OK, so let’s not stereotype him. Maybe there were some self-fulfilling prophecies going on. Maybe he did idolize her. Maybe she was like no woman he had ever known. And his rage was directed against Jack. And after he killed him, before he could move on Helena, the classes were cancelled and he was arrested.”

“Maybe. We’ll see what he tells us tomorrow. One thing stands out, though. Whatever he was doing or saying, she was completely oblivious to it.”

“Dumb broad.”

I nodded and forked some calamari. “Naïve, certainly. So, Dehan, you figure Shaw and Penelope are out of the running now, and Helena herself.”

She shook her head. “Nobody’s out of the running, but I would say that Lenny is my prime suspect.” Then she frowned. “He’s not yours?”

I took some of her cheese and put it on a piece of bread. I chewed it, watching her across the table. “I’m going to wait till we’ve spoken to him. It’s all speculation right now, Dehan. I’m having trouble with his choice of victim. I’m also having trouble with Shaw and Penelope. I can see them both as potentially capable of it, and yet…”

I watched her spear a calamari and stick it in her mouth, and added, “I am also very aware, Dehan, that we have not explored Helena as a potential suspect. That is a possibility we need to look at, and we also need to talk to…” I frowned, trying to remember his name.

She nodded. “Alornerk. It means clear sky or blue sky or something. The mathematician from Boston.” She was quiet for a bit, putting cheese on her bread. “You seriously think she might have decapitated her husband? You think that’s more likely than Lenny dos Santos?”

“We don’t know, do we?”

“OK, Sensei.”

After that, we moved on from murder and decapitation to the increasingly familiar subjects of children and retirement. While we discussed these comfortable subjects, we worked our way through a couple of ribeye steaks, a couple more beers and then a couple of whiskeys and, by the time we stepped out into the strangely desolate Main Street, with its pallid yellow light and eerie, coiled streetlamps, and began our lonely walk back toward Kilburn Manor, the temperature had dropped to close to freezing, so that we could see our breath billowing before us and I had to tuck Dehan under my arm and my jacket to keep her warm.

We didn’t talk then, but walked huddled close against the cold, along the long empty road, with its oddly ominous buildings, down Clay Street among the tall trees, to Kilburn Manor. There we found all the lights on, but nobody seemed to be at home. So we climbed the stairs in silence, among the ancient antiques and the loudly ticking clocks, to the Judge’s Suite, where there was a fire burning in the grate.

EIGHT

Lenny dos Santos was six foot six in his bare feet. In his shoes he was almost six foot seven. He was big with it. Each leg was like a tree trunk, each foot easily fourteen inches long. His arms were the size of legs and his chest, neck and shoulders were like one massive slab of