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

He tossed me the keys and I handed them to Dehan. “You drive, I read.” I showed her the file on Hattie. “See you tomorrow, Harry.”

He sighed and as I climbed in the passenger seat, I heard him say. “I have a bad feeling about this…”

I always said he was intuitive.

As we pulled away, I opened the file. I knew exactly what I was looking for and I ignored the photographs, and the description of the crime scene. I didn’t want to know about any of that. Not yet. I’d been there. I’d seen it. I wanted to know if she had fought. I knew her temperament. I knew her character. I knew that she could well have fought. That she would surely have fought.

She had.

They had recovered organic material from under her nails. They had gotten a DNA profile, but there had been no match on the database. I nodded and tossed the file in the back of the car. That was all I had wanted to know.

SIX

I didn’t sleep that night. I lay staring at the ceiling till two. Then I pulled a chair over by the window overlooking Green Park and, by the filtered light of the street lamps on Picadilly, I read the file that had been haunting me for fifteen years. My worst fears about how she had died were realized. Everything I had dreaded was true. It had all happened a decade and a half in the past, but in my mind, in my emotions, it was still happening, it was still real, and it was like a fever.

At seven, Dehan awoke and swung her legs out of the bed. She sat staring at me with sleepy eyes. “Have you been there all night?”

I nodded.

She came over on long, unsteady legs and gave my head a hug. Then she went to have a shower. While she was gone, I called Harry’s office, knowing he wouldn’t be there. A girl’s voice answered after the third ring and said, “Detective Inspector Harry Green’s office.”

“Good morning, this is Detective John Stone, I am consulting on the Katie Ellis case…”

“Oh yes, good morning, Detective Stone. Up bright and early! How can I help you?”

“I’m preparing for a meeting with Harry and Lord Ellis this morning. I meant to get a copy of the case file yesterday but everything was so rushed, I was wondering if you could e-mail it to me.”

“No problem. Just give me your email and I’ll send it right over.”

I told her, thanked her and hung up. A minute later, the email arrived on my phone. I opened up the attachment and filed through it until I found Brad Johnson’s address. 11, Raddington Road, just off the Portobello Road.

I took a sheet of the hotel notepaper and scrawled a note on it.

Just popped out. Back in half an hour.

S

Then I called down and had them bring the car out front. It was seven twenty and the traffic was not heavy yet. I took Park Lane, Bayswater Road and Ladbroke Grove, and a drive that should have taken me twenty minutes took fifteen. I turned into Portobello Road, accelerated, made the tires complain as I turned into Raddington, and skidded to a halt outside his block. It was a small apartment building with four stories, and his was the top floor.

When you’ve spent almost thirty years working as a cop in the Bronx, you learn something about picking locks. A Swiss Army knife and a tough heel to your hand is one of the most efficient methods I know, and I know a few. Thirty seconds and I was climbing the stairs to his apartment.

I gave his front door the same treatment: rammed the small screwdriver in the lock, hammered it hard with the heel of my hand and turned. As I pushed open the door and walked into the narrow, dark hallway, he was stepping out of his kitchen in his shorts, holding a mug of coffee and frowning. “What the…?”

I said, “Don’t worry, I have a warrant.”

He made a face like brain-ache and said, “Huh? Where?”

It was a stupid question. I smiled and said, “Here,” and smashed the heel of my hand into his face. His mug went flying and he staggered back against the doorjamb. Before he could recover, I grabbed the back of his head with my left hand and slammed the heel of my right into his nose. Then I hit him again in the mouth, and then I couldn’t stop and kept hammering at him till his face was a bloody mess. After that, I let him drop to the floor, knelt on his chest and spoke softly to him.

“You raped, tortured and murdered an innocent woman, the woman I loved. We were married just a few weeks and you tortured and killed her. I am not going to allow you to ruin the rest of my life, or my wife’s. I am done chasing you—almost.”

I’m not proud of what I did next, but I like to tell myself it was out of necessity, not revenge. Maybe I’ll never know. I stood and rammed my heel hard on his right knee, breaking it. His scream is something I will never forget. There was a human part of me that felt compassion, and that is the part of me I want to say is the real me. But there was another part, a diabolical side, that was in indescribable pain, and hungry for revenge. That part found satisfaction in his scream.

I went and thoroughly washed my hands and the sink. Then I called Harry.

“Morning, John. How are you this bright day?”

“Harry, listen, I came to talk to Johnson at his apartment. I found the door