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

“Believe it or not, Lenny, we didn’t come to see you because you’re black. We came to see you because you were the only person in the group who had decapitated somebody.”

“What?”

“Jack Connors was decapitated. And that last class was cancelled because somebody sent his head to Helena in a parcel, to her class. Somebody who knew she had classes there on that day, and would be there half an hour before the class started.”

His mouth sagged open. “Oh, man. That is fucked up. She was a sweet lady. I would not do that to her. She did not deserve that, man. No way.”

“So what were you doing that day?”

“I have no idea. I can’t remember what I was doing on that particular day five years ago. Nobody can remember somethin’ like that. But I would not do that to her. She didn’t deserve that.”

I nodded. “OK, so what were you driving at the time, Lenny?”

“Boy, you really out to frame me, huh?”

“No, Lenny. We are out to find the truth. And please remember that whatever you tell us, we will check and verify. If you didn’t kill Jack Connors, that’s good for you.”

He sighed heavily, then smiled at the memory. “I had a bright red 1960 Cadillac convertible, red leather seats, drinks cabinet in the back, man, you never seen nothin’ like that baby.”

“You ever own a white van?”

“A white van?” He scowled at me. “Do I look like a fuckin ’lectrician to you? Or a fuckin’ plumber? Car gives a man status. Car you choose says a lot about you. I always owned Caddies, since I was fourteen, when I bought my first wheels.”

I drummed my fingers on the table for a moment, feeling there was something unasked and unanswered, but unsure what it was. I looked at Dehan. She shrugged.

“OK, Lenny. That’s all for now…”

He made a gun out of his manacled hand and pointed it at me. “You should look at the other people in the class, man. If they knew the time she would be there, half an hour early, either they was stalking her, or they were in the class. That class was a big mix of people, man. I can’t remember them all, ’cause I wasn’t real interested in them. But like I said, they all had a story to tell. And they all loved her. We all did.”

Dehan narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “You’d send a decapitated head to the person you love?”

He looked momentarily mad. “No, Detective Dehan, I would not. But I can see how some people would, if they was in hell long enough; either to punish her for not loving them back, or as a sign that they had set her free.”

I stared at him for a long moment, then called the guard. As the door rattled and clanged, I met Lenny’s eye and said, “Thanks, Lenny. You’ve been very helpful.”

And we left.

Down in the parking lot, a north wind had suddenly risen and was gently bowing the trees in the nearby woods. As we approached the car, Dehan turned and held out her hands. “Let me drive.”

I threw her the keys. She snatched them from the air, unlocked the door and turned to face me.

“Stone, what did you take away from that?”

“That he loved her and has no alibi.”

“Seriously?”

“Uh-huh. Let’s go surprise Alornerk.”

“Boston?”

“I’ll phone him on the way, see where he is.”

NINE

Alornerk was not pleased to hear from us and questioned our authority to speak to him in Massachusetts when we were New York cops. I told him it was an unofficial visit and we were just trying to get a better understanding of the background to the case and what happened on the day of the murder. He didn’t like it, but agreed to see us that afternoon at five. It was going to be a five hour drive from Malone, so that suited us fine. For the first half hour, Dehan just drove and stared at the road ahead, while I went over in my mind everything that Lenny had told us. When I had gone over that a few times, I started going over the case from every angle, trying to fit everything everybody had said into a kind of 3D abstract puzzle.

I spoke my thoughts aloud and said to Dehan, “Let’s look at this from a different angle. Jack was taken and killed and decapitated in a very narrow window of time between one PM and five PM on that Thursday. Allow for the head to be boxed and taken to UPS and then delivered to the college and we are looking at a window between one and four PM, and that is generous. That is a three hour time frame in which the killer has to isolate Jack, snatch him, take him to a location where he can decapitate him, box up and send his head in time for it to reach Helena at college. So, what are our pool of suspects doing in that period of time, between one and four PM?”

She sighed loudly through her nose. “Penelope says she was hung over, which means she had no alibi. Grant Shaw threw us out before we got the chance to ask for his alibi, but he confirmed the wild party with Penelope on Wednesday night, and in any case made it clear that if he killed anyone, he had plenty of pros to do the job for him. Helena was having lunch with Alornerk and his European friends, and he was having lunch with her and his European friends.”

I scowled out at the passing trees in the exquisite springtime landscape. “So, so far the only people with alibis are Helena and Alornerk.”

“And then,”