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

in this that we don’t know about yet. Which I seriously doubt at this stage. So he sets off. What does he do? Does he get his car? Or does he walk? Whatever he does, in a very brief period of time he has been abducted. Now, Penelope’s apartment is about…” I made a rapid calculation in my head. “Three miles from Jack’s workplace. That’s a ten to twenty minute drive. But he never makes it. He never gets there. So somewhere along that route, within ten minutes or so of his leaving his office, he has been abducted. That means that whoever took him was right there, waiting for him to go.”

“That’s true.”

“But this is a very public place we are talking about, and nobody saw a struggle or a fight or anything of the sort. No witnesses were found who saw Jack being abducted, and we are talking about a strong man with a very aggressive personality. This is not a guy who is going to go quietly.”

“So he knew who took him.”

“Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Now, the rest of his task has to be performed rapidly and quietly and in time for the special delivery to be made punctually, in the Bronx.”

She put her fingertips to her forehead. “So, so, so…wait! Penelope might have picked him up! Jesus, Stone! You’re a genius! That’s it! Of course! You said he would never go quietly, but he did because it was Penelope who picked him up. She took him to her apartment. The most natural thing in the world. Once there, she used ketamine to knock him out. Probably lured him into the bath where the mess could be easily cleaned up, dosed him with ketamine, killed him, cut off his head and washed away all the blood, then parceled it up and sent the package. The message was, ‘You want him? You can have him!’ But how the hell do we prove it? How do we get forensics for that?”

I smiled at her. “We need the body. I doubt we’ll find it, and after so long it’s doubtful it would tell us much, but we should try and find it just in case. You never know. We also need that white van. That van is vital. Again, it’s a long shot but we may be able to piece together something from it. And finally the phone records from Penelope’s phone, and Jack and his company’s phones. We need that call that made Jack leave his office. That is key.”

She was silent for a bit, then said, “I get the call. The call is crucial, and the van. But I don’t really see why the body is that important. I really don’t see what the body could tell us after all this time.”

I held up two fingers. “Two possible sources of information, Dehan. The first would be things like, was the body dumped whole—minus the head—or dismembered? That would help us to decide whether it was a man or a woman. A strong man might bundle the body in his trunk and dump it whole somewhere. A woman lacks the physical strength for that, so she might dismember it first and take it away in parcels. Also, if it was dismembered, can we identify what kind of tool was used? If it was whole, are there ligature marks? Were the hands tied? Or had he been, as you suggested, in a bath?”

“OK, OK, yeah, I get it. What’s the other thing?”

“Well, there is the outside chance that we are barking up the wrong tree and this was a motiveless murder.”

“A motiveless murder…?”

I nodded. “Is there more than one decapitated body out there?”

“A serial killer? What on Earth would make you think that?”

“You said it reminded you of the lock up. I get the same impression. What if the head was sent to Helena, not as a message to her in particular, but a message to the whole world? What if his obsession was not Helena herself, but married women and married men of a particular type? Are we finding this so hard because we are looking for a murder with a motive, where the only motive was to kill?”

“You really think that?”

“No, not really, but I think it is an avenue we need to explore.”

“Because we haven’t got enough to be looking into.”

“We’ll ask the inspector to give us some help looking for similar murders in the New York area during a year either side of Jack’s murder. There can’t be that many deaths by decapitation.”

“You have something on your mind you are not sharing with me. You know it makes me mad when you do that.”

“Not at all. I am sharing with you everything that is on my mind. I am a reformed man, Dehan, you should know that: more caring, more sharing, more sensitive to my feminine side.”

“You’re a jerk.”

“See, that’s what I get for revealing my inner woman.”

“Take a hike. Asshole.” She smiled sidelong at me.

I said, “Dehan, please promise me something.”

“What?”

“Never get in touch with your inner man.”

“You done?”

“No. Especially if he has a big kind of Mexican mustache.”

“Now are you done?”

“No. And hairy armpits. I think that could be damaging to the inner harmony of our inner relationship.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything you are not sharing with me besides your inner asshole?”

“No, seriously, Dehan. I don’t think this is a serial killer, but I do think that we should cover that base and explore the possibility of other decapitated bodies.”

“Why?”

I chuckled. “You mean what do I hope to find?”

“Yes, OK, the more closed question. What do you hope to find in such a search?”

I grinned at her. “Decapitated bodies.”

“You are such a pain…”

“Do you mean, what would prompt me to search for further decapitated bodies?”

She