Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [readnow TXT] 📗

break in and kill Moses, but to his surprise he sees the Toyota arrive and park. As you demonstrated yourself that morning, the visibility was shit. He can’t see through the windshield, but he has no reason to believe that there is anybody else but Moses and Angela in the car. He has no beef with Angela. So he gets out of his vehicle, he walks over, empties his magazine through the window. Exactly as you said, he does not go and finish Angela because he does not care about her. As far as he is concerned, he has killed Moses. He goes back to his car and leaves.”

“So, how…”

She raised a hand. “Wait! I’m on a roll. He hears through the Bronx grapevine that the two people shot that morning on Bryant Avenue were two medical students, and not Moses and Angela. Maybe he hears also that Moses has vamoosed.”

“Vamoosed.”

“Yeah. So he goes back, mad, crazy, and assaults her, asking her where Moses is. She screams the house down. He runs. We arrive. QED. I rest my case.”

I took a deep breath, pulled off half my beer, and set the glass down carefully on the ring it had left on the table. Dehan flopped back in her chair and spread her hands.

“Come on, Stone, it covers everything!”

The pizzas arrived. Emilio wished us buon appetito and left us to it. I folded a slice of pizza, bit it, and chewed, thinking carefully. After a bit, I nodded.

“You’re right. It covers everything, it is simple and it is elegant.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You just know, you just know there is a ‘but’ coming.”

I smiled. “It is your own but, so to speak.”

“The sweet one you mentioned in the elevator?”

I smiled. “The very same.” I stuffed the crust in my mouth and spoke. “Whamph abou Wosawio?” I swallowed and drank beer while she watched me, then repeated, “What about Rosario?”

She looked out the window and shook her head. “Mother….”

I spread my hands. “There is something missing, Dehan. I think you’re right. I think you are right in practically everything you said. But there is one, small detail, one small thing where it is different. I don’t know what it is. Not yet. But….” I paused, stared out at the Jag, watched the traffic pass, the people on the sidewalk, tried to think what that ‘but’ led to.

“What? But what?”

I looked her in the eye. “Whoever killed Sebastian, also killed Rosario. And Mr. X did not kill Rosario.”

She stared at me a long time. “I am ninety-nine percent certain that Ed Irizarry killed Rosario.”

I thought about it, then shrugged and folded another piece of pizza. “Then, if you’re right, Ed Irizarry killed Sebastian.”

“The boy he thought was leading his own son astray.”

I bit, chewed, shrugged and nodded.

She went on, “The son of the woman he raped and murdered. The connection is there.”

I smiled. “Yeah, the connection is there. All that’s missing are the facts and the evidence. And, while we’re at it, a motive.”

We ate in silence for a while, thinking. Then Dehan’s phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket, stuck it to her ear and said, “Yumph?” She listened for a bit, then swallowed and said, “Wait!” She laid out a paper napkin and made hand gestures at me to give her my pen. I did and she made a note on the napkin. Then she said, “How do you spell that? A-K-A-C-H-U-K-W-U, Akachukwu. OK. Put out an APB on him, will you? Thanks.” She hung up, looked at me. “The bimmer, registered to one Akachukwu Oni, a Nigerian national living in New York with a rap sheet as long as…”

“An elephant’s trunk?”

“That is probably racist.”

“Probably. What kind of rap sheet?”

“Trafficking mainly, drugs, guns, prostitution, but also assault and assault with a deadly weapon. Many of the charges are from Nigeria, where it seems he was let off for no discernible reason. Here he’s been charged several times but always got off when witnesses failed to show, or changed their testimony before the trial.”

I nodded. “Good. We are getting somewhere. Let’s go talk to this Akachukwu.”

Dehan stuffed a piece of pizza in her mouth and said, “Apparently it means Hand of God.”

I drained my beer. “Do you know what Carmen means?”

She made a face and shook her head.

“It means ‘Vineyard of the Gods.’ It might also mean ‘Poem,’ and is the origin of the English word, charm.”

She raised her eyebrows, said, “Huh,” then frowned at me. “You know this why?”

I stood. “I looked it up. You got an address for the Hand of God?”

“Yeah. It’s an apartment over the Lotus Garden, a Chinese restaurant on the corner of Randall Avenue and Bryant. Two gets you twenty he isn’t there and never has been.”

“You’re probably right, but it’s a place to start. Let’s go.”

We stepped out into the street. I stopped, with my car keys in my hand, and looked up at the vast, blue sky. “There is,” I said, “No apparent connection between Akachukwu, and Ed Irizarry.” I looked at Dehan, who was leaning against my car, waiting. “And there should be, Little Grasshopper. There should be.”

We went to his apartment. The street door to the stairs was locked up and the windows showed no signs of life. We asked in the Chinese restaurant under the apartment and the owner told us nobody lived up there, she used it as a storeroom. I had been wrong. It wasn’t a place to start. It was a dead end, and all we could do was wait: wait for a patrol car to spot either the BMW or Akachukwu, wait for the lab to work through the forensic evidence, wait and hope that Luis would regain consciousness.

Not for the first time, Dehan spoke