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

and bought two burgers, then walked slowly back up toward my car. Finally, she said, “I believe them.”

I spoke around a mouthful of meat, salad, ketchup and bun. “We can’t afford to believe them, Dehan. We have to believe the evidence—which, I grant you, right now is telling us nothing. But if they are telling the truth, it means somebody else killed Simon Martin.” I wiped my mouth with the once white paper napkin and said, “So, if not them, then who…?”

“I know. I know…”

I shrugged. “But I do agree with you, up to a point. We may have been on a wild goose chase. Maybe it is time we started looking a little farther afield…”

But even as I was saying it, I was only half believing myself. I climbed in behind the wheel and she got in beside me.

“When we get back,” she said, “I will have a look, see if there were any other burglaries or house invasions in the area at the time.”

I took White Plains Road north, cruising at a nice, steady pace, watching the early onset of autumn: the first hint of russet in the plane trees against a pale blue sky, the first jackets and scarves replacing the T-shirts on the street, the lengthening shadows beginning to stretch out across the cooling sunlight on the sidewalks. I watched, and tried not to think. Sometimes, when you don’t think, you see things clearer.

But Dehan had other ideas.

“Once, you told me I ought to think with my gut sometimes.”

I glanced at her. “I must have been hungry.”

“So here is what my gut is telling me right now. You want to hear?”

I nodded and kept watching the autumn.

“My gut tells me she was telling the truth about the insurance. You know why?”

“No.”

“It was a rhetorical question, Stone. Just keep driving and let me talk.”

“Okay.”

“Because Sylvie Martin is the kind of woman who is always going to look for a domineering, controlling man to fix her problems. She married Simon and gravitated to Paul Truelove…”

I pulled the corners of my mouth down and danced my head around in a ‘you could be onto something’ way.

“But!” She raised her index finger. “My gut also tells me that she remembers exactly what happened that night eighteen years ago.”

I nodded in a more conventional fashion. “My gut agrees with your gut.”

I turned onto Tremont, headed east.

“So,” she said, “let’s take baby steps. Let’s state the obvious, one small step at a time: If she remembers what happened, that means she knows who the killer is.”

“Almost certainly.”

She turned in her seat to face me. “Okay, you’re right. But then we have two options: either she knows, or she doesn’t know because she didn’t get a good look for one reason or another. Maybe he was wearing a balaclava, or it happened too fast and he had his back to her. But, if that is the case, then why the hell won’t she talk? The only reason she would deliberately pretend to have amnesia is to conceal the identity of the killer.”

I looked at her. “Yes, that is very solid reasoning.”

She shrugged and spread her hands. “I can’t think of another reason. Can you?”

“No. And I agree with you in your choice of words. You said ‘conceal’, not ‘protect.’” Then I sighed and shook my head. “But we are talking about intuition here, Dehan, which has practically no value. My gut tells me, as yours tells you, she is concealing the identity of the killer. It also tells me that she is not protecting him. How does that make sense? It doesn’t. And unless we get some compelling evidence, all we have is verbose guts.”

“Verbose guts?”

“You heard me right.”

I turned into Silver Street and headed up Eastchester under the railway bridge and finally turned left at Morris Park and right onto Seminole Avenue. All the way we were silent. Maybe we were both listening to our verbose guts.

We found Frank in the small office annexed to his lab. He rose as we walked in.

“I don’t know what you are hoping for, John. It is in the nature of these cold cases that the original investigating officer hadn’t much to go on.” He shrugged and smiled without much conviction. “That is why they went cold.”

“I know. But sometimes things get overlooked. I am interested in the wound on his body.”

“Why?”

I drew breath but Dehan smirked and said, “He’s going to say, ‘what is it about the wound that interests me?’” She grinned at me. “You were going to say that, weren’t you?” She turned back to Frank. “He has this theory about how ‘why’ is a bad question. It works, too. So here’s the thing. There are two stab wounds right through the sternum. That in itself is odd, right? Who stabs through the sternum? So is there anything else you can tell us about the wounds that are interesting or unusual? Because the nature of the wounds is about all we have got right now to tell us anything about the killer.”

We both stared at her. Frank blinked and said, “Okay. Come.”

He picked up the Martin file and led us toward a projector on a bench. He switched it on and slid a photograph of Simon Martin’s punctured chest into it. It magnified the image and he pointed at the edges of the wound with the tip of his pen.

“I have read Mioko’s notes and I agree with her conclusions. See how the lower edges of the puncture are smooth and taper into a kind of narrow ‘V’ shape? Well, look now at the upper edge. There the skin is irregular and torn in a jagged pattern. Also note how the sides of the wound, about half way up, are quite broad, giving it an elongated