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

He scowled at me and for a moment he looked like his old, cantankerous self. “If you are not going to charge me, this interview is over! Any further communication with me or my family will be through my attorney!”

The door opened and Dehan came in. He barreled toward her on unsteady legs and she held the door open for him to leave. She let it swing closed after him and looked at me. I pointed.

“That is what a guilty man looks like.”

She came and rested her ass on the table, looking down at me in the chair. “But guilty of what?”

I nodded. “That is the big question.”

“The mug is on its way to the lab. The boots should be there by now…”

I raised my thumb. “Jack is eliminated as a suspect. In any case, he had no motive. Akachukwu has an alibi, but in any case had no motive. Ed looks as guilty as hell, is probably guilty of raping and murdering Rosario, but has no motive for killing Sebastian!” I stood and paced the room. “Dehan, we are looking at this the wrong way. We are looking at it the wrong way and that is why we cannot see the motive.”

“So what is the right way, Stone?”

As she said it, her cell began to ring and the first glimmering of light began to filter into my brain.

Then she said, “Angela! Hi…! He is? That is good news. Where…? We’ll be there in half an hour.” She hung up. “Moses. Edgewater Park. Prentiss Avenue. She’s there with him now.”

“Let’s go.”

It wasn’t a long drive. We took the Bruckner Expressway and merged onto the Cross Bronx, came off onto 177th St, then crossed the Pennyfield Avenue Bridge into Edgewater Park. It was late afternoon, edging toward evening by the time we got there, and the shadows of the old, gabled houses were stretched long across the warm blacktop. Prentiss Avenue was a short road by New York standards, and was populated by an odd assortment of ancient pine trees and ramshackle houses, and some new red brick constructions. Others, like the one Angela had called us to, were older, faded, with paint peeling off the clapboard facades.

I parked and we climbed out into the gathering dusk. An outside staircase climbed the side of the cream and gray building up to a faded, weather-beaten door. Dehan climbed the stairs ahead of me and rang the bell. We saw a figure indistinctly in the window for a moment, and a couple of seconds later, the door opened and Angela stood looking at us. She didn’t say anything, but stepped back to let us in.

The place had all the feel of a fisherman’s cottage. The ceiling was low and wooden, the furniture ancient and threadbare. There was an iron wood-burner in the corner, and a small, propane cooker. Moses was standing in the middle of the floor, watching us. He was big, strongly built, with big hands and big feet, and a big head on a powerful neck and shoulders.

Angela stepped nervously ahead of us and gestured at him. “Detectives, this is my husband, Moses. Mo, honey, these are Detectives Stone and Dehan. They’re going to help us.” He studied us a moment longer, then stepped forward and held out his hand to Dehan.

“Ma’am.” They shook. Then he shook my hand, too. “Sir, won’t you please sit down? We can’t offer you much in the way of refreshment, but we have coffee.”

I shook my head. “We’d be very grateful to get started on this interview, Moses.” We all sat. Before I could ask him anything, he said, “I have to tell you that I am skeptical about what you say you’re going to do. I am not inclined to trust the police.”

Dehan answered. “I understand that, Moses. I’m sure Angela has told you that I might well have had the same feelings at one time. I hope we can change your mind. You want to tell us what’s going down between you and Akachukwu Oni?”

He took a moment to think. “Ours is not such a bad neighborhood, detectives. There are others that are much worse. It was bad at one time, but over the years it has improved. There are good people and good families living there. All over the Bronx you can see this change coming.” He shook his head. “People don’t want crime anymore. People are tired of living in fear.”

Angela reached out and took his hand. He went on.

“It was maybe two weeks ago, nearly three. I was coming home from work. Me and Angela have been talking about having children, making a family. I know all the families in my neighborhood, and all the kids. And I see this man, a big man, dangerous looking. He is with a couple of his friends, sitting on his car. It was a black BMW. New. And he is selling dope to some stupid young kids who are coming up to buy it from him.”

He stopped and looked at me a long while, then turned to Dehan. “Why are the cops allowing this man to do this, in broad daylight, in the middle of the street? I approached him, and I heard him telling these kids, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, that if they wanted crack, or anything else, he could get it for them. So I told the kids to get out of there, to go home, and that I was going to tell their parents about what they were doing. And him, I told him to get the hell out of my neighborhood, or I would put him and his friends in hospital.”

Dehan made a face. “That was a very dangerous thing to do.”

“If there had been cops walking a beat there, I would not have needed to take that risk.