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

I sighed and shook my head. “Save it for the jury, Ed. That’s horseshit and you know it.”

“It is not! She was the only woman I ever truly loved! How dare you use that language about her! She was smart, elegant, intelligent, sensitive! She was a real woman!” His eyes flashed over at the door behind me in a silent comparison with his wife, who sat beyond it. “God is my witness, I was not worthy of her…” There was no mistaking his sincerity, and another piece in the puzzle slotted into place in my mind.

“You really were, weren’t you…”

“Yes… I was, and I still am. I always will be.”

Dehan’s eyes were narrowed. Two and two were making five for her and she didn’t like it. She said, “If you were so in love with her, why did you rape Susanna Mackenzie?”

He sneered at her. “You stupid woman!”

I snapped, “Watch your mouth, counselor!”

“As if I would waste my time on that pretentious, middle-class, bleeding heart pseudo-socialist inverted snob!”

“Wow…” He turned to stare at me, like I’d said something important. I went on, “That’s some put down. A lot of contempt.”

He curled his lip. “It’s what she is.”

I nodded. “It’s interesting. You must have read this yourself, Ed, that rape is not a sexual crime. Because the motivation is to humiliate, to humble somebody. Is that how you feel about Sue Mackenzie?”

“Don’t be absurd! I don’t feel anything for that woman. She is a non-entity, a hanger-on, a groupie. Why Mateo ever married her is beyond me.”

Dehan said, “She is prepared to swear in court that you raped her. With the DNA evidence that you raped Rosario, that is going to be pretty compelling for a jury.”

He stared at her like he wanted to slap her. Suddenly he advanced on her, poking with his index finger, then on me, then on Dehan again, like he couldn’t make up his mind which of us to tackle. “Just think! Let me ask you something. You think you’re so damned smart, well just think! If I killed Rosario so she wouldn’t report me to the damned cops, why the hell did I not kill Susanne? You don’t make any sense!”

He had a point and it was something I had been asking myself for a while. It was one of the things that had driven me to the conclusion I had reached. Now my gut told me I was close to getting some hard evidence.

“OK, Ed, I’ll tell you what we are going to do. We’re going to go and get a coffee, and you are going to tell us the whole story, everything! Start bullshitting me and I will take you in and put you on trial. You understand me?”

He scowled at me resentfully. “Of course I understand you. I am not a moron.”

Five minutes later, we sat around a table in the café. Dehan and I waited while he stirred two packs of sugar into a double espresso. When he was done, he made an ugly face and shrugged.

“Susanne was my wife’s friend. Matt was a good man. We had been friends for a long time. We had similar ideas. He was more…” He made that ugly face again, that had something of contempt in it. “More idealistic. Forgive and forget socialism. He thought that education was the answer to everything.” He shrugged, lifted his cup with his baby finger stuck out and pursed his lips. He sipped noisily, then shrugged again, with only one shoulder. “Me, I think unforgiving litigation is the best lesson you can teach anybody. Nothing shapes society so well or so fast as litigation.”

I nodded once and sighed. “Can we move on from the lesson in social engineering?”

He made a dismissive noise like, “Yah!” and carried on. “Matt and me had a lot to talk about. We used to discuss national and international politics, but more than that, we were very involved in local politics, restoring the balance of power away from…” He jerked his head at me. “People like you, to a more representative range of the community.”

I asked him, “Did that include people like Mick Harragan?” He went quiet. “You’re not on a soap box now, Ed, and there is no jury for you to impress. I know who you are, you’re a jumped-up power-grabbing politico just like the people you profess to fight against, like Harragan. Now quit playacting and tell me about your relationship with Sue and with Rosario. So far, you are just confirming my belief that you raped them, and Mick got you off the hook.”

Dehan was looking antsy. She turned to me. “What are we doing here, Stone? OK, it’s a valid question, why’d he kill Rosario and not Sue? How about this? Rosario swore she’d report him to the cops, go over Mick’s head and make it stick. Sue was weak and didn’t want to upset the apple cart. Let’s get this son of a bitch down to the station, because if I have to listen to one more of his damned political speeches I swear…”

He raised both his hands. “OK, OK, OK…”

“Talk about a goddamn racist, misogynist…!”

“OK!”

She turned to stare at him. He made placating movements with his hands.

“OK, you made your point. Mary and Susanne were active in the community, in various ways, and they often ran into Rosario. Rosario was…” He shrugged. “Different. She was not like any woman I ever met. At first, she used to come over to visit Mary and Susanne, but her conversation, her curiosity, her hunger for knowledge and understanding…” He smiled and shook his head. “She was extraordinary. Matt and I started recommending books to her. She would read them and talk about them, intelligently! Soon Susanne and Mary’s conversation became boring for her.” He laughed. “She would join in with me