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

With seven rounds in the magazine.” She nodded, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Dehan put her hand over her eyes, then thump her forehead with the heel of her hand. I went on. “You went up there intending to get Sebastian and bring him home. At least, I’m willing to guess that’s what you told yourself. I’m guessing you sat in the car for a bit, looking at the house. There was some light in the window, but you were scared to see what you’d find if you went in. It must have been like a weird reenactment of that time fifteen years earlier, when you’d sat there, outside that same house, waiting for Ed to come out.”

She heaved a big, deep, shuddering sigh. “I wasn’t sure at times whether it was now or then. It was so dark. It was like the whole world had turned dark. I was dark inside. I wanted to go home!” She stared me in the face. “I really did. I wanted to turn around and go home.” She shook her head. “But she had my Sebastian. And if I went home, he wouldn’t be there. I’d be on my own.”

“Sure. I understand. So when you saw her car pull up, that was the solution. You didn’t need to go inside. You could kill her right there and then, and collect Sebastian.”

She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t her. When I started shooting through the window, I saw that it was a man. Two men. I couldn’t see their faces. I knew it wasn’t her, but I couldn’t stop shooting. It was like my hands were shooting on their own. There was so much noise. My head was just full of horrible noise. And when the gun stopped, I knew I had to leave. I knew Angela was still alive. So I got in the car and went home, to wait for Sebastian…”

We were all quiet for a while. Ed was staring down at the grass. His eyes were huge and his jaw was slack. Sue was fiddling with her fingers. She looked as though she might start crying. Somewhere I noticed a bird was singing. I looked up. The dome of the sky was vast and very blue, but also a little cold and uninvolved.

“So, you had been phoning the hospital regularly to check on Luis’ condition.” She nodded. “And when he came out of the coma, you went there to see him. I guess chances were even that Angela would go too, and one way or another, sooner or later, you would find out where she was.”

She nodded again. “I couldn’t live. I couldn’t live knowing that she was still alive, breathing, loving. That family, those two women, have robbed me of everything I have ever loved. I needed to kill her.” She looked me in the eye. “And when I did, when I stood over her, and emptied the gun into her, it felt good.”

A little earlier, I had noticed Dehan step into the kitchen with her cell phone in her hand, and now I could hear sirens in the distance, but growing closer. Susanne Mackenzie heard them, too. She stared at me for a long moment, then she said, “Will you please kill me? Or let Ed kill me? Please?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Susanne. That is the whole point. It just isn’t that easy.”

Epilogue

The rest of the day was a blur of administrative grind, statements, and paperwork. At eight o’clock that evening, I leaned back in my chair, making each of my vertebrae crack. I yawned, switched off my laptop, and stared at Dehan across the desk. She nodded, stretched gracefully, and killed her computer, too.

She flopped back in her chair and smiled at me. “How did you know? It wasn’t something you could have known.”

I stood and grabbed my jacket. “Nobody had a motive, Dehan. Therefore, the boys were not the target. If the boys were not the target, but they were in Angela’s car, it followed that Angela was the target.”

She sighed and threw her hands in the air. “Sure! You put it like that and it’s obvious! But why Susanne?”

I grabbed her jacket and held it open for her to climb into. She raised an eyebrow but stood and obliged. As she slipped in her arms, I said, “There were a couple of things. For a start, I didn’t buy the rape scenario. It seemed out of character to me that a woman like Susanne would not report a rape. It seemed to be contrary in every way to everything she stood for. Then, when Ed was confronted with the allegation, he didn’t do his usual bluster and fire and brimstone act. He just dismissed it as absurd. You yourself said that he was surprisingly believable. So then I put two and two together.”

We stepped out into the balmy June evening. Above our heads, stars were beginning to glimmer in a turquoise sky. We climbed into the Jag, lowered the windows, and headed toward Morris Park. I was waiting for her to ask me where the hell I thought I was going, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “You put two and two together, and…”

I shrugged. “OK, the assumption was that Rosario was raped and murdered. But then it turned out that Ed had had sex with Rosario, but it was consensual. That means that immediately after they had sex, somebody murdered her… That’s pretty odd. And here’s Susanne telling us she was raped by Ed. It began to look to me awfully like she was trying to frame him for Rosario’s death. Once I saw that, everything else started to fall into place.”

She frowned. “Wait a minute… She accuses Ed of raping her when he hadn’t, so that we would think of him as a rapist in connection with Rosario…”