Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [story read aloud .txt] 📗

stairs, then pushed his way out into the rain. As we climbed, Dehan was staring at the steps like she was trying to read Chinese algebra. “Hang around and I’ll put you up to speed? Remind me why we’re going to see the inspector? Isn’t it because we suspect the guy you just told to hang around and you’d put him up to speed…? Have I missed something? Did I blink?”

I smiled sweetly at her. “Apparently you did.”

I knocked on the inspector’s door.

“Come!”

I pushed open the door and Dehan went in ahead of me. Deputy Inspector John Newman was standing by the window, putting on his coat. “Ah, Dehan and Stone, you just caught me. I was on my way home. My wife is making lasagna tonight, with fresh, home made pasta, and I am charged with getting some wine on the way home. I must not be late. How can I help you? What a frightful night, isn’t it?”

“We won’t keep you, sir, but there are one or two points that have come up in the Celeste Reynolds investigation which suggest pretty strongly that the investigating officer at the time behaved, at the very least, inappropriately.”

“Oh, Lord.” He frowned and rested his backside on the edge of his desk. He pointed at the big Tupperware box I was holding with some difficulty. “What’s this?”

Dehan said, “It’s Celeste’s laptop. We haven’t examined it yet, sir. The reason we are here is that the original investigating officer on this case, Detective Leonard Davis, was a friend of the victim’s family. The family are, to put it mildly, sir, dysfunctional. We have a number of possible suspects for the murder…”

He looked surprised. “Already?”

I sighed. “That is kind of our point, sir.”

Dehan plowed on. “It looks as though Detective Davis may have suppressed evidence in order to protect his friend, Celeste’s father…”

He frowned. “Protect him from what?”

“From the truth, sir, that his son might have killed his daughter.”

“Good Heavens! You have stirred up this much trouble in just twenty-four hours? I am not sure if you two are my greatest asset or my greatest liability! What makes you think this? Please, make it brief. I must get home.”

I said, “The briefest look at the case immediately throws up the need to examine Celeste’s phone records. I assumed that Detective Davis had requested those records back in the day, but they were not in the file. I asked him about them. At first he said he had no idea where they were, but then after I insisted, he said he would look at home. He came back next day, sir, with one page, saying that was all he’d requested. But it was a printout from an email that was over one hundred and eighty pages long. That’s six months of records.”

He sighed and looked at his shoes. “So he had requested six months of records, removed the records from evidence and only showed you one page.”

“Yes, sir. That page shows that in the short while before her death, she received calls from the landline at her home, her boyfriend’s cell and a burner cell. We have reason to believe that the burner belongs to somebody called, or using the name, Rod, and that she was having an affair with him.”

“Can’t you get another copy from the phone company?”

“That company is Verizon. They only hold records for a year, sir.”

He sighed again. “And you think this Rod is Lenny, Detective Davis.”

“That’s putting it a little strong, sir, but the possibility exists. He neglected to follow up witnesses, he also neglected to question Celeste’s boyfriend, failed to get this information regarding Rod, and he neglected to conduct a thorough search of Celeste’s bedroom, telling her father that it wasn’t necessary. I’ve had the crime scene team go over the room. There is a chance we may get fingerprints and DNA from her bed.”

“Oh, Lord… This is a nightmare.”

“Sir.” I hesitated a moment. “I don’t want to do anything about this just yet.”

A flicker of hope in his eyes was rapidly replaced by a shadow of worry. “You don’t? Why?”

“We don’t know yet what his involvement is. It may have been a simple, misguided desire to protect Sean Reynolds from yet another family disaster, or it may have been something considerably more serious than that. I’d like to get the results from the lab, and see what we can get from her emails before taking any action. It should shed more light on what Lenny’s involvement was, and give us a better idea of how to proceed.”

He thought about it for a while, still staring at the floor. “Does he suspect that you are, so to speak, onto him?”

It was Dehan who answered. “Yeah. He was pretty freaked out at the fact that we had found her computer, and that we were taking in her bedding for DNA testing.”

He studied her a moment before saying, “I can’t put a tail on him without alerting the IAB. Plus it would cause a lot of resentment among the troops.”

I smiled. “He’d spot it anyway, sir.” I frowned and puffed out my cheeks. “I’ve known Lenny a long time, we’re not friends, I don’t particularly like him, but he’s a good policeman. It’s a difficult call to make, sir, and I might well be wrong, but I can’t see Lenny being guilty of anything more serious than…” I spread my hands, “Extremely poor judgment. What I mean to say with that, is—I seriously doubt he will do a runner. What is much more likely, I think, is that he will come and talk to you.”

He nodded, like that made a lot of sense. Then he looked up at me and nodded again. “Yes, thank you, John. I hope you’re right. Either way, it is hard to see a good outcome to