Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

where the body was killed, is washed away into the soil. In the morning we are left with the mystery of an alien murder. After that, leave it to Don’s conscience to build up the mythology surrounding the case. What am I?”

“That is very clever. You are very clever.”

“Tell me again, but use another word, not clever. What am I?”

“Smart. You are very…”

“Brilliant! I am brilliant! Me Holmes, you Watson. Suck it up, Stone, man. Ha!”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “It is a very compelling theory, my dear Dehan. How do we prove it?”

She thought for a moment, looking up at the leaves on the London plan trees.

“After twenty years, physical and forensic evidence is out of the question. So we haul Paul in, present him with what Jane has told us, and scare him into confessing.”

Ten

But Paul was out of town till the next day.

I called Frank at the ME’s and asked him to dig out the ME’s report on the case, which he did and emailed it over. I printed two copies and gave one to Dehan. We read it in detail and found it contained nothing we didn’t already know. That night, and much of the next day, we spent reading Donald Kirkpatrick’s book, Heaven’s Fire. It was well written and extremely persuasive.

It was structured in two parts. The first part of the book dealt with the question of UFOs generally and made a strong case that there was an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. It argued that since the end of the World War II, western governments had been engaged in a cover up, concealing the truth about the presence of ET on Earth. The reason for the cover up was not clear, and he admitted that all he had was speculation. But much of his speculation was based on strong evidence made some kind of sense: avoiding mass panic, using technology recovered from Roswell against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and a more farfetched theory involving a secret war with the aliens.

He didn’t prove his case, he left many questions unanswered, but he made a well-reasoned, compelling argument with lots of circumstantial evidence.

The second part of the book dealt with Danny’s murder. It set out to prove, in his own words, that Danny had been ‘deliberately killed by an alien, extraterrestrial presence’. He did not start, as I had expected him to, with the events of the two days leading up to Danny’s death. Instead, he went into a detailed analysis of the many cases of cattle mutilation in the Midwest since the 1970s. It did not agree, in any way, with what Bernie had told me.

According to Kirkpatrick, Senator Floyd K. Haskell had asked the FBI for help, back in 1975, because of growing public concern about well over a hundred mutilations that had taken place in Colorado alone. But by 1979, the FBI had reported that there had been an estimated eight thousand mutilations in Colorado, causing somewhere in the region of one million dollars worth of damage.

The mutilations were all very similar. The incisions were always surgical in nature, clean and precise. In most cases the animals were drained of blood, but there was never any sign of blood in the immediate area of the slaughter.

One of the features that Kirkpatrick pointed to as evidence of ET was the speed with which some of the mutilations were carried out. To illustrate this, he related a case reported by the NIDS of two ranchers in Utah, in 1997, who were tagging their cattle. Having tagged a particular animal, they continued working, just three hundred yards away. Forty-five minutes later, they found the calf completely eviscerated, with all its internal organs missing: no blood, no entrails, no tracks,  and as in all the other cases, there were no tracks or footprints around the site of the mutilated animal. It was as though the attackers had approached from the air.

He detailed many similar cases. In the end, the FBI had concluded their investigation and admitted they could not explain how the animals were killed, or why they were killed in that particular way. Local law enforcement continued to investigate, but with no results.

He then went on to list a number of human deaths and mutilations which were very similar in character to the cattle mutilations. These included an unidentified Brazilian man in Guarapiranga who had had all his internal organs removed, along with his lips, eyes, ears and tongue. He had not bled, and his body had shown no signs of decay after seventy-two hours of his death. The coroner’s report was included in the book, with its official seal.

Other cases were listed, like the case of USAF Sergeant Jonathan Lovette and Major Bill Cunningham, in which the major allegedly witnessed the sergeant being abducted by a UFO in the desert near the Holloman Airbase. His body turned up three days later, expertly exsanguinated and eviscerated. Just like the cows in the Midwest. Just like the man at Guarapiranga.

By six in the evening, I had not yet come to Danny’s death, or the events of that weekend. I dropped the book on the desk and looked at Dehan. She was engrossed in her copy, frowning hard. Without looking at me, she said, “What?”

“Time to go.”

She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Let me finish this page.”

I stood and put my jacket on. “Come on, Carmencita, I’ll take you to see the real thing.”

She sighed, put a marker in the page, and stood.

Outside it was still light, but there was a copper quality to the air, the shadows were long, and the birds sounded sleepy. As we climbed into the Jag, she said, “Is this for real, Stone? He is making a damn good case. I can see why a lot of people believe him.