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

“No, I saw him yesterday. He was goin’ out when you was comin’ in. But I ain’t seen him today.”

“Call me on my phone if he comes in, will you?”

“Can I call you on your phone if he doesn’t?”

“No.”

I met Dehan coming out of the detectives’ room. “Nobody’s seen him since yesterday. I asked Pete, his partner. He said he hasn’t seen him since yesterday. He’s called him a few times, but his phone is switched off. He said he wasn’t feeling so good last night. I didn’t want to push.”

I nodded. “Let’s go to his house.”

We pulled our coats over our heads and ran through the downpour to the Jag. We clambered in and slammed the doors. I backed out, then headed at a snail’s pace, with my lights on, down Storey Avenue to Soundview, where I turned right.

Lenny’s house was in Castle Hill, on the Avenue. It should have been a five minute drive, but it took all of fifteen with the heavy traffic and the rain, and we finally pulled up outside his house at one PM. His white Jeep was in the driveway, alongside a gray Toyota. I parked across the drive, so he couldn’t leave, and then we climbed out and made a run for the front door.

His was one of a row of ugly, red brick monoliths set in concrete front and back yards behind a white steel railing. The windows didn’t invite you in so much as scowl at you from forbidding walls. Dehan leaned on the bell and after a moment, the door was yanked open by a woman in her early forties with blonde hair, a tragic mouth and weeping eyes that first showed hope, and then despair.

“Oh, my God!” she said. “Are you from the precinct? Are you here about Lenny?”

Dehan said, “Can we come in? It’s raining…” and squeezed past the woman. She stood back and I pushed in too.

She was staring up into my face with her hands half reaching for my lapels. I said, “Are you Lenny’s wife? What’s happened?”

She shook her head in rapid jerks. “I don’t know! I thought you knew! I don’t know what’s happened to him.” Now she grabbed my lapel and pulled herself toward me, staring up into my face with half crazy eyes and smudged mascara. “His car is here! His phone is switched off. Pete called me asking where he was. I came home. There’s nothing, just the note.”

“What note, Mrs. Davis?”

“On his computer.”

“Show me the note, and tell us, step by step, everything that happened since last night.”

Her whole body was trembling. “You don’t know then? You don’t know where he is?”

I shook my head and spoke quietly. “No, but we are going to find him. Where is the note? Show it to me.”

Dehan stepped up, put her arms around her and the woman collapsed against Dehan’s shoulder, sobbing convulsively.

We were in a small, carpeted hallway with white skirting boards and white walls. A door gave on to a small living room that was unremarkable. I leaned in and looked around for a PC, but didn’t find one.

A narrow staircase with white banisters climbed to an upper floor, and beyond Dehan and Mrs. Davis, I could see a door to a kitchen with mock parquet flooring. I squeezed past them and went to the kitchen. The door to the backyard was open and the rain was making a loud, thundering roar on the concrete, spattering water onto the floor. I closed the door and looked around: a large fridge covered in notes and magnets, a calendar, an open dishwasher beside a washing machine, a draining rack with a cup, a small plate, a large plate and a butter knife, a steak knife and a fork. A pine table occupied the center of the floor, with four matching pine chairs. On it there was a laptop, closed. On top of the laptop there was a note.

I sat, pulled on my latex gloves and picked up the note.

Baby, I am so sorry, I don’t know where to start.

I have done something very, very stupid, and I have caused so many problems for you and for the kids, just through my own selfishness and vanity. If I could go back into the past and change what I have done I would. If there were anything on Earth I could do to change my mistakes, please believe me baby, I would. The last thing I ever wanted in this life was to cause harm or unhappiness to you and our beautiful girls.

I can’t explain to you what has happened, or what I have done. There just isn’t time. I have to go away. Please believe me, I would not do this if I did not have to. But I have no choice. It has to be this way.

Kiss the girls for me one last time, because I will probably never see any of you again. I love you hunny. Please believe that I always have and I always will.

Lenny

I bagged it and returned to the hall. Dehan and Mrs. Davis had moved into the living room and were sitting on a white leather sofa. I sat in a matching chair with my back to the window. The double-glazing blocked out the sound of the rain, but somewhere I could hear the splatter of water falling from guttering onto concrete.

She had stopped convulsing, and her breathing, though shaky, had come under control. Dehan was stroking her back.

I said: “Mrs. Davis, have you any idea what this note is about?”

She was shaking her head before I had finished the question. “I thought you would know, when you turned up…”

“How was Lenny when he got home last night?”

She frowned and blinked a lot. “He was kind of, hyper.” She turned to face Dehan