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

I waited. When he didn’t say anything, I said, “I’m giving you the opportunity to fill out the statement you already gave us. You must be aware, Paul, that all the bits you left out cast you in a pretty bad light right now.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he blew out. It was a very eloquent gesture. He opened his eyes and stared for a long time at Dehan. “You would not believe how sick I am of hearing everybody talk about what a great guy Danny was. You know? I loved that guy. Seriously. I loved him more than a brother. Especially before…”

He stopped dead.

Dehan said, “Before what?”

“OK, I’ll say it. Before Jane came on the scene.” He sighed again. “I was pretty serious about her. I was ready to marry her. What is it with people, huh?” He looked at me as though I might have an answer to his unspoken question. “We never fall in love with the people who are good for us. You noticed that? We always fall in love with the people who are going to hurt us. I knew! I knew she was in love with Danny. But she couldn’t have him, because Danny was in love with fuckin’…” He made a gesture with his open hand, like he was pointing at some imaginary TV screen. “Dana Scully! That was his ideal woman. And…” He turned to Dehan. “Forgive me if I am sexist, and maybe you are completely different, but in my experience, women cannot resist a guy who is unattainable. And Danny—he was straight, he had his biological needs, sex was fun, but he was one hundred percent emotionally unobtainable! That was it. Do not go any deeper than that! And every damn woman he knew wanted to have a ride in his damned van. You know he had this special van where he screwed chicks, right? Sorry.”

He made a fist and softly pounded the table. “I shouldn’t talk about him like that. He was my friend and I swear to God I loved him like a brother. But he was a womanizer. That’s God’s truth.” He crossed himself and kissed his thumb. “It’s God’s truth. Other men are womanizers and they are obsessed with women. Not him. He didn’t even try. He didn’t even know. It was just like, ‘Who am I gonna fuck tonight?’ And there would be three or four chicks all waiting in line in case he chose them. You know? And in the end it just got, boring. I got bored. I got tired of always being in his fucking shadow.”

Dehan asked, “So if she was in love with him…”

He spread his hands, like it was obvious. “She couldn’t have him, so she took me. I was his best friend. Second best. You can’t afford the Mercedes S class so you buy the A class. You can’t afford an apartment on Madison Avenue, but you buy one in a cheaper part of Manhattan. I was his best friend. She couldn’t have him, so she took me instead.”

“That’s pretty harsh.”

“It’s also true.”

“Must have made you mad.”

“Yeah!” He flopped back in his chair. “Yeah, it made me mad. It made me mad at her and it made me mad at him. I was mad at her for being a cheap hypocrite whose feelings…whose love, was so fuckin’ shallow, you know what I’m saying? Was so fuckin’ shallow she didn’t care who she was giving it to. Who was so lacking in compassion and empathy, that she didn’t care what it did to me that she was gonna screw my best friend, just so long as she got what she wanted.”

Dehan frowned and raised an eyebrow. “How do you know she was going to screw him?”

“C’mon! I’m not stupid! As soon as Don tells Jasmine she’s not going to the glade, Jane is all over Danny like a fuckin’ rash: ‘Let’s you and me go! We can’t let this opportunity go! It’s too good! Let’s you and me go, Danny!’” He shrugged. “What are they gonna do up there in the glade? Count the fuckin’ stars?”

I nodded. “But Don put a stop to that. He was already concerned, even back then, about the cases of human mutilation.”

“Yeah. He said we all go or nobody goes. As it turned out, he was right. But I had already made up my mind by then, I was through with Jane.”

“What happened next, Paul?”

He thought for a bit before answering. “I let Jane know I was mad. I let Danny know too. I didn’t care any more if she screwed Danny or not, but I was damned sure I was going to break up with her before she did. She was not going to screw another guy while she was my girlfriend. You know what I am saying? You don’t do that. That is a deep lack of respect for your partner. So we slept three or four hours, till just after dawn, and went back to Don’s place.”

“But things continued to get worse with you, Jane and Danny.”

He shrugged. “Danny knew something was wrong, and he was kind of backing away from Jane a bit. But at the same time, he wasn’t really interested. He had no time for that problem. He was buzzing with what we had seen that night. He was real curious about the signals we had picked up. Him and Don, they were convinced that we had hard evidence of the presence of alien ships in Earth’s atmosphere. What he did not need was Jane causing problems in the group.”

I leaned back in my chair, trying to visualize the scene. “How was Don taking all this?”

He smiled. “He was oblivious, man. He had no idea. Him and Danny.” He shook his head. “They lived in a different world, on