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

a different plane.” He shrugged. “We packed up and went back to Don’s place. But Jane wouldn’t let up. Right away, even over breakfast, all her conversation is for Danny. She’s making comments about his van, kind of teasing him, messing with him. It was humiliating.”

Dehan shook her head, like she would not tolerate something like that. “I can’t imagine how that made you feel.”

He looked her straight in the eye. “I’ll tell you how it made me feel. It made me feel like killing her. Taking my katana and cutting her fucking head off.”

Thirteen

There was a heavy silence in the interrogation room. After a moment, Dehan said to him, “Paul, are you aware that the statement you just made incriminates you and makes you a suspect in our investigation?”

He smiled down at his hand and gave a soft snort. After a moment, he raised an eyebrow at her. “What? You’re telling me you hadn’t already decided I was jealous and had a motive for killing Danny? I’m not stupid, Detective Dehan. I know why you asked me to come in this morning.” He shook his head. “In my moments of rage, I wanted to kill Jane for lying to me, for pretending to love me when she didn’t, for putting me in the way of all that pain and disappointment when, if she had just been honest from the start, it would not have been necessary. I did, I wanted to kill her for that. But Danny?” He shrugged. “Danny, I wanted to give him two good smacks around the head and tell him to wake the fuck up! Stop fuckin’ flirting with every fuckin’ woman you meet, man! He doesn’t realize it, but when he is playing his little games, to him it’s funny, but he is hurting people! That’s not nice. It’s not respectful. I wanted to slap him around the head, but I did not want to kill him.” He gave a small, private laugh. “Bottom line, he meant more to me than she did. The fuckin’ son of a bitch.”

I studied him through narrowed eyes, trying to see if he was a good actor or if he was being honest. I decided I couldn’t tell and said, “So what happened next?”

“What happened next? It was one of the longest days of my life. Don was a very different kind of man back then. He was a really nice guy. He was open, generous, polite…” He looked at me and laughed a big laugh, pointing at me. “You wouldn’t believe it, huh? He’s a real fuckin’ grouch now. He reminds me of that guy on the Muppets.” He turned to Dehan. His laughter was infectious. “You know the one? He lives in a trash can. Don reminds me of him. But he didn’t used to be like that. He was a nice guy and he had been looking forward to that party. We’d brought beer, meat to barbeque, wine.” He shook his head. “The truth is most people were pretty freaked out by what had happened. But it’s also true that Jane…” He shrugged. “And, the truth be told, Danny too, they were bringin’ the mood down. It was hard to ignore them, and everybody was feeling bad for me and trying not to show it. The whole thing was embarrassing.”

I scratched my chin. “So, if I am hearing you right, by the afternoon Danny had started to join in with Jane.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I have to admit that. He didn’t mean anything by it. But by the afternoon he was playing along, flirting back. I had taken Jane aside and asked her to have the minimum respect of not humiliating me in front of all my friends, you know? But she just dismissed me and told me to get a life, or words to that effect. So I thought, yeah. She’s right. You know? Never a truer word spoken. It was time for me to get a life, a life without her in it. Make room for a woman who would love and like me, and respect me—not some other guy.

“So right there, in front of everybody, I went up to Danny and I pointed at him and I said, ‘I am real mad at you. This is not how you treat a friend. I would never, never, do this to you. And Monday, you and me are gonna talk about this!’ Then I turned to her and I said, ‘I’m going home, I brought you in my car, so I will take you home in my car if you want me to. Otherwise you can go in Danny’s fuckin’ fuck-mobile!’ And I saw how she looked at him, like asking, you know, ‘Can I come home with you?’ But Danny was real upset. Our friendship meant a lot to both of us, and he was not happy. Fuckin’ Jane was nothing to him. So he frowns at me and says, ‘I don’t know what you’re mad about, bro…’”

He stopped suddenly and I could see tears in his eyes. His jaw muscles were bunching and when he spoke again he sounded like he had a bad cold. “He says, ‘I don’t know what I’ve done, Paul, but whatever it is, I’m sorry, man. We can talk now.’ He said that, ‘We can talk now, we go outside and we can talk this through.’ But I was too mad and I said I was leaving. I just wanted to break up with Jane and get it over with. So he looks at her and frowns and shakes his head. She asks him, outright, ‘You want me to stay?’ and he looks at her like she’s crazy, and he says, ‘No! He’s your boyfriend. Go with him and sort it out!’”

Dehan asked, “So everybody left about the same time?”

“I guess. Danny said he was staying for a bit to speak with Paul.