Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [readnow TXT] 📗

“I can see her colluding with Paul, if she wanted to get rid of her husband, or if she really wanted to protect Humberto. But I can’t see her witnessing Humberto murder Simon, and not telling Paul. What does she gain by doing that? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I agree.”

“Also, Humberto’s account, such as it is. It’s all… external.”

She frowned at me, like I was crazy. “External? What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to put my finger on it but, the way he describes it—it’s all in his crazy language—but when he talks about it, I get the feeling he is a witness, not a participant. It’s like he was outside looking through the window.”

She gave a single nod. “And then there are the knives.”

“Yes,” I said. “Then there are the knives. How did that happen? Where did he get a bowie knife from? And, what did he do? Creep over that evening, spy on her, rush in when Simon got rough with Sylvie, stab him, and then put the knife in a plastic bag to keep it with his treasure? What would make him do that?”

“And if it’s some kind of fetish, why not do it with the other knife? More to the point, if he still had the bowie knife, why did he use a different knife in the first place?”

“Exactly.” I sighed again and shook my head. “None of these questions is quite enough to put a hole in a prosecution, Dehan, but they make me damned uncomfortable. I want them answered.” I turned onto Bruckner Boulevard. “You know? I think I’d like to talk to Mary, on her own, about her brother’s murder.”

She was about to answer when her phone rang. She looked at the screen. I caught the name, Saul.

She answered, “Hey, I’m at work.” She was silent for a bit. Then, “Okay, seven. Yeah. You too.”

She hung up.

I didn’t finish and she didn’t ask what I was going to say. Five minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot, pulled out my phone and called Sylvie’s number. It rang three times before she answered.

“Mrs. Martin, this is Detective Stone. Could I talk to Mary, please?”

Sixteen

I opened the door, but before I got out, Dehan said, “Stone, are you mad at me?”

Cold, wet air crept in around my ankles, along with the splash and hiss of traffic in the rain. I half closed the door again.

“No, Dehan. I kind of thought you were mad at me for some reason. But, to be perfectly honest, we haven’t got time for this kind of personal angst right now.”

Damp streets can produce a particularly depressing kind of echo, as though the echo itself were cold and damp. Fteley Street produced just that kind of echo as I climbed out of the Jag and slammed the door.

I went to the toilet, dried my hair with paper, got some hot coffee, and joined Dehan at our desk. I sat and started to review the very few facts on Jacob Martin’s murder. After a bit, Dehan asked, “What are you hoping to get from Mary?”

I looked up. There was something of the chastised child about her, and for a moment, that made me unreasonably angry. I dropped the file on the desk.

“I’m not sure. There are too many parallels between the two murders for it to be simple coincidence. Yet…” I shrugged. “Those parallels don’t seem to mean anything.”

“The first and most important,” she said, “is the fact that they are both…” She hesitated a moment. “‘Martin men’, father and son, Sylvie’s husband and Sylvie’s son. I don’t know how or why that is significant to the murder, but it is the most significant connection between them.”

I nodded. “Okay, yeah…”

“The second, as far as I can see, is the date. So, we have two men in the same family—the only two men in the family—being killed on the same date, but sixteen years apart. Question…” She shrugged. “A question I can’t answer right now, what makes a person kill the only two men in a family on the same date?”

“Almost like an anniversary, or a commemoration…”

“And then there is the position at the bottom of the stairs, and the wounds. Like a reenactment?”

“That is the obvious inference.”

“But you don’t like it.”

I made a face and hunched my shoulders. “How does it work? Especially if we are talking about Humberto. He comes into the house and kills Simon. He runs out the door, and sixteen years later, he comes back to commemorate the first kill, but this time he brings a kitchen knife instead of a bowie knife. It just doesn’t ring true. In the first place, I doubt Humberto is capable of the concept of commemoration. And then, what is so special about sixteen? It’s not even Jacob’s birthday.”

She put her boots up on the desk and folded her hands on her belly. “There are commemorative elements in the act, but the act itself is not ritualistic enough to be a commemorative act in itself.”

I thought about that. “That is very good. That is a very helpful way to look at it.”

“It could be,” she went on, “that something coincidental triggered the murder, and that the commemorative elements were added later, or as the murder unfolded.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “I think I follow. Give me an example.”

She looked around the room, at the bustle of cops getting on with their work, carefully ignoring us. “Let’s say that you take me out on a date.”

I frowned.

She moved on. “I believe you are single, I really like you, and I am getting into you. And, after dinner, as we are leaving the restaurant, your wife shows up and starts screaming at you. I am so mad, I pick