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

brain, like when you get something stuck in your teeth, but I’m not sure what it was. He said something…”

She screwed up her eyes. “You think it might have been her, Stone? What’s that quote?”

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. It’s possible. But it doesn’t get us very far.”

Her face had suddenly taken on a strange expression, like slow shock. “You know what her job is, Stone?”

I frowned. “Uh, yeah, she told me, she’s a TV producer. That was why she was able to come in and see us in the morning, because she has an odd schedule…” I trailed off. “Oh…”

She nodded several times, staring at me. “Yeah, oh indeed… Stone, if anyone has the skill to set up an elaborate production like this one, it would be someone in TV or the movies.”

“Maybe. We need to find out exactly what aspect of production she’s involved in, and, more to the point, what she was doing twenty years ago. She works for NBC. Get on the phone to them. Keep it confidential, I don’t want her to know we’re looking at her yet.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to play back this interview and listen to it. There is something Paul said, Dehan, some passing comment…”

But just as I was saying it, my cell rang.

“Stone.”

“Detective Stone, this is Special Agent Smith, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I was wondering if you and Detective Carmen Dehan could come down to the field office for a talk.”

I stared at Dehan a moment. “Yeah. Of course. What’s this about?”

“Your current investigation into the death of Danny Brown.”

“You have information that could help us?”

“Why don’t we discuss that when you’re here, Detective? Say, in half an hour?”

“Make that forty-five minutes. We’ll see you then. Thanks for calling.” I hung up before he could answer and looked at Dehan. “The Bureau. Agent Smith.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? What’s the bet his partner is Agent Brown?”

I nodded. “Let’s go.”

Fourteen

Agent Smith did not have his name on the door of his small, anonymous office. Neither did he look the way he sounded. His voice had somehow suggested someone who had had all his compassion and humanity ruthlessly trained out of him. But to look at, Agent Smith looked like somebody’s uncle. He was of average height, slim, with a soft, round face and balding, curly, blond hair. He wore round glasses, which added to the soft roundness of his face. But in spite of his uncle-ish look, he did not have a smile.

He rose as we stepped in and came around the desk to shake our hands. There was another man there who also stood. He did smile. He wore a suit, a black mustache, and tightly curled black hair. Agent Smith spoke as we shook. “Detectives, thank you for coming in. This is Agent Brown, I know how busy you must be, so we appreciate your taking the time.”

We sat and they sat. I noticed there were no papers on his desk, no jar with pens in it and no photos of his nieces and nephews on the desk, or the bookcase. In fact, there was no bookcase, either. He said, “I’ll come straight to the point. Agent Bernie Hirschfield passed on your inquiry to us. Do you mind telling us exactly what your interest is in this case?”

I stared at him and drew breath to answer but Dehan was already talking. “What kind of a question is that? Our interest? It was a homicide committed within the jurisdiction of the 43rd Precinct. It wasn’t solved at the time and we are in charge of cold cases. That’s our interest, Agent Smith.”

Smith blinked at her, but aside from that showed no expression. Brown smiled. “It is simply,” he said, “that we were surprised at its resurfacing after all these years, and we wondered why.”

I answered before Dehan could get in. “Purely routine, Agent Brown. We have been working through the cold cases, and this one came up. That’s what happens with cold cases. I am not going to inquire as to why you are interested that we are interested. Presumably you are doing your job and you have your reasons, just as we do. But what I am going to inquire about is whether you did, in fact, visit some of the witnesses in the original case.”

They looked at each other. Smith nodded at Brown and turned to me. “We did visit some of the witnesses. I’m not sure ‘witness’ is the right word, as it seems that nobody, in fact, witnessed the murder. But we did visit some of Daniel’s friends and family.”

Dehan crossed one of her long legs over the other and coughed. “A homicide within New York is not in the Bureau’s jurisdiction. What made you look into it?”

Brown smiled his bland, friendly smile again. “It wasn’t the fact of the homicide, Detective Dehan, but the nature of the homicide.”

“The fact that there was an apparent UFO involved, or the similarity with the cattle mutilations in the Midwest?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Both. The official position of the Bureau on UFOs is that we are not aware of any extra-terrestrial presence either on this planet or within the United States, but we certainly don’t discount the possibility. That would be absurd, when our own National Aeronautics and Space Administration is actively seeking out life on other planets!” He laughed. “Naturally, we were aware of the homicide and of the UFO over the park. So when it emerged that the local police were unable to solve the case, we went and asked a few questions.”

I nodded. “The consensus amongst the people you spoke to, in particular Donald Kirkpatrick, is that they were instructed not to talk about what had happened.”

Smith smiled for the first time. It wasn’t