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

though they sounded surprised on the phone, they were happy for us to drop in. We came off the Bruckner Boulevard onto White Plains Road and then took a right onto Lacombe Avenue. Theirs was a big, detached, yellow clapboard affair near the corner with Beach Avenue. We pushed through the wrought iron gate and climbed the five steps to their front door. I pressed the bell and heard it buzz inside. The sun was approaching its zenith and it was getting warm. Dehan stared at me while we waited. I said, “It’s almost beer time.”

She nodded and the door opened.

Stuart Brown was tall and lean. He had short sandy hair turning to gray and balding on top, like a Franciscan monk. He wore a khaki shirt, with an incongruous Christmas tank-top over it, and boot cut jeans. He smiled at us, but it was nothing personal. He looked as though smiling was a habit for him; his go-to response.

“Detectives Stone and Dehan?” We showed him our badges and he gestured us in. “Please, come in, but I am sure I don’t know how we can help you. May!” This last was hollered up the stairs as we crossed the entrance hall toward his living room, “May! It’s the cops!” He smiled a smile that would have been cheeky in a child, but in him looked like retarded adolescence. “Forgive me,” he said. “Go right on in and make yourselves comfortable. May will be down in a moment. Can I offer you anything?”

I took a deep breath, in sympathy with his lungs, and said, “Thank you, no, we really won’t keep you long.”

We entered an open-plan living room and dining room, with a bow-window on the right overlooking the street and a set of French doors at the back, in the dining area, overlooking a back yard. There was a suite of well-used furniture set around a large coffee table, and against one wall in the dining area there was a huge, stripped pine dresser. Stuart directed me to sit in a worn, red calico armchair and Dehan sat on a sofa that was covered in Mexican rugs and bits of newspaper. Feet hurried noisily down the stairs and May Brown came in on short plump legs that were accustomed to terrorizing noisy classrooms. The rest of her was as short and formidable as her legs, she too had a habitual smile that meant nothing, and, for a moment, I was transfixed by the bizarre image of these two, retired, in each other’s company all day, perpetually grinning at each other without meaning it.

“Detective!” she said, reaching for Dehan with both hands. “Don’t get up! I’ll sit next to you. What is this about? I am fascinated.”

Stuart smiled at me. “Welcome to the age of Aquarius.” He turned to his wife, who had sat beside Dehan, grabbed hold of her hand and was telling her New York needed more strong women, and said, “Darling, this is Detective Stone, Detective Dehan’s partner.”

She looked at me like I was the unwanted guest at Thanksgiving. “Of course,” she said, with big lips and big eyes. I thought she was going to add, “How nice of you to come,” but instead she turned back to Dehan and said, “Stuart and I are intrigued, not to say bemused. It has been twenty years! I believe you run a cold case unit…?”

Stuart sat in the armchair opposite me and crossed one long, thin leg over the other. “That suggests that the case is still open,” he said. “But, to be honest, to us it is quite definitely closed.”

I frowned. “Closed? How could it be? His murderer was never found.”

He shook his head and May stared at me with eyes the color of over-chlorinated swimming pools. “That is absurd. Forgive me for being blunt, Detective, but only the narrow mind of an officious, white male policeman could possibly fail to see what happened to Danny.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you telling me you know what happened, Mrs. Brown? We will consider any explanation that is properly supported by facts.”

She waved a small, plump hand at me. “There you go, you see, ‘properly supported by facts’.” She sighed. “As far as we are concerned, Detectives, Danny was shot with some sort of energy beam by trans-dimensional beings, or beings from another planet.”

I nodded. “I am aware of that theory, Mrs. Brown, but have you anything concrete in the way of facts that I can take to my inspector, so that we can begin extradition proceedings?”

It went straight over May’s head. Dehan clenched her jaw and Stuart cocked an eyebrow at me. “We didn’t invite you here to mock us, Detective. We are not alone in believing in the presence of trans-dimensional and extraterrestrial beings among us. There are some very eminent minds who accept the possibility.”

I nodded. “I’m not mocking you, Mr. Brown, far from it. But I would like you to understand that the NYPD can’t just walk away from a homicide investigation because the murder may have been committed by an extraterrestrial.”

“Have you read Donald Kirkpatrick’s book on the case?”

“No.”

“I suggest you do. His investigation is somewhat more thorough than the NYPD’s, I am bound to say. His analysis of the situation is profound and comprehensive, and he shows, quite conclusively, Detective Stone, that our son’s murder could not have been carried out—mark my words here—could not have been carried out by a human being. Once you establish that point, where do you go from there…?”

Dehan scratched her head and spoke. “That’s the second time Donald Kirkpatrick’s name has come up. What exactly was his relationship to Danny?”

He sank back in his deep chair and brushed some imaginary dust from his blue jeans. “Relationship is an unnecessarily strong word, Detective Dehan. They had no relationship other than that Donald ran the investigation group