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

know that the power of… your unconscious… now takes you deeper than you have ever gone before… into realms of… your unconscious… so deep and so high that you can reach up with your mind, among the stars, and open… your unconscious… to the minds of visitors from other worlds…”

I had set my chair back so that it was easy to stand without making a noise. Now I stood and made my way up the stairs, listening carefully to Don’s voice, alert to any change that would tell me he had noticed my absence. There was no such change. His voice continued, repeating over and over, “…your unconscious…” suggesting images of space and stars and sleep.

I reached the galleried landing and moved quickly along to the doors to the terrace, which Dehan had left open for me, as we had arranged. I stepped out and walked quickly to the side. There I pulled myself over and, with some difficulty, clambered down and dropped to the ground below, with only a few scratches and grazes. Then I ran to the back of the house and scrambled under the veranda to the small window we had opened on our way back from the clearing in the forest. The flashlight was where we had left it. I shone it through the window into a very large cellar crammed with everything from old furniture and cardboard boxes to sacks of logs, a washing machine, a big spin dryer and a freezer, a large trolley, and everything else you would expect to find in the basement of a mountain cabin.

I dropped the flashlight onto an old, dusty chair, dragged myself through, and lowered myself onto that same chair. Once down, I took the flashlight and stood in the middle of the floor, playing the light over the walls and into the corners, making a more detailed inspection, and one by one I began to find all the things I had expected to find when it had dawned on me that the party had been at a cabin in the mountains.

All but one.

Then I turned the flashlight to the washing machine, the dryer… and there was the big chest freezer. I approached it, and with a vague sense of nausea, I opened it. And it was there, as I had thought it would be. Or rather, they were there: the head, a ghastly white with blue lips, and his eyes mercifully closed. Beside it, his feet, and beside his feet, his genitals. All neatly contained in plastic bags.

I closed the lid. The torso, then, must also be where I had imagined. That was the other part of the puzzle which had dropped into place. But before I could check, behind me I head the door open, and Don’s voice spoke in a harsh rasp.

“Don’t move, Stone, or I swear I will blow Detective Dehan’s head clean off her shoulders.”

Twenty-two

I turned. There was a flight of wooden steps up to a door. That door now stood open onto the kitchen, and in the opening I could see the silhouettes of Dehan and, just behind her, Don. He seemed to have a hold of the back of her collar in his left fist, and in his right I could make out what seemed to be a pump-action shot gun.

“Where are the others? They are not in on this, are they?”

“That doesn’t concern you.”

I played the light over them. I saw Dehan wince and cover her eyes. Don did the same. I shifted it a little and said, “I haven’t much to lose, Don. You are going to kill us anyway, aren’t you?”

Dehan said, “I’m sorry, Stone. I started questioning Jasmine. He got up and when he came back, he had a shotgun…”

He shook her savagely and snarled, “Shut up!”

I said quietly, “Hurt her and I’ll kill you where you stand, Kirkpatrick.”

He snorted. It may have been a laugh. “Do as you’re told and nobody need get hurt.”

I gestured with my head at the freezer. “Like Paul? Like Jane?”

“This could have been simple and painless, Stone. You chose to make it complicated—and painful.”

“The law, Don, the law made it complicated and painful. The law that says it’s not OK to go around murdering people, however justified you may feel in doing so.”

“Don’t lecture me. I am too old and I have seen too much of the world to take lectures from the likes of you. Now put down your gun.”

I gave a single bark of a laugh. I pulled my gun from my holster and showed it to him. “I put this down and I sign Detective Dehan’s death warrant along with my own.” I shook my head. “No, we are going to have to talk about this.” I frowned. “I am curious. What have you done with the others?” I turned and pointed at the freezer. “You knocked him out with sleeping tablets, the way you tried to do with us, with the cocoa. But I don’t believe you knocked out the whole party that way. No, I don’t think that was your plan at all. I think you actually wanted witnesses…”

I stepped toward him. He backed up and shook Dehan again. “I’m warning you, Stone! I will kill her!”

I shook my head. “No you won’t. You know as well as I do that the moment she is dead, the balance of power shifts in my favor. You will put off killing Detective Dehan to the last possible moment. And that is why I am going to hold on to this weapon.” I moved toward the steps and began to climb. He backed up. I went on talking. “I made a lot of mistakes in this case to begin with. One of my first was to believe that your wife was as much your victim as Danny was. Then I shifted and thought