Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

Maria was watching me, and there was real gratitude in her eyes. “And you—boy! You had the Triads, the Mob, the Sureños, and the NYPD all scratching their heads. But it was simple, really, wasn’t it? You blew their minds. You had an apartment full of dope, and they all had you down as a submissive, obedient slave. How wrong they were. What did you do? Mix H in with their whiskey?

“I don’t know if you had the shotgun there or if Sam took it over to you. I imagine it was already there as part of Nelson’s arsenal. They were so damned stoned after you spiked their drinks, you could take your time and shoot each one of them, one after the other, at your leisure. Naturally, everybody assumed it was a hit squad who stormed in and had the job done in seconds. But it wasn’t. It was you, taking your time.

“Some people break and go to pieces when you humiliate and abuse them. Others find a way to fight back. And that was you. And the message…” I turned to Dehan. “You said it was a message right from the start, remember? The message, when you castrated and beheaded him, was, ‘this is a punishment killing. You try to dehumanize me, I will destroy you.’”

I heaved a big sigh and thought for a moment. “I am not sure if that was you or Sam. In a sense it was both of you. But I think Sam had gone directly to Texas. Because this was the real genius of your plan. Allow Mick to think that you were falling for him. He had told you that he was scamming the Triads and the Mob and that he had arranged for them to hit Nelson that night. You weren’t even supposed to be there, were you? You were supposed to be at his place, waiting for him.

“How did it go? Mick and Pro were both screwing the Mob. They arranged to have the Mob and the Triads run into each other at Nelson’s. Start a war between the gangs so the cops would assume the killing was part of gang warfare. Mick gets paid by the Mob straight into his account, and Pro collects his, in cash, from Nelson’s apartment.” I smiled and shook my head. “But when Pro turned up, his cash was gone. Because you had taken it.”

She had that same impassive, expressionless look on her face. Sam’s was the same. It was a technique they had mastered over the years, a way of dealing with what they had had to do in order to survive. I went on.

“Somewhere between New York and Shamrock you banked the money, because you had managed to persuade Mick to give you the details of his numbered account. Was it Sam’s idea to have two accounts? So if ever there was an investigation into Mick’s crimes, it would stop at his unnumbered account, while the bulk of his money was in the numbered one?

“It struck me when the Feds found the account in Belize, that the amount of money in it was just enough to be convincing, but well below the estimates I’d heard of how much he had got away with.” I paused. “Tell me about Shamrock.”

She shrugged. “What’s to tell? He thought he controlled the world. Really, he was so stupid he was like a puppet. I had arranged with Sam that we would meet at Shamrock. I told Mick I wanted to go out to eat, and he was naturally all for that. I kept making snide remarks about how the Irish were supposed to be big drinkers, but the people in this town just drank milk. I goaded him. When he started mouthing off and getting violent, I appealed to those nice people at the restaurant to call the sheriff.”

“And while he was in the slammer,” I said, “you hired a truck from old Ted. You left it near the Palo Duro Canyon, had Ted drive you back, and when Mick came out of jail with a huge hangover, you told him you wanted to get out of that place. You offered to drive, said you wanted to. Did you dope him?”

She nodded. “I had kept a dose of heroin and a syringe. I persuaded him to let me drive, and as we were heading out of town, I simply took the syringe from my bag. He had his eyes closed. I stuck him in the neck and rammed the plunger home. He convulsed. He would probably have died anyway from the overdose. But when we got to the site, I shot him in the belly with his own gun.”

I said, “I hadn’t noticed till I reviewed the case, after we got back from Texas, but of course you, Sam, were a medical student. It would have been easy for you to get hold of a woman’s skull and a few bones. You met Maria at the site and left the bones in the car. You picked up the SUV you’d rented from Ted and headed out to start a new life in San Francisco.”

Sam said, with some defiance in his voice, “What would you have done, Detective?”

I shrugged and stood. “It’s irrelevant. You did what you did. The important thing, as far as I am concerned—” I turned to Dehan, who was watching me with her eyebrows arched. “—and I think Detective Dehan will agree, is that the criminals are all either dead or in custody, and you are free to care for your children and raise a good family.”

Maria smiled, Sam frowned, and they both said simultaneously, “Thank you.”

“I just ask one thing,”

Maria looked up at me. “What’s that?”

Dehan answered for me. “Pick up the phone, Maria. Call your brother. He needs to be rescued. And call your mother,