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

Epilogue

We were sitting in a place called the Epic Steakhouse, looking through the window at the Golden Gate Bridge. Dehan was sitting across the table from me getting intense about the best steak she had ever eaten in her life. I was wondering if I had died and gone to Valhalla. I was also wondering if I would have to mortgage my house to be able to pay for the wine. But if I did, I didn’t mind. Things didn’t get this good all that often in life.

She didn’t look at me—she was too busy looking at her steak—but she stabbed her fork in my direction and said with her mouth full, “When did you realize it was Maria?”

I smacked my lips and leaned back.

“In the car, driving to Texas. I kept going over and over the same question. It had to be one of three people, but it wasn’t either one of them. So it had to be that other, invisible person. That other person in the apartment was Maria. But how the hell could gentle, sweet Maria kill five guys with a shotgun before they even reached for their weapons? Then it dawned on me—they would be doped. And the apartment was full of dope. You know the old adage, poison is a woman’s weapon. Once you accepted that, everything else just fell into place.”

I chewed and sipped and smiled.

Dehan nodded quietly, then said, “So if Jennifer wasn’t talking to Pro, who was—still is?”

“One of two people. We’ll have to wait and see.”

She grunted, then waved a steak knife at me and said, “You said that Maria was dead. But you knew she wasn’t. You said Sam had killed her, but you knew he hadn’t.”

I sipped and smiled again.

“I was struggling with my conscience, Dehan. I trusted you implicitly. But it was not my secret to tell. It was theirs. So I spoke metaphorically and hoped that you would see the meaning of the metaphor. He, Sam, had killed her and himself so that they could be reborn in San Francisco. He’s a smart guy.” I gestured at her with my hand. “And you did get it, you being a subtle, intelligent, intense kind of person.”

“Whatever. What you mean is you are vain and wanted to reveal it all at the end to show off.”

“Perhaps. I have a certain…”

“Intellectual vanity. Yeah, I know.”

“You followed me out to Frisco and stalked me.”

“I knew you were holding out on me, and I knew you were going to get into trouble. I had to be there to bail you out.” She smiled and winked.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “You were lucky I didn’t nail you in the bedroom.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you shot the guy Pro sent to kill me. I thought you were a second hit man.”

“Oh.” She chewed for a moment. Then said, “The way you were falling over yourself in the dark, I never felt I was in any danger of getting nailed by you.”

“Thanks.”

“So who was this psychoanalyst?”

I shook my head. “Just a very confused woman.”

We smiled and raised our glasses. She said, “Cheers, Stone.”

“Cheers, Dehan!”

And we drank deep.

BOOK 2

TWO BARE ARMS

One

It was autumn in New York. Or, to be more accurate, it had been autumn in New York. Now it was November, and lovers who blessed the dark did so in their apartments, where it was warmer and drier than Central Park. The leaves that had made picturesque, russet drifts just a week earlier were now turning to sludge, and the branches that had held them and released them gently onto the sidewalks now reached bare, skeletal, and cold toward heavy, gray skies.

I held Dehan’s coffee in both hands, and the warmth made me shudder. Through the windshield, I saw her step out of her apartment block. A gust of damp wind caught her hair and whipped it across her face. She scowled and ran toward me as a few fat drops of rain splatted on the glass. It was that kind of day.

She climbed in and slammed the door, making cold, shuddering noises. I handed her her coffee, and as she hunched over it I, reached around to the back seat and dropped a folder onto her lap. She sipped and eyed me.

“Want to tell me about it while I warm up?”

I pulled out into the traffic and sighed deeply.

“My parents never really understood me. I felt very isolated as a child, which made it hard to relate as an adult. I think that’s why I broke up with my fifth wife…” She was staring at me with hooded eyes. I grinned. “Oh, you meant the case?”

“Funny. How can you be funny at eight in the morning in November?”

“And a Monday. Kind of guy I am. This is the case of the two arms found in a lockup in an alley between Revere Avenue and Calhoun Avenue.”

“Throggs Neck. Barkley Avenue. 45th Precinct is right there on the corner.”

“That’s the one.”

“Gotcha. So, is that true?”

“That two arms were found there? Sure.”

“No, that your parents didn’t understand you and you were married five times.”

“No, of course not. My parents thought I was the neighbors’ youngest kid. They used to feed me because they thought I looked hungry and neglected. Pay attention, Dehan. There’s a double row of self-storage units. It is eight units long, and each unit is about fifteen feet deep by ten feet wide. Monday, December 5, 2005, Peter Smith opens up his lockup and finds, lying on top of a stack of boxes, two female arms, severed, with some skill, through the shoulder joint.”

She sipped, then asked, “Were the arms bare, or dressed?”

“Excellent question. The arms