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

Jasmine blinked.

“Oh, it was you, was it? You slipped into his room and stabbed him. Then we were lured out to the terrace, and that ‘beam’ you were so certain had come down and teleported him up to be instructed for his mission, had not come down at all. It had shot up. It was a couple of hundred dollars worth of lasers, of the sort you might use at a rock concert, stuck to a board in a small clearing thirty yards from the meeting of the three paths. It was triggered, I have no doubt, by a remote control concealed in her dressing gown pocket. She had her fit, collapsed in a trance and triggered the light display. We went running from the house, led by Don to the exact spot where we were to find the singed circle he had made earlier with a blow torch.”

Dehan was shaking her head, staring at Jasmine. “But why? Why would you collude in all this? He murdered the man you loved!”

I laughed out loud and Dehan stared at me in genuine shock. I spread my hands. “It was the best thing that ever happened to her! Don found himself being driven, almost in spite of himself, to write up the case of his charismatic friend and colleague, fallen in his passionate pursuit of the truth. Interest in that kind of story in the media in those years was at an all-time high. The chance was too good to pass up. He wrote the book and published it and, if before he was comfortably well off, suddenly his book had sold over a million copies, and twenty years later it is still selling and the case has become a UFO classic. Overnight, Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick had become millionaires.” I looked Don in the face. “Of course it destroyed you as a person. You became this…” I gestured at him. “This bitter, twisted residue of a human being. But you…” I turned to Jasmine. “You’d never had it so good!”

Dehan was nodding. “But when we reopened the case, Jane and Paul suddenly became a liability. And when you saw that we were getting too close and we wouldn’t buy the ET explanation, you decided Jane and Paul had to go.”

I nodded. “Exactly.” I turned to Jasmine. “My money is on you. I think it was your idea. You are deep and dark, and I think you suggested it to Don. Let’s not just kill them, let’s use it as the basis for a second book that will sell even more than the first one. A commemorative reunion in the mountains, where Jane, Paul, and Danny’s parents are all mysteriously killed in exactly the same way as Danny, and you, Colonel, would have the honor of being the survivor, the credible witness who saw the whole thing happen, the beams of light from heaven, the trances. You would provide the alibi for the killers.”

Stuart stared at Don, his eyes bulging. “You were going to kill us?”

Don scowled at the floor. “Don’t you want to join your precious son?” He turned to me. “Enough of this. What’s this deal you are suggesting?”

I waved my gun at the colonel, May, and Stuart. “We kill them, Dehan and I provide you with the alibi, and we get fifty percent of the proceeds from the book.”

Hait’s jaw dropped. “What?”

May screamed and covered her moth with both hands, staring at me with eyes wide with fear.

Stuart was shaking his head frantically, “No! Don, no! We won’t talk! Listen to me! For God’s sake!”

Jasmine spoke. She looked at Don. Her eyes were hard and pitiless. “I don’t want to share.”

Don snarled, “If they don’t call into the precinct tomorrow, people will come looking for them. We need a credible witness! Without a witness we have nothing!”

Suddenly Hait’s face was flushed red. “I don’t believe you people! Have you gone insane! This is murder you’re talking about!”

Don went scarlet and screamed at him, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

And then Jasmine was screaming, “I don’t want to share! We don’t share! We kill them! Kill them!” Then she swung her gun arm around, pointed at my head and screamed, “No share!”

She squeezed the trigger. There was a violent flash and a huge explosion. Jasmine was lifted off her feet and hurled back against the fireplace with a big, ugly, red-black hole in her chest, while the slug from her gun tore through the back of my chair. Dehan was on her feet. She had her left arm wrapped around Don’s gun arm, she had aimed the shotgun at Jasmine and pulled the trigger with her right. I gaped and scrambled to my feet as she smashed her left elbow back into Don’s jaw. He staggered away and fell to the floor, leaving the gun in Dehan’s hand.

Next thing, Stuart had jumped up and hurled himself at Don. I shouted, “Stuart! No!”

But he ignored me and fell on Don with his hand clasped around his neck, screaming, “I am going to kill you, you son of a bitch!”

I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him off. Then Don was scrambling to his feet and running. Dehan bellowed, “Freeze! Stop!”

But he ignored her, wrenched open the door and ran. Stewart pulled free from my grasp and went after him. I shouted, “Stuart! For God’s sake! You damned idiot!” And as I shouted, I was running. Dehan was just ahead of me. We burst through the door and out into the night. The moon was declining toward the west, but by its light we saw Don hurtle across the clearing, with Stuart close behind, and disappear among the trees, headed in the direction of the lake. We went after them. As we ran, Dehan indicated she