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

I nodded, chewing my lip. “Right. And what has made me choose this alley, so close to the station house?”

“It’s dark. It’s lonely. Maybe you’ve driven past a few times and spotted it. Either way, for some reason, you know it.”

“Okay. So I park my car. I grab the arms, and I bring them up here. I get to this bend, and I see, if I didn’t know already, that there are sixteen units. All locked. What would you do?”

Unconsciously, she curled her arms like she was holding a heavy bundle. She stared down the alley. The far end, maybe a hundred yards away, was in deep shadow. “It depends what my objective is. If I just want to get rid of them, I’d take them to the end and dump them in the shadows.”

“Right, and for now we are assuming that that is what this guy wants to do. So let’s stay with that idea for the moment. Instead of doing the obvious thing…” I stopped and sighed, and topped it off with a shake of my head. “Dehan, when you use a public toilet, if you walk in and find all the cubicles unoccupied, which one do you automatically choose?”

“The one at the far end by the wall.”

“More than eighty percent of people do that, because somehow it feels more private.”

“But this guy chooses a cubicle just past the middle, in the full glow of a lamp.”

We walked up to the unit. I bent down and unlocked the padlock. I went on, “I dump the arms on the ground, and I take the time to pick the lock. I push up the roller blind…” I stood and heaved the blind up. It made a loud, clattering noise. “And either I risk switching the light on, or I have a flashlight.” I turned and pointed at her. “If I have the arms in a bag, I take the trouble to remove them and place them on a pile of boxes, just here.”

I indicated a spot halfway down on the left.

Dehan said, “If it’s a plastic refuse sack, maybe you’re worried about fingerprints. In fact, most bags will have some place where you might find a print.”

“So, he’s not panicking. He is acting deliberately. I think the whole pattern of behavior involved—from coming to this particular alley, selecting and opening this particular unit, and placing the arms on the boxes—tells us that the whole thing was deliberate and not opportunistic.”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“So that leads us irresistibly to a conclusion…”

“Either Peter put the arms here himself, or somebody chose to put them in Peter’s very lockup, for a particular reason. Maybe a warning, an attempt to frame him…”

I scratched my chin. “So far I haven’t found a single thing in Peter Smith’s past that suggests he has any enemies, or is in any way involved in gambling or crime.”

“So if somebody isn’t trying to frame or incriminate him, why choose his lockup?”

“What is it about his lockup that would make somebody with two severed arms choose to leave them here?” I stepped out into the damp darkness. The pools of orange light made the shadows black. I looked at the silent, dead roller blinds. “Take me through who owns them, Carmen.”

“That whole side opposite was bought up about fifteen years ago by GCS, a local export company that specializes in IT products. This one here on the left of Peter’s belongs to a supermarket on the avenue, but twelve years ago it belonged to Hank Junkers. At the time, he was a member of the Hell’s Angels, and he used it to store his spare parts, tools, yadda yadda. He lived not far from here with his girlfriend, Lynda Holly. He has a history of violence and assault, some against women. Three on that side belong to a large pharmacy and a whole-food shop. And the three on this side belong to a bar and the local newspaper. An initial survey of employees doesn’t throw up any flags.”

“You like the Hell’s Angel.”

“He kind of sticks out.” She walked away from me and stood in the glow of one of the lamps. It made her into a desolate silhouette and cast a twisted shadow at her feet. She was staring back down the alley, the way we’d come. Her voice sounded strange, too loud. “They have a row. Maybe he’s drunk, high or both. He knocks her about and kills her. Now what the hell is he going to do with her? So he cuts her up into manageable portions and distributes her around town. He’s not going to put her in his own lockup. So he puts her in the one next door.” She shrugged. “Picking locks is the kind of skill he might have.”

“December 2005, January 2006, there were no dismembered bodies found in the New York area. What did he do with the rest of her?”

“He’s got a few big rivers to choose from.”

“Where they will never be found. Especially if he loads her down with a few engine parts.”

“Exactly.”

“So what made him put the arms in Peter’s lockup, instead of dumping them with the rest of her? If he put her legs in the river, why not her arms?” I stuffed my hands in my pockets and took a couple of steps toward her. I couldn’t see her eyes. “No, whoever put those arms there made a deliberate choice about the location. That leads to one irresistible conclusion. He was not hiding them—he wanted them to be found. He would do that for only one of two reasons. To throw a scare into Peter, which suggests a threat or a criminal connection, or because he knew that Peter would be going into his lockup within days rather than