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

“He wanted them to be found…?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. So we have to ask ourselves, what makes a killer hide a whole body so well that it is never found, but put the arms in a place where it is guaranteed that they will be found within a day or two?”

She stood staring at me with invisible eyes. The rain started to patter again, not heavy but enough to make you wet. After a moment she returned to the black mouth of the unit. I joined her and saw her shudder.

“I can’t think of a single reason you would do that, unless you were trying to intimidate somebody. And we have already established that was not the case. So…?”

“So you’re thinking like Carmen Dehan. If you ever killed somebody, it would be for a practical purpose, and you’d either call the cops as soon as you’d done it, or you’d make damn sure the body was never found. But one thing is for sure. Unless it was a real bad case of revenge, you would not enjoy it. You would never feel the desire to boast about it.”

The rain started coming down harder, hammering on the steel roof and hissing in the trees.

“A murder for pleasure? Placing the arms as a tease?” She turned to look at me, and now her eyes were luminous in the darkness. “You’re talking about a serial killer. You think that’s what this was?”

I stared a long time at the puddles without answering. Was it? I watched their ever expanding and interlocking ripples and the complex interference patterns they made with each other. Above them the trees bowed and danced and whispered wet whispers, and the cold air crept in around our feet and clenched damp fingers around my ankles. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the rain eased and paused, and I said, “Come on. There’s an Italian restaurant up the road. It’ll be warm, dry, and quiet. Let’s have a pizza and a couple of beers.”

Three

The bell chimed as we stepped in and stamped the rain from our boots, stripping off our coats. The place was empty except for a waiter who was walking toward us, beaming. An open fire was burning over on the left, and as the waiter approached, I smiled at him and said, “We’d like a table by the fire.”

His face lit up, and he spread his hands like I’d said the very thing he’d been waiting all year to hear. “Ma certo! Certo che puoi!”

He led us to a table for two, held Dehan’s chair for her, and looked inquiringly at me. I asked him for two beers, and he took our coats away to a coat rack near the door. Then he went to get the beers. Dehan was staring at the fire, and I could see the light from the flames playing in her eyes.

“Don’t get me wrong, Stone. I follow your logic, and I see where you’re coming from. But it just seems a hell of a conclusion from very little evidence.” She paused. “Some might say no evidence at all.”

“Is that a feeling or a thought?”

“Come on. Give me a break. You’re basing a theory that the arms belong to the victim of a serial killer on what? The fact that they were found in a lockup?”

The waiter arrived with two frothing beers, and I asked him for two sirloin steaks with plenty of french fries, easy on the salad. I glanced at Dehan. “That okay with you?”

“I thought we were having pizza.”

“In this weather? You’ve got to be kidding.” I nodded at him. He bowed and went away. “Okay, Dehan, go wild here, really go out on a limb, push the boundaries of credibility and find me one single theory that is more credible than mine.”

She was silent a long while, staring at the coals. Eventually, she sighed. “You always wind up with the same problem—why didn’t he do the same to the arms as he did to the rest of the body?”

I sipped my beer. “And the related question, which to me is more important, having successfully disposed of the whole body, what benefit does he get from leaving the arms somewhere where he knows for sure they will be found?”

“What benefit does he get…?” she muttered.

“The benefit is right there, in the question…”

“That they will be found.”

“Precisely. Which leads us to the next question. In what way is that a benefit to him?”

She sighed again. “And we’re back to square one. He is either throwing a scare into somebody, or…”

“Or the benefit is subjective. It gives him a kick, a thrill, an ego boost. And that leaves us very firmly in one place. Serial killer territory. Somebody who kills for pleasure.”

“If you’re right, Stone, the problem becomes much more complicated. This woman could be from anywhere in the United States, and the rest of her could be scattered from here to California.”

“Yup.” I nodded. “And the lack of motive means we have no idea what kind of man we’re looking for.”

“Serial killers are always men, right?”

“Male. There was one case of a woman serial killer, but she was emotionally and intellectually male. The overwhelming majority are men. Within that, there is no profile for a serial killer. They tend to have average to below-average intelligence, though a few are highly intelligent. They tend to be underachievers and feel inadequate, though some have risen very high in their professions as doctors or soldiers. They tend to be victims of violent, unhappy families, though again, one or two have come from perfectly normal, middle-class families. The only thing they really have in common is that they invert the normal progression for killing.”

The waiter, wearing an air of triumph, delivered our steaks, gave a little