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

“Well here’s the thing. I’ve made an appointment for you to go and see him, this morning at nine, hence the early call.”

“An appointment…”

I frowned. Dehan frowned in sympathy, sipping black coffee from her white cup.

“Yes, he’s at Rikers, serving five years for possession of cocaine. His name is Wayne Harris. You can collect the file on your way. It’s waiting on your desk.”

“Thank you, sir…”

“See me when you get back. Let me know what he says.”

“Yes, sir, we’ll do that, as soon as we get back.”

“Good. Nice talking to you. Enjoy your breakfast, John. And, uh, catch you later!”

I could hear the smile in his voice. I said, “Yes, sir, catch you later too…” But he’d already hung up.

* * *

It is a pretty roundabout route to Rikers Island from Morris Park, involving Randalls Island, the Robert F Kennedy bridge twice over water, and the Francis R Buono Memorial bridge just once. On the way we collected the file on the Westchester Angel case and Dehan read out loud while I drove. She had the window down and the late May sun bathed her face as she raised her voice above the battering air and the growl of the Jaguar.

“Exactly a year ago, almost to the day. Monday 16th May, 2016 a body was found on an area of wasteland that runs for about half a mile along the west bank of the Westchester Creek. It was spotted by an employee at the quarry opposite the Fedex depot, who called 911.”

I frowned. “Where was the body?”

She studied the file a minute, holding the pages between her fingers like a cigarette, to stop them flapping. After a moment she said, “Yeah. Zerega Avenue?” She glanced at me and I nodded. “You got the Fedex depot, the Golden Mango warehouse and the quarry. There’s a big patch of trees and rocks right on the river. She was down there.” She carried on reading aloud. “Time of death was impossible to establish, as always. She’d been lying out in the open by the side of the river and lividity was advanced, though decay was still only in the initial stages. It was estimated that death occurred at some time between Saturday afternoon when the guys from the quarry would likely have spotted her if she had been there, and the small hours of Sunday night to Monday morning.”

We were crossing the first portion of the Robert F Kennedy Bridge onto Randalls Island. I asked, “Cause of death was strangulation, right?”

She nodded, chewing her lip. “Mm-hm. She had some bruising to the face, especially the mouth, consistent with having been slapped hard or punched. ME suggested whoever hit her was big, or at least had large hands. Her wrists had been bound very tight with a silk handkerchief…” She looked at the photos and made a face. “But not like you’d expect. It was more like the old-fashioned cuffs. Like,” she held out her wrists to demonstrate. “…he tied one wrist tight, then left some slack and tied the other wrist, so there was some play. Like he wanted her hands to have a certain amount of freedom.” She shrugged. “Cause of death was strangulation. There was extensive bruising to the neck, the windpipe had been severely crushed and the pattern of the bruises suggested that was done with the thumbs. No prints were recovered, so the killer probably used gloves.”

My frown deepened as we passed over the sports fields and began to cross the water toward Astoria Park. “How was she lying?”

“Face down, half in the water. Post mortem found that she’d had sex, so she may have been raped, premortem, perimortem or postmortem. The semen was too decayed to provide a DNA profile.”

I grunted. “Odd.”

“What is?” Before I could answer, she said, “If she was raped Saturday night, say eight or nine o’clock, she could have been lying there about forty-eight hours, half in the water. The semen could well have decayed in that time.”

I nodded, but I didn’t say anything.

We crossed the long bridge over almost a mile of water, and she read me the last part of the file, about why Detective Ibanez had not been able to close the case. The victim had had no purse, no driver’s license, no ID on her. There were no witnesses and her DNA and prints had got no hits on CODIS or IAFIS. All they had was the fact that she was Hispanic, in her early to mid twenties and had a rather beautiful, expensive crucifix around her neck, inscribed with the name Angela on the back. Her clothes—a white blouse and a gray skirt—were good quality but modest and demure. The two latter facts had earned her the name the Angel of  Westchester Creek in the more sensationalist press.

Three quarters of an hour later we were sitting in an interview room looking at the photos of the crime scene while we waited for Wayne Harris to be brought in. “I need to see it,” I said.

Dehan nodded. “There are a couple of things I don’t get…”

I agreed, but before I could say so there was a loud clang and the steel door rolled back. Two uniformed guards led in a tall man in an orange jumpsuit. He had the look and build of a quarterback: about six foot five, and I estimated his weight at about two hundred and thirty or forty pounds of solid muscle. He had a face that looked hard and solid too, with short hair, a square, raw concrete jaw and a small, thin, cruel mouth that seemed permanently fixed in a thin, cruel smile. He had small, pale blue eyes which he used now to observe Dehan as though he was calculating her size, weight and intelligence.

The guards sat him