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

given you enough that you know I was there. And you know I saw what I saw. Now, I have smoked a lot of dope in my time, and I have snorted a lot of coke, and you know how it goes. That shit can affect a man’s memory. Not so much that he forgets things for ever! You feel me? But just so much that he needs a bit of stimulation for his memory. Am I wrong?”

I sighed. “What do you want?”

He wheezed his unpleasant laugh again. “Man… man! I have spent my whole life askin’ myself that, and I still don’t know. What do you want, Wayne? The sweet lips of a beautiful woman, the taste of a fine cigar that has been rolled on the thigh of a Cubana…” He leaned forward across the table. “A cup of real coffee, man, so many things. Where do I begin to tell you, man, what I want when I have lost my freedom?”

I sighed, like I was really bored, put my hands on the table and went to stand. “Well, Wayne, what can I tell you? If you won’t tell me what you want, then we can’t make a deal.”

“OK, OK, OK… You get me out of here, man. I can’t be in here. This place is full of dudes who need to be in here. You know what I’m sayin’? Like, they want to be in here. It’s like some weird shit, unconscious drive to be in prison and, like, controlled! But I ain’t like that. I need to be outside. I am a free spirit. You get what I’m sayin’ to you?”

I shook my head. “I can’t get you out of jail, Wayne. You were found guilty of being in possession of cocaine. You have to do your time. It’s the law.”

“You can’t get me out of jail, but you know a man who can. Am I wrong? You can make it happen, Detective Stone Cold. Don’t tell me you can’t, because I know you can.”

I shook my head again and stood. “To do that I would need a lot more than a description of the crime scene, Wayne. You haven’t told me anything I didn’t already know…”

He smiled and interrupted me. “But I told you enough that you know I was there and I saw it go down. Think about it, Detective Stone Cold. Think about it and we are gonna talk again.”

“Goodbye, Wayne.”

“Goodbye, Detective Stone Cold.” He leered at Dehan. “I’ll catch you down the road, Detective Dehan.”

Ten minutes later we climbed into my Jaguar—an original right-hand drive, burgundy, 1964 Mark II, with spoke wheels—and rolled down the windows to let in the sun. Dehan stared at me and I stared out the windshield.

She said, “I think he’s full of crap.”

I nodded several times, then turned the key in the ignition and fired up the big engine. As we pulled out and started the long drive across the dark water, I said, “I want to have a look at the place. I also want to have a look at what the press said about the murder, what details we released to them. We should talk to Ibanez, too.”

She raised her aviators up like a medieval visor and squinted at me, frowning. “He said something that caught your attention. He said something you want to check against what the press reported, because you think only somebody at the scene could have known it.”

I laughed. “You asking or telling?”

“Both. I’m asking but I know I’m right. What was it? What did he say?”

“You remember I said something was curious, and you thought I meant the decay of the semen?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t. What struck me as curious was the fact that he had crushed her windpipe with his thumbs. But she was lying face down.”

She made a face and nodded. “So he was trying to move her.”

“Right. The report you read made no mention of that. So I want to know if the papers or the TV did. Because if they didn’t…”

She was nodding. “He did. He said the killer tried to move the body into the river, then ran when the Harbor Patrol came by.”

“Yup. So we need to pull up the reporting from the time. Because if he was there, either he saw who did it, or…”

I looked at her and she said, “Or he did it.”

TWO

We found a space to park outside the Golden Mango Supermarket on Havermeyer Avenue and walked the short distance to Zerega, which runs along beside the creek. There is a stretch between the quarry and the Fedex Depot, about a hundred and forty yards or so, where the road borders the riverbank, separated only by an ugly fence made of steel tubing and wire mesh, about eight feet high. It serves little purpose, other than to make a place that should have been beautiful even uglier than it had already become: it was both easy to scale and easy to cut through.

Dehan touched my arm and pointed. “There’s a gate over there. It’s open.”

I followed her over and examined the gate. There were scratches that suggested it had once been secured by a chain and a padlock, but both were long gone. Dehan pushed the gate further open and we squeezed through into a miniature jungle of tall grasses, weeds, ferns, bushes, maples, and oak trees. I stood a moment, absorbing the scene. Dehan pushed farther in, following what might have been once a beaten path, taking big, arching steps over weeds and nettles with her long legs. She had the file with her.

I called out, “I think the body was down there.” She turned to look at me and I pointed to the right. “There should be an inlet down there, with a rocky beach, and a grassy lip,