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

I rested my ass against the desk. “What made you think she was a prostitute?”

She shrugged. “What else? She wasn’t doin’ voluntary work out there at that time of the night, was she?”

“That was it?”

“What else?” she said again. It was obviously her go-to analysis. “If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck!”

I shrugged and gave a small laugh. “But she didn’t look like a duck. Her clothes were sober, demure even. She looked the picture of respectable middle class.”

She made a pfff! sound. “You ever worked vice? I tell you Stone, you should take a sabbatical and work vice for a year. It’ll open your eyes. You get whores of every color, shape, size and persuasion! Ask Mo…” Mo was laughing like an egg custard. “Hey, Mo, you’re writing a thesis on the whole gamut of whoredom, ain’t ya? You know ’em all, huh? You dirty bastard!” There was a moment of generalized hilarity. She turned back to me. “Believe me, pal. Clothes don’t mean nothin’!”

I was about to ask her how, then, she knew what a duck looked like, but I could see the discussion turning circular so I left it and moved on.

“I saw in the file you ran her prints and her DNA, but there’s no mention of NamUs. Did you check on women reported missing…?”

Before I could finish the question she gave a big shout of laughter. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how many files on missing women there are? One hundred thousand, my friend! One hundred thousand!” She did a weird thing with her neck, moving her head from side to side. “If you think I’m gonna bust my ovaries goin’ through a hundred thousand files looking for a babe who is probably an illegal anyway, so she ain’t gonna be in those files, you are plumb crazy. No way. You wanna do that, be my guest. I got more important things to do!”

I heard Dehan’s voice from behind me. “More important than identifying a murdered girl?”

Before she could answer, I said, “What steps did you take to identify her, Veronica?”

“You know what we did. It’s in the report. We ran her through CODIS and IAFIS, and we spent a day canvassing the area. Nobody knew her, nobody had seen her.”

I heard Dehan snort. “A whole day, huh? You sure earned your pay that week, Ibanez.”

I glanced around at her and smiled. She was staring at her laptop. Ibanez looked at me. “You know what, Stone? I don’t need this.”

I nodded. “I know, you have important stuff to do.”

“Take a hike. You got any questions, look in the report.”

She went striding at speed back across the room, with her chin in the air. I turned back to Dehan. “What are you doing?”

“I’m checking the reports from the time to see if there is any mention of the position of the body.”

“And?”

“So far I’ve read three reports. None of them says anything about the position of the victim.” She sat back in her chair and linked her fingers behind her head. “Seems to me that, if the media had been told that it looked as though the body was going to be dumped into the water, they would have reported it.” She shrugged. “You know, bodies floating down the river, that kind of stuff. Sort of thing the press like.”

“I’m inclined to agree. But keep looking. I’m going to look for women reported missing May and June of 2016. Veronica is probably right. It probably runs into thousands. But first, let’s go and report to El Jefe.”

We climbed the stairs to the inspector’s office, tapped and were told to come in. He was standing at the window, spraying something onto his potted plants. He smiled benignly at us and gestured toward his chairs. “Sit, sit. I am just tending to my plants. All life is sacred, don’t you think?”

Dehan said nothing so I spoke for both of us. “Can’t argue with that, sir.”

“No,” he said, lowering himself into his chair with a sigh. “And if you did, you’d be wrong. So, how did you get on at Rikers? Has he got information of value? Or is he bluffing?”

Dehan answered. “It may be both, sir. He has something, but it may not be as valuable as he is trying to make out.”

He frowned. “I see…”

I said, “He claims he was at the scene.”

“In what capacity?”

“Well, that’s just the thing, sir. He says he was enjoying a joint, lying on the grass looking at the stars, when he saw the killer arrive with the victim. He claims she was bound and gagged. He described the way her wrists were bound and, more important than that, he said that after the victim was killed, the killer tried to drag her to the river. That is a fact that, as far as we know, was never reported to the media.”

He nodded. “Aha, so if he knows that, either he was there as a witness…”

“Or he did it.”

“Indeed. So what are your next steps?”

I drew breath but Dehan spoke first. “We spoke to Detective Ibanez. She couldn’t add anything to what was in the report. So we thought we would check how the murder was reported at the time and see if there is any reference to the body’s being moved. If there isn’t, then A, Wayne becomes our prime suspect and B, the chances are good he has more information to give us. Also, we start trawling reports of missing women around May and June 2016.”

He frowned. “That wasn’t done in the original investigation?”

I shook my head once. “Nope.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I see. May I suggest you also approach the PDs and sheriff’s departments of New Jersey,