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

It was Robert who answered. “Yes. To be honest, I do. But she would have come back home first.”

Dehan frowned. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because she had just got her bike license, and we were going out that week to get her her first bike, a Yamaha 250. She was out of her mind with excitement. She wanted that bike more than anything in the world.”

Dehan narrowed her eyes. “I hate to be brutal, but these are Hell’s Angels. They’re all about bikes. Is it possible somebody made her a better offer?”

Robert surprised me by smiling. “That’s not brutal, Detective. It’s a smart question. But the answer is, it was the bike she had chosen, partly because she loved it and partly because her friends in the club had advised her on it. She really wanted that bike. Only reason she wouldn’t come back for it is if she couldn’t.”

Honest and real. The rain had stopped, but an icy wind was bowing the evergreens in the back garden. The bare trees, the skeletons with nothing left to lose, they withstood the wind better.

I asked him, “Have you got a photo of Lynda?”

Marion got up and went to a dresser. She came back with an album. Dehan chose a picture and snapped it on her phone, then Whatsapped it to me. She was average height, fair-haired, pretty, cute, and, by the way she was laughing, bubbly and fun. If you looked a little close, she also had “trouble” tattooed in invisible ink over every part of her laughing self.

“One last thing,” I said, still looking at the photo on my phone. “Would you, by any remote chance, have Lynda’s fingerprints? Or a sample of her DNA anywhere?” I looked at them, and I could see the dread in their faces. I shook my head and smiled. “It is purely a routine question.”

They both shook their heads in silence. They knew I was lying.

Outside, Dehan rested her ass on the hood of my car. The wind was dragging her hair across her face again, so she tied it in a knot behind her head and squinted at me.

“Hank is just a nice guy with a small character flaw where he beats up girls?”

I knew we weren’t moving till we sorted this out, so I said, “Humanity is made up of seven and a half billion unique individuals, Dehan. And however much I may want to say what you want to hear, that won’t change the fact that you cannot classify human beings according to type. You should know that better than anybody.”

I opened the car and got in, slamming the door behind me. Knowing what I meant by that would be a physical need for her, so she would have to get in to find out. Then at least we could drive and argue. She walked around the car and got in, frowning at me.

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

I fired up the car and moved off.

“Come on!” I said, as though she was being slow. “You are a mass of contradictions! Everything you do, say, and feel is contradicted by something else you do, say, or feel. You are like Newton’s third law.”

She wanted to get mad but wasn’t sure what Newton’s third law was. “Is that the one about every action…?”

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

She was silent, nonplussed for a while. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to be offended or not.”

“Of course not, Dehan. I would never say anything intended to offend you. I am just pointing out that you yourself are a profoundly contradictory person. If you can be full of contradictions, why not Hank? Maybe think less about what people should be, and more about what they actually are.”

She was silent for about five minutes, so I tossed her my phone and said, “Give Hank a call. Ask him to come in.” She looked a question at me, and I said, “There is a damn good chance he killed Lynda, don’t you think?”

She made the call, and he said he’d be there early afternoon.

Eight

We had time for a quick bite of lunch, and Hank arrived at two. He looked worried. We showed him into an interrogation room and sat him down. As we sat opposite, he asked, “What’s going on?”

Dehan surprised me by taking the lead.

“Just a few details we need clearing up, Hank.”

“What kind of details?”

She was pensive a moment, looking at the tabletop. “Well, for example, the fact that you were considering asking Lynda to marry you.”

He shrugged and frowned at us in turn. “So what? It was twelve years ago, and her dad advised me not to. He was probably right. She was so crazy right then, she would have dumped me on the spot. Who told you that, anyhow?”

I got in before Dehan could answer. “The thing is, Hank, it seems you were pretty close. Closer than you really gave us to understand. It was quite a surprise to me to discover that you were pretty tight with her dad. Her parents liked you.”

He nodded. “Yeah. They were cool. She didn’t deserve them.” He suddenly screwed up his face. He looked frustrated. “What’s your point? I liked her. I was pretty serious about her. She had nice folks. So what?”

“Okay, Hank, let me level with you. You tell me a story about how you are a badass Hell’s Angel, you got your bitch, you go to a rally and your bro comes on to your bitch, you fight like real guys. She ditches you and you ride off into the sunset. Plenty more bitches out there. Then I look into it and I find the substance of the story is true, but there are a few details that you