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

Sonia on the weekend of the 28th. That’s a rampage, but only at the weekend.”

I had been thinking the same. “It may give us a clue to his work. Maybe he worked nights during the week.”

She was frowning at me. “Isn’t that very rare in serial killers, to kill so close together?”

I shook my head. “Not really. There are no hard and fast rules about serial killers. There have been serial killers who have killed three or four times over several years, and then stopped, and there have been serial killers who have gone on sprees. You’re right that the norm, especially when they begin, is to leave pretty long gaps between one killing and another. But then, typically, the gaps will grow shorter.” I paused, thinking, and added, “We don’t know whether he had killed before, and if he had, how many times.”

She was silent again for a while. Then she said, “It may not be a serial killer, Stone. We are basing this assumption on some pretty thin evidence.”

I smiled at her. “Like the infinite number of monkeys with typewriters?”

“Huh?”

“If you get enough monkeys with typewriters, one of them is bound to write the collected works of Shakespeare. If you get enough Hispanic girls in their early twenties in a single neighborhood, three of them are bound to disappear within a week of each other.”

She sighed. “OK, you made your point.”

“If I’m right, his method of disposal was pushing them into the river. I’m not one hundred percent sure of the statistics, Dehan, but I do know that on average more than twenty bodies pop up each spring in New York rivers, as the water starts to warm. A lot of them never get identified, unless they have ID on them. He might have been killing for years.”

“So his MO would be to pick up out of town girls, visitors, tourists…”

I nodded. “These three girls fit that pattern. They were also all three Hispanic, all three nice, middle class Catholic girls, well brought up…”

“Yeah, they tend to fixate on a particular type of victim…”

“So, where would he pick them up? All three were in the neighborhood of Zerega…”

She interrupted me, “Don’t forget, Sonia hooked up with this guy, was going to spend the weekend with him. That tells us something, right?”

“He’s attractive.”

“Right. He’s attractive. He has some kind of magnetic attraction to a particular type of girl.”

I nodded. “I got from Mary that maybe their two girls were a bit more wild than they liked to admit. Annabel went off to Hollywood, Sonia begged her aunt not to tell her parents she was hooking up with this guy…”

Dehan continued, “And Rosario was naïve, spontaneous and independent. So we are looking at a guy who is attractive to a particular kind of girl: a girl from a nice, middle class Catholic background who can, under the right conditions, be a bit reckless and daring…”

I took a deep breath, puffed my cheeks and blew out. “And that’s how he traps them. They walk away from him, they are safe. They go with him, he kills them.”

“He could still be operating, Stone.”

I grunted. After a moment, I said, “We need to go back to Wayne.”

She was quiet for a bit. “You see Wayne in that role?”

I shrugged. “The problem with serial killers is they can be anybody. Yeah,” I nodded, “I can see Wayne in that role, for sure I can. But I can also see Larry at the deli, Mo at our next desk, Alvin at the corner store.”

“Mo is not magnetic or attractive.”

“So Alvin is?”

“Well, you know, in a kind of nervous, spotty way.”

“That’s the last time you go to the corner store alone.”

“OK, joking aside, Stone. Do you think Wayne is the guy?”

I scratched my head. “Do you?”

She thought about it and finally shook her head. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because this killer has been killing for at least two years, possibly much longer…”

I finished for her, “And the only reason we even know he exists is because of Wayne. Why would he be stupid enough to draw attention to himself?”

“Exactly.”

“OK, but one thing we can be pretty sure of, Dehan, is that Wayne knows who it is. So we need to talk to him.”

“Are we going to offer him a deal?”

“I’m not sure yet. He was very insistent that he did not belong in there, you remember? He’s crazy to get out.”

“Yeah.”

“So let’s see if we can tease something out of him with small offerings. Maybe we can draw him out with a visit to the crime scene, a coffee, small tastes of the outside.” I glanced at her. “He likes to talk. He likes an audience.”

“But if it comes to it, if he insists on a deal…”

I was quiet, looking at the long, dark road ahead. Finally I said, “Unfortunately that is up to the inspector and the DA. Let’s see how it plays out.”

And we drove on through the dark, toward home.

FIVE

“Her name is Anderson? Pam Anderson? Seriously?”

She asked this next morning, tying her hair behind her head in a knot to stop the breeze whipping it across her face. I glanced at her and saw myself duplicated, reflected in her sunglasses, looking back at myself out of a warped, bronze world as we sped toward the Bruckner expressway.

“You are too young to know what that means,” I said.

“Are you kidding? I was raised on repeats from the ’80s. Pam Anderson. You think she has the…you know…?” I glanced at her again. She was leering and nodding. “… You know…”

I shook my head. “You are a disturbing woman, Dehan.”

“Pam Anderson… And she is coming to us?”

“On her way to work, yes.”

“Will she come running, do you