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

him in the back of the neck. Probably intending to stun him and not kill him. He, or they, then set him out in a pentagram, place the sand and the candle, move over to the east, and stab him with the knife, through the note. A note for you, to tell you you are cold, on the wrong track.”

“It’s rash,” I said. “The door is wide open, and somebody could have turned up at any moment. It shows huge arrogance and recklessness. Also, as you say, he didn’t know if Hank was dead. If he had been alive, the note would have been saturated and barely legible. It was not planned or carefully thought out.”

“We are almost certainly looking at Zak for this.”

We stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, I asked her, “Are we just reading a degree of planning and care into the placing of the arms, when really it was just a reckless act that paid off?” I shrugged at my own question and went and stood next to her, staring out at the concrete parking lot awash with water, covered in a mist of spray an inch deep. “He’s killed Lynda in some half-assed ritual in the woods in Connecticut. He buries her, but in his crazed mind he has some sick joke going on, about how Hank must be”—I spread my hands and looked at her—“missing the arms of his lover…”

“Jesus…”

“So he brings him the arms of his lover. But by the time he gets here he is tired, hungover, whatever, and suddenly the idea of walking in on Hank and handing him Lynda’s arms doesn’t seem such a great idea. So he does the next best thing. He picks the lock on his lockup—or so he thinks—and leaves the arms there for him to find.”

“It’s persuasive, Stone. But, he rolls open the steel blind and sees boxes, not bikes.”

“It’s dark, he’s tired, stoned. He just wants to sleep. He dumps them and goes.”

A squad car arrived from the 43rd to seal up the premises, and we climbed in the Jag and headed off slowly into the deluge. After a while, Dehan did a funny kind of one-shouldered shrug and said, “I could buy that.”

I didn’t say anything. I was trying to imagine Zak in plastic boot covers writing out, “Well, it took you long enough…”

It wasn’t easy.

We stopped at an English pub on Coney Island Avenue. Everything was dark mahogany and brass, and they had an open fire burning. We took a small, round table by the window and sat in the silver light of the afternoon clouds. Dehan looked tired. I realized that I felt tired. I hadn’t slept much in the last couple of days.

“I told Zak I was looking for Hank,” I said suddenly. “I liked Hank. He was making a real effort to be a better person. That’s something a lot of good people never do.”

She studied my face for a moment. “You’re not responsible, Stone. You did what you had to do, the best you could.”

“I know.”

She smiled. “You’re always telling me to think like a crook. With Zak you need to think like a psychopath, or a sociopath. He didn’t care whether Hank had shopped him or not. He might have. That was enough.”

“Yup. I should have seen that.”

She pulled a face. “And what? Would you have done any different? Hank took his chances. He rode with the Devil, and he got burned.”

We chinked glasses.

“We haven’t got enough to pull him in. We have to wait for forensics. In the meantime, we need to find out more about Pete, and especially Dave.”

She nodded. “You don’t think the arms are Lynda’s, do you?”

“I can’t make up my mind. It makes sense that they are. It makes sense that Zak killed her, and it makes sense that he planted the arms there as some kind of sick joke. But I can’t shake the feeling that there is somebody else, totally different, standing in the shadows watching.”

She chuckled. “Somebody who would write—” She put on a prissy voice and waggled her head and her bum. “Well, it took you long enough!”

I laughed. “You read my mind. It just doesn’t sound like Zak.”

I had ordered two burgers, and the waitress brought them over. We ate hungrily and in silence. After a while, she said, “You want me to take Peter?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I want to have a good look at Dave.”

Eleven

I called GCS, Dave’s company, and asked to be put through to the MD. The girl on reception said she’d put me through to Mr. Fischer, the owner and managing director. He agreed to see me that afternoon.

The Global Computer Shipping Company was somewhat smaller than its name suggested, and was located on the top floor of a brown, two-story building on East Tremont Avenue, about ten minutes’ walk from the lockup. I climbed a narrow staircase, carpeted in the same brown as the walls, and stepped into a large, brown reception area. The receptionist looked at me sadly as I approached her desk and asked me, “Mister, is it ever going to stop raining?”

I smiled cheerfully and said, “Yup, the day I get a Facebook account.”

“Please get a Facebook account…”

“Never!”

She wheezed like I was the funniest man in the world and asked me, “You the cop?” She picked up the internal phone and pressed a button. “Mr. Fischer, Detective Stone is here to see you… Okay…” She pointed at a door and said, “Right through there.”

I knocked and went in. It was a large room paneled in wood, with large windows overlooking a wet street where everybody seemed to be leaning forward under umbrellas. Fischer stood to greet me. He was in his early sixties with tightly curled gray hair and a pencil