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

been done on her teeth, it was a modern skull. By the state of decomposition, she had been dead several years. But that was about all they could determine. I sat and stared at the window and wondered if the weather was any better in South Dakota than it was in New York.

My phone rang. It was Dehan.

“You awake yet?”

“No, this is my answering service. Where are you?”

“I’m at the lab. You should come over.”

“I’m on my way.”

Half an hour later, I left my car in the parking lot and met Dehan outside the lab. She looked at me curiously.

“You okay?”

“Sure. What’s he got?”

“I’ll let him tell you.”

Frank looked at me and grunted as we walked in. “I am no expert,” he said, “but if you want this man for an organized serial killer, you had better start looking elsewhere. It is possible, of course, that he is becoming overconfident, but…” He shook his head and pulled a face, as though he didn’t like what he’d just said.

He walked over to the table where he had the bottle, the knife, and the note laid out. He pointed at the bottle and said, “He didn’t wear gloves. What he did was wipe the weapons clean after the killing. My impression…” And he paused here to stare at me for a moment. “My impression is that he was so excited by the killing that he couldn’t be bothered to be careful.”

I frowned. “Hence the enormous strength of the blow that was meant to stun him but actually killed him.”

“Exactly. I don’t know if you noticed the wet footprints?” I shook my head. He shrugged. “By the time you got there they had probably been trampled over, but we photographed them. If you study the photographs, I would say he actually ran, doing sidesteps like a tennis player, as the victim walked away from him—” He mimicked the action, with both fists closed as though he were holding a racket, or a bottle by the neck. “—and gave him an almighty double-handed backhander that smashed his vertebra and broke his neck.”

“So did you recover anything?”

He held up a hand. “Wait. I am making a point here, John. He left partials on the bottle and on the knife. But he obviously thought, as most people do, that you can’t leave a print on paper. Actually, paper is an excellent surface for leaving prints because it absorbs sweat and oil from the pores. You apply disulfur dinitride and the print comes up brown. Voila…” He led me to the note that had been pinned to Hank’s back. It was covered in clear prints. “They are being run through IAFIS as we speak.”

“That’s good news. That’s very good news.”

“Hmmm…” He didn’t sound convinced. “But you have a problem, John. Compare that behavior with your visitor from last night.” He led me over to the other note. “The only prints on this paper are yours. This paper was handled with surgical gloves from the moment it came out of the pack, to the moment you picked it up.”

I looked at Dehan. “That is conclusive as far as I am concerned. We are dealing with two different people.”

She was nodding. “Zak and somebody else.”

Frank said, “Somebody very careful and very meticulous.”

“Though not about their spelling.”

He smiled. “No, not about their spelling.”

An assistant poked his head around the door and said, “We have a hit on the prints, Frank.” He handed him a piece of paper. Frank glanced at it and handed it to me. Dehan came and looked over my shoulder.

She murmured, “Zachariah Brunell. Wanted on multiple charges of assault, assault with a deadly weapon, rape… the list goes on. Wanted in thirty out of fifty states, but not in Maine. Not in New England.”

There was a mug shot. It was Zak. I nodded. “Well, now he is wanted for murder.”

I called the precinct and had the lieutenant contact the Maine PD and send a couple of cars out to the Hellfire Club, though I was pretty certain Zak wouldn’t be there. So I had him put out an APB too.

We sat in the cafeteria, looking out at the rain falling steadily in the parking lot. I told her about my visitor and the two emails.

“I thought we could go to South Dakota. If we take it in turns to drive, we can do it in a day.”

She nodded.

“Something tells me this could be the head that belongs to the arms.”

She nodded again. “But it’s not Lynda. Lynda is out in Connecticut, probably in the lake where they had their rally.”

“We could take a small detour on the way back from Oacoma.”

She chuckled. “Small.”

“We can ask Duchess County to drag the lake, but I’d like to have a look first.”

“Sure. So who are we looking at, Stone?”

“You notice the spelling? So meticulous about everything else, but sloppy in his spelling.”

“I also noticed the rather grandiose language. You know what it reminded me of? Gamers.”

“Gamers?”

“Yeah, they play online computer games. They take on the identity of some dragon-slayer hero from some fantasy universe like Conan the Barbarian or Lord of the Rings, and they go on quests and do battle with orcs and dragons and all that shit.”

“Computer fantasies…” I thought for a moment. “Fischer said that Dave suffered from dyspraxia and dyslexia.”

“We need to find out where Dave was in July 2005. The date fits, third weekend of July. But where? No word from Bernie, huh?”

I sighed and glanced at my watch. “You need to collect a toothbrush?”

She shook her head. “I can pick one up on the way.”

“So, let’s go.”

Thirteen

The weather in South Dakota in November is very cold, but there were at least broken clouds, and it