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

Mango, on Zerega Avenue, at just before eleven. We pulled him out of the car, walked him through the gate onto the scrubland, and Dehan removed the manacles from his ankles. When she stood, she leaned close into his face. “Don’t make me shoot you, Wayne.”

He smiled. “See? I knew you was one of mine.”

I said, “OK, we’re on the clock. Where is this purse?”

He looked at me and there was real contempt in his face. “Give me a minute, dude. It’s been a while. I need to get back to the place, remember it, feel it. Know what I’m sayin’?” He pointed with both hands to where Dehan and I had been previously. “It was down there.”

I glanced at him. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure!”

Dehan went ahead of him and I stayed close behind. Pretty soon we had come to the mound where Angela’s body had been found. He stood looking at it and smiling for a while. Then he turned and looked around behind him, searching. Finally he jerked his head toward the place where I had lain. “That’s where I was, chillin’, enjoyin’ a smoke. You ever smoke a joint, Carmen?” He looked at me. “Hey! I’m just making conversation, man. That’s where I was. I heard them comin’ down where we just come. He threw her on the ground right here, went down on top of her and…” He smiled at Dehan, “He just choked the life out of that little girl while he kissed her.”

I said, “That’s old news, Wayne.”

He studied me with hooded eyes. “You a real pain in the ass, you know that, Detective Stone Cold?”

I stepped toward him and shoved him toward the path. “Come on! I’ve had as much of your bullshit as I can take. We’re going back. Come on!” I shoved him again and he stumbled. “Back to the car. You don’t know jack! You think you can play games with me? Get moving!” I shoved him a third time and he almost fell.

“Wait a minute!” His face was flushed.

I advanced on him and shoved him again. “Move!”

“It’s over there for cryin’ out loud!”

I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled his face close to mine. “Right now the DA is in discussions about your deal, Wayne. If we walk back up that path and get into my car, it’s over! We are done! And we don’t come back! So cut the Hannibal Lecter act and get the damned purse! Do you feel me, dude?”

He took his time studying my face in careful detail. Then he pulled away from me and started to walk. It was about a hundred yards, maybe a little less, over loose rocks and puddles, and through coarse undergrowth and tall grass, to a steep bank overgrown with dense trees and bushes at the foot of the GVC depot. He stood staring at it for a long while. It was hard to read the expression on his face, until finally he smiled and started moving up, into the undergrowth. He dropped to his knees at the foot of a pin oak and started to dig. After a minute or so, he pulled out a small lady’s handbag. He turned awkwardly, holding it in both hands because of his cuffs, and showed it to Dehan.

I pulled an evidence bag from my pocket, took the bag from him and slipped it in. I said, “Back up,” and as he came down the slope I said to Dehan, “You want to take a look?”

She nodded, pulled on some surgical gloves and scrounged around where Wayne had been digging. She turned to me and shook her head. “Nothing I can see, but we better get a team here anyway. Just in case.”

She called for a CSI team as we made our way back toward the car. Wayne spoke as he stumbled behind her and in front of me. “Hey, I did my part, right? I have proved I was a witness here that night. Now you got to get me that deal, man.”

Dehan looked back at me. “They’re on their way.”

I shoved Wayne in the back of the Jag, hunkered down by the open door and looked into his eyes. They were half closed and I could see nothing but contempt in them. I said, “When the Scene of Crime team arrive we’ll take you back to the prison. Then we’ll examine the evidence. If it’s any good then I’ll recommend to my inspector that he recommend to the DA that they go ahead with a deal. Now, before I do any of that, Wayne, let me ask you something.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Do you know who killed this girl?”

He nodded. “I will name him for you. And when you check it out you will see I ain’t lyin’.”

The CSI van arrived ten minutes later. We told them where the site was and took Wayne back to Rikers. All the way there he was quiet, but every time I looked at him in the mirror he was watching Dehan, staring at the back of her head.

We handed him over and drove slowly back to the station. At our desk Dehan pulled a chair next to mine and we sat and emptied the contents of the purse. There was an ID card, a driver’s license, a set of keys, some eye shadow, an eye pencil, a cell phone and a handkerchief.

The girl in the photographs on the driver’s license and the ID card was Angela. There was no doubt about it. She had been very pretty, and the smile in the pictures looked easy and natural. Her name was Angela Fernandez, and she was from Berwick, in Pennsylvania. Somewhere in Berwick, Pennsylvania, at that moment, her parents were still waiting for her, hoping.

I said, “We need to show this to the inspector. It looks