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

She studied my face a moment. “You’re not happy about that, are you?”

I shook my head.

“That comment you made about his obsession with Latinas…”

“What about it?”

“Are you sure you’re being objective?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”

“He was coming on very strong to me. He was being pretty threatening. Maybe you feel I am at risk and that’s clouding your judgment.”

I shook my head.

She went on. “Stone, I agree with you, he is a lowlife and I don’t want to see him walk. But he has no priors for rape, sexual assault or violence. And,” she shrugged, “let’s face it, other than the way he was coming on to me, and the fact that I happen to be half Mexican, you have no reason to believe he has an unhealthy obsession with Hispanic women.”

I nodded. “I have.”

“What?”

“The way he reacted when I said it. I was flying a kite, Dehan. I wanted to see his reaction. I touched a nerve. That man is dangerous, and I really don’t want to see him walk.”

She sighed. “Well, he’s probably going to and there isn’t much we can do about it. Either way, Stone. I think this is as much about your protective dinosaur instincts as it is about anything else. I don’t like him, but I don’t think he’s as dangerous as you say he is. He’s just a dope head and a scumbag.”

I stared down at the items on the desk in front of me. Then I looked her in the eye. “Just keep an open mind, Dehan, please? Until we have this wrapped up. There is more to this guy than meets the eye.”

She frowned, but nodded. “Sure. No problem, Stone.”

“Right,” I took a deep breath. “Let’s go talk to the inspector.”

NINE

Inspector John Newman looked depressed. “Poor child…” He’d said it a couple of times, now he repeated it. “Poor child. You’ll talk to the family?”

“Detective Dehan just called her mother, Elisa Fernandez. It’s two and a half hours’ drive. We’ll break the news to her when we get there, then see if we can find out what Angela was doing here, who she was with…” I trailed off and spread my hands.

Dehan added, “And if she had any connection with Teddy’s Late Night Bar or James Fillmore.”

The inspector frowned. “I have to say, it is one hell of a coincidence that three such similar girls should have been connected with that bar all within a few days of each other.”

I sucked my teeth. “We don’t know they were, sir. Sonia Ibarri was staying with her aunt, less than ten minutes’ walk away, but we don’t know that she had any actual connection with the bar. At the moment all we can say is that the connection between the girls appears to be their proximity to the bar. We’ll see if that holds true with Angela.”

He grunted and nodded.

Dehan smiled. “Like Stone pointed out to me, sir, there must be an awful lot of good, Catholic, pretty Hispanic girls in that neighborhood. The coincidence is maybe more apparent than real.”

He shrugged with his eyebrows instead of his shoulders. “I take your point.”

I said, “However, I am inclined to believe that the killer has some connection with the bar, because that was where Rosario went on the Friday night and, presumably, made an appointment to meet her killer on Saturday.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “And that does rather point to James Fillmore being our man, doesn’t it, John?”

I had to agree. “Yes, sir, it does.”

“But?”

“But there is one man, and at the moment only one man, that we know for sure was at the scene of Angela’s murder, and who knew exactly where her purse was hidden, and that is Wayne Harris.”

He frowned. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense that he should implicate himself unless he is pretty sure of his information.”

Dehan looked at me. “You said it yourself, we wouldn’t even know there was a serial killer if he hadn’t contacted us.”

“I know, but, sir, for the record, I believe we should pull him in and interrogate him, threaten to charge him with all the murders. If he knows who the killer is, he will tell us. If he doesn’t, then we’ll know it’s him.” I shrugged. “How did he know exactly where the purse was?”

He rubbed his chin and heaved a deep sigh. “I do take your point, Stone, don’t think that I don’t. I’ll discuss it with the DA and I’ll tell her how you feel. The crucial point here is that we have a serial killer on our hands who, as we have said before, may have been operating for a long time, and may still be active. That means he has to be stopped at all costs, as soon as is humanly possible.” He gave me a look that was loaded with meaning. “Meanwhile, you’d better get on your way to see the Fernandez family. Do give them my deepest condolences. I’ll have this stuff sent over to the lab, and I’ll put in a request for Angela’s bank and phone records.”

We thanked him and stepped out into the bright sunshine. A small breeze was moving the broad leaves of the plane trees on Storey Avenue. We climbed into the Jag in silence and I turned the key in the ignition. As I backed out of the lot, Dehan was watching me, with her glasses sitting on top of her head.

“What is it, Stone? I’ve never known you to get so personal about a case. What’s eating you?”

I didn’t answer until I was accelerating onto the Bronx River Parkway. Then I said, “I don’t know exactly, Dehan. Small things.”

“Like?”

“OK, for starters, the place where Wayne says he was lying