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

“What property?”

“It’s a house on Jackson Avenue. It belongs to Peter Smith, the guy who owns the lockup. To be honest, I have never liked him as our guy, but…” I shook my head. “Unless I’m missing something really obvious, it’s either David or Peter, and now we know it’s not David. We are out of options.”

He held up his cell. “That number you asked me to trace? It was Peter’s cell.”

“What?”

“Let’s go. I’ll call Judge Sanders for search warrants on that place and his house.”

I drove fast. We were both silent. I was thinking hard as we roared down the darkened highway. In my mind, I could see almost the whole thing now. It all made perfect sense, and I was raging at myself for not having seen it before Dehan got taken. It had been obvious from the start. But that was how this guy operated. His genius, if that was what it was, was to invert things, turn them into negatives of themselves, show them back to front.

The only time the captain spoke was as we streaked between two sixteen-wheelers. “I do appreciate the urgency, John. But it would be useful to arrive there alive.”

I glanced at him and nodded, but I didn’t slow down. It was a journey that should have taken forty-five minutes. It took us barely half an hour.

There was a patrol car waiting at the house. Officer Sanchez and his partner climbed out as we pulled up. He handed the search warrants to the captain. I ran up the stairs, hammered on the door, and leaned on the bell. There was no reply. I took out my piece and shot out the lock.

I heard Sanchez say, “Woah!” I didn’t give a damn. I ran in. Captain Newman, Sanchez, and his partner were right behind me. There was a short passage that led to a kitchen at the back. A door on the left opened into a living room, and on the right, stairs led to an upper floor.

I pushed into the living room while the captain went to the kitchen and the patrolmen went upstairs. The living room was shabby and seedy. There was a sofa, and two armchairs in brown vinyl. A TV was positioned opposite the sofa, and stacked next to it on the floor was a collection of pornographic DVDs. There was a cheap dining table and four chairs, and beyond them a set of french doors looked onto an overgrown back garden. Whoever used this place didn’t use it for gardening.

The captain came in from the kitchen. “Nothing.”

Sanchez called down from upstairs. “Clear, Detective!”

I went up and had a look around. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom. In the bathroom, there were patches of mold on the walls. The mirror was speckled, and the floorboards creaked underfoot.

In the master bedroom, there was a large king-size bed. It looked like IKEA, new. The sheets were fresh and clean. There was a cheap carpet on the floor, but that was also new, as were the drapes on the window. The walls seemed to be recently painted. I looked in the wardrobe. The only clothes were women’s BDSM role-playing costumes.

In the second bedroom, the paper was peeling off the walls. There was a single aluminum-framed bed. The sheets were old, stained, and frayed. It was hard to imagine Peter in a place like this. And once again, I had the feeling that the picture was wrong. I had it all—almost. But something was missing.

I ran down the stairs and went out to the back garden. The captain followed. Sanchez flipped a switch in the kitchen and an outside light came on. Around the side of the house, I found a flight of stairs that led down to a door. I glanced at the captain. My heart was pounding.

“It’s a cellar.”

I pulled out my piece to shoot out the lock again, but Sanchez said, “Detective?”

I looked up. He was holding some keys. “They were by the light switch, in the kitchen.”

I nodded. I unlocked the door and went in, shouting, “Dehan! Dehan!” There was only an empty echo.

I hit the switch by the door. There was a boiler against one wall, pipes running across the ceiling, boxes, a washing machine and dryer. I went to every wall and knocked on each one to see if they were hollow. They were all solid. I examined the pipes for scrape marks made by cuffs. There was nothing there. She was not here. She had never been here. I felt the cold, white fingers of despair clenching inside. The captain, Sanchez, and his partner were staring at me.

“She’s not here, Stone.”

I checked Dehan’s phone. We had half an hour.

The captain spoke again. His voice sounded too loud in the empty cellar. “She’s not here. So she’s got to be at his house. And if she’s not there, we’ll make him tell us where she is.”

I nodded, but I couldn’t shake that feeling—the feeling that I was missing the main point, like when I kept looking at the photograph.

“We are missing something.”

He wasn’t listening. He made for the door. “Let’s go and pull this son of a bitch in.”

I followed him back up the stairs. We climbed into the Jag, and the patrol car led the way through the darkness and the rain, with its siren howling and its lights pulsing. We came fast down Bruckner Boulevard and turned in to Revere with the tires skidding and screeching on the wet road. We had ten minutes.

His vehicle was parked out front, and there was light in his windows. I jumped out of the car and ran. I hammered on the door and heard voices inside. Peter pulled the door open. He looked scandalized.

The