Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [story read aloud .txt] 📗

Frank grunted. “Thankfully not my department.”

I rested my ass against one of his benches and folded my arms. “Speaking of departments, what about the stuff I left with you?”

“Things are a lot quicker these days, thanks to the Panasonic-IMEC developments, but we still can’t perform miracles. I have the results on some of it.”

Dehan was frowning, looking from Frank to me and back again. “What stuff?”

Frank said: “The thread.”

“What thread?”

I smiled. “Remember the splinter I had in Elk Grove?”

“Yeah, what was that?”

“I saw the needle had been threaded, but she hadn’t started embroidering with it yet. So the tail end of the thread was still there. What do you do just before you thread a needle?”

“Nothing. I never sew.”

“What did your mother do, just before she threaded a needle?”

Her face lit up. “You are smart, Stone! She would suck the thread to make a point, so it would go through the eye.”

“Exactly, and then tie it in a little knot. I asked if I could have it. She agreed and so I lawfully removed a sample of her DNA. What was the result, Frank?”

“I have it in my office. I’ll send it to you later by email, but I can tell you that there is a very close family relationship, such as brother and sister, between Mary Browne and the man who raped and murdered Sue Benedict. He was her brother.” He shrugged. “If Cyril was her only brother, then Cyril killed Sue Benedict.”

“Holy cow, Stone!” Dehan stared at me with wide eyes. “So that’s it, you solved the case…”

I shook my head. “Not quite. There are a lot of loose ends to be tidied up. Like why Fernando was murdered, and by whom. We are not there yet.”

“Well, he clearly wasn’t murdered by Cyril. You figure a woman, Frank?”

“In all probability. In all my years doing this job, I have never seen a man stab to the heart, in the back, in an embrace. Typically, men will stab low to the gut or the solar plexus, up under the rib cage. Even in an embrace. Women kill a lot less than men, and they are typically devious when they do, because usually they are aware that their intended victim, if he is a man, is physically stronger than they are. I have never seen a man kill like this.”

Dehan shrugged. “A woman with a motive for stabbing Fernando in the heart. Hum, let me see.” She puffed out her cheeks and blew. “Let’s face it, that’s not a small pool of suspects, but chances are we’re going to get a hit on CODIS because, as you would say, Stone, two gets you twenty she’s one of the hookers he’s beaten up.”

I nodded. “That would be the obvious explanation.”

“Don’t complicate this, Stone.” She grinned and wagged a finger at me, “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necesitatem.”

Frank went rigid and stared at her. “What have you done to her, Stone? She’s broken.”

I laughed. “It’s Occam’s razor in the original Latin. She does it to annoy.”

“It means,” she said, “things should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. In other words, don’t complicate things.”

“That is true,” I said. “And William of Occam was a very wise man indeed. But are you sure you are looking at the simplest answer? Are you sure you are not complicating things unnecessarily?”

She crossed her arms. “OK, genius, what’s your theory?”

“I must say,” put in Frank, “I am pretty curious to hear it myself. If this man beats up women for fun, it’s a cinch one of those women killed him.”

I shook my head. “Uh-uh, I plan to wait for the DNA results and then say, ‘See? I knew it!’”

Frank sighed. “I always said he was a fraud. Now please get out. I have places to be and people to dissect. I shall call you when I get the results.”

We left him to his dissecting and made our way out. In the lobby I stopped, called the station and asked to be put through to Clay. It rang a couple of times and a deep voice said, “I told you we got this, mother hen,” then laughed. “What do you want, Stone?”

“I believe you. Has he said anything?”

“Like what?”

“Like any kind of confession?”

“Nah, he just regalin’ us with wild stories of wild parties, cocaine and crazy chicks. I missed my vocation, man. I gonna hand in my badge and become a cocaine traffickin’ artist.”

“I’m sure you’ll prosper. Anyone call, visit, ring at the door…?”

“No.”

“OK, we’re on our way to the station. I’ll talk to the inspector and…” I thought for a moment. “Yeah, what the hell, we’ll bring him in.”

“Ten four, man. We’ll be waitin’ for your call.”

I hung up and Dehan said, “Bring him in for what?”

I didn’t answer straight away. Finally I gave my head a small twitch and said, “Drug trafficking, at the very least.”

I took the chains out of the trunk and put them on the wheels. The snow was getting deep on the roads. There were barely any pedestrians and the traffic had thinned out to the odd, sporadic vehicle crawling through the gossamer veils of falling flakes.

It took us a good forty minutes to get to the station and by the time we had collected two cups of coffee and climbed the stairs to the inspector’s office, we were cold, tired and pretty miserable. His office was warm and he was, as always, welcoming.

“What an appalling night to be out solving murders! Tell me, I have been going over the original report and I am intrigued, how are you getting on? How is it going? Sit! Sit!”

Dehan sat in an armchair, clutching her cup with both hands