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

I smiled. “And how long would you keep going, Peter?”

His face turned serious. “Well, we’ve had sessions of a couple of hours on occasion.”

“Couple of hours, huh? Five hundred bucks. And what do you get for that? What will they do for you?”

“A bit of bondage, domination…”

“You or them?”

“Depends what mood I’m in. Both.”

“I want their names.”

He heaved another sigh and wrote down a couple of names with phone numbers. I folded the paper and put it in my wallet. Then I took out my cell and took a photograph of him.

I was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then I leaned forward across the table.

“Peter, I don’t know if you fully appreciate how much trouble you are in. There is very compelling evidence tying you to Detective Dehan’s abduction and attempted murder. And that, in turn, ties you to the murder of a young girl in San Diego who disappeared during one of your trips out there. Her head turns up in Oacoma, where you passed through, and her arms turn up in your lockup.”

His lawyer butted in. “That is purely circumstantial.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but it is tied so tight to the abduction and attempted murder that any jury is going to buy the whole lot as a package, and you know it.” I turned back to Peter. “Now, so far your only defense is that the cops are trying to frame you so they can get shot at a cold case. And that is not going to wash. So you need to be doing some real, serious thinking, Peter, either about a credible defense, or about a full, frank confession.” I stood. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

I drove to the hospital. My head was aching, and the squeak and thud of the windshield wipers was like a cruel and unusual torture involving a fork, a chalkboard, and a troll with a hammer. I left the car in the parking lot and ran through the rain to the shelter of the entrance. I rode the elevator, wiping rainwater from my hair with my hands.

There was a cop sitting outside her door. I asked him if anybody had been to see her. He shook his head. “Not a soul, Detective.”

I wondered briefly about her parents, her family.

Dehan was awake when I went in. She still looked pale and pasty, but at least she didn’t look dead anymore. She gave me a feeble smile, and I sat down.

“I still don’t remember anything.”

I shook my head. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Why are you here?”

I shrugged. “I’m going to pick up a couple of hookers, and I thought I’d drop in and let you know.”

She gave her head a small shake. “I don’t want any. I’m trying to give them up.”

“Anyone you want me to call? Anything you want me to bring over?”

She blinked a slow blink. “I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”

“Let’s play that one by ear.”

I stayed a while till her eyes closed, and then I stepped out. I shut the door and stood thinking. The cop looked up at me. “Don’t let anybody in to see her except her doctor and the nurses. And whoever goes in, go in with them. I don’t want her left alone with anyone—I don’t care if it’s the second coming of Mother Theresa. Got it?”

“You got it, Detective.”

Back in my car, I called Peter’s hookers, Zeta and Cherry Tipple. I told them I was a friend of Pete’s and I wanted to meet them at the usual place on Jackson Avenue.

“How much is this party going to cost me?” I asked Cherry.

“Seein’ as you’s a friend of Pete’s, we can give you a special price, honey.”

“How special is special?”

“Two hundred an hour, fo’ each of us luscious ladies.”

I laughed. “You better be worth it.”

“You won’t have no complaints ’bout us, mistah.”

“You come prepared. I’m into the same shit as Pete.”

“No problem, big boy. See you in an hour.”

I arrived early. The captain had arranged for the lock to be fixed. I dumped my coat on the dining table and stood looking at the room. It was hard to imagine how anybody could get aroused in a soulless, desolate place like that. I sat down by his DVD collection and worked my way through them. They were mostly bondage and domination. Not so much sinister as sad.

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang, and I went to let them in. Zeta was a tall, peroxide blonde making a brave, if misguided, attempt to look ten years younger than she was. What she was was forty and extensively renovated, with some of her original features, but not many. Cherry Tipple was buxom and dark. Her features were all original and plentiful, and once upon a time she’d had a pretty face, but life and people had turned it sour.

They pretended to admire me. I winked at them and told them to go ahead into the living room. I locked the door and followed them.

“Sit down.” I gestured to the chairs, and as they sat I placed four hundred bucks on the coffee table. “This will take less than an hour.”

Cherry said, “Already I’m not liking this.”

I dropped onto the sofa and showed her the key. “The door is locked, Cherry. I’m a cop. And I need to ask you a couple of questions about Pete.”

They looked at each other. Zeta said, “Pete? Who’s Pete?”

“Pete may be a man who abducts hookers, kills them, and dismembers them, and then distributes bits of them all over the country.” I pointed at the black window, speckled with dreary, orange raindrops. “Right now, as far as the world out there is concerned, I am just a John and you girls are showing me a