Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set)

by Blake Banner

  I asked him, “Did you look downstream too?”

  “Yup, but we never found anything there, neither. Plus, when the boys at the lab had a look, they said she hadn’t decomposed in water. There was very little sign of water erosion on the skull. They said their best guess was that the skull had only been in water for a short while. What a short while was they didn’t care to say.”

  I pointed upstream, where he had pointed moments before. “So if I follow this creek back up that way, I will eventually come to the I-90…”

  “Yup. You got three bridges side by side. You got the eastbound and the westbound, and then you got Highway 16. They all cross over the creek at the same point.”

  Dehan was breathing into her hands and said, “The I-90 is going to take you all the way to Seattle. But before you get there, you are going to come to Butte, where the I-15 is going to take you south all the way to San Diego MCAS Miramar.”

  The sheriff looked at her like she might be crazy, but he was too polite to say so. I said, “What are you, an atlas?”

  She shrugged. “I know my roads.”

  I turned to the sheriff. “Can we see the skull?”

  He began making his way back up the slope through the trees. “I figured you’d want to. It’s in the truck. I made you a copy of the file we have on it. It ain’t much, but it’s all what there is.”

  We got back to the truck, and he yanked open the back. There was a blue-and-white cooler, which he opened and withdrew a cardboard box from. From that, he extracted a human skull. It gave me a frenzied grin which, oddly, was devoid of all humor because the eyes were dark and hollow. The jaw was still attached, but when I tipped the skull back I could see there had been some dental work done.

  I asked him, “Were any attempts made to extract DNA?”

  He shook his head. “We haven’t got many resources, Detective Stone. There was nobody missing from my county, nor any of the neighboring counties.”

  “Sure. Can I borrow the skull? I can get my commander to submit a formal request…”

  “I’ve already prepared the paperwork. All you have to do is sign the receipt. Ain’t no darn use to me, and if you can find out who the poor girl was and give her family some peace, I figure it’s more use to you than me.”

  We took care of the paperwork and then went and checked in at the Oasis Inn. There was a cute parade of shops whose fronts were made out to look like old Western buildings, but inside they were the same prefab shops you’d find in New York or Los Angeles. Dehan stood staring at them a while and said, “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, Stone? They had the originals, they got rid of the originals, and then made fakes to look like the originals they got rid of.” I smiled and she started walking toward Al’s Oasis. “What will they do next century, do you think? Will they make fake fakes to look like the real fakes we have now?”

  “Probably.”

  We had a couple of buffalo burgers and beer and sat by the window. It was good to see patches of sunlight on green grass, and blue sky through broken clouds.

  “After lunch we’ll go over the river to Chamberlain and have the skull sent to the forensic anthropologist. I figure there might just be enough material to get some DNA. If the head and the arms prove to be the same person, we’ll be getting somewhere.”

  She chewed and thought. “So we have a rough sketch of somebody who maybe has a route from San Diego, via South Dakota, to New York. Who selects victims at random, young women, kills them, dismembers them, and then distributes their body parts along the route.”

  “It’s possible, yes.”

  “He is a narcissistic fantasist who is probably obsessed with Conan the Barbarian-type computer games and can’t spell.” I finished my buffalo burger and nodded. “It is beginning to sound a lot like Dave. Two gets you twenty, Dave has been visiting San Diego in July and some other Californian location in December.”

  I was still nodding as I wiped my mouth. “It certainly looks that way.”

  That was when my phone rang. It was Bernie.

  “Bernie, tell me you have some good news.”

  “I have news, John, I don’t know if you are going to consider it good. Also, bear in mind you cannot use this in court because it was not legally obtained.”

  “I know, Bernie. Tell me what you’ve got.” I put it on speaker and laid the phone on the table.

  “You couldn’t find where your suspect was going because there are no such conferences. For the dates you’re talking about, every year for the past fourteen years he has been attending, in July, the San Diego Comic and Sci-Fi Fantasy Convention, and in December, the Fantasy Gamers’ Convention in Los Angeles.”

  For a moment, I felt oddly depressed. I said, without much feeling, “That is perfect, Bernie. Where has he been staying? Is it always the same hotel?”

  “Hold your horses there, pal. That is by no means the whole story. Because while he has been enjoying the events of the conventions during the day, by night he has been enjoying a very different kind of entertainment.”

  I frowned. “Really? Like what?”

  “In San Diego he goes nightly, like clockwork, to the Bull Rhino Club on Mission Gorge, at a cost of two hundred bucks a night. And in L.A. he goes to the Angels Massage Parlor on Olympic Boulevard.”

  “So, twice a year he gets away to satisfy his fantasies without his mother or his uncle knowing about it.”

  “That’s what it looks like, John.”

  “Thanks, Bernie. That is really helpful. Take it easy.”

  “Sure thing. One more thing you might be interested to know. For the last thirteen years, he’s been seeing a psychoanalyst twice a month.”

  He hung up and Dehan and I sat staring at each other. What else could we do?

  Fourteen

  We were both exhausted, so we didn’t discuss it anymore. After dispatching the skull, we went back to the motel. I left her at her room, showered, and slept until six. There is something disconcerting about going to bed when it’s light and waking up when it’s dark. I lay for a while staring into the darkness above me and wondering where I was and if anybody had left me a note.

  Then memories came back. The skull. David. The brothels. I put on the light, had a shower to wake myself up, and got dressed, thinking of Al’s Oasis and the eight-ounce sirloins I had seen on the menu.

  I knocked on Dehan’s door, and she came out with wet hair and a big smile on her face. She put a silver pendant on a chain in my hand and turned her back to me, lifting her hair up to expose her neck. “Put it on me, will you?”

  I looked at it. It was a David’s star with an inscription on the back. It said, “To Carmen Dehan, from Mom and Daddy, on her first birthday, May 9, 1991.”

  We had an awkward moment as I slipped it around her neck. Then I did it up, and she dropped her hair over my hands. I wiped them dry on my pants, and we walked the short distance across the parking lot in silence. She gave me a sudden, mischievous grin and said, “You know? This is the closest I ever get to going on a date.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her and smiled. It was the closest I ever got too, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead I said, “Yeah? Why?”

  She shrugged. “I hate people. People hate me.”

  “I don’t think people hate you, Dehan. You’re actually a…” I hesitated. “A really nice person. But people are terrified of your attitude. If you just toned down the attitude a bit…”

  She was still smiling, but she looked curious. As I pulled open the door, she said, “Does it bother you?”

  I followed her in and surprised myself by saying, “No, I kind of like it.”

  A gleaming waitress with gleaming teeth and hair smiled at us and said, “Table for two?”

  She led us to a table for two, and we ordered two beers and two steaks. As we sat, I said, “You’re attractive, you’re intelligent, you’re funny—there must be lots of men out there who’d…”

  She cut across me with, “I’m good.”

&nbs
p; “You’re good?”

  “I’m good.”

  I grinned. “Okay…” And we both laughed for no particular reason. We followed the laugh with an awkward silence, and Dehan said suddenly, “So what’s next?”

  “You mean after our date?”

  “Cut it out.” But she was still smiling.

  I shrugged. “I guess we call David in and have a chat with him. Ask him how come he’s been lying to his uncle for the last twelve years. I’d also like to talk to his shrink, but that won’t be easy.”

  She was quiet for a bit, turning the salt cellar around in circles.

  “If he thinks you and he have this special connection, you could play on that. He probably couldn’t resist the temptation to engage in some kind of heroes’ repartee with you.”

  I watched her but didn’t say anything. After a moment, she raised her eyes to mine, narrowed them, and sat back.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  I smiled.

  “You don’t think he did it.”

  I made a face like brain constipation and said, “I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just not satisfied yet.”

  “Come on, Stone. This is just being contrary. What more do you want? He fits the bill in every respect. He was there, for crying out loud.”

  “So were one and a half million other people.”

  “Come on!”

  “Okay, here’s my problem. He was going to brothels. Everything else rings true, but that strikes a false note. This murder, or murders, is all about frustration, about pent-up rage that the killer can’t release. He should be sitting at home watching porn, not spending two hundred dollars a night getting laid in a brothel.”

  “Since when are you a psychologist?”

  “Fair point, but still, it feels wrong.”

  The steaks came and the gleaming waitress instructed us to enjoy them. Dehan cut into hers and put the first slice into her mouth. She gave a gentle sigh and waved her fork at me, raising an eyebrow.

  “I am going to tell you what you would tell me. You are making assumptions.” She was right, and I said so. “For starters, you are assuming that he is going to these whorehouses and shagging his brains out every night, but I am going to put two scenarios to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Scenario one…” She cut another piece of steak and stuck it in her mouth, talking with her mouth full. “He spends all day living out his fantasy as some legendary, barbarian superhero or supervillain. He builds up in his mind this unrealizable image of himself. And by the evening he is ready to go, not whoring, but wenching. But when he gets to the whorehouse, what happens? He can’t get it up. Because he can’t get it up with real, hot, flesh-and-blood women. He can only get it up with a two-dimensional virtual woman who doesn’t threaten him. And every time that happens, his rage builds a little more, until on the fourth day he can’t take it anymore and he goes out, finds a suitable victim, probably a street whore, and kills her in a manner befitting a wild barbarian but chopping her into pieces.”

  I sipped my beer. “That is a very credible scenario.”

  “Scenario two.” She leveled her knife at me. “What I just described happened twelve and thirteen years ago. But he’s been seeing his shrink. And the shrink has encouraged him to live out his fantasies and try to make them real, keep it secret from his mom and his uncle so that they will not judge him, and have as many whores as he can manage. And he says to him, ‘Don’t worry about not getting it up, pal, because I will give you some tablets that, when you take them, will give you a hard-on worthy of a titan. And you will be the hero of the night. You will give those wenches the ride of their lives!’ And what happens?” She spread her hands. “You were right. It works. He stops killing.”

  I made a face of deep respect. “That is a very compelling argument, Detective Dehan.”

  “For twelve years. Until you come along and upset the apple cart.”

  We ate in silence for a bit. Finally, I said, “You know what? We dug into Dave, and look what we found. We’ll pull him in, and we’ll interrogate him. But for the sake of completeness, let’s dig into Peter too and see what we find. If it’s one or the other of them, it will become clear.”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “I guess.”

  She finished her steak and signaled the waitress, who came gleaming back to us with her teeth and her hair. Dehan smiled at her and said, “This is what I am going to do now. I am going to have an espresso coffee and a glass of Irish whiskey, which you are going to serve to me with no ice and in a cognac glass.”

  The waitress smiled and blinked a lot and said, “Okay!”

  It seemed like a good idea, so I said I would do the same. When she had gone away to fetch the goods, Dehan said, “So how about you, Stone, why don’t you date?”

  “Who says I don’t?”

  She made a face like a chipmunk and went, “Pffff!”

  I shrugged. “I don’t hate people. But I guess I don’t really trust people. Maybe people sense that and they steer clear of me. I don’t know. Either way, people and I—we don’t really jibe.”

  The coffees and the whiskeys came, and I smiled. “I guess that makes us like Statler and Waldorf. You are Statler, I’m Waldorf.”

  We chinked glasses.

  “Here’s to that.”

  We set out early, before the dawn, and drove all day, taking it in turns to sleep and drive. It was a tedious journey, mostly just a straight line along the I-90, through rain and drizzle, as far as Wisconsin. At Lake Erie, we stopped at a motel outside Toledo and had four hours sleep, then continued on up. We got to Danbury at midnight, booked in to a motel, and went straight to bed. The next morning, after an early breakfast at seven, we drove out to Holmes, found Camp Road, and wound our way through woodlands to the lake at Camp Kaufmann.

  We got there at shortly after eight. Most of the trees were tall and spindly, naked against the frozen gray sky. The water looked black and icy, and the ground was muddy from the relentless rain and drizzle. There was a patch of grass surrounded by huts, with a few canoes scattered here and there, and a long, wooden jetty reaching out into the water. The whole thing was enclosed by trees. I could see why Zak would have favored a place like this.

  Dehan walked out onto the jetty and stood staring at the trees and the obsidian water. I watched her from the shore. Now that we were here, I wasn’t sure what to do. After a moment I joined her, and we both turned to look back at the collection of huts. Dehan wiped the drizzle from her eyes and said, “She’s here, isn’t she?”

  I could visualize the bikes. How many? Maybe thirty, forty, fifty of them. And a hundred Angels with their ladies. There would have been crates of beer, whiskey, tequila. There would have been music, mainly old music, evocative of the golden age, Van Morrison, Zeppelin, The Eagles. And there would have been a lot of weed and coke. And once Hank left, there would have been Lynda, sentenced to death and not knowing it. I said, “Probably.”

  “Where did he do it? Right here? Or did he take her away, into the woods?”

  I pointed to a long spit that curled out into the lake and opened up into a patch of grass maybe thirty or forty feet across. “He did it right there, while they all watched.”

  We walked back and followed the long tongue of land out into the black water. There would have been a big fire burning on the bank. They would all have followed him down, a hundred black silhouettes against the flames, standing, watching, laughing, probably not knowing yet how it was going to end. And Zak would have performed his rough and ready ritual, as he had with Hank. I pointed to the left.

  “The lake provides the water in the west.”

  I walked up to the northernmost point. It was still there. I hunkered down and Dehan came and joined me. It was a crude circle of rocks that had been filled in with earth. As I gently moved away the sand, the remains of a yellow candle appeared, burned down and melted into the earth for the last twelve years. “Earth in the north.”

  I turned and Dehan stood. �
��In that case,” she said, “there should be something back there, in the south. Red, fire, right?”

  I followed her back. There was another circle of rocks, three or four feet across, blackened by fire, neglected for over a decade.

  “And in the east?”

  “The air. And probably a blue candle.”

  “It must have been cold!”

  I shrugged. “Part of the ordeal? Too drunk and stoned to notice? Who knows? But he had sex with her right there, in the center, and then probably stabbed her in the heart. What would he do then?”

  We both stared at the lake. She pushed her wet hair out of her face. “Weighted down with rocks? They couldn’t have got her very deep—the water would have been icy. It would have made more sense to bury her.”

  “Maybe they did both. What’s that?” I walked to the center of the area where Zak had made his temple. “The pentagram represents the head of a goat. The two horns would be there and there.” I pointed northeast and northwest. “Its beard would be behind me in the south. That rock is dead center, between the horns, and if I’m not mistaken, there is something painted on it.”

  The rock was half in the water, balanced on a slope where the bank dipped down to the lake. It was about three feet across and roughly spherical. As we approached, we saw that it had, indeed, a faded cross painted on it. But the cross was upside-down. I felt a sudden rush of irrational urgency, like I needed to get Lynda out of that place, that it was somehow important. I dropped on my knees and began to dig. Dehan ran, but I ignored her.

  After a couple of minutes she came back, carrying two canoe paddles. Between us, we levered away the rock, wiping the water from our eyes, until suddenly it gave and rolled into the lake with a big splash. Then we used the paddles as spades and began to dig. It wasn’t a deep grave. They were too drunk, cold, and probably wet to make the effort. She was only about two feet down. The damp earth had not preserved her. It had encouraged the bacteria and she was now just a skeleton, curled into the fetal position. She was unrecognizable, but I had no doubt in my mind it was her. And she was in possession of both her arms.