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

by Blake Banner

  Fifteen

  We spent the rest of the morning with the sheriff. He didn’t seem very amused that we’d been pursuing an investigation on his patch without his knowledge. When I explained that we were just passing through, decided to have a look at the place, and noticed the stone, he was somewhat placated, but not much.

  “Passing through? You’re a hundred and fifty miles off course, Detective. That may be passing through in New York, but not here. Next time you want to go digging up bodies in Duchess County, you call me first. Are we clear?”

  “We are clear, Sheriff.”

  Jurisdiction was an issue, but I was happy to let it slide, and by midday Dehan and I were in the Jag and headed back toward New York.

  “Whether it’s Boston PD, Connecticut, or New York, that case will end up at the bureau. I am satisfied that our arms do not belong to Lynda, and if Zak was at the rally killing Lynda, he could not have been somewhere else killing our victim—wherever she was killed. So we can, finally, eliminate Zak from our list.”

  “Which brings us back to Peter and Dave.”

  She reached in her pocket and pulled out her cell. She scrolled through her address book, selected a number, and dialed. She put it on speaker and put it on the dash. It rang a couple of times, and then a man’s voice said, “Canadian American Chemicals, good afternoon, how may I help you?”

  “This is Detective Dehan of the NYPD, 43rd Precinct. I would like to speak to Mr. Richard Chambers, head of sales.”

  “Speaking. How can I help you, Detective?”

  “We are making some routine inquiries, sir, into an old case, and we are just tying up some loose ends and eliminating people from our investigation. I wonder if you could give me some information about an employee of yours, back in 2005.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then he said, “I doubt we would have records that old readily available. Who is the employee, and what do you want to know?”

  “The employee is Peter Smith…”

  “Peter?”

  “We wanted to know if his work back in 2005 would have taken him to California at all?”

  “Why yes, indeed. I don’t need to check the files for that. Peter was instrumental in opening up the west for us, from Los Angeles down to San Diego. 2004, 2005, and 2006 he was there for at least a week every month. He was a tireless worker, highly ambitious. He is a good friend of mine. What is this about, Detective?”

  “I wonder if you could send me that information by email. I would be very grateful, Mr. Chambers.” She gave him her email address, and he repeated his question. “As I said, sir, we are just tying up loose ends.”

  She hung up and was silent for a while, then exploded, “Son of a bitch! What were they, Stone, accomplices?”

  I thought about that. It was one of the questions I had been asking myself. “I think our killer selected his venues with the same care he devoted to everything else. He chose highly populous places where there was plenty of prostitution. There is another possibility.”

  “What?”

  “That one of them is trying to deflect suspicion onto the other.”

  “If that is true, only one of them was going to San Diego and Los Angeles because he had to, and that was Peter. Whereas Dave chose to go, and he continued going after the killings stopped. Plus, the arms could be seen as having been planted in Peter’s unit. Stone, you have to admit, the evidence is just piling up against Dave.”

  “Yes, yes it is, Dehan. And I am not opposed to Dave as our prime suspect. I just want to be sure. As of right now, all we have is circumstantial, and I would like some real evidence. I’ll tell you what we are going to do. We are going to visit Peter’s wife, while Peter is out.”

  We got back to the station at almost three. When we got out of the car, Dehan said, “Stone, you going to see the captain about Zak?”

  “Yeah, why? You want to do something else?”

  “I need to do some shopping. It’s just four or five things. I will be less than half an hour. Can I borrow your car?”

  I smiled. “Of course.” I threw her the key.

  “Thanks, Sensei.”

  She climbed back in, and I watched her drive away.

  I went to my desk, collected everything in the file that related to Zak, and went to see the captain. I knocked.

  A big sigh and then, “Come.”

  He was an agreeable guy. He smiled and stood as I stepped in. He shook my hand and invited me to sit. He was in his fifties, with graying temples and an intelligent face. He was a welcome change from Jennifer.

  “Stone, of Stone and Dehan. The dynamic duo. Your reputation precedes you both.” He chuckled as though he’d made a joke, then asked, “What can I do for you?”

  First I told him about Zak. I put the file on his desk and said, “This all has nothing to do with the cold case we’re conducting, Captain. The crimes involved span at least three states. This belongs to the Feds, and I believe the sheriff of Duchess County is contacting them himself.”

  He leafed through it. He had what you could only describe as a twinkle in his eye. “So you cracked this one in your spare time while you were working on mission impossible, huh?”

  I was about to explain, but instead I said, “Yes, sir.”

  Newman chuckled. “And what about the arms? Do you think you’re close to cracking that?”

  “We have two suspects, but all the evidence is circumstantial at this stage.” I outlined how the case stood and said, “I would really like to talk to Mrs. Smith while Peter is out. I’d like to call him to come to the station for an interview and have him wait here for half an hour while we talk to his wife. I want to rattle his cage and also see if she breaks down when he’s not around.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “Well, it’s not illegal, as long as she invites you in. And if you think it’s the right way to go, I have great confidence in your abilities.” He glanced at me. “I don’t share Captain Cuevas’s opinion of you, Stone. You may as well know that. But I am keen to see some of these cold cases resolved, and I can’t think of anyone better for the job.” He paused, then glanced at me again. “As you have seen in both of these cases, some of them are not quite as cold as they seem to be.”

  I thanked him and left, wondering if he had been hinting at something. I got back to my desk, dropped into my chair, and dialed Peter Smith’s number. It rang a couple of times before he answered.

  “Peter Smith speaking.”

  “Mr. Smith, Detective John Stone here.”

  A small sigh. “Detective Stone, how can I help you now?”

  “Mr. Smith, our investigation is turning up quite a lot of disturbing evidence. There has been a fresh murder, and a number of notes have been received threatening further killings. We have reason to believe that you and your wife may be at risk, and we would like you to come in to the station for a talk. If possible, this afternoon.”

  “Both of us?”

  “No, for now just you, Mr. Smith. But we will have a car keeping an eye on your house to make sure your wife is safe.”

  “I see…” He hesitated. “Very well, I can be there in an hour.”

  “That would be fine. We’d be very grateful. Are you at home now?”

  “Yes, I work mainly from home. Why?”

  “We’ll have a car there before you leave.”

  I spoke to the desk sergeant and a couple of colleagues, and they agreed to keep him there, supplied with coffee, as long as they could. Dehan arrived and we set out for Revere Avenue.

  We parked up the road, out of sight. We watched him come out with quick, efficient steps, get into his car, and drive away. Then we got out, walked across the wet blacktop, and climbed the steps to the Smiths’ door. Jenny opened the door and looked surprised.

  “Oh! He’s just gone…”

  I smiled. “We’ll catch up with him. There were just a couple of questions we wanted to ask you, in fact. May we come in?”

  She hesitated and Dehan jumped up and
down with knock-knees and grinning. “Can I use your toilet? It’s this rain!”

  Jenny got flustered and said, “Yes! Yes of course, come in!”

  And we were in.

  While Dehan skipped up the stairs to the bathroom, I smiled at Jenny in what I hoped was a fatherly way.

  “We are very concerned for your safety, Jenny. And it is extremely important for us to make sure that both you and Peter are eliminated from any suspicion…”

  “Suspicion? Us?”

  I sighed and shrugged. “There are some very unscrupulous defense attorneys out there who will do anything to get their clients off. So I hope you will cooperate fully with us in preempting any ploys they may try.”

  She looked suitably horrified and said, “Why, yes! Of course! How can I help?”

  I thought about it a moment and asked, “What kind of shoes does your husband wear?”

  “Shoes?” She gave a small laugh. “Well, as you ask, he has rather particular taste. He always says that however badly dressed a man is, you can always tell a gentleman by his shoes.”

  “How very true.”

  “So he has his shoes made especially for him in Spain, of all places. I tell him we have very good shoemakers here in the States. But he gets cross. These he says are the best, handmade from Spanish leather. So that’s what he wears.”

  “I imagine he buys them online. What is the name of the company?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Gallardo. But what has this to do…?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I just happened to notice the other day what excellent shoes he had, and thought I’d ask. But surely he doesn’t wear them in this terrible weather?”

  “Oh, they are quite waterproof!”

  “Would you think me an awful bore if I asked to see them? I am thinking of buying some good shoes myself, and…”

  You could tell she was uncomfortable, but she had lived her entire life without ever learning to say no, and she wasn’t about to start now. So she rose and went upstairs and I, quite shamelessly, followed her into their bedroom.

  She stood in the middle of the floor saying, “I really don’t think…” But as she said it, Dehan stepped in from the toilet and I pointed to the wardrobe. “Are they in there?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Thank you, Jenny. We’ll leave it just as it was.”

  There were three pairs of Oxford brogues. They were all clean. I hunkered down and examined them. The tread pattern fit. I put them all back as I had found them. I asked her, “Are any of these the ones he was wearing five nights ago?”

  She stammered. “He rotates them, a new pair every day, from left to right.”

  I did a quick calculation and decided he would have been wearing the ones on the far left. I picked them up and smelled the soles. Then I put them back.

  I stood and closed the wardrobe. “Are you a heavy sleeper, Mrs. Smith?”

  “No, I sleep very badly. That’s why Peter insists that I take a tablet every night.”

  “So six nights ago, if Peter had got up during the night, you would not have noticed?”

  “No, but why on Earth would he have got up?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Smith. You have been very helpful. We had better get after Peter, or we’ll miss him.”

  Sixteen

  She watched us leave, with her hands clenched in front of her womb. The sky was turning black, and thunder rolled far off. A few fat drops fell as we climbed into the Jag and pulled away, and Dehan swore extensively in three languages. I paid no attention because my brain was busy putting all the pieces together.

  Finally she looked at me as though she was going to hit me. “Have you any idea what is going on? Does this make any sense to you at all? Are they? Are they accomplices? Are they in this together?”

  I was still ignoring her, but I said, “I’ll get another note this evening or tonight. Probably this evening. It will probably come to the station. It will probably have a date for the next killing, or something close.”

  “How… how can you possibly know that?”

  I glanced at her. “Wait. I’m thinking.”

  I pulled up outside the precinct and ran up the stairs. Frank, who’d been keeping Peter happy for me, grabbed my arm. “He’s in interrogation room three, and he’s pissed.”

  “Thanks.”

  I pushed into the room with Dehan on my tail. Peter looked up. His eyes were bright with indignation. “Do you know how long…?”

  I cut across him. “How long have you been wearing Spanish shoes?”

  “What?”

  “How long, Peter?”

  “I don’t know…” He screwed up his face at me. I waited. “Since I was… About fifteen years. What in the name of heaven…?”

  I closed the door. Dehan was looking at me like I was crazy. They both were. I pulled up a chair and sat down.

  “I haven’t got time to fuck around, Peter. So forgive me if I am blunt. You are not a very nice person. There must be a few people at work who really don’t like you. I need to know who they are.”

  “How dare you…!”

  “Deal with it! Now tell me! Who?”

  He went to stand. “I don’t have to…”

  “Who?”

  He looked flustered and a little scared. “Um… Johnson, Cohen, Brown…”

  “Any others?”

  “Not really…”

  “Did any of them travel to California with you in 2005?”

  He frowned. “No. I went alone.”

  I was quiet for a while, thinking. I walked to the door, opened it, and bellowed, “Any messages for me?” A few blank faces looked and shook their heads. I closed the door and looked at Peter. “You know David?”

  “David? What David? I know a couple of Davids.”

  “From the Global Computer Shipping Company. They own the units…”

  “Yes. We’ve exchanged the odd nod. He’s supplied me with my computers over the years. Odd fellow, but helpful.”

  “Over the years?”

  He shrugged and shook his head, “Ten, maybe more… fifteen.”

  “Ever run across him in San Diego?”

  “No…”

  “L.A.?”

  “No…!”

  “You realize we can check, and if we find you’re lying, that will count against you.”

  “In what? For God’s sake, Detective! What in the name of God is going on here?”

  “Let me see your shoes.” He stared at me, and his face flushed. He looked as though he was about to get violent. I said, “Are you refusing to show me your shoes?”

  He took a deep breath. “I am going to show you my shoes. Then I am going to go home. If you want to keep me, then charge me with something, but it had better be something more than wearing Spanish shoes or knowing David. Frankly, Detective, your behavior is bordering on the irrational.”

  “Your shoes.”

  He unlaced them, took them off, and slammed them on the table. I looked at them carefully and smelled the soles. I handed them back to him.

  “Thank you, Mr. Smith. I apologize for the inconvenience. You can go.”

  He stared at me in disgust. “You people. No wonder this country is going to the dogs!”

  He put his shoes back on, and as he slammed out, a uniform leaned in. “Note delivered for you…”

  I pushed past her and ran. I took the stairs a landing at a time and shouted at the desk sergeant, “Who delivered the note?”

  He pointed at the door. “Kid—he just left, in a hoodie…”

  I leapt out of the door into the gathering night as Dehan came clattering after me. It was raining. There was a young man, maybe a hundred yards away, hunched in a dark hoodie, passing through a pool of misty light cast by a streetlamp. I heard the sergeant shout, “That’s him!”

  Dehan and I took off at a sprint down the wet road. The guy must have heard us coming because he looked back and started to run. We caught him at the corner and slammed him against the wall of the deli.<
br />
  “I ain’t done nothin’! I aint done nothin’, man! Let me go!”

  Dehan snarled, “You ain’t done nothing? Why’d you run?”

  “You was chasin’ me! I ran!”

  Dehan cuffed him, and I turned him around. He was about eighteen, black, and scared.

  “Tell me about the note.”

  He shrugged and glanced from me to Dehan and back again, wondering which one to be scared of. “I don’t know nothin’ about the note. Guy said to deliver it to the desk sergeant. That’s what I done. I never even read it.”

  I wiped water from my eyes. “What’s this guy look like?”

  “Average height. Jeans, dark hoodie. Big shades and a scarf around his mouth. He give me fifty bucks and said he’d be watchin’. If I didn’t deliver it, bad things was gonna happen.”

  I sighed. “Okay, come on. You’re going to make a statement. Then you can go home. Uncuff him, Dehan.”

  I left the kid in the hands of a sergeant who took his statement, and Dehan and I went back to have a look at the note. It was still sitting on the table in the interrogation room. It was a piece of A4 photographic paper, folded in half. On the outside it simply bore my name, but on the inside, taking up half the page, there was a photograph. It looked like a shopping mall at dusk taken from the parking lot. There was a brightly lit door and a woman walking in through that door, toward the shops. In the foreground there were several cars out of focus. There was a time and date stamp on the photograph. It had been taken two hours earlier, while I was on the phone to Peter. On the top half, above the photograph, there was printed, “Tick tock, tick tock…”

  “Where is this place? Who is this woman?”

  Dehan was thinking fast. “It has to be within two hours drive in rush hour traffic.”

  “That could be thirty, forty square miles or more.” I yanked open the door and hollered, “Somebody! Anybody! Now!”

  A sergeant came running, looking alarmed. “I need a list, ten minutes ago, of all the major malls in the Bronx, with photographs.”