Cold Blooded (Dennis McQueen 02)

by Randisi, Robert J.

  “Basically,” she said, “we’ve got absolutely no connection between any of the victims. A couple of them are in the same age group, but the woman was a thirty-year-old housewife. They don’t match up as far as jobs go, or lifestyles. Thomas Wingate was perpetually unemployed, but John Bennett had a good job. And we still don’t know anything about victim number two.”

  “Okay,” McQueen said, rubbing his face vigorously with both hands. “Did you get a hold of Tolliver?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I got him on his cell. Diver and Dolan sent him on a wild goose chase, just like we figured. I told him you were giving him the Bennett murder.”

  “Good. Keep working the machine, Bailey, see what you can find out about all these victims.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing,” she said. “There’s nothing to connect them.”

  “Sure there is.”

  “What?”

  “They’re being killed by the same person, aren’t they?”

  As he went back to his own desk Bailey Sommers thought, “We think.”

  A couple hours later, McQueen was ready to go home and come back in the morning to start fresh. He stopped short when he saw Jimmy Diver enter the office.

  “Jimmy, what you and Artie did to Tolliver—”

  “We got him, boss.”

  “Got who?”

  “Hansen,” Diver said. “We got him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In a holding cell downstairs.”

  “Where was he?”

  “At another girlfriend’s house,” Diver said. “We tracked him to a house in Bensonhurt. There we found a girlfriend who was pissed at him. She gave us the address of another girl and we literally found him napping on her couch.”

  “Napping?” McQueen asked. “He kills a woman and her daughter and he’s napping?”

  “Hey,” Diver said, “innocent until proven guilty, right, boss?”

  It was a valid point. They had no solid evidence that Hansen had killed Kathy Stephens and her daughter, Miranda.

  “Okay, Jimmy,” McQueen said. He was about to tell Diver that he wanted to question Hansen, but then thought better of it. He was supposed to be working the serial case. “You and Artie see what you can get out of him.”

  “Glad to, boss, but I thought you might want to hear what he has to say.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Well . . . he confessed.”

  “What?”

  “In the car,” Diver said. “He said he did it.”

  “Jesus, I hope you Mirandized him.”

  “We arrested him for suspicion and read him his rights.”

  “He didn’t ask for a lawyer?”

  “No,” Diver said, “he confessed, and said he wanted to speak to my boss.”

  “What for?”

  “He wants to make a deal.”

  “A deal?” McQueen asked. “What’s he think he has to deal with?”

  “He says,” Diver answered, “he can give us Thomas Wingate’s killer.”

  “What?” Sommers asked. “He can give us our serial killer?”

  “He doesn’t know anything about a serial killer,” Diver said. “He just says he can give us the kid’s killer.”

  “How?” McQueen said. “How can he do that?”

  “Remember the mothballs I said I found at his house?” Jimmy Diver asked.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Hansen’s an amateur torch,” Diver said. “He says he’s the one burned down that Lydia Dean building.”

  Chapter 59

  Allan Hansen was moved to an interrogation room. McQueen decided to go ahead and conduct the interrogation himself, with Diver and Dolan present, and one other detective—Bailey Sommers.

  “He’s got a real low opinion of women,” Diver told McQueen, which is what persuaded McQueen to put Sommers in the room. He sent Diver down to move Hansen from the cell to a room, and spoke to her while they were alone in the office.

  “I want you to sit right in front of him,” McQueen told her. “Don’t say a word. Just keep your eyes on him.”

  “You think me being there is going to rattle him?”

  “I hope so,” he said. “I’m gonna hit him hard if I have to, belittle him, and doing that to him in front of you just might do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Bring out the truth.”

  “Dennis, he confessed.”

  “I know,” he said, “but I want to make sure he really did it. And that he really does have something to deal with.”

  “You’d actually make a deal with him after what he did to that woman and her little girl?”

  “What would you do, Bailey?” McQueen asked. “We’ve got a serial killer out there ready to take another life. What would you do?”

  “I’d take the bird in the hand,” she said. “If he confessed, then we know he did it. We don’t know what that nut out there is going to do—or if there really is one nut. Who’s to say that whoever this guy gives us is a serial killer?”

  “That’s what I want to find out.”

  “You wouldn’t cut him loose, would you?” she asked, incredulously.

  “It’s not my call,” McQueen said.

  “Then whose is it?”

  “It would be up to the D.A.”

  “Who doesn’t know anything about a serial killer,” she pointed out.

  “Maybe not, but we do have an unsolved homicide on the books,” McQueen said, “and an arson.”

  “I just can’t see letting this . . . this child killer go, no matter what he says.”

  “Let’s see what he’s got for us, Bailey,” McQueen said, “before we fight about it. All right?”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it—I don’t approve, but to be truthful I can’t pass up the opportunity to be in on this.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Chapter 60

  “This interview with Allan Hansen is being conducted by Detective Sergeant Dennis McQueen. Also in attendance are Detectives First-Grade James Diver and Arthur Dolan and Detective Second-Grade Bailey Sommers.”

  “What’s this for?” Hansen asked, looking at the tape recorder. His blonde hair was a mess, since the Double Ds had dragged him straight from a nap. He was wearing torn jeans and an Aerosmith T-shirt. “I said I killed the bitch.”

  “We need to conduct an interview, Allan, and get it all on tape. Is that all right with you?”

  “Ah, sure,” the young man said, “why not?”

  “And you’ve been given your rights and have understood them?” McQueen asked.

  “Sure.”

  “And you waive your right to an attorney.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Hansen said, “what do I need a lawyer for? I killed Kathy and Miranda, but I got something to trade.”

  “We’ll get to that in a minute, Allan,” McQueen said. “First, where do you live?”

  “Here and there?”

  “You move around?”

  “A lot,” Hansen said. “Depends on which girl I’m wantin’ to fuck, ya know?” He leered at Sommers. “I got a lot of ‘em.”

  “What’s your legal residence?”

  “My mother’s house, I guess.”

  “You lived there with her and with your younger sister?”

  “Yeah,” Hansen said, “my sister. You guys seen her?”

  “The detectives spoke with her, yes,” McQueen said.

  “Don’t think I ain’t tapped that gash, even though she’s underage.”

  “And your sister,” McQueen reminded him.

  “I know that.”

  “You’re admitting to incest and statutory rape?”

  “What the hell?” Hansen said, leaning back and lacing his fingers behind his head. He looked directly at Sommers. “I confessed to murder. What can they do to me for rape and incest? Besides, if you seen my sister you know what I’m talkin’ about. I mean, who wouldn’t tap that?”

  “Let’s go through what happened when you wer
e at Kathy Stephens’s house on . . .”

  Hansen was very forthcoming when it came to talking about Kathy and Miranda Stephens. Kathy was a whiny bitch who nagged him, and Miranda never shut up. The only reason he stayed around was because Kathy was good in bed.

  He leered constantly at Bailey Sommers, who had not said a word.

  “She gave great blow jobs,” he told her, “and she was a natural blonde, ya know?”

  Sommers remained silent.

  “Whattsa matter with this cunt detective?” he asked. “Don’t she talk?”

  “She’ll speak when she has something to say, Allan,” McQueen told him.

  “When’s that gonna be?” Hansen asked. “Maybe she’s in love with me, ya know? Struck dumb? Maybe she wants to fuck me?”

  “I doubt it, Allan,” McQueen said. “Let’s talk about the fire.”

  “I thought you wanted to talk about murder?”

  “We’ll get to it, Allan,” McQueen said. “I have to do this by the book, you know? Rules?”

  “Rules,” Hansen said, spitting the word out. “I hate rules.”

  “Not as much as you hate women, I bet,” Sommers said.

  “Hey, she talks!”

  Sommers realized she had spoken out of turn and fell silent again.

  “You were hired to set fire to the building that housed Lydia Studios?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Who paid you?”

  “She did.”

  “Who is ‘she,’ Allan?”

  “Lydia Dean, her and her husband, they paid me.”

  He looked at Sommers. “I fucked her, too.” He pursed his lips and blew her a kiss.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” McQueen said.

  “What?” Hansen asked.

  McQueen took a second to lean in and hit the STOP button on the tape recorder.

  “I doubt that a woman like Lydia Dean would let an arrogant little snot like you touch her. You want us all to believe what a big man you are, Allan. You screwed your sister, you have lots of girlfriends . . . I might have believed all that, but when you try to claim Lydia Dean . . . you know what I think of men who claim they’ve screwed lots of women, Allan?”

  Hansen didn’t answer.

  “Jimmy?” McQueen said.

  “They’re usually gay, boss.”

  “That right, Artie?”

  “Fruits, boss,” Dolan said, “every one of them.”

  Suddenly, Allan Hansen’s faced suffused with red—more from the small smile on Bailey Sommers’s face than the words of the other detectives in the room.

  “Get her out,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” McQueen asked.

  “I want her out!” He glared at Sommers. “Get out!” Spittle dotted his chin and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  “She’s not going anywhere, Allan,” McQueen said, “so just settle down.”

  “You can’t talk to me that way in front of her,” the prisoner complained. “She’s a . . . a broad. We’re men!”

  “You’re a man, Allan?”

  “That’s right.”

  “All right, then. Tell me about something a real man would do?” McQueen hit the PLAY button. “Tell me about the fire?”

  “I set the damn fire!” Hansen said. “I burned that whole mother to the ground.”

  “But something else happened while you were there, didn’t it, Allan?” McQueen asked. “Isn’t that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  Hansen glared at Sommers for a few more seconds, then switched his gaze to McQueen.

  “I wanna make a deal.”

  “I can’t make a deal, Allan, until I know what you’ve got.”

  “I want out from under the murder charge.”

  McQueen shook his head.

  “Ain’t gonna happen, kid,” McQueen said. “You confessed. There’s no way the D.A. is gonna cut you loose.”

  “Then I’ll take it back,” Hansen said. “I’ll take my confession back.”

  “You can try, Allan,” McQueen said, “but we all heard you, and we’ve got it on tape. In fact, we’ve got you on tape saying you’ll take it back.”

  Hansen looked like he was going to cry, his chin quivering before he firmed it.

  “This ain’t fair!”

  “Life ain’t fair, kid,” McQueen said.

  “What kind of deal can I get, then?”

  “If you help us solve the murder of Thomas Wingate, I’ll tell the D.A. you cooperated.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s the best I can do for you, Allan,” McQueen said. “What do you say?”

  “Well . . . first of all . . . who the hell is Thomas Wingate?”

  “What?”

  “I never heard of no Wingate.”

  McQueen turned and looked at Diver and Dolan.

  “You said you had information about the murder in the Lydia Studios building.”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t talkin’ about no Wingate.”

  “Then what were you talking about?” McQueen asked.

  “The woman, Lydia.”

  “What about her?”

  He looked at all four of them like they were the crazy ones.

  “I saw her do it.”

  Frustrated, McQueen said, “You saw her do what, Allan?”

  “Well, for fuck’s sake,” the kid said, “I saw her do her husband!”

  Chapter 61

  “You have been on this one day and you’ve come up with another murder?” Lieutenant Bautista asked.

  They were all in his office, so it was pretty quiet. McQueen hadn’t known how to get in touch with the lieutenant, but Sommers had volunteered to try and locate the man. Not only had she found him, but she had convinced him to come in to the office. McQueen decided not to wonder how she had done that until later.

  “Well, sir,” McQueen said, “Victor Dean has been listed as a missing person since January. This is the first real indication we’d had that he might be dead.”

  “But you suspected?”

  “I . . . thought his wife was hiding something,” McQueen admitted, “but her business had burned down, her brother was dead, and her husband was missing. I thought she might be . . . acting out of sorts.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I think she may have been . . . well, just acting.”

  Bautista sat back in his chair and regarded the four of them.

  “You two,” he said, to Diver and Dolan. “You did good work coming up with this Hansen.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Diver said.

  “We were following Sergeant McQueen’s orders, sir.”

  “Yes, yes,” Bautista said. “You can leave. Have Allan Hansen’s confession typed up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Diver said. He and Dolan left the office after a nod from McQueen.

  “Detective Sommers,” he said, “I’d like to speak to Sergeant McQueen alone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McQueen thought something might have passed between Sommers and Bautista, but maybe he was imagining it.

  After Sommers had gone and closed the door behind her Bautista looked at McQueen.

  “Although you’ve managed to come up with yet another homicide, this was quick work.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How would you suggest approaching this?” the man asked.

  “We could go to the D.A. with Hansen’s confession, and his statement about Lydia Dean.”

  “Let me ask you something, Dennis. Do you think Lydia Dean may have killed her brother?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not? Because it flies in the face of your serial killer theory? By your own admission you’ve had trouble reading this woman.”

  “That’s not the—”

  “Is she attractive?”

  “She’s . . . very well-preserved.”

  “There’s not something . . . going on that I should know about, is there?”

  “Absolutely not, sir.”

  “All right
, then,” Bautista said. “We’ll go to the D.A. and see if he wants to file charges against the woman. I’m seeing various conspiracy and fraud charges, but most of all the murder of her husband—although murder is hard to prove without a body.”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “And now that you have the killers of the woman and child you’ll concentrate your efforts on the potential serial killer case?”

  Now it was a “potential” case, McQueen thought. “Yes, sir.”

  “What kind of a deal did you make with Allan Hansen?”

  “No deal, sir,” McQueen said. “I told him I’d speak to the D.A. about him offering up the statement on Lydia Dean.”

  “Excellent,” Bautista said. “I’ll call the D.A. Meanwhile you just . . . carry on.”

  McQueen hesitated, then said, “Yes, sir.”

  In the squad room he found Sommers and Diver. “Where’s Artie?”

  “Downstairs, getting someone to take Hansen’s statement,” Diver said.

  “Okay,” McQueen said, “Jimmy, you and Artie are gonna come aboard the serial case.”

  “Boss,” Diver said, “if it turns out the Dean woman killed her husband, what about her brother?”

  “I guess when we go to make the arrest,” McQueen said, “we can ask her.”

  “You think the D.A. will file without a body?”

  “I don’t know,” McQueen said. “The lieutenant is gonna check in with him.”

  “I’ll go downstairs and see how Artie is coming along.”

  As he left McQueen turned to Sommers and looked at her.

  “What?”

  “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “About what, Dennis?”

  He just stared at her.

  “Dennis . . .”

  “Let’s go get some coffee.”

  Chapter 62

  They walked two blocks up to Church Avenue and had several choices for coffee. They chose a luncheonette, where they’d be able to have some privacy in a booth.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” she said. “In fact, I fought it for a long time.”

  “Did he force you?”

  She reached out and covered one of his hands with both of hers.

  “Oh, no, Dennis, it’s nothing like that,” she said. “You’re very sweet to ask, but this isn’t a case of sexual harassment. Just a mutual attraction.”