Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (best ereader for academics .txt) 📕

Bob put his finger to his lips and laced each mug with whiskey and winked at Dehan. She grinned and handed me a mug. Bernie was saying, “Yes to your first question.”

“Both parts?”

“Yeah, both parts. Outstanding. As regards ownership of the property. It was bought nine years ago by one Mary Browne of Elk Grove, Sacramento, and she is still the sole owner of the property. As to the insurance, she was also the beneficiary of her brother’s life insurance. Three quarters of a million dollars.”

“Bernie, can you email these documents to Deputy Inspector John Newman, at the 43rd?”

“Sure. That’s three more beers you owe me.”

“You got it, Bernie.”

“Them.”

“Yeah, them.”

I hung up, took a long pull of the coffee, smacked my lips and said, “You have to tell me your blend.” Then I called the inspector.

“John, what news?”

“My suspicions were right. Confirmation should be arriving in your email now. Sir, I feel the circumstances constitute probable cause. Have I got your permission to pick the lock? I think a man might be dying in there.”

He hesitated. “No, John. We’ll have a warrant within twenty minutes. Just hold your horses a little longer.”

I sighed. “Yes, sir.”

I hung up and we all three stood in awkward silence, sipping Bob’s excellent laced coffee. After a moment, Bob frowned. Dehan said, “What is it, Bob?”

He cocked his head. “Did you hear that?”

“No…”

I said, “I thought I did, but it may have been the wind.”

He went to his front door and opened it. We all stepped out onto his front lawn. There was no sound but the occasional gusting of the wind and the desultory creak of a branch loaded down with snow.

“There!” he said. “There it was again! Did you hear it? I swear it came from Sue’s house. It was like a muffled cry for help. “There! There it was again!”

I sighed. “You start to enjoy your coffee and something always crops up. We’d better go and have a look, Dehan. Thanks for the coffee, Mr. Smith.”

“Bob.” He winked at me. “You’re with the 43rd. I was forty years with the 45th. Go get your man.”

We crossed the road back to the corner and climbed the steps to her front door. I pulled out my Swiss Army knife but Dehan shook her head and muttered, “Put it away, Sensei, you’ll only embarrass yourself.”

She slid in front of me, pulled something out of her pocket, fiddled for a moment at the lock and the door opened.

“What did you do?”

“Mean Streets College, Sensei, mean streets.”

We stepped inside the dark hall. Pallid streetlight leaned in, making dull stencils of the banisters, on the floor and against the walls. I pulled my flashlight from my inside pocket, switched it on and played it around the small, cramped space. There was a narrow staircase rising to a second floor. On the right there was a door. I opened it onto a room that was pitch black. I said, “You think the lights work?” I reached in a flipped the switch. The lights came on.

The drapes on the right were drawn closed across the windows. The furniture was basic, and could well have been fifteen or twenty years old. There was no TV. There were no books, ornaments or photographs. But the place was clean. There was a white vinyl sofa with matching chairs, a coffee table on a rug.

Dehan moved across the room to the kitchen, separated from the living space by a breakfast bar. She ran her finger over the surface. “Dusted,” she said, and opened the fridge. The light inside came on and it started to hum.

“Milk, butter, hummus, eggs. Somebody either lives here or spends time here, Stone.”

“Somebody who doesn’t watch TV, and hasn’t much they want to remember, by the looks of it. You think maybe they’re sleeping upstairs?”

I switched on the landing light and climbed the steps without being too careful about making a noise. The landing was small. There was a small bathroom with a shower cubicle. There was soap, unused, but no toothpaste and no toothbrush. The bedroom door was slightly ajar. Inside, it was very dark. There was no snoring, no sound of heavy, sleepy breathing. There was only silence. I went over and pushed it all the way open. Then I switched on the light.

He was on the bed, as I had expected. But what I hadn’t expected was to find him handcuffed to the headboard. His ankles were also cuffed to the footboard, so that he was spread out in a big ‘X’. His eyes were wide with terror and he was staring at me. But he wasn’t seeing me, because he was very dead.

Cause of death was not hard to establish. The duvet between his legs was saturated with blood, which had sprayed as far as the footboard and even spattered the far wall of the bedroom. His genitals had been removed, apparently with a single, clean cut, and placed on his belly. From the gray, pasty color of his face and his naked body, it looked as though he had been pretty much exsanguinated from that single wound.

There were other wounds: savage wounds all over his body. There were multiple stab wounds to his left chest, slashes to his face and his legs, to his torso, his neck and his arms. But none of these had bled. He had been castrated and allowed to die, and then he had been attacked.

Dehan said, “I’ll call dispatch.”

A huge wave of weariness washed over me. I pulled my phone once again from my pocket and called the inspector.

“Stone, I am on it. Just give me…”

“Sir, you are not going to believe this.”

“What?”

“We have found Giorgio Gonzalez. He’s dead. He was castrated and left to bleed to death. After that, he