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

had his operations and completed his transformation, it seems that his drive to kill Giorgio and Fernando started gradually to subside. It was as though it belonged to his previous self, to Cyril. By becoming his mother, he had found some kind of meaning and peace.

“So when he eventually returned to the Bronx, I think he did actually start to fall in love with Giorgio. Perhaps he was living out his mother’s need to have an affair with some kind of artistic, creative bad boy, like her journalist. Whatever the reason, his fantasy about killing them seems to have faded for a few years.”

“So why did he kill them?”

I nodded. “I have a theory about that. She had been hanging around Giorgio for about eight or nine years, but she didn’t know Fernando that well. I suspect that as she got closer to Giorgio, and they started having their little affair, she began to realize that he and Fernando were more than just friends. That must have stirred long buried feelings—feelings that belonged to Cyril—and when we came along and started digging things up, and she discovered that they were both dangerous, and involved with prostitutes, Cyril’s original hatred and murderous intent were fully reawakened. She desperately wanted Giorgio to be a man she could fall in love with, but he wasn’t. He was exactly the kind of man Cyril hated for taking his mother away from him. So he and Fernando both had to die.”

She sipped her drink, gazing at the fire. “You were so convinced,” she said after a while, “that Sandy was Cyril. I can see all your reasoning, but even if I had followed it at the time, I would not have been that convinced, that sure, that she was Cyril.”

I shrugged. “I suspected it, but you’re right. In the end I was certain. And there was a reason for that.”

“What?”

I smiled. “Well, we had two murders committed by the same person, but one was committed by a man and the other was committed by a woman. There was only one way that could happen, Cyril had had a sex change operation and come back. The only person that could possibly be Cyril, was Sandy.”

“You make it sound almost logical.”

“It’s not logical for us. But to his psychotic mind, at the time, it was logical. One of the problems was that in the intervening years, his psychosis had receded. So we were looking at the actions of a psychotic person, who was, in many ways, no longer psychotic.”

“So if we had left the case alone…?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. There are signs that her split personality was still active. I think she kept Sue’s house as a place where she could still be Cyril. I think she used to go there to vent Cyril’s fantasies, as a kind of escape vale. The homicidal rage was still there, it was just waiting to be ignited.”

“Wow…”

There was a ping from the kitchen. She looked up and smiled. “The chicken is done. Let’s eat, Mr. Stone.”

I drained my glass and stood, and looked at the table we had set, with a red Christmas candle, holly, and the tree reflecting off the wineglasses.

Me and Dehan. This was home.

BOOK 15

BLOOD INTO WINE

ONE

Deputy Inspector John Newman entered the detectives’ room on hesitant feet, looking this way and that with small, jerky movements of his head, like a chicken on a secret mission. He bore a slim, manila file. He saw me watching from my desk, smiled with relief, and approached.

“John,” he said, “I thought I’d find you here.”

I wagged my pencil at him. “That’s because it’s the detectives’ room, and I am a detective.”

He smiled as though he knew it was a joke but wasn’t sure why it was funny. Dehan glanced at me from under her eyebrows, then smiled at the Inspector.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Carmen!” He looked at her in what you could only describe as alarm. “Naturally I was looking for you both! I just happened to see…” He swallowed and changed tack. “I like to get out of my office from time to time, see the troops, haha…”

I smiled amiably. “Here we are, sir, trooping.”

“Indeed! And what are you working on?”

I gestured at the old cartons on the desk. “We were just looking through the cold cases, sir. We were thinking about the Vince Wolowitz case. They found him tied to his bed in his house on St. Lawrence Avenue.”

Dehan nodded. “Clason Point, near the Catholic church. His dog had eaten his foot.”

The inspector winced. I contributed. “The neighbors said he had a hundred grand in a box under his bed, but it was never found.”

Dehan sat back. “August ’97. I always had a theory about his family.”

I wagged my pencil at her. “I’ve been meaning to look into that angle for some time.”

The inspector’s smile had turned to a rictus, which is not a good thing to happen to a smile.

“If you haven’t started on it yet, I wonder if you would have a look at the Jose Robles case?” he said.

Dehan frowned. “That’s cold? What they do, keep it in the fridge overnight?”

“I think what Detective Dehan means, sir…”

“I know what she means, John, and she is quite right.” He pulled a chair over from Mo’s desk and sat heavily. “The case is not even a week old. But it has run into some…” He hesitated, then plunged on, “…well, problems which seem intractable. And frankly, I am under pressure from ‘above’,” he made little inverted commas with his fingers, “to get it solved ‘pronto’.” He did it again, hunching his shoulders a little. “You two,” he said, gazing out the window, “seem to have a way of unearthing clues that don’t appear even to