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

“Why thank you, sir.” I smiled. “I think so too.”

“So, I know it’s not strictly a cold case, but I’d be grateful if you’d have a look at it.”

He tossed the file in front of me on the desk and I leaned over and picked it up. “Who had it to start with?”

“Gutierrez, but he’s glad to let it go because, as far as he’s concerned, it’s closed. And I have to say…”

He hesitated again. Dehan frowned at him. She said, “You agree…” He shrugged. She pressed him. “So why are we looking at it? What is the intractable problem?”

He sighed. “ADA Costas Varoufakis.”

Her eyebrows seemed to levitate. “Assistant District Attorney Costas Varu… The Assistant District Attorney is the intractable problem?”

“He does not believe it should be closed.”

Suddenly I was interested. I leaned forward.  “On what grounds? And since when does the Assistant District Attorney decide when we close a case?”

“Since his uncle went to school with the mayor.”

I grunted. “And his grounds?”

He made a face of helplessness and spread his hands. “It seems they were friends. They shared an interest in Mediterranean history or something.”

I made a dubious expression with my eyebrows and offered it to Dehan. She copied it and offered it back. The inspector sighed. “Look, I’m sorry and I am aware it’s an imposition. Just work your magic on it for a day or two and if you are convinced it’s case closed, we close the case and you can get on with…”

He made little stirring motions with his finger. I said, “Vince Wolowitz.”

“Indeed.”

“Of course we will. I shall enter it into my little black book of favors to be called in at a later time, sir.”

“He’s joking, sir,” said Dehan, in a way that said that I wasn’t.

He nodded and smiled, and retreated up to the rarefied atmosphere of the upper floor. I took the photos from the file and tossed the rest at Dehan. She read as I looked.

“Jose Robles, a Spanish national.”

I spoke looking at a photograph of him. “Spanish from Spain?”

She stared at me a moment. “Yes, Spanish from Spain. PhD in applied physics from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. That’s also in Spanish Spain.”

“I know. I’ve been. Excellent seafood.”

“He was conducting research and lecturing at University College, New York, in Manhattan. He’d been here a year last September, and had another year to run.”

The photograph I was looking at was a head and shoulders portrait. I figured he was thirty-something, handsome in that Mediterranean kind of way that women find so appealing: dark, chiseled features, black hair and big, brown eyes that managed to be both sweet and insolent at the same time. His hair was receding slightly and the collar of his pink shirt was on the outside of his turquoise cashmere sweater. He wasn’t smiling.

Dehan was saying, “He was found December fourth, that’s last Tuesday, at the house of a friend, Agnes Shine, also a lecturer at the university. He had been shot eight times in the thorax with a 9mm Sig Sauer Tacops p226…”

We both looked up, stared at each other and frowned. She raised her eyebrows and went back to reading. I stared at the naked trees outside, then turned back to the photos and found the one of Dr. Jose Robles lying sprawled and dead in an armchair. I was looking at the blood on his chest.

“The weapon was recovered at the scene…”

“Dropped on the floor near the body.”

“Correct. It was sent for prints and still awaiting results.”

“What about Agnes Shine?”

“I’m coming to that, big guy. She was known to be a close friend of the victim. Dr. Patricia Meigh, Jose’s head of department…”

“Me?”

“Meigh, M-E-I-G-H, Meigh, she’s the head of the department that was conducting the research that Jose was involved in. She was concerned when Jose didn’t turn up Monday morning and wouldn’t answer his phone. She tried to locate Agnes Shine, but it turned out she hadn’t shown up either…”

“What’s her department?”

“Um…” She scanned several pages. “Professor of Economics and International Finance.”

“Huh, OK.”

“She didn’t turn up either. Tuesday they were both missing again, so Dr. Meigh raised the alarm. A patrol car was dispatched to his house with no result. Her house is a few doors down, so they went to have a look. Living room is on the second floor, but there are outside stairs. They saw him through the window.”

“The drapes were open.”

“Presumably.”

“They were.” I waved the photograph at her.

“Uh-huh. Stephens Avenue, right by Pugsley Creek Park. Officers forced their way in, found the victim deceased at eleven AM, and no trace of Agnes. No driver’s license or any other kind of ID was found at the house. Her purse was also missing, leading Detective Gutierrez to conclude that she had killed Jose in a fit of passion and fled.”

“Witnesses?”

“Uniforms canvassed the neighbors, but nobody saw or heard anything out of the ordinary. Jose was last seen by a friend at the university Friday evening at eight. So time of death is sometime between Friday at eight P.M. and Tuesday at eleven in the morning.”

She dropped the file and reached across to pick up the photographs. I sat drumming my fingers on the desk and gazing at the stark, gray sky outside. “It has, as Holmes would say, some interesting features. Was the Sig registered to either of them?”

She answered while staring at the photograph of Jose Robles, dead in the chair. “Nope. Unregistered.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

“You’re mixing your quotes. That’s Alice in Wonderland.”

I stood and grabbed my coat. “Come, Dehan, I want to have a look at the crime scene. For once it is less than ten years old. It might actually tell us something.”

“I’m giddy with excitement,” she said