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

We were quiet for a moment, then I said, “That kind of sums up the case so far.”

She made a noise of thinking, followed by a small sideways twitch of her head. “I godda say, Sensei, to me it is looking more and more like what it has looked like right from the start.”

“And what is that? A crime of passion?”

She shifted in her seat to look at me. “What was the main problem we had? There was no trace of a relationship visible in either one of their houses. Now we know why. It’s not that there wasn’t a relationship, it’s just that they are weird.”

I laughed. “Don’t let the thought police catch you saying things like that out loud.”

“You know what I mean. They don’t express their feelings in the usual way. But you heard them. If there was one thing Dr. Meigh and Hays agreed on, it was the fact that they were emotionally dependent on each other. Only thing is, their needs were different. He needed people to need him, and she just needs him. It’s a story that’s as old as humanity. Faced with the possibility of being abandoned by him, she freaks out and kills him.”

“Where’d she get the gun from?”

“C’mon, Stone. This is America! The land of opportunity. Mail order, a pawn shop, maybe she went to South Dakota for the weekend. It is not hard to get a gun if you are determined.” She was quiet for a moment, staring at the limp, pre-Christmas lights outside, then went on. “So it’s a Sig, OK, that’s odd, but if she’s buying second hand and she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, maybe that’s the first thing that came along.”

I gave her a look that was skeptical and said, “Mad professor goes looking for a gun in a pawn shop and comes home with a Sig Sauer Tacops p226? Where shall I begin?”

“Yeah, OK, when you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”

“And you know why that is?”

“Yeah, because it is ridiculous. But the fact that it is odd she should have that particular gun does not take away from the fact that sexual jealousy is the most likely motive, and that she is the most likely suspect.”

I nodded. “That is true.”

I parked outside the station house and while Dehan went inside, I took a walk to the deli on the corner to buy some beef sandwiches and two coffees. When I got back, she was at her desk, going through a sheaf of papers. I put her sandwich and her coffee in front of her and she spoke without looking at me.

“His phone records, and hers. Gutierrez just brought them over.” She pointed at a file on my desk. “Also her financials. There it is.” She picked up a pencil and circled an entry on the record she was holding, then pushed it across the desk at me. “Saturday night, five past ten. She calls him. The call lasts four minutes.” She sat back and put her boots on the desk, pointing at me with the pencil. “He’s had his dinner, he’s washed up and put everything away because he is that kind of fastidious guy who has to have everything just so. Now he’s sitting down in front of the fire, reading about batteries and having a glass of Scotch. The phone rings...” She jabbed her pencil at the paper. “It’s Agnes and she wants him to come over because she wants to discuss something with him.”

“Hang on.” I raised a hand. “So far, what you’re saying is indisputable, but we have a problem with what comes next. “We have to accept that this very timid, self-effacing woman has gone out and bought a gun, and now lays on wine for this guy, preparatory to shooting him. It’s wrong, it just doesn’t scan.”

“Because, Sensei, you are making an assumption which is not founded in fact.”

“I bet you really enjoyed saying that. What assumption?”

“That she went out and bought the gun. She may have had it all her life. Maybe her daddy gave it to her. We have no idea where that gun came from, but it might just as easily have been sitting in her room for years.”

I nodded. “That is true.”

“And in that scenario, it does not seem so incredible. She invites him over. They are having wine and she asks him what gives with him and Ali. He replies with all the arrogance of the macho he believes himself to be. Maybe he puts Agnes down and humiliates her. Tells her that he plans to get serious with Ali. Whatever he tells her, it pushes her over the edge. She goes to her room, gets the gun…”

I sighed. “That is very plausible.” I picked up her financial records and waved them at her. “What do you say? Will we find an unexplained outlay of one thousand bucks within two or three weeks of his death?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

I started going through it. “Whether we do or not, we need to establish where that gun came from.”

As it was, I found no outlay of a thousand dollars that might have been attributable to Agnes’ purchase of a Sig Sauer p226. In fact, the most remarkable thing about Agnes’ financial records was, as with everything else about her, the absence of anything remarkable.

At five past two, Alicia Cobos arrived and I had her shown up to an interview room. We joined her a couple of minutes later. She was an attractive woman in her mid thirties. Her black hair was cut short and she moved her hands a lot when she spoke. She was overdressed and had too much makeup on, but in spite of that, she looked good. As I introduced us and we sat down, Dehan put a paper cup