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

verb to be. One minute he’s black Bronx, the next he’s a Colorado redneck… ‘I’m making soup, you want soup? I’m a bit weird and crazy, but I am also a loveable genius.’ He got us to go to him, so he didn’t have to step outside on a freezing cold day, and we didn’t even get his surname to check with the university.”

I handed her my phone again. “Call him. Get his name.”

I heard it ring a couple of times, then Dehan said, “Yo, Am, it’s Detective Dehan. Listen, we need your name. We have to fill out a report, and we can’t just call you Americano, right? What’s your surname?” She glanced at me, then said, “Nielsen? And that’s your permanent address on Bryant Avenue? Cool, Am, thanks for your help.”

She hung up, then made another call.

“Good afternoon, this is Detective Carmen Dehan of the NYPD 43rd Precinct. We are investigating Dr. Jose Robles’ murder, and I need to confirm that he had among his students one Americano Nielsen, also known as Am Nielsen… OK, I’ll hold.” After a couple of minutes, she repeated the question, then: “He did? And he is now temporarily on Donald Hays’ list of students? Thank you for your help.”

She hung up and sat banging the edge of my phone on her thigh. “So, just for the sake of argument, humor me here: let’s say Am is some kind of shapeshifter…”

“A what now?”

“You know what I mean, one of those people who can just become somebody else, like Meryl Streep. In Death Becomes Her she’s this glamorous, sexy star, and then in Bridges of Madison County she is just like totally somebody else.”

“Oh, OK, I get the idea.”

“So just humor me, and imagine that Am is like that, he can take on any kind of personality he wants, and be totally convincing. And by using that very skill, on a highly vulnerable, suggestible Agnes Shine, he convinces her to kill Jose. Now, the million dollar question becomes, does he know where she went? I think that would have to be part of the plan. He would need to know where she was going, and where she was going to hide. I mean, she becomes a big risk and a loose end.”

I nodded. “Yes, he would. He would need to know that. But I worry this theory is getting away from us. What is it actually founded on? The fact that his father is a Colorado redneck, and he is a little odd. There are a lot of suppositions here, Dehan.”

She grunted, then sighed.

We were pulling into the grounds of the Van Etten Building. I said, “I’m not saying we shouldn’t explore it, Little Grasshopper, but let’s get a bit of evidence to build on first. Let’s see what Joe has for us.”

We huddled in our coats and crossed the freezing parking lot to the lobby, then rode the elevator up to the lab. We found Joe in his office and he stood to greet us as we came in.

“Sit down, you want some coffee? It’s cruel out there.”

Dehan shook her head. “No, thanks. I just had some soup.” I shook my head too and he leafed through a stack of files till he found the one he was looking for.

“This was unexpected. Gutierrez had asked us to have a look at Jose Robles’ phone, to see if we could get any idea of where Agnes Shine had fled to, and also why she killed him in the first place. So we had the tech guys doing an autopsy on the cell when we find a deleted app. We look into it and we find he used to have Telegram.”

Dehan raised her eyebrows. “No kidding.”

“Exactly. Now, thousands of people have Telegram, there is nothing unusual about that. But, it always raises a flag with us, because obviously it is the messenger app favored by terrorists and organized crime, the reason being it is so hard to decrypt, and the company is so uncooperative with the authorities. So, we had a look-see what we could retrieve. There was very little…” He opened the file and leafed through a few pages, then said, “Here, this is all we could get. He receives a message on the Thursday before he died that says, ‘Maybe I should become your student,’ to which he replies, ‘I told you never to contact me on my phone!’ The message was from somebody called…” He looked at us both in turn. “Mohamed. We are working on getting the phone number, but I thought you’d want to see this straight away.”

Dehan sighed loudly, pulled her hat off her head and screwed it up into a ball. The static from the friction left small hairs standing up on her head like antennae.

“The fact that his name is Mohamed means nothing of itself.”

Joe nodded. “Obviously. And the fact that his name was Mohamed and he was using Telegram is nothing more than slightly suggestive.”

He smiled in a way that said that his uncle was the Sultan of Brunei and Alice in Wonderland was coming for tea on Sunday. Dehan sighed again. “But add to that the fact that he deleted the app, and that the murder weapon was a pistol favored by pros… oh man!”

I said, “The number that sent the message will be a burner.”

“In all probability, John. And the chances are he will have got rid of it by now. But if he hasn’t, we might be able to get a fix on its location.”

I looked at Dehan. She looked tired and cold. “Let’s not jump the gun, Dehan. ‘Maybe I should join your class.’” I looked at Joe. “It’s a threat.”

Joe nodded. “I agree. It certainly sounds like a threat.”

Dehan had her lips pursed, like she was blowing a kiss at her hat. “To which