Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (types of ebook readers txt) 📕

She nodded and looked away again. “You’re deep, Stone. You’re deep.” I snorted quietly, but she ignored me. “So it always comes back to love, and more specifically, sex. Are we saying that Lee and Samantha might have started having an affair?”

“It’s one possible motive, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh, but it raises two questions.” She lifted her left hand with two fingers raised. “One, why’d she go… Sorry, what made her go and marry somebody else, not Lee, after Dave was killed? And two, once again, what happened to the article and his laptop?”

“In answer to your first point, maybe it wasn’t mutual. She was feeling abandoned and frustrated because of Dave’s neglect. Lee was there. They had sex. For her it was an escape, for him it was more.”

“Okay, and the article?”

I thought for a moment, as we approached the Throgs Neck Bridge. “He realized that publication of the article posed a threat, not just to Dave, but to Samantha as well.”

“Huh… So if this is right, they meet to discuss the article and the risks involved in publishing it. Lee is already having an affair with Samantha, and it’s getting serious for him. Dave reveals the nature of the article and Lee sees the risks involved—forty-plus people have died already as a result of crossing this dame. He tells him not to do it, that he is putting Samantha in danger as well as himself.”

“How is that exactly? Spell it out for me.”

“Okay, we are assuming that Hennessy has a long track record of eliminating people who threaten to expose her or cross her in some way. Lee sees a risk that if Dave goes ahead with the article, Hennessy could threaten him, but she could also go after his wife.” She spread her hands. “If they take him out, the article could go ahead anyway, and worse still, give more credence to the story. Let’s face it, the Telegraph has a reputation for not giving in to intimidation. The murder of a journalist could just boost sales. But if she threatens Dave’s wife, he may not publish at all. All I am saying is that Lee might have seen this possibility.”

I nodded. “Okay, it’s possible.”

“But Dave doesn’t give a damn. He’s going ahead anyway. So Lee goes to see him, kills him, and takes the article and the laptop and drops them in the Hudson.”

“Hmmm…”

“Hmmm?”

“It’s almost a perfect fit. How would we prove it?”

“That’s tricky. We would need a confession from Samantha that she had an affair with Lee, just to get started. We could get them both in for questioning and play them against each other.”

I shook my head. “Lee would plead the fifth, hire a team of lawyers, and long before we got to trial he’d see we had squat. And we’d never get to trial because the DA would also see we had squat. And before that happened, we wouldn’t even be able to charge him.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“For the moment I think the Lee-Samantha avenue is blocked, but if there is anything in it, it might open up if we approach from another angle.”

“What angle?”

“Hennessy. I think I’d like to poke Hennessy and see if she jumps.”

“Seriously?” She frowned at me. “What will you poke her with? You just said we had squat.”

I grinned. “Squat can hurt if you sharpen it enough. At the very least it can look scary.”

We joined the Cross Bronx Expressway and the traffic started to get heavier. Dehan said, “You want to put that into plain language?”

“You ever heard of Milton Erickson?”

“No. Should I have?”

“He was a surgeon, a psychiatrist, and a hypnotist. He came up with this idea of being ‘artfully vague.’”

“Artfully vague?”

“Yeah. If I say to you, ‘You are feeling all those feelings you get when you start to feel sleepy,’ even though I haven’t mentioned any of those feelings, your mind will automatically supply them. You might even start to feel sleepy.”

“Huh. Okay, so…?”

“I say to you, ‘In his study, he had all the things you’d expect from an old-fashioned gentleman.’ I haven’t mentioned a single stick of furniture, but your mind has produced all the images of what you would expect in an old-fashioned gentleman’s study. Right?”

“Yup.”

“So if I suggest something to you, but I am artfully vague about the details, your brain will unconsciously supply what’s missing. What I am curious to find out is, if I suggest, in an artfully vague way, to Carol Hennessy, that we have new information about David Thorndike and his article, what details will her brain supply? And how will she respond? If I poke her, how will she jump?”

“I agree that would be interesting, but, Stone, what precisely are we trying to find out?”

I took a deep breath. It was a good question. “I think what I would really like to know right now is, did Carol Hennessy know that David Thorndike was investigating her? And, if so, did she know that he was ready to publish his article? The answer to those two questions would focus our investigation.”

We had pulled onto the Boulevard and were approaching the turn off for the 43rd. Dehan grunted. “You’re a devious son of a bitch, Stone. You promised me lunch on the way. You got me soaked, made me lie to an attorney, filled my head with suggestive ambiguity, and never even bought me lunch.”

I spoke without thinking and an ugly gnome in my head started beating an alarm bell with an iron hammer. I tried hard to ignore it.

“You’re right. Tell you what, I’ll get some sandwiches and coffee from the deli. You find a number for Carol Hennessy, and tonight we’ll grab a couple of steaks and a bottle of wine to make up for lunch. Whaddya say?”