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

long time at the floor. The inspector was looking hard at Dehan. Finally, Costas said, “You are quite right, Detective, and you have a right to know. Jose was a friend of mine. When I heard he had been murdered, it was a huge shock, and the more I looked at the murder scene, the less convincing I found it. Gutierrez is a good detective, but I asked John to put somebody on it who would look beneath the obvious.” He gestured at us with both hands. “I see he made a good choice.”

She gave a humorless snort. “One thing you can say for this case is that there is nothing obvious about it. It seems everybody has half a story to tell.” He frowned at her and she held his eye, then said, “Dr. Meigh made Dr. Robles’ research available to us. We examined it. Obviously a lot of it was incomprehensible to us, but that part of it which was translated into layman’s terms seemed unremarkable. She left us alone with it without supervision, and if we had wanted to, we could have photographed and copied it. Her security was not lax, it was nonexistent.” She paused. “Another thing that struck us both as surprising was that the research was stored at her house.”

“That is surprising.”

The inspector gave me a curious look. “I don’t know what common practice is in these cases, but you’d expect…”

“Unless the value of the work he was doing was not as great as they are making out. On the other hand, she is the head of the department and in charge of the project.” I shook my head. “I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that what we saw was little more than a review of existing technology.”

Costas looked from me to Dehan and back again. “Not a motive for murder, then?”

I shook my head. “Not what we saw, no.”

He hesitated. “What are your conclusions, so far?”

“We haven’t any, so far. We have three major questions: Where is Agnes Shine? How did she get hold of that gun? And who is Mohamed?”

His face went rigid. “Mohamed?”

“Yes, Mohamed.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand. I mean, I can only repeat your question. Who is Mohamed? How have you come up with this name?”

I watched him carefully as Dehan said, “He is somebody who was in touch with Dr. Robles, and seems to have been threatening him.”

“With what?”

I said: “With exposure?”

“Exposure? What kind of exposure?”

“That’s what we don’t know. Can you offer us any insight into that?”

“No. I mean, how would I?”

“You were friends.”

“But not that… I mean, not close enough to know anything that might be exposed!”

I spread my hands. “That’s where the investigation is at the moment, Costas.”

He stared at the floor a moment. “Yes, I see. Well…” He stood and took his coat from the back of his chair. “I’ll let you get home. Thank you for meeting with me.”

I stood. “If, as his friend, you should think of anything that could help us, however unrelated…”

He nodded. “I know the routine, Detective. Thanks again.” He turned to the inspector. “John, thanks again for your help.”

He left and closed the door behind him. We heard his feet on the stairs and after a moment, the inspector raised his eyebrows at us. “Would you mind telling me what that was about?”

Dehan still had her elbows on her knees, turning her hat over in her hands. She glanced at me. I said, “I wish I knew, sir.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh, that won’t do, John. When you subject the Assistant District Attorney to that kind of treatment in my office, and he takes it, I am entitled to know why!”

I sat. My ankles were cold and I could see amber droplets of rain spattering the window overlooking Storey Avenue. Suddenly I wanted to be at home in front of the fire, smelling something good coming from the kitchen. I sighed.

“Truthfully, sir, all I can tell you is that there seemed to be a portion of Dr. Robles’ research missing, that Dr. Meigh and Dr. Shine were close friends, but Dr. Meigh lied about it, that Dr. Robles frequented a night club on West 26th Street, in Chelsea, most Saturday nights, that somebody called Mohamed threatened to join one of his classes and that ADA Costas Varufakis is hiding something, but I have no idea what. That, right now, is the extent of my knowledge.”

He stared at me a moment, then waved his hands in the air and shook his head. “Fine! Fine! We could probably all do with going home and having a good night’s sleep.”

I looked over at Dehan. She looked as dead beat as I felt. “Unfortunately, sir,” I said, “we still have to go dancing tonight.”

TEN

We arrived on West 26th at midnight. Dare 2 Dream was located discreetly on the top floor and sported a vast terrace, a lawn, palm trees and even a swimming pool, all under a glass dome annexed to the bar. There was no music as such. It was more as though some electronic god had gone into paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia and we were trapped inside his chest. There were a lot of people, and most of them were bouncing. The ones that weren’t bouncing were leaning into each other’s ears and shouting, then nodding at each other with faces that seemed to say, I have no idea what you just said.

As we squeezed through the press of bouncing, squinting people, I began to notice a third group. These were dressed mainly in black leather. It was not overt, but if you were looking for the signs, they were there. Mainly they were in dark corners, behind palms or partly concealed by groups of voyeurs.

Dehan grabbed my head and leaned