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

“What is?”

“He supplied the gun. It was staring us in the face. I think one of us actually said it right at the beginning, but we dismissed it.”

“Why would he?”

She put her hands on my chest. Puffs of condensation came from her mouth as she spoke. “Put it together. He told us he liked her. He’s a chameleon. We’ve seen he has the ability to adapt to whatever he thinks people expect from him. Hell, he played us! He had us eating soup with him, listening to his story and advising him to go back to college! He even got that arrogant bastard Robles to get him onto the research team. So he got himself inside Agnes’ head.”

“What for?”

“I can give you two reasons. One, to help him get close to Robles because Robles could advance his career. It was not Robles who took an interest in Nielsen, but Nielsen who took an interest in Robles. And two, because Agnes is in fact an attractive woman.”

I frowned. “Agnes Shine?”

“Have you seen a picture of her?”

“She’s pretty enough, but she’s nothing special, Dehan.”

Her expression became smug. “Except, look at the way people respond to her. Ali looks like a million bucks, but how do people respond to her? With indifference. Agnes on the other hand, quiet, shy, retiring Agnes gets invited to the Meighs’ every weekend, becomes Robles’ special friend, Hays’ special friend, has Patricia Meigh hiding her and has Nielsen paying her special attention. I’m telling you, partner, Agnes Shine has a special attraction because of her shy, vulnerable nature. And Am Nielsen liked her, and with his empathic nature, got inside her defenses and when she decided she’d had enough of Robles she went to him—not Dr. Meigh or her husband!—to Am Nielsen because she knew he could get her a gun. And that, my friend, resolves the mystery of the Sig Sauer Tacops p226, unregistered and hot off the station wagon from Colorado.”

I thought about it for a moment. “You’re on fire today, Dehan. So wherever he is now…”

“She might be there too!” She pulled her cell and walked toward the car dialing. I called the inspector.

“John, good morning!”

I put him up to speed as far as Am was concerned and said, “I need to get into his house. There is a chance that Agnes is in there, or that there is some indication of where she might be.”

“Yes, I agree. I’ll send a Crime Scene team over, too. Let’s see if there is any trace of her there.”

“Good, thank you, sir.”

I hung up and by applying the small screwdriver on my Swiss Army knife, opened the lock before Dehan got back.

“We got probable cause?”

“The chief thinks so. We have a Crime Scene team coming over to look for traces of Agnes. You got gloves?”

“Always, baby.”

I glanced at her. Her tone of voice was incongruent with her Wool Elf look. She grinned. “I got the techs searching for his GPS. As soon as they find him, they’ll let us know.”

The kitchen showed us nothing but a pot of soup, one bowl and one spoon washed and dried on the rack. There was also a coffee percolator on the stove. I opened it and checked the grains. They were dry. The cups were all dry too, and stored away.

“He didn’t make coffee this morning.”

“That’s bad.”

“The last meal he had was soup.”

She smelled it. “It’s not rancid, but in this cold, that doesn’t mean much. It could be last night’s or the night before.” She put the pot down and faced me. “We spoke to him yesterday evening. We spooked him. He didn’t want to make a statement. He was anxious to get away. He bolted as soon as we left.”

I nodded. “Let’s have a look in the bedroom. See if he’s packed.”

The bed was unmade. His phone charger was plugged in next to the clock. I touched Dehan’s arm and pointed to it. She opened the wardrobe. There were a couple of jackets, a suit, a tie, some shirts, some chinos, shoes and boots. Two sports bags lay on the bottom of the wardrobe.

I opened the drawers in the tallboy against the wall. His underwear, his socks, jeans, belts and sweaters were all there. In the bathroom, his toothbrush, hairbrush and razor were all there. Dehan said:

“He didn’t come home to pack. He was in a hurry.”

“I don’t see his computer. He must have had it with him. But he’s left everything else.” I sighed and leaned my back against the wall. “What did we talk about? What did we say that could have spooked him so much?”

She thought for a minute. Outside the window, I could hear the cold sound of water spattering on the sidewalk from the guttering above. Dehan stuffed her hat in her pocket.

“He talked about how he was a clown, how they’d all heard Dr. Shine was a suspect in Robles’ murder. He knew Robles treated her like crap. He didn’t like that. He said she was really sweet—he used those words—and there was no way she shot him. He said he was sure Robles’ death had something to do with the research they were doing, but he had no concrete evidence, it was just a hunch. So he knew if he called us and said he was Robles’ student and believed Agnes was innocent, with no hard facts, we wouldn’t listen to him…”

“But that’s what he said, what did we say? Something we said spooked him.”

“I’m trying to remember. He said he got caught up playing a part…we asked him how much of what he said was true, he said pretty much all of it, he was from Colorado, his name, his dad…”

“You asked him if Robles had intervened