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

Now, let’s start where Dr. Jose Robles tells you about the LightYear Corporation’s offer.”

He buried his face in his hands and I heard him mutter, “Oh, dear God…”

“What happened, Costas? Did Robles start turning on you? Did he threaten to tell your wife, your boss? Did he threaten to leak it to the press that you hung out at the Dare 2 Dream?”

“I don’t hang out there! I went there once!”

“On whose suggestion?”

“His, of course!”

“And now he was turning that against you, threatening you with it, just for laughs.”

He didn’t answer. I said, “Is that what happened, Costas?”

“Yes, kind of.”

Dehan pressed him again. “So when he told you about the LightYear Corporation’s offer, you went to Am and told him that Robles was planning to take the offer and cut him out.”

“No, that’s not how it happened.”

“You persuaded Agnes to go out for the night. Where did you send her? To Dr. Meigh’s?”

“No.”

“You called Robles and you and Am waited for him, and when he came in, you shot him.”

“No…” He shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

“No?” She stood and leaned across the table, pointing her finger at him. “Come on, Costas! You know how this works! Do you really think you can get away with this? We have your admission on tape that you tried to scare us off the investigation! That means one thing and one thing only, goddammit! It means you’re guilty!”

Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead and I could see his hands were shaking. “I asked the deputy inspector to appoint a team who would dig deep because I wanted to find out who had killed Jose. I would not have done such a stupid thing if I had killed him myself…”

Dehan didn’t let him finish: “Unless you had framed Agnes!”

“But Gutierrez already suspected her! Why would I…”

“And that’s a question you are going to enjoy asking the jury! Right? Come on, Costas! You know we can do this all day! You conspired to assassinate two police officers to cover up your crime. You’re a DA, for crying out loud! You know how this works! The sooner you come clean, the easier it goes!”

He drew breath to answer, but I asked him, “How did you meet Am?”

“What?”

“How did you meet Am, Costas?”

“I… At Jose’s house. He was leaving one day as I was arriving.”

“Were they lovers?”

“I… I don’t know. Possibly.”

“Were you interested in Am? Sexually?”

He hesitated, frowned, then shook his head. “No! You’re confusing me. No. I mean, he was good looking, but…”

“You stayed in contact.”

“Not really…”

“This is easy for us to check, Costas. Besides…” I gave a small laugh. “You either stayed in touch or you didn’t. ‘Not really’ means you spoke again. When and why?”

“All right! I called him! Once!”

“What for?”

“To ask him out for a drink.”

Dehan uttered an exclamation under her breath and looked away. I nodded and gave a look that suggested we were guys and a woman would never understand the way we operate. “OK, let’s take this easy. One step at a time.” He began to relax. “So, when Jose came to you for legal advice about LightYear’s offer, what did you advise him?”

“I told him it was very dangerous. The offer was huge, he would have become a very rich man, but he would have been in breach of contract as well as guilty of various criminal offenses.”

Dehan interrupted. “Just let me ask you something. You say you don’t know if Am and Jose were lovers. When you saw Am leaving Jose’s house, what the hell did you think they had been doing? Playing cards?”

Costas bridled. “I imagined they had been discussing work. They were collaborating, remember!”

I grunted. “So you did know that they were collaborating.”

He swallowed. “Yes…”

“So when Jose told you about the LightYear offer, did you think of telling Am?”

He saw the trap when it was too late. He was already in it and there was no way out. He closed his eyes. “Yes, but it is not the way you’re making it seem.”

Dehan exploded. “Oh, really? How are we making it seem, Costas? That you can’t keep it in your pants and you wouldn’t know a faithful relationship if it bit you on the ass? Is that how we make it seem? Tell this reactionary, Republican bitch something. While you’re offering your liberal ass to all takers around town, what is your wife doing back home? Is she washing up, cleaning your house, feeding your kids?”

“I am not the monster you are making me out to be!”

I sounded the voice of reason. “Let’s get back on task. Did you warn Am that Jose might cut him out?”

“Yes.”

Dehan snarled, “Betrayal comes really easy to you, doesn’t it, Costas?”

“It wasn’t betrayal! He had been treating me like shit!”

Again he saw it too late. Clamped his mouth shut and screwed up his eyes. I gave him a moment to realize he was sunk. Then I asked, “In what way was he treating you like shit?”

He didn’t open his eyes, just shook his head. “He was being the way he was sometimes.”

“Can you be a little more precise?”

He opened his eyes and sagged. “He was taunting me. He had this thing: he was attracted to people who were more powerful than him. He would start a new relationship by being very submissive, giving himself completely, until he found a weakness in the other person, and then he would start to attack that weakness, until he had that person completely enslaved. It was compulsive, and he would move from one relationship to another, leaving a trail of broken people in his wake. My weakness, he soon discovered, was my wife and children.” He looked at Dehan. “Whatever you