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

I said, “You figure Lee for the kind of man who would kill somebody like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“It was cold. Steady hand, took aim, looking right into his face. Didn’t flinch. It takes real cold blood to do that. I wouldn’t be able to shoot someone in the head while they were looking me in the eye.” I shrugged and smiled. “I just don’t see that in Lee.”

She made a face. “He was ruthless enough to shop his friend to Hennessy. Greed and ambition can do crazy things to a person.”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

She frowned. “You think Philips did it?”

“If that is Philips, he is certainly cold and professional enough to do it.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

* * *

We stayed the night at the Hotel Don Carlos next door and the following morning, under fresh, blue skies, we drove out again to the Top of the World Stupa, to meet with Ananda again. The unenlightened being on reception smiled beatifically at us and told us that Nayaka Ananda was waiting for us at the pagoda behind the stupa, where he had met us the day before, and we retraced our steps up the long track.

He was seated on the floor in the lotus position and appeared to be meditating. When we were crossing the bridge, he opened his eyes and watched us approach. As we climbed the steps he stood, in a single fluid movement, and bowed to us.

“Good morning, Carmen, good morning, John. Please, will you sit?”

We greeted him and sat, and he picked up from the floor a military rucksack and placed it on the table in front of me.

“I think you’ll find everything you need to close your case in here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I have no secrets.”

I opened the sack and extracted a number of A4 notebooks, a case of rewriteable CDs and DVDs, and an album of photographs. While I was doing that, Dehan said, “I have some questions.”

Ananda smiled. “I thought you might.”

“I think you’re full of shit. I think your story is bullshit, I think you are Adrian Philips, and I think you got religion as part of your midlife crisis and now you want to clear your conscience of all the murders you’ve committed without having to face the music. So you’ve invented this cock and bull story about how Adrian Philips is dead but you knew him intimately, but it’s bullshit. You are Adrian Philips, and you can’t run away from yourself.”

He held her eye throughout her speech with no expression at all on his face. When she’d finished, he waited a moment, then said, “That isn’t a question, Carmen. That is just a statement of your perception.”

“More bullshit.”

Now he smiled. “Frame your question. What is it, exactly, that you want to know?”

She was struggling and looked at me for support. I said, “I want to know how you expect to get away with it. You have offered to be a witness at the trial. You told us yourself that Philips met with Hennessy and D’Angelo several times. If you go into the witness box, they will see you and recognize you. You’re on the FBI’s wanted list. Once Hennessy and D’Angelo finger you, the FBI will be all over you like a rash. There must be photographs of you back in England, with the regiment. How do you think you are going to pull this off?”

He looked a little bit amused and again waited for me to finish. When I was done he said simply, “I am not Adrian Philips. Adrian Philips is dead. So there is nothing for me to get away with or pull off. And it seems to me that you are wasting valuable time and effort in attempting to prove that your perception is the truth, rather than seeing things as they really are. When I give evidence at the trial, you will have your answer.”

A small white bird with a bright yellow face landed on a rock in the pond opposite the pagoda and started to peck at the water. He watched it for a moment and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was looking at a man who was deeply at peace with himself. I asked him, “Did you kill David Thorndike?”

His face creased up and he started to laugh. “No, John, of course not.” He thought for a moment. “He was killed, probably, on the night of Friday the 5th March, 2008. You are welcome to check the records of the stupa. You will find that that Friday, as every other Friday for the last ten years, I was in meditation at the meditation hall for the whole evening.”

Dehan said, “When you heard that Dave had been murdered, why didn’t you come forward and inform the authorities that you had all this information?”

He listened to the question, then gazed at the bright morning, at the pond and at the tiny bird, still standing on the rock.

“Carmen, I know you don’t trust me or believe me, and there is no reason why you should. But trust yourself, trust what you know to be truth. The last person whom I offered this information to died because he had it. Kama is a real thing. It is not a theory or an hypothesis, or a mystical force. It is a true system, a process, that responds to our actions and our intentions.

“So, if I had come forward and offered this information, which is so loaded with cruel, destructive intentions—if I had come forward and offered it to some investigator, what would my purpose, my intention, have been? To bring peace? To bring joy?”

She scowled. “Justice! To bring justice!”

“What is justice, Carmen?”

“More philosophical bullshit!”

He smiled and nodded. “Yes,