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

tape, and by the texture on my skin, it felt like nylon. There was not a hope in hell of breaking it.

I tried to sit up again, slowly, and found there were a couple of ropes across my chest and shoulders. I was pretty much immobilized, and even if I were able to move enough to reach my pockets, I had to assume my cell had been taken. There was an outside chance my GPS was on and traceable, but it was unlikely, to say the least. It dawned on me that I must be going through something very similar to what Jack Connors went through during his last hours, but it was poor consolation.

I spent the next while—it could have been half an hour or ten minutes, it was impossible to tell in that darkness—just listening. I heard nothing: no traffic, no voices, no birds, no foghorns. Nothing but my own breathing.

The surface I was lying on felt like wood, and as I explored what little area I could with my fingers, I realized I must be lying on a table. The surface and the edges were not smooth, like a polished dining table, but slightly rough, so I began a slow and hopeless process of rubbing the ropes binding my wrists against the edge of the table in the hope of wearing through them. Though it seemed more likely the rope would wear through the wood.

After a long while, I heard a noise. It might have been a bump, or a footfall. I froze. After a moment, there was the clack of a key turning in a lock and a thin strip of light broke the darkness. How near or how far it was was impossible to tell, nor did the light reveal anything of where I was, or what lay beyond it. It was just a strip of brilliance in the dark. Nothing happened for a moment. Then the brilliance expanded and at its center there was the black, spidery silhouette of a person standing with one hand outstretched, pushing open the door.

I waited. The figure was hazy and seemed to shift, perhaps take a step closer. I squinted, but I couldn’t make out any detail. I spoke and my voice sounded strange and loud.

“Who are you?”

There was no indication they had heard, or even knew I was there. I spoke louder. “Come and untie me!”

The figure remained motionless, its right hand raised, outstretched against the blackness of the door.

“The whole of the NYPD will be searching for me. They know where I went. You can’t get away with this.” Still nothing, no reaction, no indication it had heard. “Let’s talk! Let’s negotiate! Tell me what you want.”

Again nothing. I flopped back, rested my head against the tabletop and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to think. When I raised it again to look, the figure had come almost imperceptibly closer and was now filling more of the doorframe, with the brilliance behind it. Now I could sense that it was staring at me. Panic coiled like a snake in my belly. I said, “Is it Helena? Is that what you want?”

Nothing shifted, nothing changed, except that I could sense the intensity of the figure’s concentration.

“Why didn’t you kill her, instead? Why kill Jack? Which one of them was it who hurt you? Or was it both? You have a story. I’d like to hear it. I am not out to punish anyone. I am just out to understand.”

I knew I was overreaching and stopped. The figure seemed to recede slightly. I spoke again, more quietly. “So it was Helena. She was at the heart of the whole thing, wasn’t she? That’s why it wasn’t enough to kill him. That’s why you had to send her the head.”

The shadow receded a little more and the door started to close. I shouted: “Did she appreciate it?”

The door stopped. I shouted again: “Did she appreciate what you did?”

The blackness contracted around the jagged hook of light and shut it out. There was a clack, and the blackness was locked in.

* * *

Dehan had watched me leave and sat for a while thinking about dismembered bodies and decapitation. Finally, she had called Frank at the morgue. She had said:

“We’re averaging three hundred murders a year just in the city, double that in the state.”

“What’s your point, you’re being forced to do your job?”

“Hey, save the attitude for Stone. I’m the pretty one. You’re supposed to be nice to me.”

“So what do you want from me? I’m the guy who has to deal with those three hundred murders. I am actually trying to do my job. And, FYI, it’s below three hundred now.”

“Quit griping, Frank. All I want you to do is think a little. This is the kind of body that is going to stand out from the rest. He hasn’t been mangled or chopped up with a machete. His head has been cleanly severed in one swipe, with something like a samurai…”

“I am familiar with the decapitation, Carmen. It was I who described it to you, if you remember.”

“If there had been anything similar in 2013, 2014 or 2015, surely it would have stuck in your memory; a body with the head missing, or some kind of dismemberment where the limbs had been removed with surgical precision…”

“What crackpot idea is Stone playing with now? He thinks this is a serial killer?”

“He thinks it’s worth exploring, and I kind of agree. It is a very odd way to kill somebody.”

“Yes. Not as much as you might think, but yes. However, the startling feature is the mailing of the head, not the severing of it.” He sighed, then muttered, “There was something. But it wasn’t New York. You realize this city has processed around one thousand five hundred homicides since 2013…”

“Yeah,