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

and around her groin suggest she fought against him. Also, there was a lot of pre-mortem bruising on her neck and thighs, suggesting there was a sexual struggle before he killed her.

“The position of the body on the bed, with the legs spread open, and the bruising from the thumbs on the trachea, suggest that strangulation occurred either during or immediately at the end of the actual rape, while he was still on top of her. He then followed up with what looks like a frenzy of stabbing in the belly, especially around the lower belly. Apparently this is consistent with sexual rage, as it mimics the act of penetration. Semen was fresh and they were able to get a profile. He also left clear finger and thumb prints all over her body, especially her neck and throat. No match was found on CODIS or IAFIS. Swabs and prints were taken from everyone at the party, but no match was found there either.”

I put the file down and considered her across the desk, lacing my fingers over my belly. “Suggestive of somebody who knew her, wanted her, but was rejected.”

She nodded, then shrugged. The whole thing was a ‘yeah, maybe’ in body language. “It could also suggest a stalker who had been building up a fantasy at a distance. More suggestive is the fact that her windows were all locked from the inside and the door had not been forced. So either her attacker had somehow got hold of a key, or she let him in.”

“She had been at a Halloween party…”

“Yup. Seems she was involved in some art group based at the Bethlehem Church hall, near the corner of Lacombe and Thieriot. Had nothing to do with the church, they just rented the hall three nights a week.”

I managed to frown and raise my eyebrows in a complicated expression of skeptical surprise. “That’s a lot of dedication to art. Usually it’s just once a week, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know, Sensei. Anyhow, this group must have been pretty tight, because they arranged a Halloween party at one of their houses. I think the house belonged to the guy who led the group. On…”

She screwed up her forehead, trying to remember, and I said, “Taylor Avenue, within staggering distance of Sue’s house...”

“…On the corner of Patterson. Seems she left the party at about two AM. A neighbor raised the alarm the next morning. He had seen comings and goings at the house the night before, and when he got up for breakfast, he saw her door was still open.”

I sighed. “Art, sex and a murder, all at Halloween. Edgar Allen Poe meets George Simenon. Did you know, Dehan, that turpentine is an aphrodisiac?”

“No, Stone, I didn’t know that.”

“Yup, that is why you rarely see nudes draped languidly across the beds of writers, but you will often see them in that attitude across the beds of painters.”

“Huh. How about musicians?”

“That depends on the style of music, Dehan. Composers and performers in Tudor, Renaissance, Baroque and classical, you will very rarely find with nudes across their beds. However, rock and roll is notoriously sexual.”

“Sex, drugs and rock and roll.”

I wagged my pen at her. “In the words of the mighty Dylan, ‘Lay across my big brass bed.’”

“Lay across my big brass bed?”

“That is what he said. So what do you say we go and have a look at this church hall and talk to whoever was in charge at the time; see what they can tell us about this bunch of wild, wayward Bohemians?”

She stood. “I say, lead me to the turpentine, Sensei.”

It was extremely cold outside. Shards of icy air stabbed through whatever small opening they could find in your clothes, and froze small patches of your skin, making your whole body shiver. I looked at Dehan as she stamped across the road toward my Jaguar, with her cheeks flushed pink under a brown woolen hat pulled low over her ears. She was also clapping her gloved hands as she stamped.

We clambered into the car (a burgundy 1964, Mark II, which I had brought with me from England years back) billowing clouds of condensation, slammed the doors and I turned the key in the ignition. The big, old engine growled and I reversed out of the lot.

It was less than a mile down Soundview Avenue to the Bethlehem Church. As we turned right out of Storey, Dehan said, “You know where the mystery lies for me, Stone?”

I glanced at her.

She went on. “The guy knows her. She knows him. That’s why she let him in. That’s how they come to be in her bedroom with no signs of a struggle. But he makes no effort to hide his DNA. He goes right ahead and rapes her and strangles her. Makes no effort to hide his identity at all. It’s like he is super confident that no match is going to be found.”

I nodded a lot, chewing my lip. “That is very interesting, Dehan. I agree. It could be the key to the answer.”

“And then, he just vanishes. Nobody has seen him, nobody has any idea who he is. He’s like…”

“Please don’t say a ghost. I know it’s thematic, with the whole Halloween thing, but don’t.”

She tried to arch an eyebrow at me, but her woolen hat wouldn’t let her. “I wasn’t going to… I was going to say a ghoul.”

I turned into Thieriot Avenue and pulled up outside a large, white church that looked as though it might have been more at home in a Mexican desert. It was chunky and square in design. The walls were lime washed and there was a giant, wooden cross on the roof above the door. Beyond an iron fence and gate, steps that had been painted oxblood red climbed to an arched wooden door in which