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

lookin’ for any kind of sex. We tried a few times, but he couldn’t get it up. Honey, I tried everything in the book and a few things that was never writ down in the book. He just couldn’t get past Mr. Floppy.”

Dehan flopped back in her chair.

Xara turned to look at her. “I ain’t kidding. That’s why I don’t believe he could’a done that murder. He could no more rape a woman than I could. And I ain’t got a dick.”

I squinted at her. “What about Viagra, Cialis…”

“Forget it! Ain’t I tellin’ you we tried everything? He wasn’t even interested. All he wanted was a woman to be sweet to him: hug him, hold him, stroke his hair, say sweet things to him. He loved bein’ told he was handsome. Truth is he wasn’t bad lookin’. Nice face. But his dick was like last night’s fuckin’ Chinese noodles. As limp as a boiled shrimp.”

Dehan was staring at the wall. “I’ll be damned!”

Xara looked at her and laughed. “Ain’t nobody in this room goin’ to the Good Place, that’s for sure!”

I raised an eyebrow at her and smiled. “So he gave you no indication that he was planning to leave?”

“Uh-uh. He just stopped calling and stopped showin’ up.”

“OK, now think about this very carefully before you answer, Xara. Was there anything he said to you, any passing comment, anything at all that would give you some clue to where he might have gone?”

She held my eye for a long moment. Her expression was not friendly. “I already told you, I liked the boy. You get your filthy hands on him, and you gonna frame him for a murder he did not commit. So even if I had some idea, which I ain’t, I wouldn’t tell the likes of you, Mr. Gammon.”

Dehan sighed. “We don’t want to frame him, Xara. We just want to know what happened that night. If he didn’t kill Sue, we need to eliminate him as a suspect. Because right now there is a man out there, who did kill Sue, who may have killed again—who may still be killing. We want to stop this killer, whoever he is. We’re not in the business of framing anybody.”

She made a face that was skeptical. “Tell that to your buddies in Vice.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. He talked a lot about going home. Only he didn’t say it like that. He used to say ‘comin’ home,’ ‘I wanna come home,’ he’d say, like that had some special meaning for him. I know he was from Sacramento. I don’t know if he was thinkin’ of going back to California. I know he liked the desert, but I don’t think he was happy out west. He never talked about his family. He said once he had a sister, but he never talked about her.” She crushed out the butt in the ashtray and fiddled with the packet, turning it around in her plump, white fingers. “I know what that’s like, not wanting to talk about your family.” She snorted. “Whatever he thought, I ain’t no shrink, but I know he weren’t happy as a kid. You could see that plain as day.” She hesitated. “And you know what else you could see?”

I jerked my chin at her in a wordless, ‘what?’

“He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He come across as sullen and rude sometimes, but it was defensive, not offensive. That was his way of protecting himself. Underneath that shell, he was the softest, sweetest boy I ever met.”

I looked at Dehan. She shrugged. I said, “OK, Xara. Thanks for your time. You’ve been very helpful.”

She laughed a smoky laugh and started coughing. “I been helpful to the cops. I’m goin’ to whore hell for sure.”

We let ourselves out. As I closed the door, I could still hear her coughing in the kitchen. The sudden cold air made us shiver and I thrust my hands deep in my pockets.

Dehan said: “The softest, sweetest boy a submissive hooker ever met isn’t much of a recommendation.”

I grunted. “But it was a very believable picture. What time is it?”

“Eleven. Too early for lunch, Stone.”

“Let’s grab a coffee and a snack somewhere. This is one hell of a puzzle, Dehan. I need to think this through.”

We went to Monsignor del Valle Square and hustled inside the Café Sevilla. It was warm and close, it smelled of wet coats and sweet buns, and there was an espresso machine screaming behind the bar. We found a table by the window, squeezed in and ordered two cups of hot chocolate and two almond paste croissants. Then we sat and stared out at the soaking sludge and the traffic in silence. Dehan was the first to speak after the waitress had brought our order. She broke off a piece of croissant and dunked it in her chocolate.

“She just blew a hole a mile wide in our case, Stone.”

I smiled at her. “In my case. Your money was on Fernando and Giorgio.”

She tilted her head in a kind of one shouldered shrug. “You had me almost sold on your semi-serial killer theory, but I have to admit—the sweetest guy she ever met, who wouldn’t hurt a fly and he has erectile dysfunction not even Viagra can cure... that’s not much of a prime suspect.”

I nodded. “You’re right. But I still think we need to track him down and talk to him. He is still the one guy who didn’t give a sample, and he is the one guy who disappeared the very next morning after the killing. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

She frowned at her croissant and made a ‘hm’ sound, then said, “I agree, but Stone, maybe we need to look at this again. Like I said before, maybe we’ve been making assumptions.” She leaned forward and put