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

We were approaching a large intersection that looked more like a few buildings scattered in a woodland than the heart of a town, but this was the center of Elk Grove, and on the far side, on the right, was a large, modern building that claimed to be Elk Grove’s public library.

“You going to do another one of those things where you don’t tell me anything? Why are we at the public library?”

“Not at all, Dehan.” I pulled over and parked. “We are at the public library because I want to have a look at these people. I figure if they ran a full report on the incident, then there is probably a photograph of the Browne family.”

“Yeah, OK, I kind of got that, but why? What do you want to see a photograph of them for? Where is your mind going, Stone?”

I stared out the windshield and sighed. “I need to see them, get a feel for them. How are we going to find out where Cyril is, if we haven’t got a sense of who Cyril is?”

I climbed out of the car and started toward the entrance to the library. I heard the door slam behind me and Dehan mutter, “I know where my mind is going. Out of itself.”

Ten

We had sat in the quiet, spacious library, with the gentle, California light leaning in through the tall windows, making long, glistening ghosts out of the dust particles that lingered in the air. Now and then a distant echo would disturb the silence: a muffled cough, a book dropped on a table in another part of the building, a door opening briefly to allow in the hum of a passing car. Dehan had sat next to me, leaning against me with one arm on my shoulder, and we had read the article together. It didn’t add anything to what Father Cohen had told us already, except the name of the journalist, Jose Rodriguez, who had been summarily dismissed following the incident.

There had been several photographs of the family as a whole and of the individuals that comprised it. They, the family, were described in the article as God-fearing, long standing members of the community. The journalist had managed to imply that Marion’s childhood in Reno was somehow responsible for her lamentable behavior, and that though her death was a tragedy, the kids were somehow, in the long run, better off without her. The real shame was that Peter had not survived with them.

I had stopped reading after a while and sat staring at the photographs. There was a close up of Cyril, aged five. He had dark hair and sad eyes in a gaunt face. He was thin and bony, and you somehow got the feeling he was sensitive. Books would definitely have figured in his life, and I wondered if in different circumstances he might not have become a poet.

Mary, his sister, had been prettier back then, when she was younger. She gazed, smiling out of her portrait photo, as though toward a happy future. Even then, at fifteen, there was a strength about her, both physical and of character, a determination perhaps that any sign of weakness would be labeled ‘nonsense’ or a ‘fantasy’, and dismissed. I guessed that was how she dealt with her own loss and grief. That was the way she stayed strong.

A third photograph showed the whole family in their backyard. Cyril was in the foreground, on a tricycle, squinting at the camera in the sun. Mary was standing behind him, holding her father’s arm in both of hers. There was something proprietary about the gesture, which he echoed by placing his hand gently on her forearm. Like him, she was tall, with a strong, heavy body. He didn’t smile at the camera, rather he seemed to assess it and judge it through narrowed eyes. His wife, Marion, stood slightly apart from them, resting her backside on a garden table. She had a pair of aviator sunglasses perched on her head. Like her son, she was squinting at the camera, half smiling. The similarity with her daughter was striking, except that she was of a finer build, more delicate, like her son. Mary had inherited her father’s physical strength and ‘big bones’, Cyril his mother’s sensitivity.

I had sat like that, staring at them, for a good fifteen minutes, letting my mind roam and wander, until Dehan nudged me and said, “What now, Sensei, you want to grab a coffee?”

I glanced at my watch. It was eleven o’clock. “Let’s go and have lunch in Reno.”

Her eyes went wide and her jaw set. “See?” She said it loudly and it echoed. “You’re doing it! You are!”

Somebody went, “Shshsh!” and Dehan repeated in a hoarse whisper, “You are doing it, Stone! Tell me why we are going to Reno!”

I grinned. “In the car. And if you can’t learn to behave, this is the last time I bring you to the library.”

“Funny. You’re really funny.”

We left amid scowls and returned to the car. I threw her the keys and climbed in the passenger seat and as she got behind the wheel I said:

“I don’t know, Dehan. I’m kind of groping in the dark, but like you said, these coincidences can’t be coincidences: his mom’s from the Bronx, she’s killed on Halloween, he disappears on Halloween, Sue dies on Halloween…” I closed my eyes, trying to grasp a thought. “Somehow, in some way, he is trying to follow his mother. So, at the moment I am just following them.”

She glanced at me and started the car. “Reno…?”

“Uh-huh.”

She pulled away. “What for?”

“You picked up, like I did, that Cyril felt oppressed and controlled by his sister, right?”

“Yeah, I got that.”

She turned into Elk Grove