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

shook my head. “I may be wrong…” I said. “We’ll see when we get there. Don’t ask me. It’s a stupid idea. I just have a feeling…”

We arrived an hour and ten minutes later. The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office is not what you would normally associate with a county sheriff. It is a huge, modular construction, set on the edge of the desert to the north of Reno, and looks more like a military HQ from a Star Wars movie than anything else. We left the car in the parking lot, went in to the front desk, gave the deputy our names and, two minutes later, Undersheriff Sarah Pfenninger appeared in a khaki uniform with smartly tapping heels. She was short, sharp and efficient, with very blonde hair pulled back so tight you could almost hear it scream, and very blue eyes that didn’t seem to care how much her hair screamed. She greeted me and shook hands and regarded Dehan without expression.

“Your man popped up right away. Follow me.”

We followed her down a passage, through a door and a busy detectives’ room into an office that had three glass walls through which she could keep an eye on her troops. There she sat down and we sat too. She said, “Can I see some ID?”

We showed her our badges and she sat back in her chair to look at us both.

“He’s your suspect, but he’s on my turf. What’s the story with this guy?”

Dehan said, “He’s a possible suspect in a murder inquiry.”

They both looked at each other a moment. Pfenninger seemed to be waiting. After a moment, she raised her eyebrows. “Your partner already told me that. You want to put some skin on the bones?”

I filled her in with what we had found so far and she listened carefully, with a small frown creasing her brow. When I’d finished, she said, “That’s a pretty weird story. What’s his motive for killing the girl?”

Dehan crossed one long leg over the other. “We don’t know that he did. On the face of it, we just want to eliminate him from our investigation.”

Pfenninger let her eyes rove over Dehan, seemed to find her wanting and turned back to me. “You figure he’s emotionally unstable.”

“It’s possible.”

“Probable.”

I nodded. “Probable.”

“He has big issues with his mother. Could have killed your Sue Benedict out of jealousy.”

I drew breath to answer but Dehan interrupted. “You said his name popped up right away.”

Pfenninger looked at her for a full three slow seconds, with her fingers laced over her belly, before nodding.

“Yup.”

I said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Dehan looked at me in astonishment. Pfenninger raised an eyebrow at me. “How would you know that, Detective Stone?”

Dehan echoed her: “Yeah, Detective Stone, how would you know that?”

I sighed. “A hunch. How did it happen? Did he come here from Europe?”

“I don’t know. You say he disappeared from New York in the early hours of November first, he showed up in Reno on November eighth.”

“How do you know that?”

Her face was totally expressionless. “Keep listening and I’ll tell you.” I heard Dehan snort, but I ignored her. Pfenninger kept talking. “He was lodging at a house on the edge of the desert, Chablis Drive, out by the 395. Landlady said he was quiet. No trouble. Never spoke to nobody. Friday night, that’s November 10th, two days after he arrived, he goes to a building site on the river, by East 2nd Street Bridge. They were putting up a big hotel-casino at the time, and they’d poured a load of concrete that day into the foundations. So your boy gets up on a big pile of rubble, just beside the wet cement, and starts screaming about how life don’t have no meaning no more. The night watchman come running over, shining his flashlight, and he hears a big splash. Your boy had just jumped into the foundations. Wet concrete sucks you down like a quicksand. There ain’t no way out of that. So that’s where he’s buried, in the foundations of the East 2nd Casino Hotel.”

I frowned. “How do you know it was him?”

She gave a small sigh. “How many suicides have you dealt with over the years, Stone?”

I nodded. “A few.”

“Jumpers off bridges? You got some nice jumping bridges in New York.”

Dehan said, “I know where you’re going. It’s true. They always take their damn jackets off.”

“Yup.” She looked at Dehan and nodded. “Took his jacket off and left it lying on the rubble.”

I was shaking my head. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you notify his sister?”

“We didn’t know he had one. When he registered here, he registered as having no next of kin. So there was nobody to notify.”

Dehan said, “He turned up on the Wednesday, found lodgings and the first thing he did was register?”

Pfenninger spread her hands. “What can I tell you? He was depressed, suicidal, maybe he was OCD, how should I know? From what you’ve told me, he was some kind of crazy.”

I puffed my cheeks and drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair. “You have been extremely helpful, Sarah. Can I trouble you for one more thing?”

“It ain’t no trouble. Just my job.”

“The night watchman…”

She opened a file and pulled out a slip of paper. “I figured you’d want to talk to him. He’s in charge of security at the same hotel. Give him a call. He’ll be happy to talk to you. His name’s Joseph White. He’s black. One of them ironies you was talking about.”

We left her watching us leave through the glass walls of her office, with her fingers laced over her belly.

Eleven

The East 2nd Casino Hotel was a sprawling, four story building in red brick and beige that stood directly opposite the Greater Nevada baseball