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

if I would have called him that night, he would have killed them, but they was out of his juris… jury…”

“Jurisdiction.”

“Uh-huh, there was nothing he could do unless they come back.”

Dehan asked: “Had you ever seen these men before?”

“Uh-uh, never. And I never seen them since. They know what they’s gonna get if they come back. Tony will take care of them. For sure.”

Dehan scratched her head and after a moment she said, “Melanie, I know this is horrible for you, but we are nearly done and this is really helpful for us. After he had beaten you, did Fernando or the other man rape you?”

Melanie looked blank for a moment. “Well, I never thought of it like that till now. I mean, like, they paid, right? But I guess by then I didn’t wanna do it, so yeah, I guess in that sense they did.”

“Both of them?”

“Uh-huh. First Fernando and then his pal.”

“What did his pal look like, Melanie, can you describe him?”

“Mexican, ’bout five-ten, five-eleven. I remember he had real strong hands. Well built, probably in his late forties, curly hair going gray, big Mexican moustache. And he had a funny smell. It was strange, but it was kind’a nice.”

“Like paint?”

“Yeah, like paint, and kind of pepper? Jeez, I wish I could remember his name. It didn’t sound Mexican, it was more like Russian…”

I said, “Gregor?”

She craned around and shook her head.

“Stephan?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Boris?”

“No…”

“Giorgio?”

“That’s it!” She snapped her fingers. “It’s like Italian? But there’s a city in Russia called Georgia, ain’t there?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it’s actually a country. And also a state in the U.S.A.”

“No kidding?”

“Go figure.”

I looked at Dehan. She nodded and we stood. “Thanks for your time, Melanie. That’s all we needed to know.”

“Is that it?” She looked almost disappointed. “You don’t wanna, you know… Your birthday an’ all?”

I shook my head. “No, Melanie, thanks all the same.” At the door I stopped. “What are you going to do when you quit the game?”

She was still sitting on the sofa, watching us leave. “I thought I’d buy a ranch in Texas. Tony says he’ll help me out.”

I nodded. “You take care, Melanie. Make smart choices.”

We let ourselves out and stood a moment, staring at the car. She handed me the keys and went to the passenger door. “Let’s get some lunch. I need to eat and think.”

I drove back via Market Street to the New Jersey Turnpike, and then headed north. On the way, Dehan spoke.

“I think you’re right. This is all about a kind of weird, Freudian relationship. I don’t know what your exact idea is, because you won’t tell me. Shut up.” I shrugged with my eyebrows but she ignored me and went on. “But here is how I see it.

“I read somewhere, or maybe you told me, that only seven percent of communication is words, right? Which means that ninety-three percent is subliminal, non-verbal. So what does that mean for our case?”

I glanced at her. Her face told me it was a rhetorical question and not to answer it.

“It means,” she went on, “that Cyril learnt from a very early age to be a victim! And wherever Cyril went, and whatever Cyril did, he was sending out subliminal, non-verbal communication to everybody around him saying, ‘Look at me, I am a victim.’ He’s sitting in the corner, not talking, not participating, looking at his shoes, with his shoulders hunched and his knees together. In non-verbal language he is shouting, ‘I am a victim!’”

I nodded. “Interesting.”

“Shut up! Now, if ninety-three percent of communication is non-verbal and subliminal, that means that somehow we are tuned, like radios, to pick up those subliminal messages, right? And just as some people have good hearing and others are deaf, some people, like Fernando, are really good at picking up those messages. And the minute he saw Cyril, his radar went crazy and he thought, ‘Aha! Here is a victim,’ because Fernando, contrary to what we have been told, is a son of a bitch, a bully and a sadist.”

“Strong words, but I agree.”

“Now, we need to think, Stone, what was going on, what was the scene, before Cyril showed up at the art classes? We have these two sons of bitches, these two animals, probably using the classes as a hunting ground, where they can select victims to prey on. And into that hunting ground comes Sue Benedict, who fits Fernando’s model to a T, if Melanie is anything to go by. So Fernando thinks it will be good sport to bring Cyril into the group, make him fall in love with Sue, and then have Sue fall in love with him or Giorgio, and watch Cyril go to pieces.”

“That’s an awful lot of assumptions there, Dehan.”

“Wait. Now, Fernando sets about his game, constantly pushing Cyril onto Sue, and Sue onto Cyril, sometimes literally, physically, getting her to sit on his lap, or give him hugs, who knows what?

“What he doesn’t count on is what we discussed before, that Sue and Cyril actually start becoming friends. Now, here is a question for you: according to both Fernando and Giorgio, Sue was flirting like crazy that night. She was wild, coming on to both Fernando and Giorgio, getting drunk, stoned, the works, right?”

“Right.”

“Actually, two questions. One: isn’t that a perfect description of the scene they paid for with Melanie?”

I nodded. “Yes indeed, it is.”

“Second: if she was so hot and so wild that night, why the hell did she go home at two o’clock? It is a question that has been nagging at me from the beginning. Why the hell did she go home?”

“They both said she had drunk too much. Maybe she overdid it and felt sick.”

“That is the obvious answer, but…” She