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

“Stone,” she said, and looked up into my face, “I think Fernando was kissing Giorgio when he was killed…”

Fifteen

We sat in the car with the world slowly disappearing behind the wall of snow accumulating on the windshield, looking at Warren’s list. It didn’t tell us much. Most of the people coming and going were people who lived in the apartments. There were a few women, and two or three men described as possibly Latino, middle aged and of medium build, who could have been Giorgio. But with the cold and the snow, everybody was dressed up in coats, hoods and scarves, which made precise identification almost impossible.

I switched on the wipers. They churned away the snow and diffuse lights bathed the cab and gave Dehan’s face a strange, ghostly luminosity. She was still studying the list, but after a moment sighed and dropped it on her lap.

I said, “Santos and Clay were sitting on Giorgio. If he had left the house, they would have seen it and followed.”

“If they had seen it. In this weather, it’s not so hard to get away unseen over a back yard fence in the dark.”

“Don’t forget, it was still light when he was killed.” I hit the ignition. “Let’s go talk to them anyway.”

I did a slow U-turn and we started moving south toward Patterson Avenue. Dehan shrugged and narrowed her eyes in exasperation. “Who else has a motive?”

“What exactly would Giorgio’s motive be?”

“You’d just got through telling him you knew about Fernando’s taste for beating up women while Giorgio watched. He knows if we start looking into that, Fernando becomes a suspect in Sue’s murder, and with the testimony of the hookers he’s beaten up, Giorgio becomes an accomplice. He’s looking at a potential life sentence if we make Fernando confess.”

“Except that we have the apparently insurmountable problem of the DNA. And whatever our theory might be, A, Giorgio doesn’t know about it and B, we have zilch evidence to back it up.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You looked and sounded convincing. You rattled his cage and he panicked. I’m telling you, Stone, they were lovers and they were involved in some weird-ass sexual relationship where they got their kicks seducing and beating up women. Sue frustrated them because she flirted but would not submit. Her getting close to Cyril was the last straw and Fernando lost it. Cyril’s semen, whether it was planted or the result of having sex, was a godsend to them because it let them off the hook. But it made Cyril panic and ultimately take his own life.”

I was quiet for a while. We turned into Patterson. It was dark and still, with the dim light from the streetlamps barely filtering through the bare, black branches of the trees that fringed the road. What light there was reflected a sickly yellow off the drifting snow and the wet strips of blacktop. I sighed as we crawled toward Taylor Avenue.

“Well, whoever killed Fernando seems to have killed any chance we had of getting a confession out of Giorgio, I’ll grant you that much. Playing them against each other was the last move we had, unless we get a hit from the blood on Fernando’s hand.”

I pulled up at the corner, killed the engine and frowned at her. “It could have been Tony. It could have been a supplier. It could have been a jealous husband—or wife!”

She held my eye. “It could have been Santa Claus with an early delivery, but it wasn’t. It was Giorgio.”

I smiled. “You know the nicest thing about being absolutely certain of something.”

“I’m absolutely certain you’re going to tell me.”

“You are that much more likely to get surprises.”

“Tee hee. Can we talk to Santos and Clay now?”

We climbed out and heard the whine of a window sliding down across the road. We crunched through the snow and saw Clay looking out at us. “Wa’s happenin’ Stone, Dehan? Heard your other bird got iced.”

Dehan answered. “Do you study that kind of dialogue at hard-ass school?” She turned to me. “His dad’s a senator and he graduated from Harvard, you know that, right?” He did some high-pitched wheezing and she asked, “Has there been any movement here? Has he left the house?”

“No, man. We would’a followed him, right? We got visual on the front door and on the back yard. There ain’t no way he can git out without bein’ seen.” He scowled then. “He in there with a nice fire an’ a bottle of wine, ain’t it? Only a dumb-ass gonna be out on a night like this.”

I smiled. “What does that make us?”

“Four dumb-asses. The Dumb-Ass Club.”

“I guess you’re right. Thanks, Clay.”

I was about to walk away when he called me back. “Hey, Stone, he had a woman in there since about five. She come out of the house opposite, couple of doors down.” He leered. “She be a better witness than us, I reckon.”

“Happen you’re right, Clay. Let’s find out.”

“Yeah, now git outta my window, man. You makin’ me cold.”

We crunched back across the road to Giorgio’s house. The drapes were closed but I could see light filtering around the edges. We climbed the steps to his porch and I began to hear music. It sounded like jazz. It could have been Miles. Dehan rang on the bell, then knocked on the wood.

The door opened and Giorgio stood looking at us with a glass of wine in his hand. He had something on his face that wasn’t sure if it wanted to be a smile, and one eyebrow arched.

“Detectives. I am wondering, is it against the law to tell a detective he’s a pain in the ass?”

“Have you left your house this afternoon, Mr. Gonzalez?”

“In