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

her, gave Giorgio a last, tender look and made for the door. I turned to Dehan. “Go and get Santos and Clay in here, will you?”

She followed Sandy out. I moved the drape and saw Sandy go to her house and let herself in, and Dehan walk to the car, say something to Clay and start heading back. Without looking at him, I said, “Sandy seems to care for you. You going to treat her the same way you and Fernando treated Sue?”

He spoke in a wet, swollen voice: “We was just playin’ games, man. It wasn’t nothin’ serious.”

I let go the drape and walked over to him. I knew Dehan was a good forty-five seconds away, maybe longer in the snow. It was ample for what I had to do. The back-hander caught him on the right side of his head and rocked him. His eyes were staring wide and the pupils were dilated. The open right hand caught him across the ear and knocked him half on his side. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to his feet till his nose was less than an inch from mine.

“What about Melanie, you piece of shit? What about the girls in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona? How many others are there who didn’t go to the cops? Was that playing too? Was that your sick, goddamn game? To beat up on girls who couldn’t defend themselves? Was that what you planned for Sue at the party that night? Well I got news for you, pal. I’m going to be having a quiet talk with Tony, about how you beat up his girl and how now you’re looking to do a deal and turn state’s evidence by giving up your contacts in the Jersey Mob. There are two classes of scum who don’t deserve mercy as far as I’m concerned, Giorgio, and they are men who hurt children and men who hurt women. I guess you pulled the short straw, huh?”

I threw him back down on the sofa as the door opened and Dehan came in. She gave me a curious look. “Everything OK?”

“Dandy. Giorgio has promised to cooperate, and to stop answering our questions with stupid questions of his own, isn’t that right, Giorgio?”

He swallowed and nodded.

Dehan raised an eyebrow at me. “Good…”

Santos, six feet of solid, athletic muscle, came in making small hops, like a frozen kangaroo. Behind him, Clay, six foot six of genial brutality, came in slapping his arms and stamping his feet. I pointed at Giorgio. “This guy is under protective custody. He has confessed to trafficking cocaine and marijuana, and he may be the target of a hit. Sit on him till you hear from me. Don’t let anybody near him, or him near anybody. I’ll talk to Inspector Newman and have you relieved by morning if we haven’t taken him in by then. Any questions?”

Clay said, “Yeah, I got a question.”

“What?”

“Get the hell out’a here, man! We got this.”

Dehan narrowed her eyes. “That’s not a question, Clay.”

“I know that!”

“Come on.” I took Dehan’s arm. “We have work to do. Let’s go.”

We went out into the snow and made our way carefully back to the Jaguar. The sky overhead was black, densely freckled by falling flakes. I wiped the windshield clear with my hand. Then we climbed in. Dehan slammed the door, shutting out the night and the cold, and I turned the key in the ignition to start warming up the car. The engine roared for a moment, then settled to a rumble.

Dehan raised both hands. “Stone, just hold on a second, will you? I am so confused. What the hell is going on? What the hell was that back there? Did you just beat up a suspect? He didn’t kill Fernando. He couldn’t have. What the…” She hesitated. “What the fuck is going on, Stone?”

I gave her a moment to settle. “First of all, of course I didn’t beat up a witness. If I had, there would have been a lot more blood and weeping involved. Second, what that was back there was me providing us with an excuse to take Giorgio into custody, partly for his protection and partly so that we could question him. Third…” I grinned. “You said you were going to work it out for yourself. Well, my dear Dehan, you know my methods, apply them! Ha!”

She eyed me resentfully. “Jerk!” I moved off carefully, moving back toward Soundview Avenue. “At least tell me where we’re going.”

“The game is afoot, Watson! We ride to hounds! Tallyho!”

She sighed. “Jerk! You are such a jerk sometimes…”

Sixteen

We crawled along Lafayette to Castle Hill and then joined the procession north on the long, slow, slippery drive toward the Jacobi, stopping and starting at one set of lights after another, with a thousand exhausts turning the freezing air into fog, and the icy sludge on the windshield turning the lights to a multicolored haze. Time crawled, cold and wet.

“OK, Dehan,” I said at last, as we were approaching East Tremont. “I will tell you this. There are a couple of things that you have been overlooking from the very start.”

She adjusted her woolen hat and sniffed. “There are?”

Her face said she wasn’t happy, but I nodded. “Yes. You developed the idea that Cyril had had consensual sex with Sue, and that Sue had been murdered by Fernando and Giorgio. In doing that you overlooked, and ignored, the fact that Sue was actually raped.”

She was quiet for a bit, thinking, then said, “We assumed she was raped because the sex and the murder were almost simultaneous…”

“No. They weren’t almost simultaneous, Dehan. They were simultaneous. You have been focusing on the semen and the distribution of the semen, but the ME’s report said other things, remember? The abrasions around the