Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) Blake Banner (read out loud books txt) 📖

some kind of catatonic shock. I looked at Mel. She was transfixed, staring at her son in-law. Anne-Marie was still looking at the blade.

Finally he gave a big blink, like he was dragging his mind back from some nightmare. He said, “No. No! This is wrong. You are lying to me.” He pointed at the weapon. “That is not her blood. And you cannot prove it is. It is not possible.”

Anne-Marie gave her head a quick shake. “He’s right. You’re trying to trap him. There is no way you can prove that is Kathleen’s blood.”

Dehan folded her arms. “Why not?”

Mo went to answer but Anne-Marie cut across him fast. “Because in the first place, it ain’t hers! And in the second place, even if it was, after five years it would be so deteriorated it would be useless.”

She smiled. “You an expert in forensics, Anne-Marie?”

Anne-Marie scowled at her bitterly. “We all are. When you are the victim of this kind of crime, you become an expert in all sorts of things you never expected. Look at the semen they found in Kathleen! The poor girl was raped, and after just a few days the sample had become unusable. You want us to believe that after five years, the blood on that blade will give you a DNA profile?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that how old it is, five years?”

She went pale and stammered, “If it were, it would be…”

I walked to the bow window and rested my ass on the windowsill. I crossed my arms and stared at Mo for a moment. “I’m glad you brought up the subject the of semen, Anne-Marie. It’s something that has been troubling me. You see, when I talked to you both yesterday, you lied about where Mo had spent the night.”

She came back quick. “We didn’t lie, we just didn’t tell the whole truth. He did spend the night at Mel’s house. We just didn’t mention we were having an affair at the time, until you tricked us.”

I scratched my chin. “But here’s the thing, Mo. If you spent the night with Anne-Marie at Mel’s place, and the next morning—you say first thing, Anne-Marie says around eleven—you went home, argued with Kathleen and she left, at what point exactly did you have sex with her?”

His face had gone the color and the texture of a church candle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do, Mo. DNA technology is advancing faster than you can imagine. We resubmitted the semen sample for testing and they got a match. It was yours. You had sex with Kathleen just before she died.”

Mel closed her eyes. “Jesus, Mary and sweet Joanna!”

Anne-Marie had turned and was staring in horror at her husband. “You did what? What kind of…?” She stopped herself and turned to me. “Is this true or is it another trick?”

Dehan said, “Think about it, where did he spend the night?”

She turned furious eyes on her husband. Her hands were trembling. He was shaking his head.

“I swear, baby. It ain’t true. I promise you.”

Mel’s voice came like she was biting each syllable as it came out.

“Don’t—say—another—word!” She glared at me as though I had somehow betrayed her. “Lies! Lies and trickery! He is a good lad! Him and Isaac, God love’em both! They stood by me when Kath was taken from me and I will not believe these lies! Lies and feckin’ trickery! Ashamed of yourself, you should be!” She turned back to Mo. “Not another word, you hear me?”

I watched her a moment before answering. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. Her mouth was a hard line and her jaw was stubborn. “He raped and murdered your daughter, Mel.”

“Mrs. Vuolo, to you! I will not believe it. I will not! How you could do this to us after what we have already been through. Shame! Shame on you!”

I looked back at Mo. Anne-Marie had removed her hand from his and had crossed her arms. She had tears in her eyes.

“How about it, Mo? You ready to tell the truth? What are we going to find when we analyze the machete? You know, and I know, that your only hope now is leniency in sentence. And the only way you are going to get that is by coming clean. Tell me what happened, Mo.”

Mel’s face had started to crumble. Her cheeks were wet. She was staring at Mo, appealing to him. “You didn’t do it, Mo. Tell me you didn’t. I’ll believe you. We’ll get you a good lawyer. Don’t say nothin’ till we get a lawyer. We’ll get through this, love, like we got through everything else. Stick together. Remember? That’s what we promised each other. A family. Stick together….” Her lip curled, she buried her face in her hands and started to sob, begging God to help them.

I sighed. “Here’s what happened, Mo. Anne-Marie had already broken up with your brother. You were the one she had always liked, anyhow. And you were getting a bit tired of Kath. She’d served her purpose, which was to get you to the big city. But now she was becoming a pain in your ass. I don’t know exactly why, maybe she was a goody two shoes. Maybe she was a bit too puritanical. Maybe it was just that she now had a baby…”

Pat’s voice was startling in its suddenness and the venom it contained. “Maybe it was all those things…”

Mel turned on her. “Pat! Don’t you dare!”

I raised my eyebrows at Mo. “Maybe it was all those things. Point is, you were ready to move on. One of the things that had me and Detective Dehan scratching our heads was why you didn’t just divorce her. But we’ll come back to that a little later. For now, let’s just say that you couldn’t.”