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

“So no precise time of death?”

“Nope. Some time between nine PM Thursday and eleven AM Saturday. Thirty-eight hours. No forced entry. Only access to the apartment was through the front door. He had been shot, once, in the head at short range…” I turned and smiled at her. “With his own 9 mm Glock.”

“He was shot with his own Glock? That’s not cool.”

“It’s not polite at all, is it?”

“No. How about forensics?”

“Squat. The prints in the apartment were his, his girlfriend’s, the landlord’s, and a couple of others that got no hits on IAFIS. The only prints on the weapon were Thorndike’s.”

“Obviously, they ruled out suicide.”

I nodded. “He was lying in the middle of the floor, on his back. Entry wound was center of his forehead. The weapon was left on the bookcase by the door. The slug, found on the carpet a few feet away, matched the weapon.”

She snorted. “I guess that’s pretty conclusive. So the killer was admitted voluntarily, got access to Thorndike’s Glock, then shot him with it. One, single, clean shot.”

“It certainly looks that way, yeah.”

“What about the girlfriend?”

“Katie O’Connor, she was out at a restaurant with a guy, paid with her credit card, tight alibi.”

“Anything taken?”

“Yes, no, maybe. There were no signs of robbery as such. Their money, his wallet, credit cards…” I made an ‘and so on’ gesture with my hand. “All of that was untouched. In fact, it looked like the whole apartment was untouched. It was as though he simply arrived, shot him and left…”

“Except he used Thorndike’s own gun, so he was presumably there long enough to get a hold of it.”

“That, and also his laptop and all his research were missing.”

She sat frowning at her Australian hat, turning it around in her hands, like it wasn’t the hat she’d expected to see there. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense.” She raised her frown from her hat to the windshield as I turned from 169th onto Franklin, among the ugly red brick monoliths, made even more unlovely by the low gray skies and the broken lights on the wet blacktop.

“I guess we’re not going to the station,” she said.

“I thought we’d go and see his wife.”

She gave one slow nod. “Okay, so this is not straightforward.”

“No.”

“Let me sum up what I understand so far.” She hesitated a moment and glanced at me. “Are we headed for Manhattan?”

“Yup. 104th and Columbus. It is the apartment he shared with her, which she now shares with her new husband.”

“Am I playing catch up here? Do you already have an idea…?”

I shook my head. “Ideas, I have a few, but then again…” I shrugged. “Too few to mention.”

“Funny. So Dave is married, he’s doing okay because he has a nice address on the Upper West Side. For some reason you will no doubt disclose in your own good time, he also had an apartment in the less desirable Manor Avenue, in the Bronx, which he shared with his girlfriend. He’s an investigative reporter, you mentioned his research and his laptop were missing, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say he was investigating a story ‘undercover’ or whatever the journalistic equivalent of undercover is.”

“That’s my girl.”

“Either as part of his cover, or because he’s a real dawg, he shacks up with Katie O’Connor. Then one day, somebody turns up and rings at the door. It seems he knew the caller because it looks like he let him in. The caller got possession of Dave’s Glock, apparently without a struggle, which adds to the impression that Dave knew his caller. The caller then very coolly popped a cap right between Dave’s eyes, without leaving prints on the gun.” She shrugged and pulled a face. “It was early March, he was wearing gloves.” She shrugged again, only half satisfied with her own explanation. “He then puts the gun down on the bookcase, collects the laptop, and all Dave’s papers, and leaves with them.”

“That’s about the size of it. We have to assume also that his killer knew that Katie would be out and Dave would be alone.”

We crossed 3rd Avenue Bridge in silence and followed it onto East 129th, toward Harlem. Then she started nodding and spread her hands. “Okay, so I’m going to state the obvious. It looks like he was killed for the article he was writing, or because of the article he was writing, or both.”

I laughed. “You’re covering all your bases, huh, Dehan?”

“Yuh. But things are not always what they seem. That’s what you’re always telling me, right? And it may also be that he was killed by his wife, or his girlfriend, or both, and the disappearance of his laptop and his papers is incidental to the murder itself.”

“Agreed.”

“Does she know we’re coming?”

“Yeah. I called her last night. She’s an editor on a fashion magazine. She said she’d be working from home today.”

We followed Central Park North onto Cathedral Parkway and then turned left onto Columbus. I parked outside the deli, she shoved her hat on her head, and we made a run for the entrance to the block. In the elevator, as I shook the water from my hair, she grinned at me from under her absurd hat.

“Who’s laughing now, huh, Sensei?”

She opened the door almost immediately and looked at us with angry eyes. She was tall; as tall as Dehan or maybe taller. It was hard to tell because of the huge mop of afro hair on her head. Her skin was dark, but her features were more Indian than African, her eyes were almond, and her nose long and aquiline. The expression on her face was pure Latin American, but when she spoke, her accent was English. I guess it