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

It was a pretty brutal approach. Her whole demeanor seemed to collapse. She sagged, frowned, and said, “What?” Then, “No! I am working. I have potential clients arriving…”

“We won’t take up much of your time, Katie, but it’s easier if we do it here rather than at the station.”

She picked up on the implied threat and sighed. “Fine, but please, make it quick. This is an open house. People could turn up at any time. What do you want to know?”

Dehan rubbed her hands and stamped her feet. “How about we start with why you two split up?”

A flash of irritation creased Katie’s brow. “That was ten years ago!” She glared at Dehan a moment, then glared at me where I was still propped up against the doorjamb. “Can you come in, please, and close the door?”

I stepped in and closed the door behind me. Katie disappeared into the kitchen and we followed. We found her leaning with her ass against the sink and her arms crossed. Her face was flushed and I couldn’t make out if she was mad or scared. She was probably both.

Dehan rested against the door and I went and sat on a pine chair at a pine breakfast table. I said, quietly, “Why’d you break up, Katie?”

She gave me that look women give you when they are seeing all men as one single, conjoined bastard. “Because he was a son of a bitch! Why are you asking me about this? It was…”

I interrupted her, “I know, ten years ago. We are a specialist cold case unit. David was murdered, so we aim to find out who murdered him. However much of a son of a bitch he was, murder is against the law. I hope you are going to cooperate with us.”

It was like talking to an angry four year-old. She stared at me with defiance in her blue eyes, and two red spots on her cheeks. Then she closed her baby blues and heaved a big, angry sigh.

“Okay, I understand, and yes, you are right, of course.” She unfolded her arms, spread her hands for a moment, and then let them drop by her side. “We had been living together for a couple of months. He was a fun guy. He was very alive, dynamic, full of life and energy.” She stopped and for a moment her eyes became abstracted. She looked out the window and into the back garden. “You got the feeling sometimes with Dave that the world wasn’t quite enough for him.” She looked at me. “Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded. “Sure. He had an appetite for life.”

“Oh, he sure had that. He was a good journalist. Tireless. He worked hard, very hard. A lot of women would have said too hard, but I supported him. I admire hard work and commitment in a person. I don’t need some guy fawning over me twenty-four seven. I like to see a guy achieving something in life. So I supported him…”

Dehan narrowed her eyes. “Were you aware of what he was working on?”

Katie gave a lopsided smile. “No… Dave was super careful and secretive about his work. Nobody, and I mean nobody got to see it. Even his editor got the bare minimum of information.”

I said, “Okay, so in what way were you supportive?”

She shrugged. “I made no demands on him—if I worked eight or nine hours a day, he would work sometimes twelve or fifteen—sometimes more. When he did, I would keep him supplied with coffee, food, whatever he needed until he was done.” She shrugged. “We got up together, we went to bed together, and I was there at his side every step of the god-damned way. I believed in him.”

I knew the answer but I asked anyway. “So what happened?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? I discovered the son of a bitch was married.”

Dehan was chewing her lip. She said, “How’d you find out?”

She stared at Dehan for a long moment, then down at the floor. “He told me.”

“He told you?”

She nodded without looking up. “It was about a week or so before… before they found him. I got home from work and he was kind of hyper. He wasn’t making a lot of sense. He said the article was finished, it was going to be mega.” She shook her head, still looking at the floor. “He was talking crazy stuff, about getting the Pulitzer, writing a best seller, making a fortune. At first I was right there with him.” Now she looked up and held Dehan’s eye. “I was as excited as he was. We were going to be rich, famous. It was going to be bigger than Watergate. Then, I remember it like it was yesterday, he took hold of me by the shoulders and told me to sit down. He sat next to me, on the sofa, and told me.”

Dehan shook her head. “Son of a bitch.”

Katie glanced at her. She looked grateful. “Yeah. He’d been married for five years, something like that. I don’t remember exactly. I just remember going cold all over. The betrayal!” She stopped and studied Dehan’s face for a moment, like she was searching for something there. “All the time we had been together I had thought I knew him, but he was a stranger. He’d been lying to me, using me. And what about his wife? If he was capable of doing that to her, what would he do to me in five years?”

Dehan nodded. “Suddenly, he was a stranger.”

“Right. He told me he was going to come clean with her, tell her about us and get a divorce. Then we’d get married…”

She gave a sudden, startling yelp of laughter and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Can you believe it? He had it all worked