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

this case, you come clean. And I will be watching. And if you try to cut me out again I will apply for a transfer. You understand me?”

I watched her a moment before I answered. “Bring it down a notch or three, Carmen. I have no ‘feelings’ for this woman, one way or another. I don’t plan to cut you out and my judgment is clear. We’re good, partner. There is no issue here. Trust me.”

She grunted and studied my face a moment without humor. “You want to know what I read while you were arranging your date?”

“It’s not a date.”

“You want to know?”

“Sure, hit me.”

“Don’t tempt me. I got like ten or fifteen minutes to scan his last few features in the paper. Several of them mention Senator Carol Hennessey. And his last article was about her, and allegations that are going around the web of corruption and shady deals. It’s not much to go on, but it seems he may have been developing an…” She hesitated. “An interest in her.”

I pulled over the articles and looked at them. “No kidding.” I started scanning the first page. “I vaguely remember something about her and her husband, back in the late ’80s or ’90s. A real-estate deal in California or something. Didn’t somebody die?”

“I don’t recall. I was a kid in the ’90s. But there seems to be a lot of shady stuff in her past. It may not be related, but I figure there’s a chance he decided to go into it in more depth. We should ask Shaw about it. Even if he didn’t know the exact nature of the investigation, he must have know what it was about in general terms.”

She went quiet and I looked up. She was staring at me fixedly.

“What?”

“You should ask Pearce about it tonight.”

“I will. Believe me, Dehan, she’ll be so bored and disappointed by the time we’ve finished the meal she’ll never want to see me again.”

“Sure. Just ask her, will you?”

“I will. Now will you give it a rest?”

We spent the next fifteen minutes reading through the articles in silence. Dehan had been right. Dave Thorndike did seem to be developing not so much an interest as a near obsession with Senator Carol Hennessy. And it wasn’t hard to see why. If half the allegations against her and her husband were true, they made the Mob look like a bunch of schoolgirls. And the curious thing was that, when I checked on Google, I could not find a single successful libel case brought by her, or her husband, against any of their accusers. In fact, I couldn’t find any libel cases, period; successful or otherwise.

I frowned at Dehan, whose face was still hidden behind her laptop. “These allegations against her, they really damaged her career. She had a shot at the Oval Office.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But she never brought a libel suit against anybody.”

“Uh-uh.”

“I think this is important. It’s damn good work, Dehan.”

“Uh-huh.”

I sighed noisily and went back to reading. Eventually, the desk sergeant buzzed to say that Bob Shaw had arrived. Dehan went to get him and I went to get coffee, feeling vaguely uncomfortable.

Six

Dehan was waiting outside interrogation room number 3 as I approached. She had her hands in her back pockets and her hair tied in a knot behind her head. She smiled at me with her mouth, but frowned with her eyes. I handed her a coffee.

“Ready?”

She took it with her left hand and gently punched my shoulder with her right. “Yeah. Sorry.”

I shook my head and opened the door for her.

Bob Shaw looked up and smiled uncertainly as we came in. He was in his late sixties, but still ruggedly handsome. Dehan sat and I placed a coffee in front of him. “I’m not sure what it is. The machine says coffee, but who knows?”

He glanced at it and then at me. “Isn’t this one of those rooms where you grill suspects?” he said. “Am I a suspect in some crime?” He was grinning, but the question was serious. “I spent the better part of forty years investigating the police. I know how you operate.”

I smiled and sat. “The police have changed a lot in those forty years, Mr. Shaw. Today they watch us more closely than we watch you.”

He barked, “Ha!” picked up the coffee and peered inside. “What is this? It looks like my piss after I drank too much agave beer down in Mexico.”

“Maybe they found a way to synthesize it, because that is pretty much what it tastes like. Mr. Shaw, you are not a suspect in any crime. We just need to ask you some questions about David Thorndike.”

He looked at me and chuckled. Then he gave Dehan an appraising once-over. “Okay, shoot.”

“Do you know what happened to Dave’s laptop and the article he was working on?”

He shook his head and looked slightly bored. “Really? After ten years? That’s your question? They asked me that at the time. I told them I had no idea. He never showed it to me and he sure as hell never gave it to me.”

I nodded. “I figured, but you have to ask, right?”

He shrugged and pulled a face.

I ignored him and went on. “I know he told you nothing about the article, I know he never showed it to you, I know all that. But I want you to tell me what he did tell you.”

“Nothing!” He spread his hands, raised his shoulder and his eyebrows.

Dehan smiled and snorted. “Bullshit.”

He kept the same expression but turned it to face her.

I said, “It’s bullshit, Mr. Shaw, and you know it. You would never have approved an investigation without knowing at least the basics. You knew something. And I know for a fact he