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

called you at least once to tell you it was finished and he expected a Pulitzer. Now you know very well, as a reporter yourself, that there are little bits and pieces in what he did tell you that, when you put them together, add up to something!”

He sighed and started bouncing his head around. “Okay, okay, point taken. I’m just not all that comfortable sharing information with cops, know what I mean? You guys have a way of taking facts and distorting them for your own ends.”

Dehan snorted again. “Unlike reporters.”

“Hey!” He pointed at her. “Not on my papers, sugar! We were never yellow press. The Times, the Tribune, they might indulge in a bit of truth massaging and distortion of perspective to suit their political agendas. Not the NYT. We told it how it was and we took the consequences. And we always made sure our facts were solid.”

I nodded. “Okay, so we operate the same way. Now, what did he tell you? What, in general terms, was the story about?”

He sighed, examined the coffee one last time, and finally started to talk.

“Dave had got a bee in his bonnet. And I think he was onto something. We had talked about it a few times over a drink. A couple of his articles had touched on it, and he was pretty psyched about the evidence he had got together so far. He was a damn good investigator. So he came to me and said he wanted to go undercover and start to dig deep.”

Dehan said, “Into what, Bob?”

He looked surprised. “We on first name terms now? Do I get to call you Carmen, Carmen?”

She smiled.

He snorted. “Sweetheart, I was shooting acid and challenging the establishment before your daddy had his bar mitzvah. Don’t try and play me. Into what? Into Senator Carol Hennessy. Her name, and her husband’s, were and are linked to a whole raft of dubious business deals: tax evasion, illegal exports, facilitating arms sales to oppressive regimes and governments that harbor terrorists. And as for suspicious deaths, you go online and you can download a PDF file with forty-eight names of people who died in suspicious circumstances after crossing her path.”

He sat back, placed both hands palm down on the table and studied them for a moment. “Now I guess it’s forty-nine.” He sighed. “I’m not saying that it’s all true, but hell! I never saw anyone who attracted so much shit. Even Nixon didn’t attract this much controversy. And Dave had a nose, you know what I’m saying? He had an instinct. He’d start digging and ferreting and scratching away, and if there was something hidden, he would find it. Man, it was like dowsing! He just knew when there was something hidden. And he became pretty much obsessed with the Hennessy story.

“So I told him. Go for it. I’ll back you up. That was pretty much the last I ever heard from him. I had no idea where he was or what he was doing. That was the arrangement we had. I knew he would produce the goods. He was the best reporter I ever worked with, or ever knew for that matter. And believe me, I knew the best. But he was something special.”

Dehan had been listening carefully. Now she asked, “What happened?”

Bob Shaw sucked his teeth for a moment, then said, “He went off the radar for a few weeks. Then he called me one evening. He said he was really excited about the story. It was his best work ever.” He nodded several times. “And if he said that, believe me, it was good. He was talking about getting the Pulitzer, about rocking the establishment. He was even saying the shock waves from what he had would be so far-reaching it could lead to constitutional change regarding the accountability of congressmen. And Dave wasn’t one to say that kind of thing without good cause. Whatever he had…” He shook his head. “It wasn’t dynamite, it was an atom bomb.”

I was frowning. “In less than two months? An investigation like that would take months.”

He nodded. “I know. I would have expected six months at least. That kind of investigation is painstaking, and he was meticulous. More than most. But that was what he said. He was wrapping it up, and it would be cataclysmic in its impact.”

“So what happened?”

“I told him to bring it in and let me see it. That was when he told me he was in fear for his life. He was afraid that somebody was on his trail and intended to kill him. Given the nature—and the subject—of his investigation, I was inclined to take him seriously.

“Next thing, I heard he’d been found murdered. Him, and forty-eight other people who had crossed Carol Hennessy’s path.”

Dehan gave her head a twitch. “That’s quite a story.”

“Yeah, that’s what he thought. And I wish you or the Feds would dig into this woman’s background, her and her goddamn smarmy husband. But that ain’t ever going to happen because the establishment looks after its own.”

Dehan shrugged. “You may be right, Mr. Shaw. I wouldn’t know. But if she killed Dave Thorndike, we will take her down.”

He made a face, “Yah, yadda yadda.”

She ignored him and plowed on. “We have a witness who says that a couple of days before he was killed, his laptop and his papers had gone from their usual place on his dining table where he worked.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“Yes, now, if he didn’t give them to you, who else would he trust enough…”

He was already shaking his head. He went to speak, hesitated, then creased his eyes and shook his head again.

I said, “Who, Mr. Shaw? You thought of somebody and dismissed them. Who was it?”

He hunched his shoulders and screwed up his face. “Nah… I thought