Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set) Blake Banner (ereader iphone txt) 📖

hope. We have reason to believe Dr. Robles’ murder may have been related to his work, and not to his private life.”

“That is absurd.”

I stopped on the stairs. Dehan turned to watch me. I suppressed a pellet of anger in my belly and said, “With all due respect, Dr. Meigh, how would you know that?”

The momentary silence said she’d been taken aback. Then she said, “Well, I mean, how could it be?”

“That is a question, and a very good one. But what you made before was a statement of fact and an unfounded one. So with your permission, I am going to go with the question. Our investigation has turned up several inconsistencies which suggest it is possible Agnes Shine did not kill Dr. Robles, but that his murder may have been related to his research. If we are right, then other people on your team could be at risk.”

“I see…”

“Now we can apply for a judicial order, but then you’ll have to get your lawyers involved, it will be costly and slow, and during that time somebody else could get hurt…”

She cut me short. “Look, Detective, there is no need for all that. Just give me half an hour and I’ll get back to you.”

We returned to our desks and Dehan lowered herself into her chair. Outside it had started drizzling and the tops of the naked branches across the road were bouncing gently in the desultory, wet wind. It occurred to me it was almost Christmas. I smiled down at Dehan.

“We have to get the tree.”

She nodded. “Tonight.”

Behind me, Mo at his desk said, “Hey, you know, this year you ain’t allowed to say Merry Christmas, in case it offends the GBL…whatever, bacon, lettuce and tomato brigade, on account of Christians being homophobic. Now we gotta say a Gay Christmas and a Rainbow New Year. Seriously. I read it in the paper. If you don’t believe me, look in the Post. I got it right here.”

Dehan put her boots up on the desk. “They have words in that? I thought it was just pictures.”

Mo grinned. “Hey, you know why Jesus wasn’t born in Vegas?”

“I know you’re going to tell me.”

“They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin!” He laughed noisily. “That’s good. Three wise men and a virgin. I like that. Like you’re gonna find three wise men and a virgin in Vegas! Right!”

He turned back to his desk, shaking his head and laughing. My phone rang.

“Stone.”

“Morning, Stone. Joe. OK, it’s piecemeal, but I’m giving you what I’ve got. We took all the bedding from Dr. Shine’s house and Dr. Robles’ house. We kept it all in three separate piles: on the bed, in the dirty washing, and clean and in storage, so that they would not contaminate each other.”

“Good.”

“Now, as a first step, we examined each piece of bedding to see if they did in fact have any latent fluids. We examined them thoroughly.”

“And?”

“They didn’t. ”

“Could they have been washed out?”

“No, recoverable semen stains will resist time and the washing machine, John. There was not a trace on any of the sheets. I’d be prepared to swear he never had sex in his own bed. Nobody had sex in his bed. And the same goes for her. They seem to have been celibate, at least in their own beds.”

I frowned down at Dehan, then asked, “What about the glasses?”

“Working on it.”

“Thanks, Joe. I appreciate it.”

I hung up and sat. “There was no sexual relationship between them, Dehan. The sheets were clean. Not a trace of semen on his or hers.”

“All the damn forensic evidence we have is negative. It all shows what didn’t happen and who didn’t do it.”

“We need to find this Mohamed guy. We need to know what he wanted from Jose, and why it was a threat for Jose to have Mohamed in his class.” I leaned back in my chair. “Why do I keep getting the feeling we need to talk to Am again?”

Dehan shrugged. “If Dr. Meigh won’t play ball, maybe he can give us a better insight into the research they were doing.”

“Yeah, maybe. Let’s see what Meigh gives us.” I drummed my fingers on the desk for a bit. “You know one of the things that’s eating me? How did Jose find out about Am? He said they didn’t want to accept him on the course, but Jose recognized his genius. How? How did he even know he existed?”

“Through his application.”

I made a QED face and said, “If his conversation is anything to go by, his application form wouldn’t exactly have screamed IQ 160. He may be brilliant when it comes to electronics and engineering, Dehan, but when it comes to communication…”

She narrowed her eyes. “What are you driving at?”

“I don’t know, but I can smell something. There’s Mohamed, ‘Maybe I should join your class,’ and Jose replying ‘I told you never to contact me on my phone!’ And then he deletes Telegram. So what did he have it for in the first place? And then there’s Am, coming to Jose’s notice before he joined his class. Before he was even admitted to the university.”

I studied Dehan’s face for a while and she studied mine back. She said, “It’s odd, isn’t it? ‘I told you never to contact me on the phone.’ Not ‘this phone’, but ‘the phone’. So, how else would he contact him?”

“Email and Facebook, but they are not as secure as Telegram.”

She nodded, then said, “But he obviously didn’t know that, which is telling us something.”

“It’s telling us he was not steeped in spook lore.” I sat forward with my elbows on the desk and rubbed my face with my palms. “If you were selling industrial secrets to the Saudis, and they advised you to install