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

She turned and went very quickly up the stairs. I took a long pull on the whiskey and closed my eyes while it did its work. Uisce beatha, the water of life. After a bit, I opened my eyes again and accessed my email. There were two from Inspector John Newman. Each had a PDF attachment. One was David Thorndike’s bank statements for 2007 and 2008, the other was his credit card statements. I saved them to my David Thorndike folder and took another slug of whiskey. It began to mix with the painkillers and life began to seem tolerable.

Upstairs I heard the shower start to hiss.

The statements I needed were from October 2007 to February 2008, five months. I began to go through them, item by item. Dimly I was aware that Dehan’s shower was in fact quite a long one, but I paid no real attention. At some point the water stopped hissing, and there was a long silence. But what little concentration I had was focused on the long list of expenses before me: mortgage, electricity, telephone, wi-fi, repayments on his car, ATM cash withdrawals.

As I came to the end of February, without having found anything significant, but having acquired a feeling of pleasurable ‘otherness’ from the whiskey and the painkillers, I heard Dehan’s feet, brisk on the stairs. She reached the bottom and looked at me.

“How you doing there, Sensei?” She sounded nasal and puffy.

I gave her a Cheshire grin. “I’m good. But you sound like you have a cold coming on. Maybe you should have some whiskey, too.”

“Not a bad idea, Stone. I think I’ll do that.”

She poured herself a drink and went into the kitchen to start cooking. I moved to his credit card. I closed my eyes for a bit and drifted among the comfortable sounds: the refrigerator opening and closing, a pot extracted from a cupboard and placed on the cooker, vegetables being chopped on a wooden board, the squeak and pop of a cork from a bottle of wine. After a bit, she started to sing softly.

I may have drifted off, because when I opened my eyes again the stew was on, there was a wonderful smell on the air, and she was washing up.

I looked at the screen in front of me and saw that in December of 2007 David had used his credit card to buy two tickets to Sri Lanka. A Christmas gift to themselves, perhaps.

I made a note and kept scrolling. Then, in the last two weeks of January I found a series of credit card payments at gas stations in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Neat. Then, three days later the same thing but in reverse order. There were also a couple of motels.

I scrolled down a little further and found in the third week of February the same thing. A three day gap and a repeat of the same states, once again in reverse order. I sipped my whiskey and looked up. Dehan was leaning on the breakfast counter looking at me.

“You want to eat on your lap, or at the table?”

“At the table. He made three long trips in the period October to March, 2007, 2008. One, which we can probably eliminate, a two week trip to Sri Lanka at the end of December. He bought two tickets so I am guessing it was a Christmas holiday with Samantha. However, mid-January he takes a very long drive to Arizona and back. By the looks of it, he stayed about three days. Then, in the third week of February he repeated the trip. So we can say conclusively that during his investigation into Senator Hennessy, he made two long trips to Arizona, where he stayed a total of six days, three and three.”

She smiled. “Bingo.”

“We can also say then, with some degree of certainty, that this putative hit man…”

“Putative hit man?”

“Supposed hit man, was in Arizona at that time. We can zero in up to a point with his motel. And a couple of the gas stops in Arizona were probably made on his way to see K, or his way back.”

“That’s good work, Stone.”

I closed my eyes. “Tomorrow we’ll call Samantha in, ask her about Arizona. Do they have some connection with the place? What reason would he have for going there? We’ll ask her about Sri Lanka, too. There’s probably nothing in it, but it’s close enough to Pakistan to warrant looking into it.”

She came around, switched off the laptop and took it away.

“Okay, Sensei. That’s enough for today. The stew will be another half hour. Now you sleep for a bit. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

At least, I’m guessing that’s what she said, because by then I was already asleep.

* * *

Samantha arrived at ten thirty the next morning. She didn’t look happy to be there. I wasn’t happy to be there either. Most people don’t realize it, but often as not, healing hurts more than getting injured in the first place. I was doped up and I knew I was going to have to rely on Dehan to make sense of the interview.

I had asked Samantha when I phoned her whether she still had any of David’s papers and notes from previous investigations. She told me she had and I’d asked her to bring with her anything from the end of 2007 and January 2008. She’d said there wasn’t much, but she’d bring it.

As we sat across from her she pushed a small stack of notebooks across the table toward me.

“These are his notes and ramblings from the end of 2007 and early 2008, just before he left. You’re welcome to them. I’m sick of the sight of them. I tried to give them to Bob and Shelly, but they didn’t want them. I