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

I nodded. “Yeah. Looks that way.”

“We going to Arizona?”

“I think so, but not yet.”

“What’s wrong?”

I shook my head and chewed my lip. “I don’t know. Something doesn’t fit. Something is all wrong.”

Nineteen

“What? What is wrong?”

“Call the Jetavanaramaya temple, Dehan. Contact them, talk to this Ananda Sri Pannasiha. I want to know what he and David discussed for two weeks that seemed to galvanize him into this investigation of Senator Hennessy. I’m going to go through these notes of his and see if I can get some idea of what made him suddenly decide to go to Sri Lanka and explore Buddhism.”

“Got it!”

While she searched for the number, I started working my way through his notes. They were mainly in a diary and two A4 notebooks, plus any number of loose sheets and paper napkins that had been stuffed in at various points.

I opened the diary. There were a lot of quotes about Buddhism. Several times he had written down the question whether Buddhism was a religion or a philosophy. One entry, dated the 31st of December, 2007, asked, “If Buddhism does not acknowledge the existence of an absolute God, an absolute, ultimate judge, then how can there be good and evil? How do we decide what is right and what is wrong?”

He must have been a howl at the New Year’s party. Another entry, scrawled on an undated paper napkin said, “Kama is conditioned not only by our actions, but above all by our intentions. So our dying thoughts acquire a huge importance as it is they that will condition the nature of our next birth.”

There followed several pages of brief, almost illegible notes, names, dates, phone numbers. If all else failed, they would all have to be followed up.

The last entry in the diary was, “‘Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.’ Hamlet to Rosencrantz, scene two act two.”

I looked up at Dehan. She had the phone to her ear and was bouncing a pencil up and down on its eraser. She jerked her head at me like, ‘What?’

“He was having some kind of existential crisis.”

“I thought you had to be either Jewish, French, or Russian to do that.”

“You’re being facetious.”

“I am? They won’t answer the phone. It makes me mad when people don’t answer the… Oh, yes, hello, is that… Yes, good evening. Is it very late…?” She looked at me. “What time is it in Sri Lanka? I didn’t think.” Then back to the phone, “Hello? Hello? I’m calling from New York, in the U.S.A… Excuse me?” She gave a nervous laugh and looked at me again. “He’s laughing. Hello? My name is… Yes, hello. My name is… Excuse me? No… no… I am looking for…” She sighed. “Thank you, you too. I am looking for Ananda Sri Pannasiha…” She smiled. “Yes! You know him! That’s great! Can I speak to him…? Hello? Hello?… What? No, wait!” She slammed down the phone. “Son of a bitch!”

I smiled. “I guess it’s about ten or eleven at night over there. What happened?”

“I have no idea. The guy was real sweet. I am pretty sure he was speaking English, at least most of the time. He was delighted to hear me mention Ananda. For all I know he may have been Ananda! Then he blessed me, said something I didn’t catch, and hung up.”

“Maybe try again when it’s not almost midnight. You probably got the poor guy out of bed.”

“Yeah, but I tell you what. I’ll start with an email, then follow up with a call tomorrow.”

“Makes sense.”

She started typing. “What’s eating you? Why does it matter that he was having an existential crisis?”

“I’m not sure. There’s something else. Something that has been right in front of our noses from the start and we have been ignoring it.”

She glanced at me and carried on writing. “What?”

“Something Samantha said. She said that if he went to Arizona while he was…”

“Dark.”

“Yeah, dark, it meant it was directly related to his investigation—to the article.”

She shrugged and made a face. “Yeah, we pretty much knew that.”

“Yeah, but then she stressed that when he was working on an article, nothing else mattered. Everything he did while he was working on an article was related to that investigation.” I flipped back to my notebook. “Here it is, ‘…anything he did during that time would have been directly related to his article.’”

She paused and frowned at me. “Yeah, so?”

I shrugged. “So he chooses that time, when he was supposed to be obsessively focused on an article, to start a live-in relationship? And not just any article. The article of his career.”

She flopped back in her chair. “Son of a gun.”

“And these notes.” I flicked them with the back of my fingers. “Practically everything I have seen so far is quotes from Shakespeare and Buddha about the nature of morality.”

“Katie.” She scratched her head. “Cherchez la femme… There is always a damn woman involved.”

“Shit!” I slammed my hand into my forehead. “I am so goddamn stupid!”

Mo at the desk across the aisle looked up and smiled blandly at me. “No argument from over here.”

Dehan scowled at him. “Butt out and get a life, asshole!”

He wheezed a laugh and withdrew into his file.

She turned back to me. “What?”

I pulled the list of K’s supposed victims from the file and tossed it across the desk at her. “You said we should go through them. You were right.”

She glanced at it. “Jack O’Connor.”

I pulled my laptop over one-handed and started typing five-fingered. Dehan said, “I got it.” She rattled at the keyboard and sat back. After a moment, she started reading.

“Johnathan Joseph O’Connor,