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

subject or that person; devouring it. Where other people are inhibited by things like good manners, social conventions, danger…” She shook her head again. “David was not fazed by anything. He didn’t even consider things like that. If X was the objective, then nothing, and I mean nothing, would stand in his way.” She paused, looking down at her hands on the table. “There is something very compelling, very attractive, about that quality in a man.”

She raised her eyes to look at Dehan again.

Dehan said, “I get that.”

“Before I knew it I was staying at his place every other night, moving my clothes and my music in… It wasn’t so much a whirlwind as a tornado.”

I repeated the question, “So why did you lie to us?”

“I told you I didn’t lie. Yes, I knew that he was investigating my father’s death. I also knew that he believed Carol Hennessy was responsible.” She stopped talking, looking at each of her fingers in turn, as though she might find the answer to life’s injustices on one of them. “At first I wanted to help him. I thought he wanted me to. I had always believed that my father was assassinated, and that the robbery, the murder of my mother and my sister, they were merely to make it look like a home invasion. I have always believed that. And when Dave came along saying that he believed it, too, and that he thought he might be able to prove it…”

She trailed off. Dehan waited a moment, then asked, “Did he tell you how he was going to prove it?”

Katie seemed not to hear her. “At first I didn’t want to get involved. I was terrified of the brutality of that man. The ruthlessness, the efficiency with which he did it. Do you know what it’s like to be a child, to witness something like that and feel completely powerless and helpless in the face of such…” Her face creased with disgust. “…Power, such strength and violence? I still have nightmares about it. But he persuaded me that if I helped him it would be a way of achieving closure. And I believed him.”

Dehan started to repeat her question. “Did he tell you…”

“No. He got me to talk. I went over the murder a hundred different ways, until I had become numb to it. But he never told me anything about his article or his investigation, or his other sources.”

I thought for a moment and asked, “What can you tell me about K?”

She frowned at me. “Who’s Kay?”

I slid the anonymous note across the table to her. “Are you going to deny that you sent this?”

She read through it carefully. When she’d finished, she raised her eyebrows and pushed it back across the table to me.

“I have no idea who wrote that, Detective Stone, but what you’re suggesting doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’m right here.” She gave a small laugh, like I was being absurd. “Why would I send you an anonymous letter when I can talk to you face to face?”

I nodded and sighed. “I was hoping you would explain that, Katie.”

“I’m sorry, detective, you are way off base. When Dave revealed to me that he was married, I saw what a stupid bitch I had been. He shared nothing with me. Do you get that? Nothing. I gave him.” She paused, watching my face to see if I understood. “He kept everything from me, his article, his investigation, his life, the truth!”

I pulled back the letter and the list and slipped them into the folder again.

“What can you tell me about his two trips to Arizona?”

She gave an exasperated half-laugh half-sigh. “Again? He was away for about a week in January and a week in February. Did he go to Arizona? If you say so. He didn’t tell me. All I knew was that he was away.”

I took a deep breath and spread my hands. “If you won’t cooperate with us, Katie, then there is no point in my talking to you any longer.”

She hesitated a moment without looking at either one of us. Then, she said quietly, “I’m sorry,” and she got up and left.

Dehan and I stared at each other for a minute, but neither of us had anything to say, so we stood and made our way downstairs. I found Sergeant Garcia and gave her the manila folder with instructions. When I’d finished telling her what I wanted, she said, “Listen, the car was identified. I didn’t want to interrupt your interrogation, but they got it on CCTV at a gas station. They got the number.” She handed me a slip of paper. “Patrolman Junkers traced it. It was reported stolen the same night of the shooting.”

I made a face that was rueful. “To be expected.”

“No, but a neighbor got it on her cell. She filmed the whole thing! The Inspector wants you up in his office to look at the video.”

I bellowed across the detectives’ room, “Dehan! Upstairs!”

Everybody looked, and as Dehan crossed the room there was much laughter, applause, and wolf-whistling.

I was knocking on Inspector Newman’s door as she came up behind me. “What the hell is it, Stone?”

Newman’s voice called, “Come!”

I pushed in as I said to Dehan, “They got footage of the car.”

“Shit!”

To Newman I said, “Is it any good?”

“You tell me.”

He had his laptop open on the desk. He pressed ‘play’ and turned it so we could all watch. I sat and Dehan crouched beside me with her hand on my shoulder.

The quality was grainy, but good enough to see the dark Audi parked on a leafy street. It was between two plane trees, under a street lamp. There was a group of three men under the tree by the trunk. The nearest was wearing