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

that for a long moment as she accelerated toward Randall Avenue. With anybody else in the world, it would be a simple question of identity, but with him it was somehow impossible to consider it on that level. It became a philosophical question about the very nature of identity itself, even if you didn’t want it to be. In the end, I shrugged. “Logically, it’s him. But I never saw anyone so certain of the fact that they were not somebody.” I spread my hands. “And it does not seem to faze him at all that he is going to face Hennessy and D’Angelo in court.”

She turned onto Randall Avenue and we crossed the bridge, and next thing, we were turning into Vincent Avenue, heading north and looking for Katie’s house.

It was a large, white, double-fronted clapboard affair with black gables and black shutters. We parked out front and climbed the stairs to her porch. She opened the door before we had time to ring and led us to a spacious, comfortable living room, where she gestured us to a couple of sage green armchairs. We refused coffee and she sat on a matching sofa.

I watched her a moment. She looked anxious. I smiled and said, “Should I call you Katie or Kathleen?”

Her answer surprised me. She smiled back and gave her head a little shake. “Kathleen is dead. I am Katie.”

I gave a small bark of a laugh. “So it is possible to die and be reborn within a single lifetime.”

“I guess it is.”

“Katie, we tracked down David’s source. He may be Adrian Philips, the man who killed your family, or he may not. At the moment we have no way of knowing for sure. It seems Philips repented for the things he had done, and turned to Buddhism as a way of atoning. It also looks as though he was killed in a bomb blast in Pakistan in 2007. If that is the case then this man, Dave’s source, was his spiritual teacher.”

She made no expression with her face, just blinked several times. “So, the man who broke into our house… He might be dead?”

“There is a good chance. The case is now in the hands of the FBI. They have the resources to find out for sure. If the source we have found is in fact Philips, he will be arrested and tried.”

She seemed to digest that information for a bit, then asked, “And what about Hennessy?”

I smiled again. “She has been arrested. So has D’Angelo.”

She stared at the carpet for a while, then turned to look out at the gray rain that had started to fall outside, leaving long streaks like tears on the panes.

Dehan had frowned at me briefly, and now said to Katie, “We also arrested Jackson Lee, Dave’s friend.”

Katie looked surprised. “Really?”

“Dave had entrusted the article to him, along with all his notes and his research, everything he had learned from his source. Lee stole it and murdered Dave, so that he could use it to blackmail Hennessy.”

An expression of dawning realization washed over her face and she slowly leaned back on the sofa. In a very small voice she said, “After all these years…”

I spoke quietly. “Does it make sense at last?”

She nodded.

“Something that intrigued me for a while,” I went on, “was the way in his diaries and his notes, he went on and on about these moral quandaries, questioning what was right and wrong, what morality was.”

She gave a small, sad sigh. “In his own, twisted little way, he was a very moral man. Trouble was, he could only think of morality on the grand scale, how it affected society, history, culture. He was all about the law, democracy…” She trailed off, looking at the rain again. “But when it came to individual human beings, he was blind. Hennessy had to be brought to justice, not because she had killed a little girl’s father, not because she had robbed a good man of his life and a wonderful woman of her husband, no. She had to be brought to justice because she had betrayed her sacred office as a secretary of state, as a congresswoman. Because she had betrayed democracy. He was a very moral man, in his own, twisted way.”

We were all quiet for a moment, listening to the patter of the rain in the street. My voice sounded too loud when I spoke.

“And then he met Ananda Sri Pannasiha. Or it may be Adrian Simon Philips, the poisonous Asp. And he began to question all his morals, everything he had ever believed in, didn’t he?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And the only reason you were with him began to dissolve.”

She nodded again.

“And the one hope you had cherished, that your father, your sister, and your mother, and you, might finally get justice, began to slip through your fingers.”

It was almost a whisper. “Yes…”

“There is one small piece that I am missing, but I think I can hazard a guess. “He fell in love with you, didn’t he?”

She nodded.

“Ananda, Philips, whoever he is, had a deep impact on him. He is that kind of man. And I think David started to question just about everything. But two things were clear for him, I think. He was in love with you and he had in his hands the opportunity to become very, very rich. I think what he proposed to you was that he would leave his wife, and you and he could be together, living like kings. Making Hennessy pay.”

She sighed. “This monk he was seeing twisted him somehow. He said he had been liberated. Why should we publish the article when we could use it as blackmail and become rich. The Hennessys were billionaires, if we were clever, we could live in luxury for the rest of our lives without