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

kneeling beside me and planting a big, messy kiss on my cheek. Then she was off to get my wallet and her laptop. A minute later, she was back in her chair rattling at the keys on her computer. I lay, with my eyes open, looking over at the breakfast bar and the kitchen and smiling, enjoying the sound of her.

“You know how long I have wanted to go to Goa? Years.” She rattled a little longer, then went on, “Say, Stone, the other night, just before you got shot…”

“Uh-huh…”

“You said you wanted to talk to me about something. Something Shelly had said. What was that?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. Then I smiled. “Nothing important. Maybe I’ll tell you in Goa.”

BOOK 8

UNNATURAL MURDER

One

When you see it on TV, it has drama. But in the real, three-dimensional world, the steady throb of the red and blue lights in the darkness, the way they wash the walls of the house with their dull colors, the way they make the black windows look hollow and empty, like dead eyes—that has no drama. And the pain and the convulsive weeping of the girl who loved the victim, and now sees him lifeless and gaping behind the wheel of his cheap Toyota, the numb, expressionless faces of the uniforms who have seen it all before, the ME and the CSI team, who just want to go home to bed—all of that, all of it, it has no drama. The true horror of that scene, of all the scenes like it, lies in the fact that it is banal, it is horrifically ordinary.

We climbed out of Dehan’s Focus and ducked under the yellow tape that hung across Bryant Avenue, segregating two houses from the rest of the world, because here somebody had been killed, murdered. Sergeant Solano met us as we crossed the line. Dehan was frowning at him; at three AM, she’d brought her attitude with her.

“You want to explain to me why I’m here, Sergeant?”

Solano made a face like sheepish turning to worried and said, “I wasn’t sure what to do, Detective. It’s three AM and the Inspector’s not at the station. It ain’t a cold case exactly, but it might be connected. And I knew you… your mom… So I told dispatch…”

He trailed off. The expression on Dehan’s face might have made Godzilla trail off. It made intimidating look like a welcome respite. So I said, “You did the right thing, Sergeant. Walk us through it.”

He gave me a grateful smile and pointed at the Toyota. It was parked under a streetlamp. I glanced at what lay beyond it: a rundown terraced house with steps rising to a large veranda behind wrought iron railings, a red brick wall and peeling green paint on a cheap door and a window frame; a girl, Latina, sitting on a wooden chair, in her twenties, barefoot, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, crying; a female cop hunkered down by her side, trying to comfort somebody who can never be comforted.

Dehan had moved to the window of the car and was peering in. I said to Solano, “OK, what’s the story?”

“Two victims, Detective.” He moved toward the vehicle and I went and stood beside Dehan, looking through the shattered window. There was a young man, maybe mid twenties. He was slumped over on his right side. He looked uncomfortable. There was a lot of blood from two bullet wounds in his head, and at least three more in his arm and chest.

Solano was saying, “This is Sebastian Acosta, resident at the Jacobi…”

On the other side of the car, crouching by the passenger seat in the open doorway, I could see Frank, the ME, looking back at me. “Good morning, Frank.”

“I knew them.” He said it in a dead voice that masked his anger.

I turned back to Solano. “Thanks, Sergeant. I’ll give you a shout if I need you. You canvassing the neighbors?”

“Yeah, we’re on it.”

“OK, I’ll talk to you in a minute.”

Dehan had moved around the car. Frank stood and I joined them. There was blood on the sidewalk and on the stairs leading up to the veranda. Frank looked unhappy.

“Sebastian Acosta, twenty-six, wanted to be an ME.” He pointed at the blood on the stairs. “His friend, Luis Irizarry, twenty-five, was going to be a plastic surgeon. He said there was more money in it and you didn’t have to watch your patients die.”

Dehan voiced the question I was wondering. “Where is he?”

“In a coma, in an ambulance on his way to the Jacobi.”

She screwed up her face. “They were both residents?”

He nodded. “They’d been through med school together and they were doing their residency together.”

I asked, “How bad is Luis?”

“Pretty bad. We won’t know till he gets there. He took two rounds to the chest. Sebastian took the brunt of the attack. He has two shots to the head and three to the body, point blank. There are powder burns on his face.” He pulled out his cell. “I’ll get Personnel to email you their addresses.”

I walked back around to the driver’s side and stood where the shooter must have stood, with my arms outstretched as though I was holding a gun. Dehan came and stood beside me.

“I think I remember them.”

I glanced at her. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “And that girl,” she jerked her head at the veranda. “I think she’s Rosario’s daughter, Angela.”

“Rosario?”

“My mom’s friend. Rosario Rojas. That’s what Solano was talking about. Rosario was raped and murdered in this house. That’s her daughter. When they were kids, she used to hang out with these two.”

“How’d Solano know?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Stationhouse gossip. We are paid to snoop, Stone.”

I made a face. “I guess you’re right. You OK with this?”

“Sure. I’m