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

Angela stared at the tabletop, but like she wasn’t seeing it, like she was seeing something else instead, something that made her scared. Her breathing was ragged. Finally, she said, “There was just a man running to his car. Seb was lying on the seat and Luis was on the steps. The man got in his car and drove away.”

I said, “Was his car on your right or on your left?”

“On the right.”

“And once you saw that, you ran downstairs and dialed 911?”

She nodded.

I looked at Dehan. “I don’t know if you have any more questions, Detective Dehan. I have all I need for now.”

Dehan gave Angela a squeeze and said, “We will need a full statement later on, but right now I’ll get somebody to drive you home. You need me to call anyone? A doctor, a friend?”

“No. I’m fine.”

They got up and moved to the door. As she was about to leave the room, I had a thought. “Angela?” She stopped and looked at me like she was afraid I was going to make her stand in the naughty corner. “Do you think whoever did this saw you at the window?”

She stared at me for a long while before she shook her head. After that, Dehan walked her downstairs and I made my way to our desks. There I dropped into my chair and sat gazing at the black window that showed nothing of the creeping dawn, but just the orange wash of the streetlamp on the corner of Storey Avenue. Dehan came in on her long legs, yawning, and fell into the chair opposite me, leaning her elbows on the desk. We stared at each other for a while and eventually, I said, “From her bedroom window, she could not have seen Sebastian lying across the seat. Neither could she have seen Luis on the stairs.”

She chewed her lip and gave three ponderous nods. “She was downstairs.”

“I think you are right. First order of priority, Carmen, we need to find out what those boys were doing there at three in the morning. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that they were outside her house. They were close friends, you could see that by the way she went to pieces when you mentioned they used to play together.”

“I noticed that.”

“They were there…” I shrugged. “They were there for her, for some reason. Which begs the question, how did the shooter know they were going to be there?”

“I told Angela we’d see her again after she’d had time to sleep and get over the shock. She said she’d take a pill.” She looked at her watch. “It’s just after four. We should go and call on the parents.”

I sighed and rubbed my face. “Yes…”

“You want me to take Acosta and you…”

I interrupted her. “No. I’d like us both to do both. This is going to be a complicated case. My gut tells me there will be subtle emotional nuances all over the damned place. I want you there so we can discuss it. We’ll see Luis’ family first, then Sebastian’s.”

“You got it, Sensei.”

We took her car because my Jaguar was still at my house. She had picked me up after dispatch called her. I climbed in the passenger seat and slammed the door. She fired up the engine and I looked at her profile against the creeping light of early dawn. She was exquisite, and totally unaware of it.

She backed out onto Fteley Avenue and headed for Bruckner Boulevard. The Irizarry family lived not far from me, in Morris Park.

“One thing I am still not clear about,” I said, as she pulled onto the freeway, “is how this becomes a cold case.”

She grimaced. “I’ve been wondering that myself. I see it and I don’t.”

“Explain.”

She gave a little sigh and thought for a bit. As we turned onto White Plains Road, she started to talk.

“I’m going back a bit. This must be 2004, maybe 2003, so I was thirteen, fourteen. It was about a year before my parents died. My mom had become real close with Rosario, one of the mothers in the barrio.”

“Barrio?”

She glanced at me. “Yeah. My mom wasn’t an intellectual, but she liked intelligent people. Rosario was smart. She hadn’t had much in the way of opportunities or schooling, but she read a lot and she had opinions. She liked my mom because my mom had broken the rules. You know, defied the church, her family, married a Jewish guy. Anyhow, after a while Rosario starts hanging out with a crowd…”

She stopped and made a face like she didn’t really approve of what she was going to say. I prompted her, “A crowd? What kind of crowd?”

“My dad described them as ‘fast’. My mom wasn’t crazy about them either. From what I remember,” she glanced at me again, “and I was only about fourteen years old! From what I remember, there were two couples. One of them was mixed race, which attracted a lot of attention. She was a white academic.” She laughed. “She might have been a schoolteacher for all I know! But that was the impression. Radical left wing, making a statement, you know the kind of thing.”

I managed to frown and raise an eyebrow at the same time. “Kind of woman who made it possible for you to have your job.”

“Absolutely. I’m not criticizing. Shut up and listen. Anyhow, she was married to a black guy, black Puerto Rican, I think. He was also some kind of academic. I remember there was some talk about him being ill, and he may have died. These two were close friends with another couple…” She thought for a moment. “Eddie and Maria. This couple were also Puerto Rican. He was a defense attorney. He was just starting out,