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

“Of course…”

He turned and walked away, back into the sleeping shadows of his house. The kitchen was brightly lit. The walls were lemon yellow, a vast refrigerator gleamed silver, and there was a large, round, pine table with four pine chairs in the middle of a floor laid with big, terracotta tiles. In the center of the table, there was a bowl brimming with tropical fruit. We sat and waited. I wondered, bizarrely, if he’d notice if I had a banana.

The sound of rushing, unsteady feet on the stairs drove the thought from my mind. We stood as they came back in. Mary was small and dark, perhaps a couple of years younger than her husband. Her hair was in curlers and she had a dressing gown drawn tight around her, as though she hoped it might protect her somehow. She ran across the kitchen, clutching her gown with her left hand, reaching out to me with her right.

“What’s happened? Is he all right? Where is he?”

Eduardo announced in a voice that was too loud, “I’ll make coffee!” and stared at us each in turn. I ignored him and guided Mary to a chair. We sat and Eduardo left the coffee pot by the sink and came to sit with us. He looked for a moment as though he might start weeping.

I put my fists on the table and spoke. “Mrs. Irizarry, Mr. Irizarry, we do not know all the details yet, but in the early hours of this morning, at about three o’clock, Luis and his friend Sebastian were parked in a car in Hunts Point…”

Eduardo’s eyes went wide. “Hunts Point? What the hell…?”

Maria covered her ears and screwed up her face, “Ed, please!” It was an eloquent gesture that spoke of a hypersensitivity developed over years of enduring his unquenchable outrage at everything he encountered.

I ignored them both and went on. “It seems they were approached by an unidentified person and shot point blank. Luis was in the passenger seat and managed to exit the car. He received two bullet wounds to the chest. He is in critical condition at the Jacobi.”

Ed’s mouth was sagging open. He kept staring around the room, as though he was following a slow-moving fly on its journey around the kitchen. Mary had both hands over her mouth. Her eyes were huge with horror as she stared at my face, struggling to give some meaning to what I had told her.

It was Ed who spoke first. “What was he doing at Hunts Point?”

Dehan answered him. “We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on that, Mr. Irizarry.”

He glared at her. “I? How the hell would I know?”

“Ed, please! These people are here to help us..!”

“Cops? Help us? Just shut up, Mary!” He turned back to Dehan. “I have no idea what he was doing there…”

Her eyes were hooded when she cut him short. “There were two of them, Mr. Irizarry. He was with his friend, Sebastian. You know Sebastian, don’t you?”

Mary said, “They’ve been friends since they were tiny. Is Sebastian badly hurt?”

“He received five shots. Two to the head and three to his arm and chest. He is dead.”

Her face twisted with grief. “Oh no…” Her voice was the voice of infinite sadness. She said it again. “Oh, no, no… Poor Sue. Poor Sue…”

She took a handkerchief from her pocket and began to sob into it. She cried silently with her shoulders shaking in small spasms. I was struck with the impression that crying silently and unnoticed was something she had learned to do over the years. Dehan turned back to Ed, who was staring at the tabletop.

“The reason we thought you might be able to shed some light on why they were where they were, Mr. Irizarry, is that they were parked outside Rosario’s house. You remember Rosario, right?”

He didn’t do anything. He didn’t react. Only, his eyes stared a little harder, and it was his motionlessness that was so striking. Mary’s sobbing stopped abruptly and she looked up at Dehan. “Rosario…? She’s dead…!”

“I know, Mrs. Irizarry. That house now belongs to Angela. Have you any idea why Luis and Sebastian would be parked outside Angela’s house at three in the morning?”

Ed’s eyes narrowed. “What are you implying?”

I put my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “It’s a simple question, Mr. Irizarry. We are not implying anything. We know that at one time you were both friends with Rosario, and the boys used to play with Angela. So, have you any idea what they might have been doing there?”

He didn’t answer. Mary shook her head. “I thought they had lost touch. When we moved out of the neighborhood, we lost touch with Rosario, Sue, Matt…”

I asked, “Sue and Matt were Sebastian’s parents?”

She nodded. “Matt was ill. He died. Poor Sue, this is going to hit her so hard.”

Dehan sighed. “Please forgive me, we have to ask these questions, have you any idea, at all, however remote, who might have wanted to hurt Luis and Sebastian?”

Ed snorted. “You can spare us the phony empathy, Detective. The answer is no. And we will not collaborate in your transparent attempts to frame our son as being involved in drugs or prostitution. Whatever that loser Sebastian might have been involved in, I have no idea. But Luis had nothing to do with it!”

“Ed!” Mary’s face was crimson and her neck taut and corded. She stared at her husband and before he could answer she half-screamed at him, “Can you not give it a rest for one single minute? Our son is dying in hospital and all you can think of is scoring points off poor Sue! Sebastian is dead, for God’s sake! Is there no trace of humanity in you?”

He scowled