Knife Edge (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 27) Blake Banner (10 best books of all time TXT) 📖

addicts. That little black brat, he could have screwed it up for them for good.”

I puffed out my cheeks and blew. She shook her head again. “I am not saying that’s what happened. I am just asking, what if?”

I thought about it for a long moment.

“OK, Sonia, send me the picture, I’ll discuss it with my partner and maybe we’ll review the case and go and have a talk with Brad Mitchell and Dr. Wagner. I can’t promise you anything, but we’ll have a look and see if the lead is worth following.”

She smiled and thanked me, and sat a moment. I figured she was in her late forties. She was attractive and elegant, but looked tired, drawn and unhappy. Finally she stood and left, and I reached for my cell.

Two

The phone rang three times before she picked it up. When she spoke she was out of breath.

“Yeah, Stone, what’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m working out in the gym, why?”

“Because we’re going to visit Brad and Emma Mitchell, in Castle Hill.”

“Uh-huh. Why?”

“Git yer ass up to your desk and you can read why in the file.”

I heard a soft grunt. “I love when you talk rough like that, you bad, bad man.”

I hung up and went down to my desk to sort through our cardboard filing system, comprised of two large cartons, and found Brown 2010, and Mitchell 2014. They were cross-referenced. I read them over briefly, called Frank, the ME, about something I didn’t understand, and was making copies of the two files when Dehan walked in, looking fresh and lithe. I shoved a file in her hands.

“One,” I said.

“Hello.”

I ignored her and went on. “Cherise Brown married to Earl Brown, like so many men, a no-good, lowdown drunk. She, apparently blinded by love, had two children by him, Leroy and Shevron. While he was at home watching TV, drinking whiskey and smoking weed, she was at work raising money to feed her family. This went on for eight years. Her sister Sonia, our informant, advised her repeatedly to leave him and start a new life, but Cherise made excuses for him and they stayed together.”

Dehan rested her ass on the side of her desk and frowned at me. I went on.

“On May 14th, 2010, Cherise arrived home early from work and found Earl raping six-year-old Shevron while eight-year-old Leroy watched. It turned out later this had been going on for some years, to both of the kids.”

“Son of a bitch. What did Mom do?”

“She went to the kitchen, grabbed the kitchen knife and attacked him. There was a fight.”

“In front of the kids?”

“Mm-hmm, Shevron tried to protect her mother and Earl hit her so hard he broke her neck. Reconstruction by the ME and the detectives at the time was that Cherise stabbed Earl in the back, he somehow took the knife from her and stabbed her several times in the belly before collapsing, and they both died.”

“Leaving Leroy as the only living witness to the violent death of his entire family. Holy sh…”

I nodded. “But that’s not all of it.”

“There’s more?”

“Yup.” I collected up the copies and dropped into my chair at the desk. She shifted round to look at me. “Leroy went to an orphanage for about six months. Almost immediately, as soon as the murder was reported in the press, the Mitchells, a liberal, academic family who were residents of the Bronx, applied to adopt Leroy. They both lectured at NYU. He’s a psychiatrist, she a sociologist. There was some concern about whether a white family should adopt a black orphan but after six months and threats of legal action, it was approved.”

“Kid had a shrink?”

“Simone Robles. In the file. He was still only eight.”

“The Mitchells had kids?”

“Two kids, younger than Leroy. Marcus, seven and Lea, five. Apparently they got on well, and the whole family was keen to make it work. Seems the kids liked each other, but…”

“There had to be a but.”

“It seems, when Leroy turned twelve, in August 2013, he began to change. He started talking to his aunt about how black men were better and stronger than white men, how white women preferred black men. He used to write her WhatsApp messages on the subject. Sonia spoke to Emma about it, but the Mitchells didn’t seem too concerned. They thought it was normal given the trauma he had suffered, and he’d get over it..”

“So what happened?”

“On June 13th, four years and a month, almost to the day, after his parents and his sister were killed, he was killed too, along with his adoptive sister, Lea.”

“Holy cow. How were they killed?”

“It was a Sunday, Brad and Emma Mitchell had been drinking coffee after breakfast and the kids were playing in the backyard. They had a big lawn and a garden shed where they kept the gardening tools. At some point, the Mitchells started to hear a lot of screaming coming from the shed. They ran to see what it was about, and found Lea and Leroy dead. There was a lot of blood on the floor. Lea had had her throat cut, and Leroy had been stabbed repeatedly in the back.”

Dehan was frowning hard. “What about the other boy, Marcus?”

“They found him in the shed, hiding under a tarpaulin. He was in severe shock. He hasn’t been able to help as a witness because he slipped into a catatonic depression and never really recovered. He has never spoken again, to this day.”

“Huh!”

“It was never solved. There was no DNA or forensic evidence and the case went cold.”

She nodded. “And the only witness was the kid, Marcus.”

“Yup.”

“OK…” She moved around to her chair and sat in it. “But I don’t see how we can do anything with this, Stone. Where the hell do you begin?”

I leaned forward with my elbows on the desk. “Sonia came to see me this morning and she brought, not so much new evidence as, old evidence with a new angle. It’s thin, but…” I shrugged. “I