Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (read aloud books TXT) 📗

Go back. To eleven o’clock. Five past. This guy went to Mrs. Graham on the seventh?”

“Yeah, this is just the footage of people leaving, but…”

“Call her.”

“What?”

“Call her! Ask her if she had a disabled visitor, goddammit!”

The porter ran to reception. “I’ll call!”

“Now, replay it… Freeze it. There. Look at the digital display. What’s that number?”

“Holy shit…”

“It’s a nine. That old woman in the wheelchair is my partner.”

The porter poked his head in. “I am so sorry. She didn’t have a visitor and nobody came with a wheelchair…”

“Isolate that footage, send it to this email.” She handed him a card and turned to the porter. “Tell me you saw a van. Tell me you saw a vehicle. Tell me you saw which way they went.”

The man’s face was a picture of distress. “I… He wheeled him out. I stayed in here. He might have turned right…”

She pulled her cell from her pocket and dialed the inspector.

“Carmen!”

“Sir, he was wheeled out of here at ten past eleven this morning, in a wheelchair. He was covered in a couple of blankets and a hat, to make him look like an old lady. I’m having the footage sent over, maybe the lab can do something with it, but the guy doing the wheeling is nondescript and hard to identify.”

Though even as she was saying it, something was nagging at her memory. She went on.

“We need another team to canvass the area for anyone who saw a man pushing a wheelchair. They must have got into a vehicle. Someone might be able to identify the vehicle, or tell us which way it went.”

“Dear God, Carmen. It is hard to believe. Who would do such a thing?”

She nodded. “Somebody crazy. I’m going out to talk to the neighbors.”

She stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine. The part of Riverside Drive where Penelope had her apartment was largely a residential area, and what few stores and businesses there were were mainly inside the buildings, and had no large plate glass storefronts that allowed a clear view of the street. So the first fifteen minutes of Dehan’s hunt for witnesses was largely fruitless, until she came to the Upper West Side Cooperative School on West 96th, around the corner from Penelope’s apartment block.

The school was closed but, as she approached, beyond the iron railings she could see an elderly man in blue overalls with a wheelbarrow, tending to a small plot where a cherry tree was in blossom, surrounded by springtime flowerbeds. She took out her badge and held it through the rails, then stuck her fingers in her mouth and emitted a shrill whistle that might have shattered glass.

The guy straightened and turned. She waved her badge at him and called out, “Detective Dehan, NYPD!”

He ambled over to her and leaned on the green rails. He smiled without malice and said, “Dehan, huh? What’s a nice girl like you doing in an outfit like that?”

“What can I tell you? My first choice was ballet, but my toes were too long. Were you here at eleven this morning?”

“Sure. I been here all day.”

“I’m looking for witnesses who saw a man in his late twenties, early thirties, wheeling an old woman in a wheelchair. You see anything like that?”

“Yeah, sure. She was a weird lookin’ woman, too. Big. That woman made some man’s life a misery, I’m tellin’ you. At the time she looked quiet, like maybe she was sleeping. He wheels her up the hill. You could tell she was heavy, cause this kid was struggling. Big hands, big feet. The woman, not the kid. Looked like a man, only she had this floppy hat with flowers on it. You wouldn’t want to marry a woman like that.”

“Where’d they go?”

“He had a van parked right there, across the road. Wheeled the chair into the van and secured it. Then drove away, like he was headed for the Hudson Parkway.”

“You didn’t get the plates…?”

“Nah. They was odd, you know? An odd couple. But I didn’t think it was nothin’ criminal.”

“You said the guy pushing was a kid?”

He made a rueful smile. “At my age, everyone’s a kid. I guess he was what you said, late twenties, early thirties, medium height, medium build, kinda hard to describe. He was so normal.”

“What kind of van was it?”

“White Savannah, tinted windows. Had a side door with a ramp, to get the chair up.” A cloud seemed to pass over the man’s face. “He gonna hurt that woman?”

“That’s what I’m trying to avoid. That woman is a six-foot-two mensch who also happens to be my partner and my husband.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Detective Dehan. I guess he’d make a better husband than a wife.”

“Yeah, he makes a pretty good husband. Any distinguishing features on the van? Anything to make it stand out from other white Savannahs…?”

He shrugged and looked momentarily helpless. “It was real clean. Actually, spotless. But there were no logos, no stickers, nothin’. All white with tinted windows. That’s it.”

“Tinted windows?”

“Yeah, along the back.”

She nodded. “OK, thanks.”

“Hope you find him, Detective Dehan.”

She turned and walked down the road, back toward Penelope’s apartment block. On the way she put out a BOLO for the van. It was a forlorn hope, but it was something. Then she called Inspector Newman again.

“Carmen, what news?”

“He was loaded into a white Savannah on West 96th by a man in his late twenties or early thirties. Medium height, medium build, nondescript. I put out a BOLO on the van. We’ll need the CCTV footage from the Upper West Side Cooperative School on West 96th, also the neighboring streets. Maybe we can get a license plate and see where he was going. Seems he was headed for the Hudson Parkway.”

“I’ll take