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

chick who was younger and better looking. OK, so Helena was also screwing another guy. But she wasn’t in love with him. All along, the man she loved was Jack. And Jack barely knew she existed and treated her like shit.”

He frowned. “The person in the CCTV footage is a man.”

“And the one in the wheelchair is an old woman. And yet.” She shook her head again. “That is not hard to arrange, sir, and besides, she may have an accomplice, a younger man to do the heavy lifting. She is an attractive, very rich woman with a lot of admirers and followers. It would not be hard for her…”

She frowned and became momentarily distracted. The inspector was nodding. “Indeed—Alornerk himself! Well, we should know shortly if Connors Communications’ vans were used today, and if so, by whom. What is it, Carmen? Something wrong?”

“I just remembered…”

There was a tap at the door and the inspector snapped “Come!”

A uniform poked his head in and said, “Detective Dehan, you have a UPS delivery. Maria signed for it and it’s on your desk.”

“Yeah, thanks…”

She stared at the inspector. He stared back.

In a strange trance, she moved out of the office, hearing only the blood in her ears. She moved down the stairs and pushed into the detectives room. Everybody was staring at her, though she was not aware of them. She was aware only of the carton standing on her desk, eighteen inches cubed, and Stone’s empty chair beyond it.

SIXTEEN

The inspector pushed past her in a rush.

“Carmen, let me open it. Somebody take Carmen away from here! For God’s sake, get her out of here!”

Mo stepped toward her, Consuelo, who had been working at Dehan’s desk, rose and moved toward her, arms stretched out.

Dehan snarled, “Stay away from me! Don’t touch that box!”

She reached in her jeans and pulled out a blade. She advanced on the box and, with her hands shaking badly, she cut the tape and gripped the cardboard flaps. The detectives had gathered around her. The inspector stepped forward, reaching for her. “Carmen, no…”

“Stay away!”

Her face was pale and drawn, and with sudden vicious violence she ripped open the box, stared inside and screamed. She staggered back a step, covering her face and fell into her chair, still screaming. Then she was on her feet, pounding the desk with her fist. She kicked her chair and sent it crashing against the wall. “Mother fucker!”

She turned and stared at the rows of astonished faces watching her. “What are you all staring at? He’s not in there! He hasn’t had his fucking head cut off!”

Mo was the first to move, then the small crowd began to disperse. The deputy inspector stepped toward her and held her shoulders. She stared into his face, her own a sickly gray color, biting back the sobs, blinking away the tears, her hands trembling.

“Carmen, put the knife away.”

She folded it and put it in her pocket.

“Sit down. Somebody, Consuelo, get her a coffee. Now just take a moment to breathe and get a grip. It was not him, and that is a good thing, right?”

“Don’t even dream about taking me off this case, sir.”

“It’s OK, just take it easy. Nobody’s taking you off anything. But we need to get this stuff to the lab.”

“Not yet.” She stood, took some latex gloves from her jacket pocket and pulled them on. “There’s a note, and I saw a photograph.”

She reached in the box, which was almost empty, and extracted an envelope and a photograph of a dense woodland. She examined the photograph a moment and handed it to the inspector. Then she opened the envelope and read aloud in a steady voice.

“‘No head for you today, Detective Dehan. Your husband is intact, but buried in a shallow grave. I guess I could have googled it, but I just didn’t have the interest: how long can a person survive buried alive?’” She paused, hesitated, then continued. “‘Do I seem cruel? Yet I am trying to redeem myself. At least I spared him the cheese cutter and gave him a chance. Hurry now! You might just find him in time.’”

The room seemed to rock under her feet. She reached out to the deputy inspector with fumbling fingers and took back the photograph. It was a glade in a forest. It meant nothing to her. She forced herself to focus. The ground was dark and mulchy: last fall’s leaves rotted into the soil. A large tree stood in the center of the picture, perhaps an oak, maybe fifteen or twenty feet from the camera, with large ferns on the right and more trees she could not identify. To the left, her left, a space between trees showed a patch of water. And in the foreground, near the foot of the oak, a mound where the earth had been disturbed.

She handed it back to the inspector. “We need to have this copied to all the sheriffs’ departments, Jersey to Maine, parks authorities, every cop in every PD on the East Coast. Somebody knows where this is.”

He took the picture. “Consuelo, see to it. Copy it to every cell phone in the 43rd, then get it out to every precinct in New York state, copy it to the sheriffs’ departments, park authorities—everyone and anyone you can think of. There is an NYPD detective buried alive at this spot, we need to know where it is now!”

He turned back to Dehan. She was already talking over him. “He’s had him maybe six hours. Allow for the time to dig the ground, put him in the hole, drive back, prepare the package and have it delivered. That limits him to an area of less than three hours from the Upper West Side.”

“Much less, Carmen, two to two and a half maximum.”

“OK,