Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner

Author:Blake Banner [Banner, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-10-18T05:00:00+00:00

BOOK 3

GARDEN OF THE DAMNED

One

For reasons I couldn’t really put my finger on, it was somehow appropriate. Out the window, April was coaxing the first, tender green leaves from bare branches and withered twigs after a dark, cold winter. This seemed like a suitable counterpoint. I tossed the file onto the desk, narrowly missing my feet, and said, “This one looks interesting.”

Dehan picked it up, leafed through it, and read the abstract on page one.

“John Doe,” she smiled at me in a way that said she wasn’t really smiling at me, “good start.” She carried on, “Aged about thirty, found in a dumpster at the corner of Lafayette and Bryant, in the Bronx. No papers, no ID. Clothes suggest a vagrant. Cause of death, a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, possibly a .38. No slug recovered and no blood found in the vicinity.” She looked at me. “What makes this interesting?”

I frowned at her and spoke with some severity. “The fact that a young man got murdered.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “No. That is why we should investigate it. That doesn’t make it interesting. So far it looks like a guy nobody cares about got whacked by another guy nobody cares about. You said it was interesting, why?”

“Look at the photographs.”

She leafed through till she came to the photographs, three six by eights. She spread them on the desk and spent a couple of minutes staring at them. They showed a man of about thirty, in old, filthy clothes, lying face down in a dumpster full of rubble and builder’s trash. She shook her head. “Help me out. I’m not seeing it.”

I gave a small smirk as I handed her my magnifying glass. “Have a look at his hands.”

She stared at the glass a moment and then at me before taking it, then she looked at John Doe’s hands. She sat back. “Okay, they appear to be manicured. You are observant, Sensei.”

“And the hair. That is definitely a hundred dollar haircut.”

She leaned forward again and studied the photographs. She nodded. “So,” she said and handed back the glass. “How do we figure this? He’s in the neighborhood of Lafayette, maybe looking for a whore, he gets mugged…”

Even as she was saying it, she was seeing the flaws. I said, “Let’s suppose he had a thousand dollar suit that, by some fluke, happened to be the right size for our killer. So he kills him, takes his suit, his shoes and his watch, plus his wallet. Why then go to the trouble of dressing him as a homeless person and dumping him in a dumpster?”

She looked back at the file.

“Single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Execution style.” She shrugged. “These days any kid who wants to be in a gang is likely to shoot you in the back of the head just so he can boast he killed you ‘execution style’.”

“True enough.” I stood. “But if you look at the ME’s report…” She leafed through to the report and read while I spoke.

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