Fire From Heaven by Blake Banner

Author:Blake Banner [Banner, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-04-27T17:00:00+00:00

FO URTEEN

Agent Smith did not have his name on the door of his small, anonymous office. Neither did he look the way he sounded. His voice had somehow suggested someone who had had all his compassion and humanity ruthlessly trained out of him. But to look at, Agent Smith looked like somebody’s uncle. He was of average height, slim, with a soft, round face and balding, curly, blond hair. He wore round glasses, which added to the soft roundness of his face. But in spite of his uncle-ish look, he did not have a smile.

He rose as we stepped in and came around the desk to shake our hands. There was another man there who also stood. He did smile. He wore a suit, a black mustache, and tightly curled black hair. Agent Smith spoke as we shook. “Detectives, thank you for coming in. This is Agent Brown, I know how busy you must be, so we appreciate your taking the time.”

We sat and they sat. I noticed there were no papers on his desk, no jar with pens in it and no photos of his nieces and nephews on the desk, or the bookcase. In fact, there was no bookcase, either. He said, “I’ll come straight to the point. Agent Bernie Hirschfield passed on your inquiry to us. Do you mind telling us exactly what your interest is in this case?”

I stared at him and drew breath to answer but Dehan was already talking. “What kind of a question is that? Our interest? It was a homicide committed within the jurisdiction of the 43rd Precinct. It wasn’t solved at the time and we are in charge of cold cases. That’s our interest, Agent Smith.”

Smith blinked at her, but aside from that showed no expression. Brown smiled. “It is simply,” he said, “that we were surprised at its resurfacing after all these years, and we wondered why.”

I answered before Dehan could get in. “Purely routine, Agent Brown. We have been working through the cold cases, and this one came up. That’s what happens with cold cases. I am not going to inquire as to why you are interested that we are interested. Presumably you are doing your job and you have your reasons, just as we do. But what I am going to inquire about is whether you did, in fact, visit some of the witnesses in the original case.”

They looked at each other. Smith nodded at Brown and turned to me. “We did visit some of the witnesses. I’m not sure ‘witness’ is the right word, as it seems that nobody, in fact, witnessed the murder. But we did visit some of Daniel’s friends and family.”

Dehan crossed one of her long legs over the other and coughed. “A homicide within New York is not in the Bureau’s jurisdiction. What made you look into it?”

Brown smiled his bland, friendly smile again. “It wasn’t the fact of the homicide, Detective Dehan, but the nature of the homicide.”

“The fact that there was

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