Dead Cold Mystery Box Set 1

by Blake Banner

My phone rang. I looked at the screen. It was Frank. I put him on speaker.

  “What have you got, Frank?”

  “Okay, the hairbrush.”

  “Good, what?”

  “Not a match.”

  I stared at Dehan.

  “The blood on the carpet and the hair on the brush are not from the same person.” He waited. I was silent, trying to process the implications. He went on. “I don’t know why the blood from the floor was not processed back in 2015, but it wasn’t. It is clearly not Springfellow’s. We ran it through CODIS and we got a hit.”

  “You did? Who?”

  “Ernesto Sanchez, a member of the Sureños gang.” Dehan and I were still staring at each other. I heard Frank say, “Stone? You still there?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Frank. That’s…”

  “Clearly not what you expected.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Sorry!”

  He hung up.

  “Mindfuck is right, Dehan.”

  She was already on the computer, checking the database. “I remember Ernesto Sanchez. He was a real asshole. He lived a couple of streets from me. He had an older brother, Alfonso, another asshole. They used to hang out and be assholes together. If I remember rightly…” She stopped talking and stared at the screen. “Yeah, Alfonso is in jail, Attica, upstate. He’s halfway through a two-year sentence.”

  “What about Ernesto?”

  She shook her head. “He’s been off the radar for a while.” She got up and went and stuck her head out the door. She looked around a bit and suddenly bellowed, “Hey, Chavez! Come here!”

  She came back to the desk, and after a moment a uniformed cop walked into the detectives’ room. He looked as though he was trying not to look pissed.

  “Yes, Detective.”

  “You patrol Garrison Avenue, Bryants Hill Gardens, Seneca…” She made a “and so on” gesture with her hand. “Right?”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “You know the Sanchez boys, Alfonso and Ernesto?”

  He frowned. “Yeah. Alfonso’s inside.”

  I said, “What about Ernesto? You seen him around?”

  He pulled a face. “Now you mention it… I ain’t seen him for a while.”

  “How long, would you say?”

  Chavez looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Detectives, I couldn’t say.”

  Dehan said, “More than a year?”

  He nodded. “I’d say so.”

  “More than two?”

  He danced his head from side to side. “Maybe a couple of years.”

  I reached for my phone. “Thanks, Chavez. That’s great.”

  He left, looking uncertain.

  “Dehan, we want an APB on Ernesto Sanchez. I want to know if he is dead or alive. If he’s alive, I want to talk to him.”

  “I’m on it!”

  “Meantime, I am going to call Attica.”

  She grinned. “Road trip!”

  I arranged a meeting with Alfonso Sanchez for the following day at twelve noon, which meant setting out at six or six thirty a.m. I hung up and looked at my watch. It was only five, but I was beat. Dehan stretched and cracked her vertebrae over the back of her chair, then went to stand in front of the fan with her arms held out.

  I said, “We’ve got an early start. Up at five. You want to stay over?”

  She yawned and gave me the thumbs-up.

  We stopped at Kmart on the way and bought some groceries. Dehan led the way, talking over her shoulder as I followed. “I thought maybe spaghetti? It’s easy, but it’s filling. What do you think? Or maybe baked potatoes, but it takes at least an hour. I think spaghetti. You got any preference?”

  I smiled but didn’t bother answering because she’d already put the ingredients in the basket and was walking toward the wine section.

  “I don’t normally drink wine midweek, Stone, but spaghetti without wine? It’s like oysters without champagne, burger without beer. It’s not right, is it?”

  “No.”

  “They say the man should choose the wine. I don’t see why. Women can’t choose wine? Plus, you’re just standing there like Friday on Monday. I like this one.”

  She chose a wine.

  “Like Friday on Monday?”

  “My dad used to say it. What does Friday do on Monday?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Exactly. I also need a toothbrush and shampoo.” She grinned. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave them in your bathroom.” I followed her back toward the checkout. “Most men, you start leaving your toothbrush and your shampoo at their house, they freak out.”

  When we got to my house, she went to the kitchen and started unpacking. I said, “You want a drink?”

  “What you got there?”

  “Beer, whiskey, martini, gin…”

  She opened the fridge. “I found the beer.”

  She cracked it and drank from the bottle. I poured myself a whiskey. She had started chopping onions on a wooden board. I wandered into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge, watching her.

  “So, Stone, for real. What’s the deal with you and women?”

  I was surprised and let my face show it, but she was staring at the onions she was chopping and didn’t see me. After a moment, I shrugged.

  “There is no deal…”

  “That’s kind of my point.”

  “It’s like I told you before. I was married. It didn’t work out. And as you know yourself, this job kind of gets in the way.”

  She made a face. “For me it wasn’t the job. I just never met a guy who wasn’t a jerk.”

  I smiled. “Maybe it’s the same for me. I never met a woman who wasn’t a jerk.”

  She threw the onions into the olive oil, followed by garlic and red peppers, then added some fresh thyme. It smelled good.

  “But,” she said and paused a moment, grinding black pepper into the meat, “don’t you ever miss having somebody? Like, you know, even just a companion. Hell! The sex! Don’t you miss the sex?”

  “This is very personal, Dehan.”

  “Do you mind?”

  I shook my head, “No. No, I don’t mind.” I thought about it. “I guess the answer is, if I stop and think about it, yes, of course I do. But—” I laughed. “Thankfully I have a job that doesn’t give me much time to think about it.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything. She stirred the onions, then dropped in the meat and started breaking it up with the wooden spatula. I watched her a moment, then said, “Why do you ask, Carmen?”

  She danced her head around a bit.

  “We work together. We see into other people’s lives and tragedies probably more intimately than anybody else in their lives.” She paused, shrugged, and made a face. “You know a lot about me. More than anybody else alive, or dead! But I don’t know a lot about you.”

  I stared into my whiskey. “Maybe there isn’t much to know.”

  “Open the tins of tomatoes for me, would you? And just grind some black pepper into them.”

  I smiled and did as she asked. As I was grinding the pepper, she said, “You do know, right, if you ever need to talk…”

  I handed her the tomatoes, and as she poured them over the meat, I said, “I’m not gay.”

  She laughed. It was a funny, infectious laugh that made me laugh too. She put her hand on my arm. “I know.”

  We stared at each other a moment, smiling.

  I said, “I’ll set the table.”

  TWELVE

  We were up at five, and Dehan performed her ritual of frying bacon and eggs and making coffee. To me, breakfast is a slice of toasted rye and a large espresso, but I was beginning to enjoy the ritual as much as she obviously did, so I wasn’t about to complain.

  By six, we were on the road, moving through a dark city that was yawning and stretching and fumbling its way to the bathroom. We took the Cross Bronx Expressway over the Alexander Hamilton and the George Washington, and then we followed the I-80 through endless su
burbs, heading west and north. We didn’t say a word to each other until we had left Totowa behind us and we were driving among countryside and thick woodlands touched by the early morning sun.

  Then I eased back in my seat and said, “We need to address the elephant in the room.”

  She turned to look at me. “What?”

  “It looks as though Baxter sent us on a wild goose chase. We have absolutely no reason to believe that Tamara Gunthersen had anything to do with Stephen’s murder. Or am I wrong?”

  She grunted. After a bit, she said, “Her husband still has a Colt .38. She still probably came here to see Stephen.”

  I glanced at her. “Did she shoot Ernesto Sanchez?” She shrugged. “This walking ray of divine sunshine shot a Sureño?”

  Mindfuck was right.

  We didn’t discuss it again until we reached Attica. We left the car in the parking lot, showed our badges at the gate, and a warden showed us across the yard into one of the wings. From there, we were taken to a secure interview room with concrete walls and no windows. A fluorescent strip on the ceiling gave a dead, stark light over a table and three chairs.

  After five minutes, steel doors clanged and echoed, and Alfonso Sanchez was led in. He was seated opposite us and handcuffed to the table. He was in his thirties, but he looked older. He had a Fu Man Chu mustache and a tattooed face. He wasn’t somebody you’d want your daughter to date.

  “We’ve been looking for your brother, Ernesto.”

  He smiled. The question amused him. “You bin lookin’ for Ernesto? You found him?”

  “He went off the radar two years ago.”

  The smile faded and he shrugged. “What can I tell you, cop? I don’t know nothin’.” He gestured around him. “I’m inside. What do I know?”

  Dehan said, “You could tell us if he’s dead. Is he dead, or was he just injured?”

  He hissed through his teeth and looked away.

  She pressed him. “Come on, Alfonso. I know you. I saw you every fuckin’ day when we were growing up. You went everywhere together. You did everything together. You want me to believe you weren’t there when he got shot?”

  He was looking mad and scared at the same time. He didn’t know what we knew, and he was seeing his sentence shifting from two years to twenty for the murder of Stephen Springfellow.

  I leaned across the table and spoke softly. “Did you and Ernesto murder Steve?”

  “No! Uh-uh!” He was shaking his head.

  I ignored him and went on. “Because right now, Ernesto’s blood and an eyewitness put you both at the scene of the murder.”

  He was still shaking his head. “Uh-uh, no way. I was there, and so was my bro, but I did not kill that motherfucker.”

  “But you beat him up.”

  “Yeah, we beat him. But we did not kill him. Shit! He weren’t through talking to him…”

  He knew he’d said too much, sighed, and shut his mouth.

  Dehan gave a small laugh. “Okay, help me out here, Alfonso, because to be honest, things are not looking good for you right now. See, here’s my problem. There is you, there is Ernesto, and there is Steve. Steve is tied to the chair, and you both are beating him…”

  Alfonso was shaking his head.

  Dehan ignored him. “Then what happens, Steve suddenly slips his bonds, shoots your brother, then shoots himself, and just before he dies, he ties himself up again? Come on, level with us, or you are going down for the double homicide of Steve and your brother.”

  He sighed. “Hija de puta…”

  I growled, “Watch your tongue.”

  “We were not the only ones there.” He looked real scared for a moment and leaned forward. “You gotta understand, this had nothing to do with the Sureños. This was just me an’ Ernesto, doin’ a private job.”

  Dehan snapped, “What kind of private job?”

  “I’m comin’ to that. But you got to understand, this is nothin’ to do with the gang. Okay?”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “It was Danny Schultz. He come to me and Ernesto in Pepe’s Place. We knew him from when we were kids. He’s a fuckin’ loser. Always wheelin’ and dealin’ and always makin’ a fuckin’ loss.” He laughed and I saw he had three teeth missing. “But he comes to me an’ Ernesto an’ he says he has a job. His employer—he call him his ‘employer’—wants him to beat up some guy and find some chick. He says the pay is real good. Danny is no good for that kind of job.” He turned to Dehan like they were old pals. “You know Danny, right? Skinny little fuck. So his employer tells him to go find some real pros. So he come to us.”

  Dehan’s voice could have corroded stainless steel. “Yeah, you’re real professionals. So the guy you had to beat up was Steve?”

  “Yeah, Danny said this guy knew where the chick was.”

  “So what happened?”

  He shrugged and pulled a face. He looked confused. “The whole thing was crazy. We get to the apartment and Danny knocks on the door, like he is going to visit his fockin’ family. The guy opens the door and we go in. Danny is pushin’ him. But the fuckin’ chick is there in the apartment. So what the fuck? Now what?”

  I stopped him. “Is this the girl?”

  I showed him a photograph of Tammy.

  He nodded. “Yeah, that’s her. Cute chick.”

  Dehan said, “So what happened next?”

  “Danny starts going crazy, screaming at both of them to tell where it is.”

  I stopped him again. “Where what is?”

  He shook his head. “I dunno, man. He’s just screaming, ‘Where the fuck is it? Tell me where the fuck it is!’ But they just keep sayin’ they don’t know what he’s talkin’ about. So Danny tells me and Ernesto to tie Steve to the chair. Now Steve is getting scared, right? So he changes his tune. Now he’s sayin’ he don’t know where it is, but she does.”

  “Hang on.” It was Dehan. “Did Danny tell you at any point who his employer was?”

  Alfonso shook his head. “No, man, that was like, secret. But he made it sound like this guy had plenny money. That was not a consideration. An’ this chick, she had something that he wanted real bad. So I’m thinking now we gonna have to beat up on the girl. But Danny has a different idea. He is gonna be smart. She is like crying and begging for them not to hurt Steve. She even gets down on her knees, and she is sayin’ over and over, ‘please don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him.’ So Danny tells her he is going to beat Steve to death if she don’t tell him where it is. All she does is cry. So Danny gives Steve a backhander…” He started laughing with real mirth. “The motherfucker almost breaks his fockin’ hand. You could see the fockin’ tears in his eyes, man. So he says to me and Ernesto to beat Steve to death, and don’t stop until she talks.”

  Dehan shook her head. “But you didn’t.”

  “No, man. We give him a good beating. Danny is standing by the door, smoking. Me and Ernesto is takin’ it in turns, and Steve is in a bad way. She is on the floor, hysterical, cryin’ and beggin’, ‘please don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt him!’” He turned to look at me with genuine bewilderment. “But who gets chicks, right? Suddenly, she’s screaming, ‘all right! All right!’ like this, ‘all right, I take you to it! Just stop hurting him!’ And she goes to a chest of drawers, like she’s gonna get some keys or some shit. And, I am swearing to you, man, she takes out a .38 from the drawer an’ she plugs a hole right in Steve’s chest. Right there! Like that, pom! Then she shoots Ernesto. Then she turns the gun on Danny, but he is out of there like fockin’ shit, man.”

  Dehan narrowed her eyes. “She didn’t shoot you…”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, man, I bent down to help Ernesto and get him out of there. He’s hurt bad. I look at her. She looks at me. Then she’s gone. I don’t know if she went after Danny or what she did. I just know I didn’t die that night porque Dios no lo quiso.” He looked at me. “God didn’t want it.”

  I drummed the table with my fingers. “Yeah, no doubt he
’s saving you for a sunbeam.”

  Dehan stared at me for a moment, then looked back at Alfonso. “You are telling me that after begging for him not to be hurt, she pulled a gun on you and shot him before she shot Ernesto? She didn’t shoot Ernesto, you, and Danny. She shot Steve.”

  He shrugged. “That’s the way it happened, man. If I was going to lie to you, I would tell you something more convincing. She pulled the gun from the drawer, I’m thinkin’, ‘fuck, I am going to die,’ but then she points that thing at Steve and shoots him through the heart.”

  I sighed. “What happened to Ernesto?”

  “The bullet was lodged in his chest. It come in through the side, tore up his lungs. He died. We put him in a sack and buried him in the river.”

  We were quiet for a bit. Eventually, I asked him, “Where can we find Danny Schultz?”

  “He used to hang out at Pepe’s Place, on Longwood, by the railway bridge.”

  “Okay.” I stood.

  “Hey, Stone, I know you ain’t gonna believe me. But losin’ my bro’ like that…” He jerked his head at Dehan. “She’ll tell you. Me and him, we was close, man, real close. Losin’ him and then having my life spared like that… when I get out of here, I am goin’ straight. I didn’t kill Steve. I done bad things and I gotta atone for them, and I will. But I did not kill Steve.”

  When we got to the door, he called out, “An’ I cooperated with you! Right?”

  I looked back at him and nodded.

  Down in the parking lot, Dehan leaned her ass against the car and crossed her arms. In the glaring heat, against the burgundy of the Jag, her hair looked very black.

  “Is it me? Am I going crazy? Or is it the world? You know, maybe it’s normal. Maybe it’s normal for a sweet girl that everybody describes as luminous to pull out a .38 and blow away the man she’s supposed to love. Maybe I’m the crazy one.”

  I opened the door and climbed in. As she got in next to me, I said, “You’re not crazy, Dehan. We’ve been chasing ghosts and shadows.”

  “You’re not kidding! The one motive we had, the one solid thing we had to hold on to, just got flushed down the can!”

  I fired up the engine and looked at my double reflection in her shades. “But it never was the motive.”