by Blake Banner
She looked startled for a moment. “I? Well, not really… not exactly…”
I smiled. “You fell in love. Didn’t you?”
Her cheeks colored. “Yes, I did. How did you know?”
“I worked backwards. And when I did that, it made sense. When Matt had gone, the man you were so dependent on emotionally, it made sense somehow that you would turn to his best friend, the man who was so dominant in the group, the man whose personality ruled the roost. You fell in love with a man who wasn’t yours. You fell in love with Ed.”
Ed was staring at us both like the world had gone mad and it was our fault. “What? Susanne? Me? What are you talking about?”
I shrugged again. “Little comments here and there, I started piecing it together and it made sense. Without realizing it, just by being that alpha male in your group of friends, he was giving you at least some of the support you needed. And I think, at first, that was enough, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “I loved Mary. She was a good friend, simple, kind, a good mother. Our boys were like brothers.”
“You would have been content to love him from afar.”
“I would.”
I looked at Ed, whose eyes were scandalized. “But then, Ed, you went and fell in love with Rosario. And as if that wasn’t enough, you bought a house in Morris Park. In two devastating blows, you destroyed the group, broke Sue’s heart, and tore her life apart. First her husband, then you, and then her whole life. You left her with nothing.”
He was staring at Sue, aghast. She said nothing, just gazed down at the grass. I went on.
“I’m pretty sure you had picked up the signs. Ed told us he made no secret of his feelings for Rosario. But something tells me the tipping point came when she told you herself. I’m guessing she was pretty excited, and because Marta had backed off a bit, you were probably her closest female friend at the time. His big trial was coming to an end, and he was going to leave Mary and marry her. That must have been a knife in your heart.”
She nodded, then raised her eyes to meet mine. “I thought I was going to die. The pain was like nothing I have ever felt, even when Matt died. I left, but then I came back that afternoon, knowing he would be there. I knew it would be hell, but I needed to see it. His car was parked out front. He was there such a long time. I thought I was going crazy, knowing what they were doing in there. I cried and cried, until I felt I had no more tears inside me. Then I saw him come out, looking happy, looking so…” She shook her head, her face eloquent of bitterness and hatred. She hissed the words like a snake, “In love! I watched him drive away. Then I climbed the steps, rang on the bell. She opened the door, like him, so full of happiness and joy, her eyes bright, her hair rumpled from sex. We went into the living room and… I don’t remember what happened next. The next thing I do remember is being on the floor, sitting on her, with my hands around her neck, and my thumbs pressed deep into her throat. Her face was grotesque, purple, swollen…” She looked over at Ed. He had gone a ghastly, deathly gray. She said, “If you had seen her then, you would not have loved her.”
He began to sob and tremble. I stood and walked over to him. He stared up at me, with pleading, sobbing eyes, like he was begging me to tell him it wasn’t true. I reached down and took the gun from his limp fingers.
As I sat again on the wall, he said, “Why, Susanne? Why? She loved you. She loved us all!”
“But I loved you. And all you could see was her. We were happy, the four of us. And then she came along, and took over. I hated her for that.”
I sighed. “So for the second time in your life, you had this big, empty space. But you were lucky in one thing, weren’t you?”
She nodded.
“Your son. Handsome, brilliant. I bet not a day went by that you didn’t see Matt looking at you through his eyes.”
She was staring down at the grass again, smiling, lost among the reflections of the past.
“But there was one thing, wasn’t there? His friendship with Luis you could just about handle, but his friendship with Angela, that must have been tough, especially as they started growing up, moving into puberty, becoming young adults.”
She spoke without any real emotion. She said, “She was very like her mother. So pretty, so sweet-natured…”
“Did you warn him to stay away?”
She nodded. “He got angry. We started having rows. He told me he couldn’t wait till he could afford to move out. That hurt me.”
“You know he had a girlfriend, right?”
She gave a small snort and pointed at Ed. It was an oddly humorous gesture. “He was married! It doesn’t stop them. When they decide to go away, they go away…”
“So Friday night he called, in the wee, small hours. He was drunk, he was at Angela’s and he planned to stay there the night. It must have been building up over time, like Rosario’s ghost rising up from the dead, to steal yet another one of the men you loved and depended on emotionally. What happened? Where did you get the gun?”
“It was Matt’s. He and Ed both felt it was important to be able to protect their families.”
“An automatic, right? With seven rounds in the magazine.” She nodded, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Dehan put her hand over her eyes, then thump her forehead with the heel of her hand. I went on. “You went up there intending to get Sebastian and bring him home. At least, I’m willing to guess that’s what you told yourself. I’m guessing you sat in the car for a bit, looking at the house. There was some light in the window, but you were scared to see what you’d find if you went in. It must have been like a weird reenactment of that time fifteen years earlier, when you’d sat there, outside that same house, waiting for Ed to come out.”
She heaved a big, deep, shuddering sigh. “I wasn’t sure at times whether it was now or then. It was so dark. It was like the whole world had turned dark. I was dark inside. I wanted to go home!” She stared me in the face. “I really did. I wanted to turn around and go home.” She shook her head. “But she had my Sebastian. And if I went home, he wouldn’t be there. I’d be on my own.”
“Sure. I understand. So when you saw her car pull up, that was the solution. You didn’t need to go inside. You could kill her right there and then, and collect Sebastian.”
She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t her. When I started shooting through the window, I saw that it was a man. Two men. I couldn’t see their faces. I knew it wasn’t her, but I couldn’t stop shooting. It was like my hands were shooting on their own. There was so much noise. My head was just full of horrible noise. And when the gun stopped, I knew I had to leave. I knew Angela was still alive. So I got in the car and went home, to wait for Sebastian…”
We were all quiet for a while. Ed was staring down at the grass. His eyes were huge and his jaw was slack. Sue was fiddling with her fingers. She looked as though she might start crying. Somewhere I noticed a bird was singing. I looked up. The dome of the sky was vast and very blue, but also a little cold and uninvolved.
“So, you had been phoning the hospital regularly to check on Luis’ condition.” She nodded. “And when he came out of the coma, you went there to see him. I guess chances were even that Angela would go too, and one way or another, sooner or later, you would find out where she was.”
She nodded again. “I couldn’t live. I couldn’t live knowing that she was still alive, breathing, loving. That family, those two women, have robbed me of everything I have ever loved. I needed to kill her.” She looked me in the eye. “And when I did, when I stood over her, and emptied the gun into her, it felt good.”
A little earlier, I had noticed Dehan step into the kitchen with her cell phone in her hand, and now I could hear sirens in the distance, but growing closer. Susanne Mackenzie heard them, too. She stared at me for a long moment, then she said, “Will you please kill me? Or let Ed kill me? Please?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Susanne. That is the whole point. It just isn’t that easy.”
EPILOGUE
The rest of the day was a blur of administrative grind, statements, and paperwork. At eight o’clock that evening, I leaned back in my chair, making each of my vertebrae crack. I yawned, switched off my laptop, and stared at Dehan across the desk. She nodded, stretched gracefully, and killed her computer, too.
She flopped back in her chair and smiled at me. “How did you know? It wasn’t something you could have known.”
I stood and grabbed my jacket. “Nobody had a motive, Dehan. Therefore, the boys were not the target. If the boys were not the target, but they were in Angela’s car, it followed that Angela was the target.”
She sighed and threw her hands in the air. “Sure! You put it like that and it’s obvious! But why Susanne?”
I grabbed her jacket and held it open for her to climb into. She raised an eyebrow but stood and obliged. As she slipped in her arms, I said, “There were a couple of things. For a start, I didn’t buy the rape scenario. It seemed out of character to me that a woman like Susanne would not report a rape. It seemed to be contrary in every way to everything she stood for. Then, when Ed was confronted with the allegation, he didn’t do his usual bluster and fire and brimstone act. He just dismissed it as absurd. You yourself said that he was surprisingly believable. So then I put two and two together.”
We stepped out into the balmy June evening. Above our heads, stars were beginning to glimmer in a turquoise sky. We climbed into the Jag, lowered the windows, and headed toward Morris Park. I was waiting for her to ask me where the hell I thought I was going, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “You put two and two together, and…”
I shrugged. “OK, the assumption was that Rosario was raped and murdered. But then it turned out that Ed had had sex with Rosario, but it was consensual. That means that immediately after they had sex, somebody murdered her… That’s pretty odd. And here’s Susanne telling us she was raped by Ed. It began to look to me awfully like she was trying to frame him for Rosario’s death. Once I saw that, everything else started to fall into place.”
She frowned. “Wait a minute… She accuses Ed of raping her when he hadn’t, so that we would think of him as a rapist in connection with Rosario…”
“Correct. But we found out Rosario had not in fact been raped.”
“That’s deep.”
“She is a very deep woman. For her, the murder of Rosario, her own son and Angela, were all a single act: the destruction of a woman who was trying to steal her loved one.” I sighed. “And then there were a few other little things. For example, neither Akachukwu nor Ed could have shot Sebastian. Akachukwu was an experienced, battle-hardened mercenary. His grouping would have been tight and accurate. And as you found out this morning, Ed is a member of the Pistol Club. Frank told us from the start, whoever did the shooting was not accustomed to firing a gun. It was only a .38, but it was dancing all over the place. There was no grouping at all.” I glanced at her. She was nodding. “Same thing with Moses and Angela. At point blank range, there was a foot between one shot and another.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I should have thought of that.”
“The other thing, which you realized in Angela’s garden—I saw you slap your forehead—was that Ed’s gun, the Smith and Wesson Bodyguard, is a revolver and it carries only five rounds. That would have meant that in both shootings, Sebastian and Angela, he would have emptied the cylinder, reloaded, and then fired two more shots. That would have been pretty eccentric, even for Ed. So, when you put that together with the poor aim, Ed just didn’t fit the bill, but Sue did.”
We were moving along Morris Park Avenue and she still hadn’t said anything. She gazed out the window at the deepening dusk and the warm glow from the shop fronts and the windows, with the wind whipping her hair across her face.
“So when I was dragging us off to look for Ed, you called her.”
I nodded. “I was pretty sure he was going to go to Rosario’s house. Contrary to you, I think he is a very passionate, romantic man, who just happens to be an asshole as well. I had a hunch he was going to want to end it all where she had died. So I asked her to meet us there. It struck me that bringing them together like that might trigger a confession.”
I turned into Haight Avenue and after a short drive came to a stop in front of my house. I climbed out and went around to the passenger side, where Dehan had climbed out, too. She was giving me an odd look that was masking a smile.
“You’re going to force me to eat that damned bison steak whatever happens, aren’t you?”
I didn’t smile. I was serious.
“Dehan, I owe you an apology.”
She frowned. “You do?”
“In Goa, I was an ass, and I am sorry.”
She blinked. She was startled.
I went on, “There is something I should have done, and I have a confession to make.”
“Stone? Are you okay…”
The last word came out muffled because I had taken her in my arms and kissed her. At first it was like kissing a wooden plank. But when I whispered my confession in her ear, she went soft and put her arms around my neck, and we stood there, holding each other, home at last, as the moon rose over the Bronx and smiled.
* * *
What'd you think?
First of all, thank you so much for giving my work a chance. If you enjoyed this mystery, then I would be extremely grateful if you would consider writing a short review for the book on Amazon. A good review means so much to every writer, but means even more for self-published writer like myself. As it allows new readers to find my books, and ultimately allows me to spend more time creating stories that I love! :)
You can do so directly down below:
US Review Link
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CA Review Link
AU Review Link
* * *
Ready for the next mystery?
If you are ready for the next adventure in the DEAD COLD MYSTERY series, then you can purchase the next book in the series, Fire From Heaven, now!
The links are down below:
US Link – Fire From Heaven
UK Link – Fire From Heaven
CA Link – Fire From Heaven
AU Link – Fire From Heaven
If you havent already read the first four books, then you can purchase them together in the first box set for a discount!
Here are those links:
US Link – Dead Cold Box Set: Books 1 -4
UK Link – Dead Cold Box Set: Books 1 -4
CA Link – Dead Cold Box Set: Books 1 -4
AU Link – Dead Cold Box Set: Books 1 -4
That's it for now :)
Take care,
Blake Banner
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ALSO BY BLAKE BANNER
Up to date books can be found on my website: www.blakebanner.com
DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES
An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)
Two Bare Arms (Book 2)
Garden of the Damned (Book 3)
Let Us Prey (Book 4)
The Sins of the Father (Book 5)
Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)
The Heart to Kill (Book 7)
Unnatural Murder (Book 8)
Fire from Heaven (Book 9)
THE OMEGA SERIES
Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)
Double Edged Blade (Book 2)
The Storm (Book 3)
The Hand of War (Book 4)
A Harvest of Blood (Book 5)
To Rule in Hell (Book 6)
* * *
[1] See Let Us Pray
[2] See Garden of the Damned
[3] See An Ace and a Pair
Table of Contents
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BOOK 5
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Epilogue
BOOK 6
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Epilogue
BOOK 7
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Epilogue
