Read Online The Cold Room by Robert Knightly - Free Book Online

killer?’
    â€˜That’s my opinion.’ Roach took a bottle of lemonade-flavored ice tea from the bottom drawer of his desk and drank. ‘The exposure to cold, the head trauma, the pregnancy – they’re real. The rest is staged.’
    â€˜Does that mean you think her killing was unpremeditated, that her killer was enraged?’
    â€˜Or panicked, which sometimes amounts to the same thing.’
    â€˜Then maybe you should rearrange those elements. First the pregnancy, then the cold, then the death blow.’
    Roach smiled as he rose from his chair. My time was up. ‘One other thing, detective. There’s a sadist in the mix somewhere, an actor who, at the very least, shaped events.’
    I took those thoughts with me to Missing Persons where I reviewed eighteen files, all of young white females reported missing in the last three months. Unlike the list faxed to me on the prior night, most of the case files included photographs, which allowed me to quickly determine that my victim was not among them. Still, I took careful notes as I went along. Millard wanted his ass covered and my intention was to generate as much paper as possible, to stuff the case file until it overflowed.
    When I finished, I turned to the six files that lacked a photo. Five were either too young or too old to be my victim, while the sixth was of Nina Klaipeda, an eighteen-year-old Lithuanian immigrant. Nina had been reported missing by her mother, Jolanta, five weeks before, and that made her unlikely to be my victim. Nevertheless, I’d have to pay her mother a visit, assuming Nina hadn’t returned home. According to the description in the case file, Nina Klaipeda’s hair was light, her complexion fair. Weight and height were in the ballpark as well.
    I stopped for a coffee break around three o’clock, just before I left for Brooklyn, and took the opportunity to call Adele. I knew she’d be happy to learn that she was right about the pregnancy, a possibility I’d never considered. I also knew that if I waited until I got home, she’d probably be asleep.
    â€˜From the beginning, we suspected that the post-mortem activity was purposeful,’ she told me upon hearing the news, ‘and now we know why. Did you meet with John Roach?’
    â€˜Yeah. An interesting guy.’
    â€˜What did he say?’
    â€˜He said we can pretty much dismiss the psychosexual killer thing.’
    â€˜Did he say why?’
    â€˜Too many people involved. But he was only giving me a rough impression, not an official profile. By the way, the tests came in for cyanide and carbon monoxide. Both negative.’
    Adele paused for a moment. ‘So, where are you going with the case?’
    â€˜Tonight, I’m heading up to the Bronx, to check out a missing Lithuanian. Tomorrow, it’s Greenpoint.’
    â€˜Why Greenpoint?’
    â€˜Greenpoint has a large population of Polish immigrants and it borders Williamsburg, the neighborhood where the victim’s body was dumped. Somehow, I don’t think your average, everyday killer would just stumble onto South Fifth Street. You can’t even see the pier from the street. At the least, he’d have to be familiar with the neighborhood.’
    â€˜True enough, but he might simply work in the area and live somewhere else. Or he might live in the neighborhood, but the victim lived somewhere else. And another thing. Even if the victim grew up behind the Iron Curtain, she doesn’t have to be Polish just because she’s blond. She might be an East German, a Russian, a Ukrainian, a Czech, or come from the borderlands between Austria and Hungary.’
    I found myself smiling. Adele’s tone was upbeat and engaged. In this matter, at least, there was no distance between us. ‘The dump site is obscure and Poles have been living within a few miles of it for a century. I’m gonna start with the obvious and see how it goes. Unless you