The Last Mile

by David Baldacci

  Milligan said, “None. They didn’t move in the same circles. They were far apart in age. No lines of connection that I can see.”

  Decker said, “Let’s assume they were paid off to lie, is there any way to track those payments?”

  Milligan looked at him funny. “Twenty years later? Probably the banks they used aren’t even around anymore. Industry has consolidated. Plus, why would they lie? And who would pay them off?”

  “For the moment I’m assuming that Mars is telling the truth. If so, we have to account for the discrepancy in the timelines offered up by Mars on one side and then Tanner and Simone on the other.”

  Milligan shook his head. “I think it far more likely that Mars is lying. Otherwise, you’re looking at a big conspiracy against a college football player, and I just don’t see the motive.”

  Bogart cut in. “But we’re here and we will explore the angles. All the angles.”

  Milligan looked down at his notes, obviously unhappy with this. “I talked with the police department. Most of the officers from that time have retired, but there was one guy I spoke with who was around back then.”

  “What did he say?” asked Bogart.

  “That they’d never had a murder here before. Burglary, missing person, drunks getting in fights, kids stealing cars for joyriding, and even someone taking a cow as a prank, but this crime blew the town away.”

  “But they latched onto Melvin Mars pretty fast.”

  Milligan glanced at Decker. “Well, the evidence was overwhelming.”

  “What do we know so far about the parents? Where was Lucinda from?” Decker asked.

  Milligan rustled through some pages. “I couldn’t find out. Like her husband, there’s not a lot on her.”

  “Where did she learn to sew? The police report said that was partly how she earned money. And Mars confirmed that today.”

  Milligan had a hard time keeping a straight face. “To sew? I really couldn’t tell you.”

  “And she also taught Spanish,” said Decker.

  Bogart said, “There are a lot of Spanish-speaking people in Texas.”

  “But we don’t know if she was from Texas,” pointed out Decker. “Now, if she were Hispanic, I could understand the language thing. But she was black.”

  “Well, last time I checked black people can learn to speak Spanish, Decker,” said Milligan. “And sew.”

  Decker didn’t ignore this one. “Right now we’re speculating. So to compensate for that we have to deal in probabilities. Lucinda certainly could have learned to sew and speak Spanish. I would just like to know where and how.”

  “Okay, if you really think it’s important,” said Milligan. “Feel free to check it out for yourself.”

  “I plan to,” said Decker. “She also worked at a janitorial service?”

  “Yes. They cleaned places around town.”

  “Busy woman. Any other family?”

  “Not that I could find. Same for her husband.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?” asked Decker. “One of them not having any family around, okay, but both?”

  Milligan shook his head. “It was a long time ago. Maybe they moved around. Not everybody comes from huge families. People get lost in the shuffle. It seemed the only remarkable thing about either of them was their son. There were lots of stories about him, even before the murders. Guy was a helluva athlete. What a waste.”

  Bogart said, “Keep digging on the Marses.”

  Milligan nodded, but didn’t look terribly enthusiastic.

  “They were shotgunned and then burned,” said Decker. “Why both?”

  Milligan said, “If you think it was done to obscure identification, it wasn’t. They were positively identified by their dental records.”

  “Then why?” persisted Decker.

  “Symbolic?” suggested Bogart. “If Mars did do it he might have wanted to obliterate them from his life. Burning might accomplish that, in his eyes at least.”

  “But then we have Charles Montgomery saying he did it,” pointed out Decker. “I need to talk to him.”

  “That is being arranged,” said Bogart.

  “The Marses’ house isn’t far from here,” noted Decker.

  “That’s right. It’s abandoned. I guess no one wanted to live in it after what happened.”

  “And the motel where Mars said he stayed?” asked Decker.

  Milligan said, “Knocked down. It’s now a shopping mall.”

  “And Ellen Tanner’s place?”

  “Still there, but she’s long since gone. So I’m not sure what you’ll find there.”

  “Well, that’s why people look,” replied Decker. “Let’s go.”

  After he left the room Milligan put an arm on Bogart’s sleeve.

  “Sir, maybe the Morillo case wasn’t the best one, but we have a binder full of others a lot more promising than this one.”

  Bogart said, “Actually, we’re just getting started here.”

  Milligan removed his hand and said, “You’re putting a lot of faith in this guy.”

  “Yes, I am. Because he’s earned that faith.”

  Bogart walked out to follow Decker.

  Milligan reluctantly did the same.

  CHAPTER

  14

  THE HOUSE LOOKED lost among a wasteland of overgrown bushes and fat-canopied trees. One might need a machete to hack through the tangles.

  Decker just used his hands and his bulk to navigate it. Bogart and Milligan were right behind him.

  They reached the fallen-in front porch and stared up at the façade. They could still see the char marks on the outside of one of the upper-story windows, which was boarded up with plywood.

  “Where the bodies were found,” noted Decker, and Bogart nodded in agreement.

  “We’ll need to step carefully,” said Milligan. “I don’t know how structurally sound this place is.”

  Decker gingerly stepped up onto the front porch, avoiding the obvious areas of weakness. He reached the front door and pushed against it. The door didn’t budge.

  Decker put his big shoulder to it and finally the wood cracked and the door swung inward. There was no electricity on, of course, which was why the men had brought powerful flashlights.

  They moved inside to find the interior remarkably free of debris, although the smell of mold and rot was everywhere.

  Bogart put a hand over his nose. “Damn, I’m not sure we should be breathing this.”

  Decker looked up. “The roof and windows held. That’s why it’s not more trashed inside.”

  He swung his light around the room, taking in the space bit by bit as he moved forward.

  The house was small and it didn’t take them long to finish with the ground floor and the attached garage. There was no basement level; that left the upstairs.

  As soon as Decker hit the first step his brain popped with the color blue. It was so sudden that he misjudged the riser and stumbled a bit. Milligan caught him by the arm.

  “You okay?”

  Decker nodded, though he wasn’t feeling okay.

  He had only experienced blue like that when he had seen his family’s bodies in his old house. And every time he had visited it since.

  Electric blue: It seemed to overwhelm every sense that he had. It was unnerving, uncomfortable.

  And I just need to get over it.

  He blinked rapidly, only to find the blue reemerge each time his eyes opened.

  Synesthesia is not all it’s cracked up to be.

  He picked his way carefully up the rickety stairs and hit the landing.

  There were only two bedrooms up here—Mars’s and his parents’. They had shared a bathroom.

  Decker stepped into the first bedroom. He assumed it was Mars’s. The bed was still there, and so were crumbling posters of R&B singers Luther Vandross and Keith Sweat. On another wall was the confirmation that this was not the parents’ room—tattered posters of supermodels Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer.


  “Red-blooded American male,” commented Milligan. “Jeez, it’s like we opened a time capsule or something.”

  “Where was the shotgun rack?” asked Decker.

  Milligan pointed to the far wall. “Over there. Single rack with a small drawer underneath to hold the ammo boxes.”

  They next went into the parents’ bedroom.

  Decker stood against one wall and thought back to the diagrams in the old police reports. Bodies were right under the front window, side by side. Roy was closest to the window, Lucinda on the side nearest the bed. The glass had blackened and shattered from the heat. The plywood had been nailed to the exterior of the house, closing this gap.

  Unlike their son’s room, this space had been emptied.

  “What happened to the furniture?” asked Decker.

  “I imagine it was all taken as evidence,” said Bogart. “And the firefighters might have had to carry some of the combustibles out while they were dealing with the blaze.”

  Decker nodded. “Maybe we can find out for sure. And those square marks on the wall. Pictures hung there. I wonder what happened to them?”

  Milligan said, “I can make some calls.”

  Decker opened the closet door and shone his light around the interior. He was about to close the door when he stopped and leaned farther into the closet.

  “Check this out.”

  Bogart and Milligan joined him and stared at where Decker was pointing his light.

  “‘AC + RB’?” said Bogart, reading off the faded letters someone had written on the side wall of the closet. “What does that mean?”

  Decker took a picture of the writing with his phone. “I don’t know. They could have been there before the Marses even bought the place.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe the Marses wrote them. Which means it could be important.” Decker gazed around. “Who made the 911 call about the fire?”

  Milligan said, “I don’t think they ever determined that.”

  “People really didn’t use cell phones back then. And I doubt reception was great back then in this area. So it probably wasn’t a car driving past.”

  “Well, it could have been. And then the people went to their house and called.”

  Bogart said, “But if they’d done that they’d know where the call came from. They could trace it.”

  Milligan was already nodding. “That’s true. I’ll have to check.”

  They went back downstairs.

  Here Decker saw what he had seen before. A faded picture of a young Melvin Mars in his high school football uniform. It was hanging on the wall. On a small shelf were more old photos of Mars at various ages.

  “Surprised they’re still here,” said Bogart.

  “Like you said, no one wants to come into a house where people were killed. And not too many people live out this way. And strangers passing by wouldn’t even be able to see the house from the road, particularly now with everything overgrown.”

  Decker looked around some more.

  “But it’s interesting what we’re not seeing.”

  “What’s that?” asked Milligan.

  “Pictures of Roy and Lucinda Mars.” He turned to Milligan. “It’s like they never even existed.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  DECKER LOOKED AT his watch.

  They had driven to the house where Ellen Tanner had hooked up with Melvin Mars that night. It was small, old, and set off by itself. There wasn’t another home within twenty miles of it. And back then it was probably even more isolated.

  “Why’s a young woman living all the way out here by herself?” Decker had asked.

  Neither Bogart nor Milligan had an answer.

  Then they had driven back to the site of the old motel, which was now a strip mall. They had next driven to the Marses’ home. All three locations were off the same main road, a fairly straight shot.

  Decker said, “It’s one hour in between Ellen Tanner’s old house and the motel. And about forty minutes from the motel to the Marses’ house.”

  Milligan, at the wheel of the car, nodded. “He left Tanner’s at ten p.m. He said he reached the motel about an hour later, or eleven o’clock, which works. But the motel clerk testified that he checked Mars in at one-fifteen a.m. So he could have driven another forty minutes to his house, killed his parents, and driven back to the motel and made it easily by one or a bit after. That’s what the prosecution successfully argued.”

  “Not easily,” countered Decker. “He had to get to the house, shotgun his parents, get the gas, and set them on fire. That would take some time.”

  “But it could be done, there’s no denying that.”

  “And the police report said a car matching Mars’s was seen leaving the vicinity of their house about the time the coroner thinks the murders occurred,” added Bogart.

  “That’s right,” said Milligan. “And the witness was a long-haul trucker who was based here and knew the Marses.”

  Bogart nodded. “And he died five years ago, so we can’t talk to him.”

  Decker said, “But we have Charles Montgomery. We can talk to him.”

  “I got an email back from the folks in Alabama. It’s all set. We can speak to him the day after tomorrow.”

  Decker’s phone buzzed. It was Jamison.

  She said, “We’ve talked to Mars. Davenport is writing up her report now.”

  “What does she think?”

  “I’m not sure. She plays things close to the vest.”

  “What do you think?”

  “He seems very sincere, Amos. But he could also be very manipulative. I just don’t know which one yet.”

  “Did he tell you anything new?”

  “Not really. He reiterated his innocence. We went over his actions on the night his parents were killed. He can’t explain the timing. He said he went to sleep at the motel and woke up when the police knocked on his door.”

  “Well, he’s had two decades to perfect that story. But one thing does bother me.”

  “What?”

  “If he planned this all out, why can’t he come up with a plausible explanation for the time gap? He had to know it was going to be a problem.”

  Bogart, who had been listening in, said, “Criminals usually