Green said, “You can work it and I can’t stop you. But you can’t stop us from working on it.”
Kemper took out her phone. “I sure as hell can. With one call.”
Green looked ready to protest when Jamison intervened.
“Look, this is going to be a long, complicated investigation with many moving parts. It seems to me that the better path is to marshal all of the assets that we have to tackle this sucker.” She looked at Kemper. “The DEA can ride point. But the FBI is already engaged and we want to see this through. Baronville has been the scene of six murders now, and to cut the local cops out of investigating the crimes seems like it could turn into a field day for the media. That’s not going to help anyone except a network’s TV ratings. And that would distract us from finding out who killed these people.”
Everyone looked at Kemper to see her reaction to this.
At first it looked like she might be put off by Jamison’s words. But then she nodded. “Ground rules: All investigations flow through me. Leads, clues, interview notes, results. DEA is the central clearinghouse.”
Decker said, “I believe that all six of the murders are connected. If they are, that means your two guys had to be involved in all of that in some way.”
“I don’t see how that could be possible,” retorted Kemper.
“I think I might,” said Decker.
“How?” she shot back.
“First, I need to know how long they had been undercover.”
“Who the hell told you they were undercover?” Kemper snapped.
“No one told me.”
Jamison said, “Then, Decker, how did you know?”
He looked around at the array of DEA agents. “The FBI makes inquiries about possibly two dead agents. All sister agencies give the FBI a negative response except for yours,” he said, indicating Kemper. “Not only did you not respond, the inquiry went right up to the top at DEA and a special team is dispatched almost immediately.”
“But the undercover part?” asked Kemper. “They could just be agents.”
“Two agents in the normal course of business go missing, you’d know right away. But two undercover cops won’t be checking in regularly. They go missing, you wouldn’t necessarily know unless they missed a check-in with their agency point of contact.”
“And how do you know so much about undercover operations?” asked Kemper suspiciously.
“Believe it or not, back when I was a cop in Ohio, I worked undercover. My naturally scruffy appearance seemed to fit right in. And I’m a big guy. Most people bought the fact that I was an enforcer looking for work. And I wouldn’t check in for days because the bad guys keep a close watch over you. It’s not like you can run off and text the cops every five minutes. You go undercover, you live the role. You’re freewheeling. You have to build your cred. You have to breathe with the scum. So what were they doing?”
“No one in this room is cleared to know that other than me and my team,” said Kemper sharply.
“Makes it pretty difficult to work together, then,” noted Decker.
“I said I was the clearinghouse, not that we would be working the investigation together.”
Decker looked at Green. “Okay, I guess we just investigate the other four murders, which are not officially part of DEA’s pissing contest, but are squarely within your jurisdiction. Then if we find out there’s overlap, we can call in the FBI to come and run point. We solve the whole case and DEA looks like the chumps they are.”
“You are way out of line, mister!” barked Kemper.
Decker eyeballed her. “No, what’s out of line is we’ve wasted so much time over absolutely nothing but bullshit because your agency’s ego is apparently more important to you than finding out who murdered two of your guys. If this is how you run your investigation, knock yourself out. But it’s not how I run mine. So, speaking on behalf of the FBI at least, screw this, and we’ll see you around.”
He walked out of the room.
Kemper watched him go and then eyed Jamison. “It that your position too?”
“He’s my partner, so, yeah, it is. And you know what else? He happens to be right.”
She walked out. A moment later Green followed, along with Lassiter.
Chapter 20
DECKER LAY IN his bed at the Mitchells’ house rubbing his glued-together scalp.
It was late, and he was tired and his head was throbbing.
He hadn’t been entirely honest with Jamison. It was true he had taken many hits as a football player. And he’d suffered a number of concussions over the course of his football career. But this injury felt different. It felt deeper. More invasive.
The X-ray had shown that whatever had hit him had not penetrated his skull. There was no crack, no fracture, yet he still felt weird, and not just because his brain had bounced off the inside of his skull, which was basically the definition of a concussion. He just wasn’t sure why he felt so different.
Sleep would not come, so at around three in the morning, he showered, dressed, and went downstairs.
On the kitchen counter, he saw a slip of paper. He picked it up. It was the sheet of numbers that Zoe had shown him to see if he could remember them.
On a whim, he decided to put the matter to a test. He set the paper down.
He dialed the page up in his head and went down the columns. Everything was going fine until he got near the end. Then something in his head skipped, like a DVD with a scratch on its surface.
I can’t see the last two numbers.
In a semi-daze, he walked out the back door and sat down in a wicker chair on the rear deck. It was fortunate that where he was sitting was partially covered by an overhang, because a fine rain was falling. Although it wouldn’t really have mattered to Decker. He had certainly sat out in the rain before. And even slept in the rain when he’d been temporarily homeless back in Ohio.
He rubbed his temples. His perfect recall had been with him so long that he often took it for granted. There were elements of it that he also hated, like not being able to let time erode the horrific memories of his family’s having been murdered. But still, he had come to count on his remarkable gift to help him solve crimes. And if it was now becoming fallible?
He closed his eyes and brought the page of numbers back up. This time he could see the last two numbers, but not three in the middle. They were fuzzed over, like someone had smudged the ink in which they’d been written.
Well, that’s great.
He stared across at the house that had been the genesis of the current investigation. If he hadn’t been standing out here having a beer and looking around, he and Jamison would never have been involved in any of this.
Who murdered you?
Decker wanted to know the answer to that question more than any other.
“Are you okay, Mr. Amos?”
Decker turned to see Zoe Mitchell standing in the doorway of the house in her pink PJs. She was holding a neon green blanket and her thumb hovered near her mouth. She looked anxious.
“I’m fine, Zoe.”
“Aunt Alex said you hurt your head.”
“It was nothing. Just a bump. You can’t sleep?”
She walked out and sat cross-legged on the deck next to him, her blanket held tightly to her chest. “Sometimes I just wake up. Then I go get some milk, but Mom forgot to get it today.” She stopped talking and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
When Decker looked down at her, he was suddenly seeing another little girl: his daughter, Molly.
“Does your blanket have a name?” he asked quietly.
Zoe shook her head.
“My daughter had a blanket too. She named it Hermione. You know, from Harry Potter? Hermione Granger.”
“My mom won’t read the books to me or let me see the movies yet. She says I’m not old enough.”
“Well, when you are old enough you’ll love them.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Molly.”
/> “Is she older than me?”
Decker looked away, a sudden catch in his throat. It had been stupid to bring up Molly.
He nodded. “About six years older than you.”
“How come she didn’t come here with you?”
Yeah, a really bad idea.
“She had—school.”
“Oh. So, her mom is with her?”
“Yes, they’re both together, that’s right.”
Zoe gazed over at the house where the two men had been found.
“Are you and Aunt Alex doing stuff with what happened over there?”
“We’re helping the police look into it.”
Zoe put her thumb back in her mouth and sucked on it, her eyes wide and her brow furrowed. “Mommy said people died in that house,” she mumbled.
“Look, Zoe, you don’t have to think about any of that, okay? It has nothing to do with you or your family.”
“Aunt Alex is my family. And you said you were helping the police.”
This caught Decker off guard. “Right. I know that. I mean…” His voice trailed off as Zoe looked up at him hopelessly.
“You…you should go back to bed, Zoe. It’s really late.”
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Sometimes you have so much going on inside your head, you just can’t sleep.”
“This helps me,” Zoe said, holding out her blanket for Decker to take.
He smiled at this kind gesture by the little girl. He touched the blanket and said, “Thanks, but I think you and your blanket need to stay together. It’s just better that way.”
Zoe cuddled with her blanket, stood, and walked back to the door.
She turned and said, “I hope you don’t get hurt any more, Mr. Amos.”
Decker looked at her. “I’ll try not to.”
After she went back inside, Decker stared again at the house behind them. He closed his eyes and let his memories unspool like film across his mind.
His eyes popped open.
And for good reason.
Normally, his memories came back to him just as he had seen them. He had always considered the process pristine. Just like when Zoe had shown him the sheet of numbers and he had memorized them.
But now, like the problem in trying to see the numbers, the memories were erratic and disjointed, as though frames were jumbled together and running out of order through his mind. It was disconcerting, annoying, and Decker eventually put it down to his head injury.
The weird head injury.
He settled back in his chair and made his meandering way through the frames of their first night in Baronville. What he had seen. What he had heard.
The car driving away.
The plane flying over.
The spark of light in the window.
The grisly discoveries.
Then, out of order, the two noises he had heard. Thud and scrape.
Decker didn’t like not knowing something. Yet not knowing something was part of being an investigator. He often didn’t know anything right up until he knew everything.
He suddenly wanted to take a walk.
He went back inside and quietly searched for an umbrella to protect him against the rain. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have cared about getting a little wet, but he had to take into account his head wound.
He opened the closet door off the front entrance.
Inside there was an umbrella leaning against the wall.
And there was something else.
It was a roll of architectural blueprints leaning next to a cheap battered briefcase.
At first, Decker figured they might be for the house, but it was a big sheaf for such a modest residence.
Curious, he unrolled the plans and laid them out on the foyer floor. He took out his cell phone and used the flashlight feature to look over the top page.
It was a large building, laid out in grids.
Decker noted the writing at the top.
It was the fulfillment center where Frank Mitchell worked.
That made sense. He was in management there. The facility was relatively new.
He rolled the plans back up and put them away.
He stepped outside, put up the umbrella, and started to walk down the street. He reached the end, turned the corner, and walked over to the next block.
He wanted to see something.
The Murder House, as he now termed it.
There were lights on in the house and a police cruiser was parked in front.
Behind the cruiser were parked two black SUVs. As he watched, an officer in a yellow slicker got out. A guy in a DEA windbreaker climbed out of one of the SUVs and joined the cop on the property patrol.
Kemper was clearly relying on the locals for nothing.
Decker ran his gaze over the house, the plot of land, the few parked cars on the street, and all the dark houses up and down it.
He looked up at the sky where the plane had flown over.
Then he looked down the street again.
That was odd. He checked his watch.
Three-forty.
There were lights on in one of the houses about six doors down and on the opposite side of the street.
He headed in that direction.
Chapter 21
YOU’RE UP LATE, young fella. Or else up early.”
As Decker approached the house with the light on, he saw an old man sitting on the covered porch in his wheelchair. He also noted the wooden ramp leading up to the porch.
The wood-shingled house was small and in disrepair. The sole tree out front was full of dead leaves. The small lawn had gone to weeds. Everything had a wasted look to it, as though it were all just waiting to die.
Parked in the carport next to the house was an old passenger van.
Decker stopped in front of the house. “So are you.”
The man was wrinkled and sunken in the wheelchair. His head was bald and covered with brown splotches from sun damage. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles. He shrugged. “Get to my age, what’s time matter?” He tugged his sweater more tightly around him and shivered slightly. Though it was humid with the rain, he had a blanket over his legs.
The man must have noticed that Decker was looking at the blanket.
“Summer, winter, hell, it don’t matter. Still get the chills. Docs say it’s a circulation problem. I say it’s my pipes getting clogged with living too long. See, that’s a reason to not be around too many years. Everything falls apart.”
“So you live here?”
“What’s it look like?”
“You’re Fred Ross?”
“Who wants to know?” Ross snapped.
“Me. I’m Amos Decker.”
“Amos? Haven’t heard that name in a long time. Reminds me of that show, Amos ’n Andy? Long time ago. Hell, everything’s a long time ago. Goes with being old. I’m eighty-five. Most days I feel like I’m a hundred and eighty-five. Some days I wake up and wonder who the hell I am. How’d that old man get in my body? It ain’t no fun.”
Decker drew closer to the porch. The rain had ceased, so he lowered his umbrella. “Were you here two nights ago, Mr. Ross?”
Lassiter had said that Ross had probably not been home, but Decker wanted to hear this for himself.
Ross looked down the street. “You mean when whatever happened there happened?”
“Yeah.”
“You a cop?”
“Yeah.”
“Saw them go in earlier,” Ross said, pointing down the street. “Looked like Feds to me.”
“How do you know that?”
“I watch TV.”
“So, were you here that night?”
Ross shook his head. “Hospital. Had a breathing problem. I’m okay now. I get lots of breathing problems. Folks at the emergency room know me on a first-name basis. Ain’t nothing to be proud of, I can tell you that. If you’re old and rich, that’s one thing. But old and poor, I don’t recommend it, Amos.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.
Have the police been by to see you?”
“No. I just got back today, see. Or yesterday now, I guess.”
“You live alone?”
Ross nodded. “The missus died, oh, nearly twenty years ago now. Smoking. Don’t never smoke, Amos, ’less you want to die in godawful agony.”
“You ever see anybody around that house, Mr. Ross? Anybody at all? Even if they seemed innocuous. Or anything that seemed odd, out of place?”
His gaze boring into Decker, Ross said, “Eyes ain’t too good, so I don’t see much at all no more.”
“I see you’re wearing glasses. And you said you saw the ‘Feds’ at the house.”
Ross took his glasses off and wiped them on his sweater. “Most houses on this street are empty. Baronville, mostly empty too.” He put the specs back on.
“But a new fulfillment center is here.”
Ross shrugged. “Ain’t enough jobs to bring the town back. And don’t pay what the old jobs paid. Hell, nothing pays like the old jobs did. I never went to college, never had the chance, but I had me a good-paying job. Now, if you don’t know computers, you’re screwed.” He held up his hands. “Nobody builds nothing no more. Just typing crap on a keyboard. That’s all folks do now. Typing. I mean, hell, what kinda job is that?”
“Did you work at the mines or the mills?”
“Coal, paper mill, and then the textile mill. At the mills, I fixed the machines. Did some of that at the coke plant too. When you come into this town back then, you could smell the stench. The coal, and the crap we used to make the paper. I heard the Barons used to call it the smell of money. Screw them. Now the Mexicans and Orientals do all that for pennies a day. Before long they’ll have damn robots doing it. Then the Chinamen and Mexies will be out of a job too.” He cackled. “Used to be a railroad line that ran right through the middle of town to take the coal and coke to the Pittsburgh steel mills and also to other parts of the country to keep the lights on. Yeah, I was a miner, but I got outta that early. Paid good but, hell, who wants black lung, right? What my missus died of, really, and she never stepped foot in a mine. Didn’t want that crap inside me. No sir.”
“Did you know the Baron family?”
“Assholes, all of ’em.”
Ross spat on the porch.
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