“You got it.”
“How long has he been in prison?”
“Nearly a year, so I don’t think he has anything to do with what happened.”
Decker didn’t necessarily agree, but he didn’t argue the point.
“Where in prison?”
“It was a federal crime, so he’s out of state. Indiana, I think. No rhyme or reason how the Bureau of Prisons allocates prisoners.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s it going with your investigation?”
“It’s going.”
Decker clicked off and studied the road. If he couldn’t talk to Freedman, he’d try someone else on his interview list.
He turned the truck around and headed back toward the Mitchells’. Before he got to their street, he turned and pulled to a stop in front of the residence across from the Murder House.
This place belonged to Dan Bond, the only person who lived on this street with whom Decker had not spoken.
He knocked on the door and immediately heard footsteps.
A voice called out, “Yes, who is it?”
“I’m Amos Decker, Mr. Bond. I’m with the FBI. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about what happened across the street.”
“I don’t like to open my door to strangers.”
“I understand that. But I just need to ask you a few questions.”
“Do you have a badge?”
“I do.”
“Can you put it through the cat door?”
Decker looked down and saw the small hinged opening. He took out his badge and put it through the slot.
He heard noise on the other side and after about thirty seconds his badge was passed back through the pet door. He picked it up and looked at it. There were fingerprint smears all over it and also what looked to be flour. He rubbed the badge off on his jacket and put it back in his pocket. Then a few moments later he heard three separate locks being undone.
The door opened a few seconds later to reveal a small, shriveled elderly man standing on shaky legs.
“Mr. Bond?”
“Yes?”
Dark glasses covered Bond’s sightless eyes.
Over his shoulder, Decker could see the man’s white cane hanging on a wall hook.
“Can I come in?”
“I suppose so, yes. I felt your badge. It seemed legitimate.”
“That’s because it is.”
“You can never be too careful.”
“I agree with that.”
He stepped back and Decker passed through.
Bond closed the door behind him, walked slowly over to a chair in the front room, and sat down.
Decker assumed the man must know intimately where every stick of furniture was in his house.
Decker sat down opposite him. The house smelled strongly of cooked kale and mothballs. But also of freshly baking bread.
“Sorry if I interrupted your baking.”
Bond waved this off. “I was already done. The loaf’s out of the oven now. It’s one of my few pleasures left. I bake at all hours of the day and night. I don’t need much sleep. Never did actually.”
Bond was completely bald, with a pink, flaky scalp. He was dressed neatly in khaki pants and a short-sleeved blue shirt with a white T-shirt underneath. He had on black orthopedic shoes.
“Do you live alone?” asked Decker.
“Yes, ever since Dolly passed. She was my cat. That’s why I have the pet door. I had a wife too. Betty. She died twenty-one years ago last week. Cancer. I’m ninety-one and I look every day of it even if I can’t see myself.”
Bond cracked a smile at this quip.
“You look fine. Nice house.”
“It’s old, just like me. I’m not going to get another cat. I won’t outlive it, and who would take care of it?”
“Does someone come here and…help you out?”
“Used to, yes. And there used to be a lot more neighbors. But the ones I haven’t outlived have moved away for the most part. Sad to see. But just the way it is. Price of sticking around too long.”
Decker looked around. “How do you get to the store? And the doctor?”
“I walk with my little cart to the store. It takes most of the day. Sometimes my youngest son comes, but he lives in Pittsburgh. And I don’t go to the doctor anymore. I don’t see the point. They just give you more pills to take.”
“Have you been in Baronville long?”
“All my life.”
“What did you do?”
“I was an accountant.” He touched his glasses. “I wasn’t always this way. Macular degeneration. Started in my sixties. Went totally blind about ten years ago.”
“I wanted to ask you a few questions about the night the two men were discovered in the house across the street. Were you home?”
“Oh yes. At night, I’m always home.”
“I assume the police have already been by to talk to you?”
“Yes. A Detective Lassiter. She asked me a lot of questions. I don’t think I was very helpful.”
“Well, I might ask you the same ones. What do you remember about that night?”
“Sirens.”
“I mean before that.”
“Remember the storm. It was a doozy.”
“Anything else?”
Bond sat back in his seat and scratched his chin. “I remember a car starting up and driving off.”
Decker said, “I heard that too. And I also saw a plane go over, a few minutes before the storm blew in.”
Surprisingly, Bond shook his head. “No, that wasn’t a plane.”
“No, it was. I saw it in the sky. The blinking lights and all through the clouds and fog. It was pretty damn low. So it was either taking off or more probably landing.”
“No, son, that wasn’t a plane.”
“But I saw it, Mr. Bond.”
“I know what you’re thinking. That I couldn’t see anything. Thing is, we never have a plane come low over here. No airports of any kind around here that I know about. And Pittsburgh is way to the south of us, and Cleveland way to the west. So even if they were landing or taking off, they’d be far up in the sky by the time they passed over here. But maybe you saw blinking lights and assumed it was a plane. But it was so cloudy, and even foggy, like you said, that you couldn’t see the actual plane, could you? You just saw lights?”
Decker blinked and let his memory frames go back to that moment in time.
I saw the lights or the reflection of lights. But that was all. The clouds and fog were too thick. But it had to be a plane.
Seeming to read his thoughts, Bond said, “And if it was that low, did you hear the engines? They’re pretty loud at low altitudes, even a prop plane. And I was outside that night, on my rear deck, before the storm started. And I didn’t hear anything like that.”
Decker broke out of his thoughts and shook his head. “I didn’t hear the engines. I just saw the lights.”
Bond chuckled. “You just assumed. That’s okay. Perfectly natural.”
“So, if it wasn’t a plane I saw up there, what was it?”
“Well, it does make me think of my grandson Jeremy.”
“Your grandson? How so?” asked Decker curiously.
“When he came to visit one time he brought it along to show me. Well, show me relatively speaking. I could hear it when he started it up.”
“Hear what?” exclaimed Decker, because he needed the elderly man to get to the point.
“His drone. He’s got one of those big ones. He uses it to take aerial photos for his real estate business, and he also shoots amateur movies and uses it to get some neat shots from the sky. A lot cheaper than renting out a chopper. I think that’s what you probably saw that night. One of those big drones.”
Decker’s jaw dropped. A drone. “Wait a minute. Can you even fly a drone at night?”
“Oh, sure. Jeremy does it. In fact, he flew his around here last time he came. And that was at night. I’m sure there are rules and regulat
ions about doing it. You have to have lights on the thing and all, I would imagine. And if you’re in a flight path or near an airport you probably have to get some sort of permission or waiver. And you have to be careful about what you’re taking pictures of. Right to privacy and all. I think you’d have legal problems if you flew over someone’s backyard and started taking pictures of them there, or through their windows. At least I think that’s what Jeremy told me when I asked him about it.”
“Okay, but what would a drone be doing here?”
Bond shrugged. “I don’t know, but I know it wasn’t Jeremy’s. He wasn’t here that night. He lives in Maryland. I know it wasn’t Alice Martin’s because she doesn’t have one. I doubt she’s ever even seen one. And Fred Ross? Bet if he saw a drone he’d shoot it out of the sky with his damn shotgun. That’s it for this street. Nobody else here. But it could have been somebody on another street. Jeremy told me that drones have different ranges. And once they hit the end of that range, they don’t go any farther. But Jeremy’s is a commercial model and it’s got a pretty good range.”
Decker had a sudden thought. “Could it have been a chopper and not a drone?”
Bond shook his head. “Choppers are real noisy. I would have definitely heard a chopper, and so would you at that low an altitude.”
“Makes sense. And the drone would have a camera attached, right?”
Bond nodded. “Sort of the point. You use a drone to take pictures or video. Though I guess there’s talk of using them to deliver stuff too. Anyway, Jeremy’s has a fancy camera on his. He told me he slides his phone right into the control box and the drone sends whatever it’s seeing right to his phone. Don’t really understand how all that works, but then I’m just an old fart. On this street, we’re all old farts. Well, I take that back. I never would call Alice a fart. She is a very dignified lady. Taught Sunday school.”
Decker said, “So you know Alice Martin?”
“Oh yes. She and my wife were really good friends. She came to the funeral.”
“And Fred Ross? You mentioned him and his shotgun. Do you know him well?”
Bond’s face wrinkled up. “I’ve had that displeasure for far too long.”
“Yeah, that’s what Alice Martin said. You say you were outside that night. Did you hear the drone?”
“No, I didn’t. You can hear it when it’s on the ground, but not high up in the air. They’re pretty quiet. At least Jeremy’s is.”
“Did you hear any other sound? It’s really important.”
Bond again scratched his chin. “Well, I did hear a weird sound I’ve never heard before. Something tapping and scraping. Over and over.”
Tapping and scraping. That’s actually a good description.
“I heard it too, but I couldn’t tell what it was,” said Decker. “So, you’ve never heard it before?”
Bond shook his head.
“But you could hear it from your back porch?”
“The yards here are small, and the houses are even smaller. It’s not that far from my back porch to the street.”
“And the car starting up and driving along? Did you recognize if it belonged to maybe Alice Martin?”
“Alice doesn’t drive and she doesn’t have a car.”
“I take it Ross doesn’t drive anymore, being in a wheelchair.”
“No, he does. He’s got his big van all rigged out. Chairlift and special controls so he can drive it even though he can’t move his legs. Well, at least he used to. When I still had my sight I would watch him driving it.”
“How was he disabled?”
“At the textile plant where he worked. Some big piece of equipment fell on him. Paralyzed from the waist down. That was decades ago.”
“That’s tough.”
“Well, it hasn’t made him exactly congenial. But, to tell the truth, Fred was an asshole even when he could walk.”
Decker smiled. “I could definitely see that.”
“Back then, I could see it too. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“No, you were of great help. Thank you.”
Decker left and walked back to his truck.
A drone.
So, who was watching what or who that night?
Chapter 42
SURELY, A STRICKEN place.
Decker was on the rear deck of the Murder House looking at the back of the Mitchells’ home.
He had been gone all day. He had covered a lot of ground but didn’t feel as though he had made much progress. Unfortunately, that could be the textbook definition of being a homicide detective.
There was still a DEA agent on duty at the Murder House, but the flashing of Decker’s credentials had allowed him admittance per Kate Kemper’s instructions.
As he watched, the rear door of the Mitchells’ house opened and Jamison stepped out. Behind her was another tall young woman who was holding Zoe’s hand.
They all sat down around the outdoor table.
While Decker had never met any of Jamison’s sisters other than Amber, he assumed the woman was one of them. She had the same long, lithe build and facial features as her sister. She had obviously traveled in for the funeral of her brother-in-law. A moment later the door opened and Amber stepped out. Even from this distance it seemed to Decker that the woman had aged twenty years. She was not so much walking as shuffling along.
He drew back into the shadows so they wouldn’t be able to see him. He didn’t quite know why he did this. Well, maybe he did.
He didn’t want to have to be with them right now because he wouldn’t know what to say or do. And he didn’t want to blurt out something that would embarrass his partner.
He continued to watch as Zoe curled into her mother’s lap and put her thumb in her mouth.
Decker knew that every time Zoe celebrated her birthday the agony of her father’s death on the same day would be front and center. Every present she opened, every piece of cake she bit into, every candle she blew out would bring the memory of her father’s last day alive. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and there was also nothing anyone could do about it.
The guilt at times would be simply overpowering, ripping the smile off your face and the laughter from your throat.
Decker knew this, because almost the very same thing had happened to him. And this thought both enraged and energized him, the twin emotions combining to further fuel his desire to discover whether Frank Mitchell had been murdered or not.
The air was cool and the sisters were wearing jeans and thick sweaters, while Zoe had on a long sweatshirt with purple tights. Decker watched as Jamison went back inside and then came out carrying a tray. She poured out cups of tea. There was also a platter of food, and this sight made Decker’s stomach grumble.
It was well past seven and he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Yet watching the group of bereaved women, he felt guilty about his hunger.
He looked to the sky. Bogart had given him the name of a contact at the FAA. Decker had called the person and she had checked on flight arrivals and departures on the night in question in the Baronville airspace. She confirmed that there would have been no planes passing that low over Baronville.
The blind man Dan Bond had been right and Decker wrong. A man who could not see had “seen” far more than Decker had. It was a humbling experience, and one he would never forget.
Now, he wasn’t jumping to conclusions and assuming that it was a drone, but he couldn’t really think what else it might have been.
Decker left the house, got back into his truck, and drove off.
His destination was the Mercury Bar. The last time he’d been there he’d seen that they served a full menu of food as well as drinks.
Before he got there his phone buzzed. It was Milligan.
“How’s Alex doing?” he asked.
“As well as can be expected, I guess.”
“Give her my condolences.” Decker heard some paper rustling on Milligan’s end of the line. The FBI agent continued, “Okay, I got
some answers for you. Maxus is a publicly traded company. Been in the FC business for about twenty years. Couldn’t find anything unusual about them. They’re big. They service lots of companies. They’re profitable. Their management is all aboveboard. No ties to ISIS or anything like that. They are exactly what they appear to be.”
“Okay, what about Stanley Nottingham?”
“He’s in his eighties, and while he used to live at the address you gave me, he recently moved to a nursing home in New Jersey.”
“What’s his background? Ties to Baronville?”
“None that I could find. He grew up in New York and worked in the fashion industry until he retired.”
“His parents?”
“From New York too. Dad owned a deli in Brooklyn. Mom was a seamstress. Both deceased.”
“Nottingham have any kids?”
“No, never married.”
“How’d he get to the nursing home?”
“I couldn’t find that out.”
“How long had he lived at the address I gave you?”
“Forty years. But here’s the other thing we’ve confirmed. Bradley Costa lived in the same building before moving to Baronville. Which means they were neighbors.”
“That makes sense.”
“But I take it you thought there would be a connection between Baronville and Nottingham?”
“I thought Nottingham was the reason Costa came here.”
“Well, I couldn’t find anything about that.”
“Thanks, Todd. Email me the contact information for the nursing home.”
“Will do. And keep me posted. I can come up if things get hairy. Or hairier.”
Decker clicked off. All the spots on the street had been taken, so he ended up parking in a vacant lot about two blocks from the bar.
He walked in and the place seemed to be hopping.
A small stage had been set up and a three-person band was playing country tunes. The singer’s voice was good and the musicians clearly knew their way around the instruments.
Decker grabbed a two-seater table as far away from the band as he could. He didn’t want music. He wanted food, a beer, and the time to think things through.
A waitress came and took his drink order. After she left he scanned the room for the young idiots who had attacked John Baron, but didn’t see them. Then he looked for Baron, but didn’t see him either. He eyed the bar and saw Cindi Riley juggling about a dozen customers at the same time.
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