He sat down and drank some of it.
“You going soft on me, Decker?”
He looked at her. “How do you mean?”
“You’re worrying about other people a lot lately.”
“I investigate homicides. That means there are always lots of people to worry about.”
“Do you think they should stay here or leave Baronville?”
“I don’t have a good answer for that, because I’m not them.”
“But there’s nothing for them here.”
“Frank Mitchell is here,” replied Decker. “He’s always going to be here now.”
Jamison changed color and looked down. “Right. I…I guess I wasn’t thinking about things that way.”
Decker took another sip of coffee and glanced out the small window into the dark. “I didn’t want to leave Burlington. And at the same time, I wanted to get the hell out of Burlington. My family was murdered there. They’re both buried there. When I left, I felt like I was abandoning them. I used to go to the graves every day when I lived there. I would sit and talk to them. Now I haven’t been in months.” He set his cup down. “I don’t want to end up with my only connection to them being faded pictures on the wall, Alex.”
“You of all people should never worry about forgetting them.”
“It’s not the same. I buried them there. That is my connection to that place. It will always be a part of me whether I want it to be or not.”
“So, based on that logic, you think my sister should stay, then?”
“I think…everybody is different.”
With that he rose, cleared the table, and he and Jamison loaded the dishwasher. Then he left the kitchen and went to his room.
Decker opened his closet and pulled out two things: the construction drawings he had found in the hall closet, and the piece of graph paper he had uncovered at Toby Babbot’s trailer.
After looking over the pages for about a half hour he decided he needed something else in order to make sense of it.
He left his room, walked down the hall, and knocked on the door.
A few moments later, a sleepy-eyed Zoe opened the door. She was in her pajamas and was holding her cat.
“Zoe, I’m working on a very important project and I think you might have something I need.”
At this, the little girl perked up. “Sure, Amos, what do you need?”
“A ruler. Do you have one?”
She nodded, hurried over to a small white-painted desk set against one wall, and opened a drawer. She pulled out a green ruler and brought it over to him.
“Thank you very much, Zoe,” he said, taking it from her.
“You’re welcome.”
Decker had turned to go. But then he faced her once more.
“Did your mom talk to you?”
She nodded. “She asked me if I wanted to stay here or move someplace else.”
“And what did you tell your mom?”
Zoe shrugged. “Daddy’s here. I don’t want to leave him all alone.”
Decker knelt down so he was eye to eye with the little girl.
“I can understand that.”
Zoe stared back at him. “You told me that when I visited Daddy he would know I was there. That he would know here.”
She touched the center of her small chest.
“Yes, I did.”
“So, I can’t leave him or else he’d be sad. He would be sad here.” She touched the center of Decker’s chest. “Right?”
Now Decker wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Right.”
She yawned.
“You better go get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay, Amos.” Zoe gave him a hug and he quietly returned to his room, his gaze downcast.
Life really is a bitch sometimes.
He sat down on his bed and looked at the plans spread out there.
Then he looked down at the ruler. Written on it in Sharpie was the name “Zoe Mitchell.”
He got up and walked over to the window and looked out over a town that was in despair, but that was perhaps slowly coming back.
But at what price?
And how many more people were going to die before it was back?
He turned his head in the direction of Zoe’s room.
Should they stay or should they go?
It would be very easy to say they should go.
Flee the violence and danger. Go to a safer place.
But where exactly was that anymore?
I guess if I have any purpose in life, it’s to help make sure there are safe places left to go to.
With that thought in mind, he sat down and used the ruler to go over every dimension of the construction drawings and Toby Babbot’s version of the same.
He used paper and pen to make his calculations, and when he was done he had found only a single discrepancy between the two documents.
But what a discrepancy it was.
Chapter 55
CAN I SEE Mr. Ross, please?” said Decker. He showed his credentials to the woman at the front desk of the fulfillment center. “He knows me. I’ve been here before.”
It was the next morning and Decker had driven here at a very specific time.
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Ross is out on the main floor right now, Agent Decker.”
“Could I wait in his office? It’s really important,” he added, because she was the only one working the desk and several people were waiting in line behind him. “I’ve been to his office before. When Frank Mitchell was killed.”
“Oh, right, of course. That was so awful. Um.” When she still hesitated, Decker pointed to the bruise on her forearm.
“You bang that on something?”
“Squat rack at the gym.”
“You work out, that’s good. Keeps you healthy.”
“It’s not just that. I want to be a picker. I’m building myself up so I can pass the physical requirements.”
“You don’t like working in the office?”
“Pickers make a lot more money and they get overtime and a better 401(k) match. That’s what I’m gunning for.”
“Well, good luck on that. So, can I go back and wait for Ross?”
She glanced at the impatient-looking people in line behind him. “That’ll be fine. He’s doing his usual walk-around. I’m afraid it’ll be about forty-five minutes.”
“I’m in no rush.”
Decker headed off and entered the corridor behind the reception area that housed the offices of the center’s management staff.
Ross had told him previously when he did his walk-arounds, which was why Decker was here at this time window. He didn’t want the man around.
He made his way swiftly down the hall and reached Ross’s office. He tried the door, only it was locked. The blinds were open showing the office to be empty.
He looked around. There was no one in the corridor. He slipped a penknife from his pocket and used it to push back the bolt.
He shut the door behind him and closed the blinds.
The office looked exactly as it had when he’d been in here before. Ross’s coat was on a hook on the back of the door and a small duffel bag was on the floor. Decker opened the duffel and looked inside. There were some gym clothes and a pair of sneakers and white socks.
He zipped the duffel back up and took the object he’d brought with him out of his pocket.
It was a measuring tape.
He quickly measured the dimensions of the room.
The depth of the room was two feet shorter than the construction plans had indicated. That meant the entire back wall had been moved forward two feet. And there had to be a reason for that. Decker had seen from the plans that a hallway also bordered the back wall, as it did the front, so there was no wiggle room there.
He walked over to the wall behind Ross’s desk and started to examine it.
He had seen before that this wall was paneled wood with elaborate moldings, with a boxed Pittsburgh Steelers jersey hanging on one section. It hadn’t made an impact on him
before, but now he found it very interesting.
Decker heard a sound that made him jump.
He looked all around the office until he located the source.
Ross’s smartphone was on a shelf behind his desk. And it was buzzing.
Someone was calling him. Decker glanced at the number, but had no way of knowing who it was; there was no name attached to the number on the screen.
He turned back to the wall and used his knuckles to tap against the wood at various spots.
Finally he reached a spot where the sound evidenced a hollow space. This was where the boxed jersey was hanging. He kept knocking against the wall here until he had mapped out a space roughly the size of a large door.
He felt around the edges but without success. The moldings were covering them.
He looked down at the carpet in front of this space.
It looked a bit frayed there, as though something might have been routinely rubbing against it.
He looked back up at the wall and decided to try something simple. Placing his finger against the edge of the hollow space, he pushed in.
Nothing happened. He kept pressing in other spots. Finally, near the ceiling, which he had to stretch to reach, he struck gold. There was a medallion up there and it appeared to be a bit loose. Decker tried turning it clockwise, but it wouldn’t move. Then he tried counterclockwise. It moved like a doorknob.
There was a click and the hollow part of the wall swung open. It partially caught on the carpet, which accounted for the wear.
It was a clever mechanism, Decker could see. There were three metal deadbolt shafts on the side of the door, one at the top, one in the middle, and one near the floor. Turning the medallion in the direction that he had caused all three deadbolt locks to recess into the door, allowing it to be opened.
Decker pulled the door all the way open and looked inside the revealed space.
It was about two feet deep and lined with shelves. That accounted for the two-foot-smaller footprint of the office. This space had been used to accommodate this storage closet. Whoever had put it in couldn’t simply recess the closet into the original footprint without moving the entire wall back, because of the hallway behind it. And if he had moved only this space forward, leaving the rest of the wall in place, it would have looked suspicious.
On the shelves were rectangular-shaped cardboard boxes.
Decker picked one up. There had once been a label on it, but most of it had been peeled off and there was no information left on it to help him.
He looked over at a shredder set next to the desk and wondered if that had been the fate of the labels.
Probably.
He counted the number of boxes. There were twenty.
He carefully unpeeled the tape from one of the boxes and opened it. Inside was a thin layer of bubble wrap. And under the bubble wrap were a number of plastic bottles. They were all full of a white granular substance.
Thinking quickly, Decker put one bottle in his pocket, closed up the box, carefully retaped it, and put the box back on the shelf. He swung the door closed.
He glanced down at Ross’s chair. The seat was scuffed and marked and he knew why.
Decker was six-five. Ross was about five-nine. Unlike Decker, he had to stand on the chair to reach the spot that would open the door.
After checking through the blinds to make certain the hall was clear and then leaving them open, as they had been, Decker made his way out. Passing by the reception area, he spoke to the same woman.
“I actually couldn’t wait any longer. You don’t have to tell him I was here. I’ll catch up with him another time.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“No, thank you. Oh, one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Is there a gym here for the employees?”
“A gym? No. Why?”
“Last time I was here I saw a gym duffel in Ross’s office. I thought it might have had workout clothes inside.”
“It probably does. He works out at my gym, right after he leaves here. Like clockwork. I sometimes work out with him. Doesn’t hurt to get in good with the boss.”
“Right. Does he change here or at the gym?”
She looked puzzled. “At the gym. They have locker rooms and showers.”
“Well, good to know he’s keeping in shape,” said Decker.
Really good to know, he thought as he hurried out.
Chapter 56
DECKER GOT INTO his truck and was about to drive out of the parking lot when he turned in the opposite direction and headed over to where the new construction was under way. He parked his car, got out, and walked as close to the construction site as he could. Workers were racing everywhere and forklifts and trucks and Bobcats were hurtling around carrying materials. Obviously, the police had allowed the work to recommence. Decker studied the activity for a bit and then took a closer look around the area. He spotted something, bent down, and picked it up. Examining it for a moment, he stuck it in his pocket. He got back into his truck and drove off.
On the way, he called Kemper and asked her to meet him in front of the Mercury Bar.
He was waiting for her when she pulled up. He climbed into the SUV, pulled out the bottle, and briefly described to her how he’d found it.
“Can you check to see what it is? I think I know, though.”
She looked at the bottle. “It’s almost certainly either heroin or fentanyl. They look the same, which is why dealers lace one with the other. Problem is, it takes thirty milligrams of heroin to kill someone, while it only takes three milligrams of fentanyl to do the same. So, you said you got this from a hiding place in Ted Ross’s office?”
“Yeah. And there’s a ton more in there. I think the shipments are coming in through the fulfillment center.”
“Why ship it there? Why not to his home or a PO box?”
“Far easier to search a home or PO box. The fulfillment center gets millions of packages. Like finding a needle in a haystack, if you’re the cops.”
“But don’t they track all those boxes pretty closely? How is he getting them out of the computer system there?”
“He’s the manager of the place. If anyone could think of a way, he could.”
“How did you even know he had a hiding place in his office?”
“Toby Babbot. He’d drawn plans of the fulfillment center. I found a set of official construction drawings and compared them. Babbot’s version showed only one discrepancy from the construction drawings. A two-foot-deep deviation in Ross’s office.”
“How’d Babbot find out about that?”
“He worked on the construction of the fulfillment center and later worked in the office there. He might’ve discovered it that way. I used a tape measure. Maybe he did the same.”
“Do you think he knew what Ross was going to do with that space?”
“Well, Babbot ended up dead, so chances are he did know, or at least suspected.”
“I’m surprised that Ross would keep this in his office.”
“It’s actually pretty secure. You can’t accidentally open the closet. He had to stand on a chair and turn a part of the molding to do it. And the panel was seamless. You could look at that wall all day and not know a door was there. And he had a Steelers jersey hanging there to disguise it further.”
“How did he have something like that installed and no one know about it?”
“He might have done it himself. He told me he worked construction before he moved on to the fulfillment center. Or maybe one or more of the construction guys is in on this and did it for him. As the manager, he had free run of the space and was overseeing all the construction work.”
“But how would a guy like Ted Ross get mixed up in a drug distribution operation?”
“He once described himself to me as the little guy, the underdog. And he said that when the little guy gets a chance to punch back, he needs to go for it. I think that was the reason he gave me the contact information for a lawyer for Ambe
r to sue Maxus. He hates the big guys. And Alice Martin told me that his father, Fred, treated him and his mother really badly. Ted told me the same thing at the funeral. Maybe that screwed him up too. I can vouch for the fact that Fred Ross is a pretty unpleasant guy. That and a boatload of money would be a hell of a motive. Or maybe they approached him because he was the fulfillment center manager and they wanted to use that as their cover.”
“Decker, this really is awesome work on your part.” Kemper paused. “And now I’ll return the favor. I found out what you wanted to know about Randy Haas.”
“Our dying declaration guy who fingered your two agents?”
“You asked if he had family and whether he might have been sick. Well, you were right on both counts. He had a wife and two young kids. And he had pancreatic cancer. Advanced. He had maybe two months to live.”
“And the family? How are they doing?”
“They apparently had a financial windfall. They’re living in Bel-Air, California, in a home that cost three million.”
“And their explanation for that?”
“Life insurance. A ten-million-dollar policy.”
“That’s not cheap.”
“No, it’s not. But the premiums were fully paid up.”
“Okay, but I doubt that Haas listed ‘drug dealer’ as his occupation on the application. I can’t believe a legit insurance outfit would have sold him a policy that large. His odds of dying early were way too high.”
“The policy wasn’t written by an American company. It was an overseas outfit that we’ve tried to find out about, but so far we’ve run into a stone wall. It could have just been a way for his family to be paid off in exchange for his lying about my two agents.”
“Life insurance again,” said Decker thoughtfully.
“Right. But how’d you know we’d find out Haas was terminal?”
“Because I believed he lied about your guys. He set them up to take the fall. They weren’t rogue. I think they had stumbled onto what was happening here in Baronville and they had to be taken out. And Haas, who was already a dead man with a family to take care of, was the one to help do it. He made you think your guys were bad, and the real bad guys killed them. And his family reaped the benefit of his lying declaration. For all we know, he injected that fatal dose of morphine himself.”
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