The Fallen

by David Baldacci

  “What would the premiums run for someone like my sister?”

  “Don’t hold me to it, but for someone her age and healthy, generally speaking, for a twenty-year policy for a million bucks, you’re looking at four hundred bucks a year in premium payments. For a thirty-year term, a little over six hundred bucks a year. That’s strictly actuarial tables talking. Odds are she’ll live another fifty years or so. Of course, after, for example, the thirty-year term is up, she can keep paying the next layer of premiums. But then your sister would be close to her mid-sixties, and the premiums would be a lot higher, so she might just let the policy lapse. That way, the insurance company has collected twenty or thirty years’ worth of premiums from the insured and not paid out a dime.”

  “Nice business, if you can get it,” noted Jamison.

  “Selling insurance is a for-profit business, after all,” Norris said, with a laugh tacked on.

  Jamison glanced at Decker and then said to Norris, “Thanks, I’ll give these materials to my sister and she can follow up with you.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Norris rose.

  However, Decker remained sitting and said, “We were referred to you by Linda Drews.”

  Norris slowly sat back down. “Oh, right.” He shook his head sadly. “That was tough. Her son dying like that. Broke my heart.”

  “Yeah. She said he had hurt his back at work and was on painkillers.”

  “Right.”

  “That didn’t affect his ability to get life insurance?” asked Decker.

  Norris eyed him keenly. “I’d love to keep jawing, but the fact is I’ve got an appointment to get to.” He stood. “Jenny can show you out.”

  As they left the office and headed to their truck Jamison said, “You really spooked him.”

  Decker nodded. “I think he knows we’re FBI.”

  “Is this some sort of insurance scam?” she asked.

  “Could be.”

  “The premiums he quoted are pretty low. I doubt most people would need help to pay them.”

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  “You’re obviously thinking about something,” she said, staring at him.

  “I’m remembering something Fred Ross told me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That nothing in Baronville is really illegal.”

  Chapter 61

  DECKER SAT UP in bed and listened to the rain pouring down outside.

  Does it ever stop raining here?

  He looked over at the small table under the window. He’d laid his clothes there. And on top of them was his badge.

  He rose, walked over, and picked it up.

  It wasn’t an FBI special agent badge, because he wasn’t one. But it was a federal badge and it did have the authority of the FBI behind it. And Decker had arresting authority as a member of an FBI task force.

  Decker had carried a badge for over twenty years now. He’d had it the night he’d discovered that he no longer had a family.

  He’d had it with him when Alex Jamison and then Melvin Mars came into his life.

  He carried it now in Baronville, PA.

  It had provided him comfort when he’d needed it. It had provided him a means to the only ends he had ever cared about.

  The truth.

  But that was not why he was now looking down at his badge.

  He glanced out the window, and though he couldn’t see it, he knew exactly where the home of Dan Bond was located.

  The old man should have been allowed to live out the remaining years of his life in peace. But someone had not allowed him to do that. And Decker was going to make that person pay.

  Decker swiveled his head in the direction of the house where Alice Martin lived. And just a few doors down from that was Fred Ross and his sawed-off shotgun.

  He cast his mind back to that first night, after he’d found the bodies. He and Jamison had driven down the street. There had been no cars parked on it.

  However, Fred Ross’s van had been parked under his carport.

  Ross said he’d been at the hospital. And Decker had confirmed that that was true. And he had been transported by ambulance, meaning his van would have been under the carport that night.

  These thoughts were interrupted by a tap on his door.

  “Yeah?”

  Jamison said, “It’s me. Got a minute?”

  Decker said, “Give me a sec.” He checked his watch. It was after midnight. He pulled on his pants. “Okay.”

  Jamison, dressed in a robe, came in.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “I got to thinking about our meeting with Norris and I decided to do some digging.”

  “Digging on what?”

  “Insurance premiums.”

  “Okay.”

  “I emailed a friend of mine who’s in the insurance business and asked her some questions. Specifically, I gave her Keith Drews’s information. The back injury, the fact that he was a prescription drug user, and also where he lived. I just got the reply back.”

  He glanced at his watch again. “Your friend works late.”

  “She works in Manhattan at one of the biggest insurance companies in the world, so she’s basically chained to her desk. Anyway, she said Baronville is smack in the middle of what the insurance industry has started to call Opioid Alley. Fifty or so years ago insurance companies had different insurance ratings for different communities, but that was outlawed. So even though they call places like Baronville part of Opioid Alley, that’s really unofficial because they really can’t charge more for a policy simply because of where you live. But insurers do file rates based on an entire state and the opioid crisis has grown to such an extent that it’s actually affecting longevity, and thus the premiums charged tend to be higher. Like Norris said, it’s a for-profit business. My friend said that even though Keith Drews was a young person, the fact that he lived here and had suffered a back injury and was consequently taking painkillers would raise a red flag for them. And the fact that most opioid abusers start with prescription painkillers would also be factored in. And a million-dollar policy for an unmarried and childless person with no job would have also raised questions. The bottom line, she told me, was that because of Drews’s circumstances, it’s highly doubtful a policy that large would have been approved. But even if an underwriter would okay such a policy, the premiums wouldn’t be a couple hundred bucks a year like Norris quoted me for my sister.”

  “What would they be?”

  “She could only give me a ballpark, but she said for a ten-year policy it would be about two thousand a year. For a thirty-year policy about four thousand. So how could Keith Drews have afforded that unless someone was making the payments for him, like you suggested?”

  “But your friend said that she didn’t think the policy should have been issued in the first place, even though it was.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Which makes me wonder why an insurer would’ve taken that risk. And it’s not just Drews. As you know, Kemper told me a lot of life insurance policies have been cashed in here over the last few years.”

  “Either the insurance companies involved have been royally screwing up, or maybe people are lying on their applications.”

  “They would surely investigate that before paying out,” countered Decker. “In fact, Kemper told me that the companies had investigated a number of them, but still ended up paying out.”

  “Well, if they did write the policies and they couldn’t find any wrongdoing, they would have to pay out.”

  “Kemper emailed me a list of the insurers that have paid out money. It’s a long list. From all over the place. Some big names, but many I’d never heard of.”

  “Meaning Norris and whoever else might be doing this are probably spreading it around. My friend also told me that life insurance companies give agents contracts based on the volume of business the agent will throw their way. If the volume isn’t there over a few years’ time, the contract gets ya
nked. And with the sort of scam Norris may be running, if you go to very few insurers or even just one, they’re going to quickly see something weird is going on and they’re going to stop writing policies here and stop doing business with the agent. But maybe Norris doesn’t care about that for some reason.”

  “Which brings up another important question.”

  “What?”

  “I wonder how much of the million bucks Linda Drews got to keep. And who got the rest?”

  Chapter 62

  DECKER FINALLY FELL asleep a little after one o’clock.

  He dozed fitfully for a bit and then woke up coughing. He’d gotten wet yesterday and he was afraid he might have caught a cold.

  He drew a long breath and coughed again, this time more violently.

  He sat up and gagged, then suddenly lurched to one side of his bed and threw up.

  Dizzy, he got to his feet and immediately fell to the floor. He managed to drag himself over to the window, open it, and stick his head out into the rain. He sucked in the chilly, wet air and his fuzzy brain cleared and his nausea passed.

  When he brought his head back inside he smelled it.

  He lumbered from the room, covering his nose and mouth with his T-shirt.

  He pounded on Jamison’s door.

  “Alex! Alex!”

  When she didn’t answer, he opened the door and looked frantically around.

  All he could see was her foot sticking up from the other side of the bed.

  This froze Decker for an instant, because that had been exactly what he had first seen when he had discovered his wife’s body at their home back in Burlington.

  He raced over to the other side of the bed, bent down, and checked the pulse at her neck. He detected it and she was breathing, if spasmodically. He lifted Jamison up in his arms and rushed back to his bedroom, where he placed her next to the window and held her head out the opening.

  She gasped, came to, and looked up at him.

  “Wh—”

  “Stay right there, keep breathing in. And don’t turn any light switch on. Okay? Any spark could trigger the gas.”

  She nodded feebly and Decker ran from the room.

  He flung open Zoe’s bedroom door. She was lying in her bed.

  “Zoe? Zoe!”

  He sniffed the air. It wasn’t that bad in here. Yet.

  Zoe slowly sat up in bed. “Amos?” she said sleepily. What’s the matter?”

  Decker ran over and opened her window. “I want you to put your head out the window, okay. There’s a gas leak in the house. I’m making sure everybody’s okay.”

  “Mommy!” Zoe cried out.

  “I’m going to get her right now. Put your head out the window and take deep breaths, okay? And don’t turn on the lights.”

  She nodded, jumped up, and ran over to the window.

  Decker thundered down the stairs, because Amber’s bedroom was on the ground floor, in what had been a den that they had converted into a bedroom. Its bathroom was down the hall.

  He opened the door. “Amber?”

  Her bed was empty.

  He scanned the floor, then he heard a moan from somewhere. His gaze darted to the hall. He ran back out and looked in the direction of the bathroom.

  “Amber!”

  The moan came again.

  Decker ran down the hall and opened the bathroom door.

  Amber was lying on the floor in her nightclothes.

  As Decker knelt down next to her, she stopped breathing and went limp.

  Decker started gagging again because the volume of gas in the bathroom was so high. He lifted her up and took her outside. Laying her on the porch, he started to perform CPR.

  A few moments later he felt a presence next to him. It was Jamison.

  “I’ve called 911,” she whispered, staring at her sister.

  She knelt down and, synchronizing with Decker’s pushes on her sister’s chest, started blowing air into Amber’s mouth.

  Finally, after about thirty excruciatingly long seconds, Amber’s chest heaved up, air gushed out of her mouth, and she retched.

  “Mommy!”

  They turned to see Zoe racing out of the house. She dropped to her knees and hugged her mother.

  “Mommy!”

  Amber slowly put an arm around her daughter’s waist. She tried to sit up but Decker gently pushed her back down.

  “No, just lie there. The ambulance is on its way.”

  It arrived a few minutes later and the paramedics put Amber on oxygen and loaded her onto a gurney. Jamison rode in the back with Zoe. Before the ambulance pulled away, a teary Jamison said, “Thank you, Amos.”

  “Thanks, Amos,” said Zoe, still anxiously glancing at her mom.

  Decker nodded, closed the ambulance doors, and stepped back as a gas company truck pulled up along with a squad car.

  Decker told them about the gas leak in the house and the men hurried around to the back to turn off the gas supply.

  Decker recognized the police officer who approached as Officer Curry, the one who had responded when Decker had found the dead bodies.

  “You okay?” asked Curry. “You look a little green.”

  “I’m good.”

  “Gas leak, huh?”

  Decker looked at him. “Yeah.”

  “That’s pretty unusual.”

  “Yeah.”

  One of the gas men came back around from the rear of the house and walked over to them looking grim.

  “What is it?” asked Curry.

  “Somebody tampered with the pressure valve going into the house,” said the man, shaking his head. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Yeah,” said Decker. “We are.”

  “I wonder who would’ve done that?” said Curry.

  “It might be a long list,” replied Decker.

  Chapter 63

  L​ATER THAT DAY, Decker opened the door to see Alice Martin standing there. Her quad cane was in one hand and she held a pie in the other.

  Over her shoulder Decker saw the police cruiser parked at the curb. Lassiter had authorized it after Decker phoned her and told her what had happened.

  “I heard,” Martin said tersely. “Is everyone all right?”

  Decker nodded. “Amber got checked out at the hospital. They’re keeping her for a bit longer, but she should be home tonight.”

  “And Zoe?”

  “She’s okay. The gas didn’t get very far into her room for some reason. They cleared the whole house out and checked for gas levels before they let us back in. She’s at the hospital with her mom.”

  “Do they know how it happened?”

  “Still checking on it.”

  Martin turned and glanced at the police cruiser. “I take it that the presence of the police means that it wasn’t an accident?”

  Instead of answering, Decker glanced at the pie. “Is that for Amber?”

  “It’s for all of you. Lemon meringue.”

  She handed it to him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be sure to tell Amber.”

  Martin looked around. “This used to be a very nice neighborhood. Now it’s not very nice at all.”

  “I can see how you would feel that way.”

  “It might be best for all of you to just leave Baronville.”

  Decker stared at her without answering.

  “Why would you want to stay in a place like this?” she asked.

  “I don’t live here. But Amber and her daughter do. Her husband came here for a job. It’s not like they had a choice. And I have no idea if they’ll stay here or move.” He paused. “Why do you stay, Ms. Martin?”

  “Because it’s my home and I’m too damn old to move.”

  “Like your neighbor, Fred Ross?”

  She stared at him. “You live long enough, Mr. Decker, you accept things you never thought you otherwise would.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “For some it’s one or the other.”

 
; “And for you?”

  “I hope you all enjoy the pie. I’m very good at lemon meringue. At least I’m still good at something.”

  She turned to leave, but then looked back at him.

  “This used to be a nice town way back.”

  “You mean when the sweatshops were operating and a robber baron was making all the money?”

  She smiled. “I guess we all romanticize our pasts, to make them better than they actually were.”

  “Maybe we do,” said Decker. “Nostalgia can be very tempting. And nearly as addictive as opioids.”

  She said sharply, “You don’t seem very appreciative to someone who just brought you a pie.”

  Decker looked taken aback. “I’m sorry. I…I guess getting nearly killed hasn’t put me in the best mood.”

  “Well, enjoy the pie,” she replied in a softer tone.

  She walked off while Decker stood there watching. At first, he was feeling guilty about having spoken to her so abrasively. But when she left the gravel walk that led up to the house and reached the sidewalk, Decker stiffened.

  Clunk, scrape, clunk.

  The sounds he’d heard that night.

  Her quad cane was striking the pavement, and the broken foot on the cane she had told him about earlier was making those sounds. It was first scraping against the pavement, and then, when she lifted it and brought it down, it clunked against the pavement.

  He closed the door and leaned his head against the wood.

  Son of a bitch. Baronville. More like Murderville.

  He had some things to do and he didn’t have much time to do them.

  He went into the kitchen and threw the pie into the trash.