Decker looked back at her. “You guessed wrong.” He glancedat Jamison. “Up for a short ride?”
She stared at him dumbly but nodded resignedly.
***
Their vehicle was a rental, principally because Jamison’s own car was a subcompact, which would have required Decker to bend his big body nearly in half to get in. And for such a long road trip, that was not a welcome prospect.
A Yukon had farmore leg- and headroom.
“You said ashortride,” said Jamison. “Gee, let me guess our destination.”
“Just drive over to the next street, Alex.”
“And may I ask why, since we’ve already been over there?”
“Just want to see something.”
“We could just walk.”
“It’ll be easier in the truck.”
As they pulled down the street Decker pointedat the sign posted at its entrance. “Dead end. No outlet.”
“Well,deadend is an appropriate sign for this street tonight,” noted Jamison.
The police were still there processing the scene and one of the officers glanced at them as they drove by. Before he could react, however, Jamison had driven past the house. She reached the end of the road, turned around, parked the SUVat the curb a half-dozen houses down from the crime scene, and cut the lights.
As they watched, Green and Lassiter appeared at the front door. In the illumination provided by the front porch light, the two detectives seemed to be in animated conversation.
“Is that what you wanted to see?” asked Jamison, yawning.
Decker shook his head. He wanted to see the street andthe cars parked there. The homes here had no garages, only carports and street parking.
The only thing was, other than the cop cars and their SUV, there were no cars parked on the street, and none near the crime scene house. Decker looked at the houses up and down the street. None had lights on, but that might be due to the lateness of the hour.
“Most of these homes don’t looklived in.”
“Well, like we’ve been told, Baronville isn’t exactly a hopping place.”
“And that also means there won’t be many eyes around that can help us with the comings and goings of the crime scene. They had to get the two men in there, either dead or alive. There’s no attached garage on the house to pull into, so they would have been exposed at some point.”
“Orthe two guys could have walked in and been killed there.”
Decker closed his eyes and thought about what he had seen and heard before the lights in the house had started going on and off because of the electrical short.
A plane going over.
A series of sounds: thuds and scrapes.
A car starting up.
The plane? Obviously, no connection.
Theweird sounds? Maybe connected.
A car driving away after dumping the bodies there?
He closed his eyes more tightly. His perfect recall was best with visual things. But it was still far better than average with things of an auditory nature.