Chapter 64
SO WHAT’S UP,Decker?”
Decker was sitting across from Agent Kemper at the Mercury Bar. Cindi Riley was not working tonight. She might be at the jail with Baron, Decker thought.
Kemper’s hair was clipped with a barrette. Her sidearm was on a belt holster and her badge was pinned to her belt.
“Just wantedto check in on a few things.”
“Has everyone recovered from the gas attack?”
“News travels fast, I take it?”
“Lassiter phoned me.”
“She put a patrol out front.”
“Glad to hear that. I take it someone thinks you’re getting too close to things. Like when they tried to blow you and Jamison up in that trailer.”
“Seems so.”
“So,areyou getting there? Because I see my case slipping away from me by the minute. I don’t know how much longer I can sit on this.”
“I talked to the hospital where Fred Ross was taken on the day I found the bodies. He called 911 complaining of chest pains.”
“Okay.”
“The hospital checked him out and found absolutely nothing wrong. They released him the next day.”
“Why the interest in Fred Ross?”
“Because the bodies of your two agents were kept on ice before they were transported to the empty house. I think they were taken there in Ross’s van. Which means they were probably kept in a freezer shortly before then. And since Fred Ross lived on the street he might have been nervous about us thinking he knew something, or had seen something thatnight. His being in the emergency room at the time would provide him both an ironclad alibiandpreclude us from asking himfor details about that night.”
“How do you know they were taken there in his van?”
“I heard a vehicle start upafterI saw the lights in the house flickering, which means they had already placed the bodies and poured the blood, which eventually causedthe flickering. They must have gone to the house with the bodies before I went out on the deck. And the only car on the street that night was Ross’s.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yeah, I can. It’s a dead-end street. While I wouldn’t have seen the car, I would’ve seen the carlightsif it had gotten to the stop sign at the end of the street. That means the vehicle didn’t leave thestreet. It dropped off the bodies and then it was drivenbackto Ross’s house, and the people who dumped the bodies probably left from there on foot.”
“An old guy in a wheelchair is in the middle of this?”
“I think he is, because his son is.”
“Okay. I guess I can see that, but looping your octogenarian father into a major drug operation can seem pretty unbelievable.”
“Well, it’s about to get more unbelievable, because Alice Martin, the former Sunday school teacher, is involved too.”
“What! How do you figure that?”
“Her damaged walking cane was the sound I heard that night. She was out there, probably checking on the transfer. And she told me she despises Fred Ross, but his phone number is up on her wall along with all her otherfrequently called numbers. But there’s something else.”
“What?”
“She was the one who told me that she had seen two men fitting the descriptions of Beatty and Smith enter the house next to where their bodies were found.”
“So?”