She said nervously, “Alex told me about…”
“Yeah,” said Decker.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” said Decker.
When he said nothing else, Amber rose and said awkwardly, “I…um, I have to get Zoe to school.”
“Yeah,” said Decker, staring down at the table.
***
A few minutes later, Jamison joinedhim and poured herself a cup of coffee.
“I saw Agent Kemper last night, or early this morning, depending on how you look at it,” he said.
She sat down openmouthed across from him.
“Where?”
“At the house where we found the dead guys.”
“What were you doing over there?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Took a walk past the Murder House. Met Fred Ross, theneighbor who Green and Lassiter haven’t spoken with yet. He’s a hard-ass prick with a sawed-off shotgun under his blanket. Thought he was going to shoot me.”
“Jesus, Decker, can’t you just go to sleep like the rest of us?”
“He said he wasn’t home at the time. But he said something else.”
“What?”
“He said he’d come to realize that nothing is really illegalin Baronville.”
She frowned. “What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know. After I left him I was walking back here when Kemper came out of the Murder House.”
“Did she cop an attitude?”
“No, she seemed to have mellowed out, actually. She told me something about the two dead men. TheywereDEA agents. Will Beatty and Doug Smith. Beatty was the one in the basement.Undercover, like I thought. Only she said they had gone rogue.”
“Gone rogue? What does that mean?”
“They allegedly killed a bad guy they were working with. Man named Randy Haas. And it looks like Beatty and Smith were killed earlier and put on ice to screw with the TOD calculation. Kemper brought in her own medical examiner because she didn’t trust the local one.”
“Well, neither did you. I guess this proves you right.”
“Beatty died from a massive drug overdose of a super powerful opiate, obviously forced into him. Smith was strangled, but not by the rope.”
“So they were brought to that house already dead?”
“Appears so.”
“Why go to all that trouble?”
“No idea.”