Rogue agents.
Six murders, four of which seemed to involve unrelated parties.
Was it all about drugs? Lots of people had died due to drugs. And by all accounts, Baronville was in the grips of the same opioid crisis that was terrorizing other areas of the country.
And he and Jamison had apparently run smack into it.
And what about Lassiter’s father burning down a banker’shouse and going to prison for it and then dying there? And her mother later committing suicide? He could see now why Lassiter had a beef against the current John Baron, unreasonable as it might be.
And lastly, what the hell was happening in his head? Why hadn’t the electric blue color come? And the nausea and the hairs rising off his neck? It wasn’t like he wanted any of those thingsto happen to him. But at least they were predictable. That they no longer occurred was, in his mind, worse than if they still happened to him.
My brain might be changing again. Who will I be tomorrow?
He sighed. That sort of speculation was not something he wanted to dwell on.
And then a thought occurred to him. Thankfully, it was tied to something about the case.
He took out his phone and called Kemper. She answered on the second ring.
“What would your two agents be doing in that house?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Well, they might have been watching something or someone.”
“You mean like a surveillance nest?”
“Something like that, though I couldn’t find any evidence of that.”
“Thereare only three people who live on that street, Decker, and they’re all old and one of them is blind and one of them is a former Sunday school teacher.”
“And one of them is an asshole with a sawed-off shotgun.”
“Explain that.”
He told her about his run-in with Fred Ross.
“I still don’t see how a bitter octogenarian in a wheelchair has anything to do withthis.”
“I don’t either.”
“Well, I have some news for you.”
Decker perked up at this. “What’s that?”
“The dead guy, Brian Collins?”
“Yeah.”
“I have some more info on him than what I shared at the house tonight.”
“And why are you willing to share it with me now?”
“I’m growing to like you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“We knew his former partner,” Kemper said.
“Who was that?”
“Randy Haas, the dead guy who fingered my two agents as rogues.”