“Right, right,” said the man as he eyed Decker. While White was still in her black suit with the white shirt, Decker had on khakis and a faded dark blue sweatshirt.
“You must have come from up north,” said the guard. “It’s almost never sweatshirt weather here.”
“Have you provided the list of guests and residents who entered here over the last twenty-four hours?” said Decker.
“Provided to who?”
“The cops,” said White.
“They haven’t asked for it.”
“Okay, we’re asking for it now,” said Decker.
“I’ll have to check with my supervisor.”
“Then go ahead and make the call while we’re waiting, because we need that info now.”
“Don’t you need a warrant for that sort of stuff?”
“Did you kill the judge and her guard?” said White.
The man took a step back. “What! Hey, no way.”
“Then we don’t need a warrant. People coming through this gate have no expectation of privacy. And this is a murder investigation. So we need to know who came through here and when during the last twenty-four hours at least.”
“So make the call to your supervisor,” said Decker. “And bring the information to the judge’s house. We’ll be waiting for it.”
“Uh, okay.”
“And open the gate,” said White.
“Oh, right.” The man quickly did so, and they drove through.
“If that’s the quality of the security here, I’m surprised only two people are dead,” noted White.
“Well, there might be more that we don’t know about yet,” said Decker.
Cummins’s home was large and of Mediterranean design with white stucco siding and a red tile roof. It was situated on a shady, quiet cul-de-sac. The plantings were mature and well tended. This tranquility was marred by police and unmarked cars parked all over, and yellow crime-scene tape vibrating across the front yard in the brisk breeze.
Decker noted a blue sedan parked in the driveway. “Might be the dead security guard’s ride.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Every other ride here is either a police cruiser, or has Florida government or federal plates.”
“Could be Judge Cummins’s car.”
“A woman who owns what looks to be a two- or three-million-dollar home is not driving a dented-up ten-year-old Mazda. And she would have pulled it into one of those three garage bays, not left it in the driveway. And check out the bumper sticker.”
White read it off: “The Feds are watching you.”
“Not something you’d typically see on afederaljudge’s car.”
They parked at the curb, cleared the security at the front door, put on booties and vinyl gloves helpfully provided by a member of the forensics team, and stepped inside.
Decker was immediately hit by a searing vision of overpowering electric blue. This was his synesthesia working overtime. His whole life, in fact, was represented by an overactive memory plus sensory pathways that had crossed streams like a clover exit off a highway.
He put a hand against the wall to steady himself because when the electric blue hit him, it made his balance momentarily say bye-bye.