“I’ve heard it before, but I Googled it to be sure. Legal jargon. Means something like ‘The thing proves itself.’”
“Right, I checked that too. Must be important, at least to the killer, which makes it important to us.”
“You think it stems from her caseload, something in the past? The blindfold, too? Maybe some defendant thought she screwed them. Justicewasn’tblind, that sort of thing?”
Decker said, “Tyler thought her getting protection had something to with her position as a judge. But she might have not been straight with him about that. It might have something to do with her ex-husband. Barry Davidson has money, a thriving international business. He likes to party, have the young ladies over, or so Tyler told me. He might have screwed with somebody or embezzled some funds from a shady client, and this was the result. They get back at him by killing her.”
“Or, like you suggested before, he could have hired someone to do it. Either way, we need to check his financial records.”
“Andrews is already on that. But let’s discuss the possibility that someone else killed her because they had a beef against Barry.”
“But why kill the judge and not him?” asked White.
“You kill him, maybe you don’t get your money back.”
“If so, and he knows who it is? And maybe that’s what he’s not telling us?”
Decker said, “He’ll either eventually tell us, go after them on his own, keep his mouth shut because he’s afraid—which would get my vote—or disappear because he’s scared shitless.”
“I like how you summarize things. So neat and orderly.”
He eyed her cagily. “Jamison told you about the electric blue, right?”
White did not answer. She just kept watching him steadily.
“When I walked into the judge’s house and had my little ‘moment’? I saw the look on your face. Death equals electric blue. You knew that. I could read it in your face.”
“She did tell me, yes,” White conceded.
“And this was not just idle chatter from a long time ago. You called herafteryou got assigned to partner with me.”
“And to her credit she didn’t want to tell me anything. She’s totally loyal to you, if you have any doubt about that. But I used my girl-agent-to-girl-agent card.”
“Anything else I need to know from the girl-agent exchange system?”
“I’ll let you know if it becomes relevant.” She paused. “Does that tick you off?”
“No, it’s actually the only thing you’ve said so far that made me smile.”
She gaped. “You smiled? When? Because I didn’t see it.”
“I do it internally.”
She smiled resignedly. “Of course you do.”
They went to their rooms.
***
White immediately phoned home and talked to her mother and then her kids.
She had a lot to catch up on even though she hadn’t been gone that long. It was good to hear their voices, especially now, with so much change going on in her life.
While she was doing that, Decker sat on his bed and stared out the window, where the sun had long since faded, but he could hear the roar of the Gulf through the glass.
He closed his eyes and once more envisioned the gun in Mary Lancaster’s hand. He watched as she lifted it to her mouth, inserted it between her lips, letting the muzzle rest on the tongue, because it was very awkward to hold a gun that way. Then her finger would slip to the trigger. She probably closed her eyes, let her mind wander to wherever it needed to.
And then…