Long Shadows (Amos Decker, #7)(32)

“Did she get any calls before she left?” asked Decker.

Kelly checked the landline, but the latest message on there was a recorded voice from the previous night announcing a great financial opportunity in gold futures if the Kellys called back right away.

“How about her cell phone?” asked White.

“I don’t know. Like I said, I was out in back doing yard work earlier. I wouldn’t have heard her phone ring from out there.” Kelly looked at them nervously. “I’m sure she’s…I mean, nothing could have happened to her, could it?”

None of them answered his question.

Decker said, “If you hear from her, will you tell her to call us?” He handed the man one of his cards.

“Right away. I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Probably be back any minute now.” As soon as he finished he looked off into the distance, his mouth agape, and his eyes slitted in worry.

As they drove away, Andrews said, “What do you think?”

“I think potential witnesses keep disappearing on us. Let’s go to a place where that can’t happen,” said Decker.

“Where’s that?” asked White.

“Alan Draymont’s home. He’s not there, but there might be something to help us.”

“But he lives back near Miami,” said Andrews. “That’s over four hours roundtrip from here.”

“You got something else to do today?” retorted Decker.

“What do you think about Mrs. Kelly?” interjected White.

“She worked with the judge, probably knew things about her nobody else would. And now she might have vanished.”

“Surely her husband would have seen someone kidnap her,” countered White.

“A phone call or text to lure her out would have done the same thing,” replied Andrews.

Decker eyed him and said, “That’s right. And if she doesn’t turn up voluntarily we have to figure out who that might have been. I’d get her phone records ASAP.”

Andrews got on the phone to do just that and he said he was also putting out an APB on her and her car.

As they drove along, Decker closed his eyes and let everything they had learned, and not learned, settle over him like a layer of fine dust. Yet, frustratingly, all he could see in his mind was Mary Lancaster with a gun in her mouth. He opened his eyes and stared at the back of White’s head as she steered the car.

This is not the time for my brain to go on some weird-ass emotional odyssey.

He watched as Andrews spoke to his folks at the FBI to get the necessary paperwork going to get into Kelly’s phone records and also put out the APB.

Decker wondered how much longer he could keep doing this shit. Part of him didn’t care if he ever solved another case. And that had never happened to him before. Was it Mary’s killing herself? Sandy’s desperate pleas to him? The fact that he hadn’t held his wife, or kissed Molly on the cheek, in years?

His daughter would be a teenager now, in high school. Getting ready for the prom. Getting ready for college, maybe. Getting ready for life. Instead she was lying in a coffin next to her mom’s grave. Through no fault of her own.

That buck stopped with me. Always with me.

Andrews put his phone away, “Okay, the ball is rolling on that.” He eyed Decker. “Did you hear me?”

Decker glanced at the sun, the image of his dead daughter strewn all across its flaming surface. Decker could imagine his brain and imperfect memory burning up, just like the sun.

And maybe that would be the best thing that could happen to him. Because right now, he just didn’t see this ride lasting much longer.





Chapter 22



A?LAN DRAYMONT HAD LIVED IN an apartment about twenty minutes from Lancer’s house. It wasn’t in a sleek high-rise. It was in a three-story structure nowhere near the water. It looked old and worn out. And set up like a motel where the doors opened directly to the outside.

“They’ll probably knock this thing down in a couple of years,” noted Andrews. “Rezone and go up fifteen stories and maybe have water views; you can make a fortune.”

“Yeah, and in twenty years this might be beachfront,” noted Decker.

“That’s not funny,” shot back Andrews.

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Andrews looked at White. “We’re sensitive to climate change issues down here.”

White looked in the direction of the water. “I guess I would be, too, seeing how close it is to you all. But I live in Baltimore. We got issues, too. Guess we all do. Only I’m nowhere near the Harbor. Way out of my price range.”

“Roe said they had seven offices in Florida?” said Decker.

“Yeah, they actually have one in Naples.”

“So if Draymont lives two hours away, why have him guard Judge Cummins? Why not use someone from Naples?”

Andrews said, “That’s a good question.”

White interjected, “If he was guarding the judge at night, did he sleep on the premises?”

“If he slept at all,” said Decker. “He’d probably be up all night patrolling and then go crash somewhere while the judge was at work. But Gamma would have to foot that bill, I would think.”

“I’ll check on that to be sure,” said Andrews.