Long Shadows (Amos Decker, #7)(68)

“I’ll have to check on that.”

“Great. We’ll stay right here while you do.”

With an annoyed look, the woman picked up the phone and made a series of calls. She finally put down the receiver. “They all appear to be out at the moment.”

“Did you know either of them?” asked White.

“Just to say hello.”

“And now they’re both dead. Mouths stuffed with money that came from the country where your founder, Kanak Roe, emigrated from,” said Decker. “What a hell of a coincidence.”

“I don’t know anything about that, but it doesn’t sound coincidental.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it?” said Decker. “Which explains why we’re here.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Another woman died last night. It was connected to this case. And an FBI agent was shot.”

“I’m very sorry about that, but there is no one here to help you.”

White glanced at Decker and clearly saw the frustration building in the man.

“Well, thank you for being so unhelpful,” said White. She pulled on Decker’s sleeve and dragged him from the room.

Outside she said, “Okay, I know you want to blow a gasket, same with me. But we can’t. They’ll have their lawyers all over our asses, and then the call will go to DC and we might get pulled right off this sucker, which I know will piss you off even more.”

Decker looked sullen and uninterested in her words until he let out a deep breath and said, “You’re right. That was the stupid way to go. Now we need to do the smart.”

“Which is?”

“The real way to win a football game comes before you step on the field. You look at film, game plans, you study your opponent and his tendencies. You come to know him maybe better than he knows himself. It gives you a split-second advantage, but that’s really all you need.”

“So we’re going to…?”

“Learn exactly who and what Alice Lancer and Alan Draymont were. Because I don’t think this was their first rodeo when it comes to blackmail.”





Chapter 48



T?HE KINGSTON GROUP,” SAID WHITE as they sat in Andrews’s small office at his RA in Fort Myers. “That’s where Lancer was the communications director and later a lobbyist. They’re a respected K Street outfit, been in business for a long time. She was there for five years. Good record, no complaints. Before that she was a corporate lawyer for a white-shoe firm in DC. I spoke to someone at the firm. They reported that nothing unusual happened while she was there.”

Decker was looking over some pages on a laptop. “Connection to Draymont?”

“The people I spoke to didn’t know of one. But they might have dated, hung out as friends; it didn’t have to be a professional connection. She was a number of years older than he was, but so what?”

“Did they live near each other?”

“Relatively speaking, but not in the same community.”

“No overlap in their jobs?” asked Decker.

“Well, the lobbying firm did a lot of work on Capitol Hill. And Draymont worked security at the Capitol complex. It was entirely possible that their paths would have crossed professionally. You know, she’s up there lobbying someone while Draymont is on duty. He caught her eye. They might have dated. Those things happen every day.”

Decker thought about her words. He caught her eye.

“But nothing firm on any nexus between them?”

“No. But they could have kept it on the Q.T.”

“Were either of them married?” he asked.

“No record of that. You were thinking if one was, that would be a reason to keep their relationship secret?”

“Yes. Okay, let’s just take this logically, step-by-step. You don’t kill someone without a reason, particularly in this situation. Now, with Cummins we have a number of motivations, separate and apart from Draymont and Lancer. But for the latter two, you kill them if they did the killer wrong, or had information that was dangerous to the killer or whoever might have hired them.” He looked up at her inquiringly.

“Okay, I agree with that. But could their killings be a symbolic act against Kanak Roe and Gamma? Remember the money in the mouths.”

Decker shook his head. “I would maybe think that, if Draymont and Lancer had no connection to one another. But they did. It’s beyond probability that they would both be targeted simply as symbolic stand-ins for Kanak Roe or Gamma Protection Services. And Patty Kelly intimated that they were doing something to make money.”

“You thought that involved blackmail, and that they got their hands slammed in the cookie jar. So that was probably why they were killed.”

“But that was somehow also connected to Kanak Roe and his home country. Hence the Slovakian money in their mouths.”

“But, Decker, Roe came to this country many decades ago—before Draymont or Lancer were even born, in fact.”

“Doesn’t matter. If the connection is there, it will explain all facets of the case.”

She shook her head. “Well, right now, I just don’t see it. And I like to keep an open mind on cases. Going down only one alley can waste a lot of time if it turns out to be the wrong alley.”