Redemption (Amos Decker #5)(120)

“Why else? Money. I think when we dig into his finances, we’ll find some secret accounts flush with cash.”

“Do you think Childress has been working with them all this time?” asked Lancaster.

“Think back thirteen years ago, Mary.”

“Okay, the four murders.”

“We were newly minted homicide detectives.”

“Right.”

“So brand-new detectives were sent out on a four-person murder scene with no seasoned detective to head up the investigation.”

She glanced at Natty. “That’s right. There were more senior detectives available to investigate the case. Including you, Blake.”

Decker said, “I looked back through the records from that night. You want to guess who assigned us to that case?”

Miller said disgustedly, “Childress, when he was heading up the detective division.”

“That’s right. He wanted inexperienced people on that case who would jump all over the forensic evidence that had been planted and never look anywhere else.”

Decker glanced at Natty. “You might have seen what we didn’t see back then, Natty.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I wouldn’t have figured it out all these years later, I can tell you that. Not like you did.”

“Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. And I didn’t figure it out in time to save Meryl Hawkins.”

Bogart said, “We’ll keep looking for Egorshin and Gardiner and the rest. In the meantime, you all have to be on your top guard. From everything we know so far, you blew up a substantial spy ring operating in this country. The odds are these people will hightail it out of the country to live to fight another day.”

Decker said, “But there’s always a chance that they’re going to hang back and exact their revenge. That’s sort of a very KGB thing to do.”

“Exactly,” said Bogart. “In fact, there’s no reason for you to stay around, Decker.”

“No, there’s unfinished business I have to take care of.”

“Like what?” asked Bogart.

“Meryl Hawkins.”

“You can’t bring him back to life.”

“No, but I can do the next best thing.”





Chapter 77



BOTH MEN STIRRED when her eyes fluttered open.

Decker and Mars were sitting next to Rachel Katz’s bed in a hospital room that had no windows, for obvious reasons. Mitzi Gardiner had been moved to another windowless room, which was also heavily protected by both local police and FBI agents. They were taking no chances now.

Mars stood and took her hand. “Hey, how do you feel?” he asked.

She slowly nodded and managed a weak smile. “Better.” She glanced at Decker and her expression grew solemn. “How much do you know?” she asked cautiously.

“Well, Bill Peyton is really a Russian named Yuri Egorshin, and Brad Gardiner has been placing Egorshin’s spies all over the country for years now from an operation initiated at the American Grill. And we also know about the secret room underneath your restaurant where they create fake identities, backgrounds, and maybe even faces for these folks. Other than that, not much.”

Katz put a hand to her face and groaned. She finally withdrew her hand and looked at the lines and tubes running over her body.

“Am I going to recover?”

“Yes, you are,” said Mars. “We were just waiting for you to fully wake up.”

Her mouth quivered. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll take a shade of the truth,” said Decker. “Unless you want to tell us the whole thing.”

“Can you lift my head a bit?”

Mars hit the bed control to accomplish this.

After she was settled, Katz drew a long breath. “The first thing you have to understand is that when I married David, I knew about none of this. There’s still a lot I don’t know.”

“He’d already opened the Grill before you met,” said Decker.

“Yes. And our life was good. We had the restaurant and I had my business. And he was already working on other projects. Everything was aboveboard, at least as far as I knew.”

“And then the meeting with Don Richards?”

“And he was dead.” Katz started to weep.

Mars handed her a tissue, which she used to dab at her eyes.

“I was devastated. It hit me out of the blue. I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to kill him.”

“But then?” said Decker expectantly.

“But then I was thinking of selling the Grill. I was tired of Burlington and the memory of what had happened to David. I just wanted to start over fresh.”

“And something happened to make you change your mind?”

“It was Bill Peyton or this Yuri person. I had told him I was thinking of selling out. He didn’t tell me a lot, but what he did tell me was stunning. He said that David was a criminal. A member of an organization that had done terrible things. And that his death was a result of that membership. He had apparently done something to anger them. They had found out and made the decision to kill him.”

“Why kill the Richards family?”

“I don’t know. Peyton never told me.”