The Fallen (Amos Decker #4)(113)

“Dan Bond.”

“I told you, I never even met the man.”

Decker said, “Which raises the question of why Dan Bond’s fingerprints were found on your badge.”

“What!?”

Decker took out his own badge. “Dan Bond was a careful man. I knocked on his door after dark, and he wouldn’t let me in until I put my badge through his cat door. He told me he didn’t like to let strangers inside his house. He used his fingers to make sure the badge was legit before he let me in. And, really, who else besides a cop would he let in at that hour of the night?” He held up the badge. “So that was how his prints got on my badge. But you just said you never met him, and yet his prints are on your badge. So how do you explain that, Detective Green, unless you were the one who visited Bond that night and killed him?”

“That’s bullcrap!”

Green looked at Lassiter, who was staring at him openmouthed. “Those can’t be his prints on my badge. It’s impossible.”

Decker said, “The day you threw your badge down and I picked it up? I saw it was smudged with prints, and something else that I realized later was…flour. Bond told me he liked to bake at all hours. He got flour on my badge too when he was checking it out. Agent Kemper also informed me that traces of flour were found on your badge. Now, I don’t know if we can match it to the flour in Bond’s kitchen but we really don’t have to since we have your prints.”

Green said nothing. He just glared at Decker.

“The thing is, Detective, if you’re going to the trouble of killing someone, you really need to sweat the details,” added Decker.

Green turned on Kemper. “You bitch! You took my badge without a warrant. That makes it inadmissible.”

Kemper held up a piece of paper.

“I got a warrant, signed, sealed, and delivered.”

“Based on what?”

“Based on the fact that we checked Alice Martin’s phone records. Dan Bond called her the night he was killed. Then she immediately called Fred Ross’s number. Shortly after that, you received a call from Fred Ross. And an hour after that, Dan Bond was killed. So our theory is that Bond called Martin and told her something that alarmed her, and she phoned Fred Ross to have it taken care of. And he dialed you up to do it.”

“But what could have alarmed Alice?” said Lassiter. “She’s just an old lady who used to teach Sunday school.”

Decker said, “She’s actually a lot more than that. I believe Bond was killed because he recognized that the sound he’d heard the night the two DEA agents’ bodies were discovered was Alice Martin’s recently broken quad cane hitting the pavement. Maybe she walked past his house the day he was killed, said hello to him, and so he knew the sound was being made by Martin’s cane. He might have later called and asked her what she was doing out that night. That was not good, because Bond might tell somebody else, like me.”

Green barked, “I want a lawyer.”

“Yeah, well, maybe your lawyer will convince you to talk so you get life instead of the needle,” said Decker.

Kemper looked at her men. “Cuff him, read him his rights, and take this scum to to the holding cell downstairs.”

The men moved forward and handcuffed Green.

“You don’t know who the hell you’re messing with, Decker!” the detective shouted as he struggled helplessly.

“Funny, I was going to say the same thing to you.”





Chapter 67



YOU HAVE NO reason to protect anyone,” said Decker.

He was sitting in an interrogation room at police headquarters with Lassiter on one side of him and Kemper and Jamison on the other.

Across from them was Alice Martin sitting very primly in her seat. She didn’t answer.

“We checked the big game freezer in your basement,” said Decker. “The one presumably your husband used to store his venison in. But you didn’t just keep deer meat in there. Whoever put Beatty and Smith in there wasn’t all that careful. Their DNA has been recovered by the DEA.” He glanced meaningfully at Kemper. “And that particular federal agency is out for blood. So, I say again, you have no reason to protect anyone.”

She lifted her gaze to his. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Convince me otherwise.”

She smoothed out her long skirt and rested her hands in her lap.

“I have children and grandchildren, and soon I’ll have great-grandchildren. I have to think of them.”

“How did you even get mixed up with something like this?” asked Lassiter.

“I outlived what little money I had a long time ago. I’m eighty-eight and in reasonably good health. Once you’ve reached this age, your odds of living another ten years or so are pretty good. I did not wish to do so in abject poverty. I’m tired of never going anywhere. Of never having anything.”

“Your kids couldn’t help?”

“My children are barely making ends meet themselves. I have Social Security and that’s it. And even here that does not go a long way.”

“Lots of people have only Social Security, and they don’t join a drug cartel to earn more money,” pointed out Kemper.

“I did not join a drug cartel!” she said sharply.