The Fallen (Amos Decker #4)(25)

They reached the corner of the structure and stopped for a few moments, scanning the area behind it.

“There!” barked Jamison, pointing toward the right side of the thick woods.

She and Decker reached the tree line and plunged ahead. Though Decker was big and bulky and not in the best of shape, he maneuvered around the trees with a surprising nimbleness. Only he had lost sight of the person and stopped so abruptly that Jamison ran into him.

Gasping, Decker looked around. The sounds of the person running seemed to echo from all directions.

“Where did he go?” said Jamison.

Decker shook his head. “Lost him.”

They heard a car door slam shut and an engine roar to life.

Decker once again sprinted forward, yet he broke free of the trees only in time to see twin taillights disappearing down another gravel road.

Jamison joined him a few moments later. They were both bent over sucking in air.

Regaining her breath, Jamison said, “I will never pull your chain again about not being in shape.”

Decker straightened and muttered, “Well, I wasn’t fast enough to catch the person. I couldn’t even see if it was a man or a woman. And I got zip on the vehicle, not even a letter on the license plate.” He kicked a rusty old can lying on the ground.

“Decker, we did all we could.”

“Let’s at least see if we can find out what they were looking for,” he grumbled, stalking off toward the trailer.

They went in through the rear door.

“No forced entry here. And the front door didn’t look damaged either.”

“So it was either open or the person had a key,” reasoned Jamison.

Inside, the place didn’t look like it had been searched. Yet there was stuff everywhere, neatly stacked on tables, chairs, counters, and the floor.

“Pack rat,” said Decker knowingly. “But when you don’t have a lot, you don’t throw anything away.”

“Green said they got no prints from here other than Babbot’s.”

“So no visitors, unless they wore gloves.”

“Well, the place just had a visitor,” Jamison pointed out.

When they were finished searching, Decker leaned against the wall in the tiny kitchen. “No grab bars or special toilet in the bath. No wheelchair access. But a bunch of empty bottles for prescription painkillers. So what was his disability?”

“Green said he was going to check.”

“If it were obvious he wouldn’t have to check. And where’s the guy’s car?”

Jamison looked out the front window. “Maybe he didn’t have one.”

“He did at some point. There are wheel ruts in the dirt. He probably parked in the same spot every time. And there are old empty cans of Valvoline motor oil behind the trailer.”

“Maybe Babbot drove his car to the house where his body was found.”

“If he did, that should have been in the file. Since it wasn’t I’m assuming that’s not what happened.”

Decker went back over to a table built into the wall halfway between the kitchen and the front room.

There was a large pad of graph paper on it.

He sat down at the table and looked at the pad. “I wonder what this is for?”

Jamison joined him and stared down at the paper.

“I used something like that when I would do my math homework in high school, but my pad was a lot smaller.”

Decker bent down and looked more closely at the top sheet. “There are impressions on it.”

“You mean from whatever was written on the sheet above it?”

Decker nodded. “I think so.”

He carefully tore off the sheet and handed it to Jamison, who slid it into a plastic evidence pouch she had brought from the SUV and then placed it into her bag.

Decker picked up some magazines from a table and flipped through them. He did the same with some books on a small shelf. “Babbot had an interesting mix of reading tastes,” he said. “From porn to mechanical to guns to history to conspiracy theories.”

“Sounds just like a lot of America,” said Jamison impishly.

Decker next picked up an empty prescription bottle from the kitchen counter. “And unfortunately, this is a lot of America.” He eyed the label. “This was Percocet. But there were other empty bottles for Vicodin, OxyContin, Tylox, and Demerol. All potent stuff.”

“And all addictive. Overmedicating. It’s one reason we have an opioid crisis.”

“Dr. Freedman,” he said, reading off the prescription label. “That was the name on the other bottles.”

“Then Freedman might know about the disability,” replied Jamison.

Decker looked around. “I wonder how long Babbot lived here? He was on disability. It doesn’t exactly pay enough to allow you to live in luxury. And if he had to move recently because his bills were adding up, we could at least have a shot at talking to a neighbor. They might be able to tell us something helpful about Babbot. Green will probably have that information.”

He looked out the rear window at the trees and grumbled, “Here all we have are squirrels and deer.”

“What was that?” said Jamison suddenly.

Decker looked at her. “What?”

“Thought I heard something. At the front of the trailer.”