The Fallen (Amos Decker #4)(3)

“We better go inside,” said Zoe nervously. “Mommy says that more people get hit by lightning than you think.”

“Who lives in that house, Zoe?” Decker asked, pointing to the other house.

Zoe had her hand on the door leading back inside. She said, “I don’t know.”

Decker’s gaze focused and then held on a sudden spark of light.

It was inside the other house, behind one of the windows. He didn’t know if it was a light from inside simply reflecting off the glass, or whether the cause might be something more complicated, and potentially dangerous.

He set his beer down and hustled off the deck. But he needed to find out.

“Where are you going?” Zoe cried after him; her voice held a note of panic.

He called over his shoulder, “Go inside, Zoe, I just want to check on something.”

Another crack of lightning was followed by such a deafening explosion of thunder that Zoe bolted inside, while Decker ran the other way.

Despite his bulk, Decker had been an elite athlete for many years. He grabbed the top of the fence separating the two properties, neatly swung over the barrier, and dropped inside the other yard.

He hustled across the grass toward the house. He could feel the temperature plummeting as the storm fully enveloped the area. The wind kicked up and buffeted him. He had grown up in the Midwest and was used to these dangerous weather systems that made the Ohio Valley their stomping grounds, conjuring up and then spinning off tornadoes like a cancer spawned mutant cells.

He knew the rain would be coming next, probably in sideways sheets.

He reached the house’s pressure-treated deck and raced up the steps. He didn’t look back at Amber’s house, so he didn’t see Alex Jamison come out and gaze quickly around for him.

He got to the window where he’d seen the reflection of light. He could now smell it, which confirmed his suspicions.

Electrical wiring had gotten mixed with liquid. He had investigated homicides involving arson, and the smell was unmistakable. There was a fire in there.

He put his face to the glass and peered inside. Electrical fires tended to move fast, usually behind walls where they could spread unseen until it was too late.

A moment later, he saw something that confirmed his worst fear: a flicker of flames and the rise of smoke.

Then he looked to the right as a spear of lightning lit up the whole area.

Decker froze at what he was seeing in the illumination provided by the lightning strike. A moment later, he broke free from his paralysis and ran to the back door. Without hesitating he hit it with his shoulder like he had many football blocking sleds. The flimsy door buckled under the massive impact and fell open.

The storm was screaming overhead now, so Decker couldn’t hear Jamison calling to him. She had rushed off the deck and was running to the rear fence when Decker had crushed the door. The rain was falling hard now, whipped by the wind into a stinging frenzy, as the storm emptied millions of gallons of water over the western edge of the Keystone State. Jamison had run out of her shoes and was soaked before she was halfway to the fence.

A drenched Decker burst into the kitchen and turned right. He had his Beretta out and pointed in front of him. He now wished he hadn’t had all that beer. He might need his fine motor skills to be better than they presently were.

He moved swiftly down the darkened hallway, bouncing off one wall. Something fell to the floor as he brushed against it.

It was a picture.

Decker cursed himself because he had just contaminated what was now a crime scene, an act he would have found unforgivable if someone else had done it. Yet it couldn’t be helped. He didn’t know what was going on here. What he had seen might just be the tip of the iceberg.

He cautiously poked first his gun and then his head around the corner. He cleared the space with two long visual passes and straightened.

Decker now knew what had triggered first the spark and next the flames.

And the flickering lights.

Exposed electrical wires had indeed been commingled with liquid.

But it wasn’t water.

It was blood.





Chapter 2



DECKER?”

Decker peered around the corner to see a soaked, shivering, and barefoot Jamison standing farther down the hall from where he’d just come.

“You got your gun?” he asked quietly. Wave after wave of electric blue light was pouring over him. He felt nauseous and dizzy.

Jamison shook her head.

He motioned her toward him.

She hurried forward, turned the corner, saw what Decker already had, and stopped dead.

“Good God!”

Decker nodded. It was a fitting expression for what they were both seeing.

After all, the man was hanging from the ceiling.

A rope had been inserted through a hook that had once held a chandelier that was now lying on the floor.

The noose had been placed around the man’s neck.

Yet death by hanging did not typically cause blood loss.

Decker stared down at the wooden floor. The blood had pooled and then flowed toward the wall, where it had encountered the frayed electrical cord of a floor lamp and begun the electrical shorting process.

Before Jamison had appeared, Decker had used his foot to tap out the sparks after unplugging the cord. Part of a square of carpet and a dangling strip of wallpaper had caught on fire. He had used his wet jacket to beat out the flames on the wall, and had rolled up the carpet to smother the fire there. Then he’d stepped back so as not to further interfere with the crime scene. It was right then that Jamison had called out.