The Fallen (Amos Decker #4)(66)

If Babbot had been killed because of something at Maxus, then what about Frank Mitchell?

Was the accident not really an accident?

After all, if you could program a robot to do one thing, you could program it to do another thing.

But why kill Frank Mitchell? What would have been the motivation?

He pulled out his phone and called Todd Milligan, a team member of his at the FBI. He asked Milligan to check out anything he could find on the Maxus Corporation.

Milligan knew Decker well enough to not ask any questions. He simply said, “On it.”

Decker put the phone away and continued to stare at the house where the bodies of two DEA agents had been left. They had been killed elsewhere, that was now clear, but Decker had no idea why. Or why that house had been chosen as the location for their bodies.

He closed his eyes and let his memory flash back to the first time he’d met Frank Mitchell.

They had been sitting in the living room after Frank had gotten home from work. Frank had been naturally upset at two murders having taken place almost in his backyard. He’d been curious about the killings, but that was normal too. It would have been unusual if he hadn’t been curious.

Then Decker moved on to another image.

It was a photo. Of a Little League baseball team.

And maybe something more than that.

*



He met Jamison on his way out. She was holding Zoe’s hand as they came up the front walk. In her other hand was a bag of groceries.

“Where are you going?” she asked him.

“Just back out to check on a few things.”

“How’s it going?”

“It’s going.”

“Don’t do anything—” She stopped and glanced at Zoe. “You know.”

“I know.”

As he hurried away, Zoe called after him, “Mr. Amos, you’re going to come back, right?”

Decker stopped and slowly turned. “I’ll be back, Zoe. I promise.”

He drove over to Bradley Costa’s apartment and used the key Lassiter had given him to let himself in.

He walked right over to the photo on the shelf.

A smiling John Baron stared back at him.

The boys all looked happy too. They should have after winning the state championship.

What had been bugging Decker ever since he’d found out about Bradley Costa was one question: Why would a young and single banker leave New York City and come to this place? Decker had to imagine that especially for a young person with money, the enticements of the Big Apple would trump anything Baronville had to offer.

He stared at the photo and then his gaze slipped to the frame around it.

Why not check the obvious? he thought. In fact, he should have done it before. He picked up the photo, turned it around, and flicked off the little metal tags that held the back of the frame on. He took out the cardboard backing and then the photo itself.

“Damn,” he muttered.

There was a name and an address written there.

“Stanley Nottingham,” he read off.

Underneath the name was an address in New York City.

Decker slipped the photo into his jacket.

Who was Stanley Nottingham in New York City, and why would Costa have this information written down on the back of the Little League photo?

He thumbed a text to Todd Milligan asking the FBI agent to look into this for him as well. If Decker had to travel to New York to talk to Nottingham, he would. The man might be able to explain why Bradley Costa had come to Baronville. And that information might lead to something else.

And then the case might finally start to make sense.

Criminal investigations usually involved minutiae piled on top of minutiae, until something clicked with something else, or, sometimes, contradicted something else. Either way, it could lead you in the right direction.

And Decker desperately needed something to go right.

He left the apartment, got back into his truck, and set off for his next stop.

Betsy O’Connor, Toby Babbot’s last known roommate.





Chapter 40



IT WAS BEYOND horrible, what happened to him.”

Decker was sitting at a coffee shop. Across the table from him was Betsy O’Connor, who worked as a waitress there. She was about five-five with a blocky build. Her graying hair was cut short and a pair of eyeglasses dangled on a chain around her neck. Decker had gauged her age at closer to fifty than forty.

He spooned some sugar into his coffee and said, “So you lived with him for a few years?”

“Yes. I mean, it was totally platonic,” she hastily added. “My husband was an ass who liked to beat me when things went wrong in his life. I dated a couple of guys after my divorce and found them to be much the same. So, I’ve chucked men, at least for the foreseeable future.”

“But Babbot was different?”

“Look, Toby had his issues, but he was basically a good guy who’d had a crappy life. That’s why we were living together. We had to. We couldn’t make ends meet otherwise.”

“How’d you two come to know each other?”

O’Connor looked a bit embarrassed. “At an addiction meeting. We were both coming off issues with pain pills and trying to get our lives back on track. We were both working, but the jobs just didn’t pay enough. Together, though, we made enough to live in a small house.”