The Fallen (Amos Decker #4)(69)

“Yes, ever since Dolly passed. She was my cat. That’s why I have the pet door. I had a wife too. Betty. She died twenty-one years ago last week. Cancer. I’m ninety-one and I look every day of it even if I can’t see myself.”

Bond cracked a smile at this quip.

“You look fine. Nice house.”

“It’s old, just like me. I’m not going to get another cat. I won’t outlive it, and who would take care of it?”

“Does someone come here and…help you out?”

“Used to, yes. And there used to be a lot more neighbors. But the ones I haven’t outlived have moved away for the most part. Sad to see. But just the way it is. Price of sticking around too long.”

Decker looked around. “How do you get to the store? And the doctor?”

“I walk with my little cart to the store. It takes most of the day. Sometimes my youngest son comes, but he lives in Pittsburgh. And I don’t go to the doctor anymore. I don’t see the point. They just give you more pills to take.”

“Have you been in Baronville long?”

“All my life.”

“What did you do?”

“I was an accountant.” He touched his glasses. “I wasn’t always this way. Macular degeneration. Started in my sixties. Went totally blind about ten years ago.”

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about the night the two men were discovered in the house across the street. Were you home?”

“Oh yes. At night, I’m always home.”

“I assume the police have already been by to talk to you?”

“Yes. A Detective Lassiter. She asked me a lot of questions. I don’t think I was very helpful.”

“Well, I might ask you the same ones. What do you remember about that night?”

“Sirens.”

“I mean before that.”

“Remember the storm. It was a doozy.”

“Anything else?”

Bond sat back in his seat and scratched his chin. “I remember a car starting up and driving off.”

Decker said, “I heard that too. And I also saw a plane go over, a few minutes before the storm blew in.”

Surprisingly, Bond shook his head. “No, that wasn’t a plane.”

“No, it was. I saw it in the sky. The blinking lights and all through the clouds and fog. It was pretty damn low. So it was either taking off or more probably landing.”

“No, son, that wasn’t a plane.”

“But I saw it, Mr. Bond.”

“I know what you’re thinking. That I couldn’t see anything. Thing is, we never have a plane come low over here. No airports of any kind around here that I know about. And Pittsburgh is way to the south of us, and Cleveland way to the west. So even if they were landing or taking off, they’d be far up in the sky by the time they passed over here. But maybe you saw blinking lights and assumed it was a plane. But it was so cloudy, and even foggy, like you said, that you couldn’t see the actual plane, could you? You just saw lights?”

Decker blinked and let his memory frames go back to that moment in time.

I saw the lights or the reflection of lights. But that was all. The clouds and fog were too thick. But it had to be a plane.

Seeming to read his thoughts, Bond said, “And if it was that low, did you hear the engines? They’re pretty loud at low altitudes, even a prop plane. And I was outside that night, on my rear deck, before the storm started. And I didn’t hear anything like that.”

Decker broke out of his thoughts and shook his head. “I didn’t hear the engines. I just saw the lights.”

Bond chuckled. “You just assumed. That’s okay. Perfectly natural.”

“So, if it wasn’t a plane I saw up there, what was it?”

“Well, it does make me think of my grandson Jeremy.”

“Your grandson? How so?” asked Decker curiously.

“When he came to visit one time he brought it along to show me. Well, show me relatively speaking. I could hear it when he started it up.”

“Hear what?” exclaimed Decker, because he needed the elderly man to get to the point.

“His drone. He’s got one of those big ones. He uses it to take aerial photos for his real estate business, and he also shoots amateur movies and uses it to get some neat shots from the sky. A lot cheaper than renting out a chopper. I think that’s what you probably saw that night. One of those big drones.”

Decker’s jaw dropped. A drone. “Wait a minute. Can you even fly a drone at night?”

“Oh, sure. Jeremy does it. In fact, he flew his around here last time he came. And that was at night. I’m sure there are rules and regulations about doing it. You have to have lights on the thing and all, I would imagine. And if you’re in a flight path or near an airport you probably have to get some sort of permission or waiver. And you have to be careful about what you’re taking pictures of. Right to privacy and all. I think you’d have legal problems if you flew over someone’s backyard and started taking pictures of them there, or through their windows. At least I think that’s what Jeremy told me when I asked him about it.”

“Okay, but what would a drone be doing here?”

Bond shrugged. “I don’t know, but I know it wasn’t Jeremy’s. He wasn’t here that night. He lives in Maryland. I know it wasn’t Alice Martin’s because she doesn’t have one. I doubt she’s ever even seen one. And Fred Ross? Bet if he saw a drone he’d shoot it out of the sky with his damn shotgun. That’s it for this street. Nobody else here. But it could have been somebody on another street. Jeremy told me that drones have different ranges. And once they hit the end of that range, they don’t go any farther. But Jeremy’s is a commercial model and it’s got a pretty good range.”