They started a saline drip line and put a blood pressure cuff and pulse monitor on her.
“Her pressure and respiration are really low,” said one of the EMTs. “Critically low. I think she took something more than was in that bottle. Let’s roll. Now!”
They were loading her onto a gurney when Decker noticed something.
“Wait a minute, where’s her husband?”
“Who?” said one of the EMTs.
“Her husband. Tall guy. He let you in.”
“Nobody let us in. The front door was open. We just followed the noise to back here.”
Decker ran out of the room, down the hall, and out the front door. A late-model Audi 8 had been parked in front when he’d gotten here. It was no longer there.
He looked up and down the road fronting the house.
Brad Gardiner was gone.
And Decker had no clue why.
Am I ever going to get out ahead of this damn case?
Chapter 69
“I DON’T LIKE GETTING PLAYED,” grumbled Decker.
He was sitting alongside Lancaster and Mars in the visitors’ waiting room at the local hospital in Trammel, where Mitzi Gardiner had been admitted into the critical care unit. As with Rachel Katz, they had armed guards stationed 24/7 outside her room.
Though the doctors were hopeful that she would recover, they could not guarantee what her mental state might be when she regained consciousness. One of the doctors had told them, “When abused, the drug she took can have a particularly destructive impact on certain areas of the brain having to do with memory.”
“Well, that’s great,” Decker had replied. “Since we need for her to remember a lot of stuff.”
Lancaster now said, “We found Brad Gardiner’s car abandoned about two miles from his house. He might have been picked up there and taken somewhere else.”
“It never occurred to me that her husband might be a part of all this,” said Decker miserably.
“Playing a role all these years?” said Mars. “That’s a commitment and then some.”
“Agreed,” said Lancaster. “I mean, they had a kid together.”
“I’m not saying the guy doesn’t love her or didn’t want to marry her and have a child,” said Decker. “But I can’t think of another reason why he would have vanished like that, unless he was afraid we were going to find out something.”
“This goes way beyond money laundering, Decker,” said Lancaster.
“We need to find out all we can about Brad Gardiner.”
Lancaster said, “I’ve already started digging. He went to college in Illinois. Moved here about fifteen years ago. Worked at a variety of jobs in the financial sector. Now he specializes in an upscale placement market.”
“Mitzi told me a little about that. She called it a high-end job placement platform.”
“That’s right,” said Lancaster. “Apparently he’s not placing people in low-paying jobs. He focuses on finance, law, high tech, manufacturing, energy, those sorts of fields. They pay the big bucks and he gets big commissions.”
“I wonder how he hooked up with Mitzi,” said Decker.
“You really think this was all arranged after the murders thirteen years ago?”
“She didn’t marry him thirteen years ago. She had to go through her big makeover. She told me that Katz helped her with that. Then Gardiner steps in and marries Mitzi and they have a kid and a wonderful life.”
“And Gardiner came to the area about the same time as David Katz was opening the American Grill,” noted Lancaster.
“Right. Mitzi said her husband knew nothing about her past. Now, either she was lying, or she didn’t know that her marriage might have been a setup.”
“Assuming it was, why would they go to all those lengths to give Mitzi a second shot at life?” wondered Lancaster.
“She helped them by framing her father for four murders. They wanted to keep her in line.”
Lancaster shook her head and said, “Okay, but if they were afraid she might talk, why not just kill her? These folks don’t seem to mind solving their problems with violence. And it’s not like she was a major player in whatever they’re doing.”
“Maybe they were afraid with another murder so soon after the others that people would get suspicious and start digging. With Meryl fingered as the killer, no one looked anywhere else. I know that better than anyone.”
Mars said, “And it worked, apparently, all this time.”
Decker looked thoughtful. “But now, with Gardiner and Katz in the fold, we may be able to find out what’s going on.”
“Well, Katz hasn’t woken up yet, despite what the doctors told us, and Gardiner isn’t out of danger yet,” said Lancaster. “And you heard the doctor about the state of her memory if she does come out of it. I’m not sure we can rely on either one.”
“I agree,” replied Decker. “Ground zero for us is the American Grill. We have to find out what’s inside there.”
“Okay, but we have no probable cause whatsoever to search the place for an underground room,” pointed out his old partner.
“We can ask nicely,” said Mars.
Decker shook his head. “And this Bill Peyton will be within his rights to say that the only person who can properly grant that request is lying in a hospital bed unconscious. And if we tip him off, and he is in on whatever’s going on, that would not be good. The guy struck me as really cagey.”
“So what do we do, then?” asked Mars.
Decker looked at Lancaster. “Did you run Peyton’s print?”
“We did. And got nothing back. He’s not in the system.”
“Just because he has no criminal history doesn’t mean much. Can we do a deeper dive on him? Try to find out his background? What he was up to prior to coming here?”
“We can. I just don’t know how far we’ll get. If he’s not in the system, it might be hard to build a profile on the guy. I presume that there are a lot of Bill Peytons in this country.”
“Yeah, I did a preliminary search online and found squat. But we have to find a way to search for that secret room,” said Decker.
“I agree. I just don’t know how we can.”
“If Katz wakes up, we can get her consent.”
“Right, but that might be never,” retorted Lancaster.
“Then we have to try something else,” said Decker.
“I get that, but what?”
“Up to this point, we’ve been entirely reactive. They’ve been leading us around by the nose. And I’m getting sick of it.”
“Okay, so?”
“So, let’s jerk their chain for once.”
Chapter 70
THE CALL CAME IN at one in the morning. Smoke coming from the American Grill. A fire, apparently. Two fire companies responded, along with the police.
Decker, Mars, and Lancaster followed on the heels of the arson squad as they approached the smoke-engulfed restaurant. The firefighters reported that it was only smoke and no fire.
That made sense, because the smoke bombs that had been placed earlier on the roof of the Grill and in the Dumpster in the rear could produce no flames.