Jamison said, “I think I’d rather stay single.”
Bogart said, “We’ll run those leads down and search Gardiner’s business. What else?”
“Bag and tag everything that was in the Grill’s underground room.”
Bogart said, “You were lucky that an apparent fire broke out, so you could search the place and find that room.” He stared pointedly at Decker.
“I’ll always take luck when I can get it,” replied Decker. “Even if I have to make it myself.”
Chapter 73
“STRIPPED CLEAN,” Bogart said over the phone to Decker. “Gardiner’s office didn’t have a thing left in it. He must have had an exit plan in place. As soon as you spooked him, he probably had the place wiped. Same thing for Peyton’s apartment. Nothing left, if there was anything ever there.”
Decker said, “We need to find out all we can about them, Ross. And his house and office have to be full of the guy’s prints. Same for Peyton’s apartment.”
“I already have a team looking for that. Now, these ‘trainees’ you told me about at the American Grill?”
“Yeah?”
“I doubt any of them will show up for work. Peyton would have given them a heads-up. But I’ll have people there just in case they do. And we’ll track down where they were staying and search all those places too.”
“Let me know if you turn up anything,” said Decker.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take a little trip down memory lane.”
* * *
Decker sat across from Lancaster at her house. In the background he could hear Earl and Sandy getting ready to go out.
Sandy burst into the room. She was a fireball of energy, always in a good mood, until she dropped into the blackness of despair, something that could occur within seconds. Her coat was half on and a ski cap covered her eyes.
She pulled it up and announced herself. “I know you,” she said to Decker. “You’re my mommy’s partner. You’re Amos Decker.”
“And you’re Sandra Lancaster.” This was a little ritual that the pair had always engaged in.
Earl hustled in and grabbed Sandy’s hand.
“We’ll be back later,” he said, glancing first at Decker and then at his wife.
“Right, hon, thanks,” said Lancaster.
After the pair left, Decker refocused on his old partner. “Things going okay?” he asked.
“We’re taking it day by day, hour by hour. I have to tell you that Earl teared up when I told him what you said to me on those bleachers that night. He’s very grateful for your talking some sense into me.”
“It was just my opinion, Mary. I can’t judge you, because I haven’t walked in your shoes.”
“Well, I think you stopped me from making a big mistake. When things go bad, you need your family. You don’t push them away.”
“No disagreement from me.”
“Okay, the case?”
“It’s starting to make sense, but there are some gaps.”
“Some gaps?”
“We know that Meryl Hawkins was set up. His daughter helped to frame him for the four murders. We don’t know the exact motivation for the killings, but the fact that Katz had some sort of spy ring going on underneath his restaurant gets us close to it. He either had a falling-out or demanded more money, or whoever killed him was feeling threatened by him.”
“Okay.”
“Fast forward to today. Hawkins learns the truth from Karl Stevens. He gets out of prison and comes back here to enlist our aid to prove his innocence. Someone kills him that same night.”
“And we still have no idea who that is.”
“Since we’ve learned that the spy ring or whatever it is was still operating in Burlington, it seems to me that the spy ring’s the likeliest culprits. Now we have Rachel Katz. She was the point person for a consortium of shell companies that Bogart has discovered have a Russian connection. Now, Rachel was waffling some. Look at her discussion with Melvin. They might have been afraid that she was going to turn on them. So they tried to kill her. They tried to kill me too. And they did kill Sally Brimmer.”
“Because she impersonated Susan Richards. But we still don’t know how someone got her to do that.”
“No, we don’t. That’s still an open question, but they might have blackmailed her by threatening to tell Natty’s wife about their affair. Now Mitzi Gardiner, overcome with guilt, tries to kill herself with pills. I think she was lucky she had a gun.”
“Why?”
“Otherwise, her hubby might have saved her the trouble.”
“You think he would have killed her?”
“I can’t really assume otherwise. We found the underground room and all the evidence there pointing to some sort of spy ring. Peyton has made a run for it, as has Brad Gardiner. Now we’ve got two women in hospital beds and we’re waiting for them to wake up to tell us what they know.”
“If they wake up. And if they do, we have no guarantee they’ll tell us anything.”
“We have leverage over them. Mitzi tried to kill me. And there’s no way that Rachel can plausibly argue that she had no knowledge of that room under the American Grill. If they talk, they can work a deal. If they won’t they go to prison for a long time. But I don’t want to count on them. We have to keep pushing.”
“The FBI may find out some stuff that could help us.”
“Maybe. But they also might end up with a big fat zero. These people obviously had an exit plan in place, and they executed it pretty damn well.”
“So we may be back at square one then, after all this time.”
“Maybe not,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s occurred to me that this whole thing runs deeper than I previously thought. It seems to me that someone connected to this is hiding in plain sight.”
“Okay, how do we find out who that is?”
“We let them do it for us,” Decker said cryptically.
Chapter 74
THEY HAD BROUGHT MITZI GARDINER from the hospital in Trammel to the one in Burlington. Both women were in the same room so that their protection could be consolidated. Policemen and state troopers were arrayed around the hospital and outside their room. Across the street, counter-snipers were posted to prevent anyone from taking a long-range shot at the women.
Decker, Lancaster, and Mars were waiting outside the room because they had been told that Rachel Katz seemed to be coming around.
A few moments later, Natty showed up with Pete Childress and Captain Miller. Childress looked chastened and anxious, Miller grim and focused. Childress glanced at Lancaster, but would not look at Decker.
“Natty told me all the work you’ve done on this, Mary. Good job. In Burlington! I can hardly believe this crap is going on.”
Lancaster said firmly, “Decker’s done most of it, Superintendent. Without him, we’d be in the dark about everything.” Childress seemed to wince a bit at her words.
He finally looked at Decker and nodded curtly. “Right, yes. Well, that’s good, Decker. I’m, uh, I’m glad to see that you’ve been of assistance to the department.”