Jamison leaned forward. “I know that you don’t want to hear this, Decker, but I’m going to say it anyway.” She paused, seeming to choose her words with great care. “At some point, you’re going to have to let this go. I mean, I get coming back here to visit their graves and all. But you have your life left to live. That means you have to move forward and stop dwelling in the past so much. Cassie and Molly wouldn’t want you to do that, you know that.”
“Do I?” said Decker abruptly.
She sat back, looking saddened by this comment.
“They shouldn’t be dead, Alex. If anyone should be dead, it should be me.”
“But you’re not. You’re alive and you have to spend every day living for them and yourself. Otherwise, it’s all wasted.”
Decker rose. “I’m going to take a shower and change my clothes. And then we’re going to go catch a killer. I’ll meet you back down here in half an hour.”
“Decker, you need to get some sleep!”
“No, that would just be wasting time, wouldn’t it?”
As he walked off, Jamison just stared after him, the look on her face one of heartbreak.
Chapter 7
DECKER LET THE HOT WATER run off his head for a full minute before soaping up. The next moment he had a brief panic attack because he couldn’t recall Cassie’s favorite color. Then his memory righted itself and the proper shade kicked out of his brain.
He rested his head against the shower tile. Shit, more hiccups. No, more malfunctions because I’m a machine, after all. Right?
Was his memory going to keep misfiring? Right when he needed it to work precisely? Or would there be a time when it simply stopped functioning altogether? Then a dreaded thought sprouted up: Was he developing complications from his brain injury all those years ago? Like CTE?
He finished in the shower, dried off, and put on fresh clothes. Mentally he still felt like crap, and physically he was tired, but at least he was clean.
Jamison was waiting for him in the lobby. They got into the car and from the driver’s seat Jamison said, “Where to?”
“Our only viable suspect right now, Susan Richards.”
On the way he phoned Lancaster and told her what they were going to do. He had to leave a message because the call went to voicemail. She was probably still sleeping, surmised Decker.
Richards’s home on Primrose Avenue was a small single-story brick bungalow with old-fashioned green-and-white-striped metal awnings over the windows. The patch of yard was neatly laid out, with mature trees and well-shaped bushes and planting beds. An abundance of colorful fall flowers was displayed in pots on the covered front stoop.
“Nice landscaping,” commented Jamison.
“She was a florist for years,” explained Decker. “Into gardening. Runs the floral shop she sold to new owners a while back.”
“Do you actually think she could have murdered Hawkins last night?”
“She could have. But I don’t know if she did. That’s what we have to find out.”
They got out, but Decker didn’t head up to the front door. He instead walked over to the house across the street.
“Verifying alibis?” said Jamison as she caught up to him.
He nodded and knocked on the door of the bungalow that was a twin of Richards’s home, only with a screened-in porch on one end.
Answering the door was a tiny elderly woman with white hair so thin they could see her reddened scalp underneath.
“Yes?” she said, staring at them from behind thick glasses.
Jamison held out her FBI badge, which the woman scrutinized.
“FBI?” she said. “Have I done something wrong?”
“No,” said Jamison hastily. “We were checking on a neighbor of yours, Ms.…?”
“Agatha Bates.” She looked up at the towering Decker. “Are you FBI? You didn’t show me a badge.” She ran her gaze over him. “You look too big to be FBI. I watch a lot of TV. No FBI agent is as big as you.”
Jamison said hastily, “He works as a consultant for us.”
Bates slowly drew her gaze from Decker and settled it on Jamison. “Which neighbor?”
“Susan Richards.”
“Oh, Susan, sure. Nice lady. Lived here a while. Not nearly so long as me. I’ve been here fifty-seven years.” She looked at Decker again. “Don’t I know you?”
“I worked here on the police force for twenty years.”
“Oh, well, I don’t have much contact with the police. I pay my taxes and I’ve never robbed anybody.”
“I’m sure,” said Jamison. “We were wondering if you could tell us when you last saw Ms. Richards.”
“Well, I saw her this morning when the police came to get her. We don’t usually have the police around here.”
“That was pretty early,” noted Jamison.
“Well, I get up pretty early. Only sleep maybe four hours a night. You get old, you don’t sleep. I’ll be sleeping all the time pretty soon.”
“Excuse me?” said Jamison.
“When I die, honey. I’m ninety-three, how much longer do you expect me to be around?” She paused and adjusted her glasses. “So why did the police take her in the first place?”
“For some questions. Did you see her yesterday, in the evening, maybe?”
“I saw her come home. It was around quarter past eight.”
“How can you be so certain?” asked Decker. “And have you spoken to her this morning?”
“No, I haven’t talked to her. If she’s home now she hasn’t come out of her house, least that I saw. Usually takes a walk in the morning. I have my coffee on the screen porch. I wave, she waves back. I guess the police coming messed that up.”
“So you didn’t see her come back from the police station this morning?” asked Decker.
“No. I was probably in the kitchen making breakfast, or out in the backyard puttering. I like to putter. People my age, we putter, and we do it slow. I don’t need a broken hip.”
“So last night?” prompted Jamison.
“Quarter past eight,” she said again, staring at Decker. “She volunteers at the homeless shelter. She always gets in around that time. And I know the time because Jeopardy! had been over about fifteen minutes. I got the Final Jeopardy question. The answer was Harry Truman. I remember Truman. Hell, I voted for him. All three of the contestants got it wrong. Not a single one was over thirty. What do they know about Harry Truman? I would have won enough to take a vacation somewhere.”
“So, you saw her come home last night? Did she leave again? Would you have seen her if she did?”
“She didn’t drive in her car if she did,” said Bates. “That car of hers sounds like a bomb going off when she starts it up. It’s an old Honda. Darn muffler’s shot. Told her to get it fixed. Almost makes me wet my pants every time I hear it. My hearing’s still good. I can hear pretty much everything and especially that damn car.”
“But she could have left another way. Walked or called a cab?”
“Well, I was out on the screen porch doing the crosswords and reading until about ten-thirty or so. I would have seen her leave. After that, I went inside. Hit the hay about eleven or so.”