“You know her?”

  “Oh yes. Like I said, she had cases here, lots of them. So she was at the courthouse a good deal. Really nice woman, and a very fine lawyer.”

  “What was her practice?”

  “Criminal defense.”

  “Interesting.” Decker eyed the desktop computer. “Cummins’s laptop and phone were at the house, correct?”

  “Yes,” said Andrews. “They’re being examined. And we’ll check this one, too.”

  Decker and White looked through the desk drawers while Andrews started searching through a cabinet.

  Later, after they were finished, Decker went back out to the clerks. “‘Res ipsa loquitor.’ Mean anything to you?”

  Angstrom said, “It’s a Latin term. It means ‘Things speak for themselves.’”

  Sykes added, “The concept is used in civil cases. Negligence, that sort of thing. Shifts the burden of proof to the defendant.”

  “Give me an example,” said Decker.

  “An animal part found in a can of vegetables. A plane engine catching on fire. An AC window unit in a high-rise falls out and kills someone. The result itself speaks to there being negligence or some illegal or actionable act by the defendant. In other words, it wouldn’t have happened at all if someone didn’t screw up. It’s not applicable in criminal cases. There the burden of proof remains with the government at all times, of course.”

  They walked out of the courthouse with Patty Kelly’s home address.

  “Do you know Kelly?” Decker asked Andrews.

  “No, not really. But I’ve never heard a bad word said against her. She’s been with the judge since Cummins joined the court.”

  After a ten-minute drive they reached a neighborhood of well-kept modest houses with meager lawns, tall and short palm trees, and lots of rock and gravel accents in various colors. Decker assumed that was popular down here because rock and gravel didn’t need to be watered and the sun couldn’t kill them.

  A late model red Kia SUV was parked in the driveway.

  They knocked on the door and waited. Finally, they heard footsteps.

  Only the person who opened the door wasn’t Patty Kelly.

  Chapter 21

  YES?” SAID THE MAN, WHO was in his sixties, with salt-and-pepper hair, and a loose, couch-potato frame.

  Andrews flashed his badge and said, “We’re here to see Patty Kelly. And you are?”

  “I am her husband, Steve Kelly. Is this about the judge?”

  “Yes. How’d you hear?”

  “Someone from the court called here this morning.”

  “And your wife?”

  “Patty’s not here.”

  Decker said, “She called in sick today.”

  “She didn’t sleep well last night. She had time off she needed to take, so she did.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “Maybe to the store. She mentioned last night she had some shopping to do. She was gone when I got back in the house from working outside. Probably went to just take her mind off the judge. She’s been gone a few hours now.”

  “Can you call her?” asked Decker. “And let her know we’re waiting?”

  “Sure.” Kelly took out his phone and called. It went right to voice mail, so he left a message. “I’m sure she’ll call right back. She always does.”

  Five minutes later his phone had not rung.

  Decker said, “Try texting her.”

  He did and they waited another five minutes.

  “What store?” said White.

  “Well, she was going to quite a few. But she usually saves the grocery shopping for last. At the Harris Teeter, just up the road. You might have passed it.”

  “What kind of car does she drive?” asked Andrews.

  “White Toyota Camry. She’s got a vanity plate. ‘SUNNY.’ As in Florida sunny.”

  Decker looked at Andrews. “Why don’t you wait here in case she comes back. We’ll check out the Harris Teeter. Whoever sees her calls the other.” He eyed Kelly. “Got a picture of your wife handy?”

  Kelly took a framed photo off the shelf and held it out. White took a picture of it with her phone.

  Decker glanced at the photo. Patty Kelly was an attractive woman in her early sixties with white-blondish hair cut to the shape of her head. She had a trim figure and stood about five-five. Intriguingly, she looked familiar to him for some reason. And it was surprising that he could not pull that memory up instantly from his personal cloud.

  Well, the Cognitive Institute said I was in for more changes. Maybe this is one of them.

  He and White got into the rental and drove off to the Harris Teeter.

  They were on the lookout for the white Camry with the SUNNY plates on the way there, but didn’t see it. Decker drove through the parking lot looking for the car, while White went inside the Harris Teeter to search for the woman.

  Twenty minutes later they both had come up empty. They drove back to Kelly’s house. Steve Kelly had tried calling his wife multiple times without luck.

  “Did she get any calls before she left?” asked Decker.

  Kelly checked the landline, but the latest message on there was a recorded voice from the previous night announcing a great financial opportunity in gold futures if the Kellys called back right away.

  “How about her cell phone?” asked White.

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I was out in back doing yard work earlier. I wouldn’t have heard her phone ring from out there.” Kelly looked at them nervously. “I’m sure she’s…I mean, nothing could have happened to her, could it?”

  None of them answered his question.

  Decker said, “If you hear from her, will you tell her to call us?” He handed the man one of his cards.

  “Right away. I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Probably be back any minute now.” As soon as he finished he looked off into the distance, his mouth agape, and his eyes slitted in worry.

  As they drove away, Andrews said, “What do you think?”

  “I think potential witnesses keep disappearing on us. Let’s go to a place where that can’t happen,” said Decker.

  “Where’s that?” asked White.

  “Alan Draymont’s home. He’s not there, but there might be something to help us.”

  “But he lives back near Miami,” said Andrews. “That’s over four hours roundtrip from here.”

  “You got something else to do today?” retorted Decker.

  “What do you think about Mrs. Kelly?” interjected White.

  “She worked with the judge, probably knew things about her nobody else would. And now she might have vanished.”

  “Surely her husband would have seen someone kidnap her,” countered White.

  “A phone call or text to lure her out would have done the same thing,” replied Andrews.

  Decker eyed him and said, “That’s right. And if she doesn’t turn up voluntarily we have to figure out who that might have been. I’d get her phone records ASAP.”

  Andrews got on the phone to do just that and he said he was also putting out an APB on her and her car.

  As they drove along, Decker closed his eyes and let everything they had learned, and not learned, settle over him like a layer of fine dust. Yet, frustratingly, all he could see in his mind was Mary Lancaster with a gun in her mouth. He opened his eyes and stared at the back of White’s head as she steered the car.

  This is not the time for my brain to go on some weird-ass emotional odyssey.

  He watched as Andrews spoke to his folks at the FBI to get the necessary paperwork going to get into Kelly’s phone records and also put out the APB.

  Decker wondered how much longer he could keep doing this shit. Part of him didn’t care if he ever solved another case. And that had never happened to him before. Was it Mary’s killing herself? Sandy’s desperate pleas to him? The fact that he hadn’t held his wife, or kissed Molly on the cheek, in years?

  His daughter would be a teenager now, in high school. Getting ready for the prom. Getting ready for college, maybe. Getting ready for life. Instead she was lying in a coffin next to her mom’s grave. Through no fault of her own.

  That buck stopped with me. Always with me.

  Andrews put his phone away, “Okay, the ball is rolling on that.” He eyed Decker. “Did you hear me?”

  Decker glanced at the sun, the image of his dead daughter strewn all across its flaming surface. Decker could imagine his brain and imperfect memory burning up, just like the sun.

  And maybe that would be the best thing that could happen to him. Because right now, he just didn’t see this ride lasting much longer.

  Chapter 22

  A​LAN DRAYMONT HAD LIVED IN an apartment about twenty minutes from Lancer’s house. It wasn’t in a sleek high-rise. It was in a three-story structure nowhere near the water. It looked old and worn out. And set up like a motel where the doors opened directly to the outside.

  “They’ll probably knock this thing down in a couple of years,” noted Andrews. “Rezone and go up fifteen stories and maybe have water views; you can make a fortune.”

  “Yeah, and in twenty years this might be beachfront,” noted Decker.

  “That’s not funny,” shot back Andrews.

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  Andrews looked at White. “We’re sensitive to climate change issues down here.”

  White looked in the direction of the water. “I guess I would be, too, seeing how close it is to you all. But I live in Baltimore. We got issues, too. Guess we all do. Only I’m nowhere near the Harbor. Way out of my price range.”

  “Roe said they had seven offices in Florida?” said Decker.

  “Yeah, they actually have one in Naples.”

  “So if Draymont lives two hours away, why have him guard Judge Cummins? Why not use someone from Naples?”

  Andrews said, “That’s a good question.”

  White interjected, “If he was guarding the judge at night, did he sleep on the premises?”

  “If he slept at all,” said Decker. “He’d probably be up all night patrolling and then go crash somewhere while the judge was at work. But Gamma would have to foot that bill, I would think.”

  “I’ll check on that to be sure,” said Andrews.

  They approached Draymont’s apartment, which was on the third floor.

  “Any problems with a search warrant here?” said Decker.

  “There is if he lives with someone,” pointed out White. “Who might have killed him. Then there is a Fourth Amendment issue, because even murderers have an expectation of privacy under the law. Go figure.”

  Decker nodded. “Right. So let’s knock on the door and find out if he did live with someone. Because consent to search by someone legally authorized to do so is the best exception to a warrant requirement.”

  When they got to the third floor and approached Draymont’s apartment, Decker pulled his gun and said, “Okay, that’s maybe an opportunity.”

  The door was partially open.

  Andrews and White had drawn their weapons, too.

  Decker eyed Andrews. “Your turf, how do you want to handle this?”

  “Me first, you left, White right.” Andrews moved past Decker, shouted out, “FBI, identify yourselves. Now!” There was no response. “FBI, coming in.” He kicked the door open, and edged into the front room. Decker was on his left wing and White on the right, their guns doing sweeping arcs in front of them.

  “Shit,” said Decker. “Somebody beat us to it.”

  The place had been turned upside down.

  They made a quick search to make sure no one was there, dead, injured, or hiding.

  Decker said, “Check with the management and see if anyone saw anybody here either last night or today, and also when was the last time anyone saw Draymont. And you’ll have to dial up a forensics team. Since we’re not sure if he lives with someone, get a warrant.”

  “Right.”

  The place was only about a thousand square feet, Decker estimated. Little furniture, and what was there was cheap and old. It might have come with the apartment for all he knew. There were no personal photos that he could see, nothing to really show who had lived there.

  Andrews returned about a half hour later after his questioning of management and other personnel.

  “No one saw or heard anything. The place only has the manager and a handyman on-site. The manager had liquor on his breath and the handyman was working on his pickup truck in the back and didn’t really seem with it.”

  “No maid service or anything?” asked Decker.

  “Nope. People clean their own units. I tried the apartments on either side of Draymont’s. Nobody answered. I taped my card to both doors with a message to call me if they know anything about Draymont. The manager said he pays on time and caused no problems. No visitors that he knows of, but I doubt he keeps close watch. And there’s no one else on the lease other than Draymont.”

  “When we did the quick search I didn’t see anything business related here,” said White. “No home office, laptop. No files or documents.”

  “And his phone was not found on his body at Cummins’s house,” said Andrews. “People weren’t taking chances. If they took his phone, they turned it off, because we couldn’t track it. Same for Lancer.”

  “Let’s get Patty Kelly’s cell phone number and see if we can track it,” suggested White.

  “On it,” said Andrews. “And I’ll have the apartment secured until the warrant drops. Even if no one else is on the lease, I don’t want to take chances that someone else might reside here.”

  “Good idea,” said White.

  Decker looked over the railing at the parking lot below. The day had produced a truckload of questions and really not a single answer. In fact, it was getting more complex by the minute.

  This is going to take my A game. But I’m not sure I’m up for it.

  Chapter 23

  THEIR HOTEL HAD A SAD four-seater bar and Decker was sitting in one of them cradling a half-empty bottle of Bud. He eyed the TV screen, where a hockey game was on. To him, it was a little incongruous watching heavily clothed men skating on ice with palm trees gently swaying just outside the hotel, and a temperature of seventy degrees at eleven p.m.

  He took out his phone, placed it on the bar, and looked at the caller log. Mary Lancaster had phoned him at 2:58 in the morning. She would have roughly seven minutes left to live.

  The image of the woman putting the gun in her mouth once more came to his brutalized mind. And he had just stood there without saying one damn thing to stop her.

  When he had woken up in the hospital after the blindside hit on the football field that had ended his athletic career as well as the person he had once been, Decker had no idea what had happened to him. As the doctors explained about his dying twice before being resuscitated, it was as though they were speaking to him about someone else.

  Traumatic brain injury, they had said. The extent of the damage was unknown as yet, they had told him. They had simply done their best to keep him alive. It would not be until weeks later that he would learn what had truly happened to him that day.

  Then came the extended stay at the Cognitive Institute in Chicago, where he had met folks who had also suffered injuries to their brains. And for all of them that trauma had led to startling new mental superpowers.

  Superpowers. Yeah, I can forget nothing, most of the time. I see death as electric blue and other shit sometimes as orange or pink or green. Big, bad numbers used to come to eat me. I’m as socially awkward as a fourteen-year-old boy with a face full of zits at his first dance. I get tongue-tied on things I used to do easily, like being funny instead of annoying, having a filter, being sympathetic, though I have gotten a bit better with that. I have the same body but not the same person inside of that body. It cost me my family, though, and because of that I can never forgive…me.

  He closed his eyes, and his broad shoulders slumped as he felt the full weight of all that he was pondering.

  “You want some company?”

  He looked up to see White standing there. She’d changed into jeans, a dark red blouse, and black ballerina flats that made her look very short.

  “Free country.”

  She slid onto the seat next to him and glanced at his phone. The screen had gone dark.

  “Waiting for a call?”

  He pocketed the phone. “No.”

  She waved to the bartender and ordered a G and T with Bombay Sapphire as the critical ingredient. “We covered a lot of ground today. Crisscrossed the state twice, in fact.”

  “But didn’t find out much,” he amended.

  “Early days yet. Got to start somewhere. And there are always lots of questions and muddling shit at the beginning.”

  “And at the end, depending on how things turn out.”

  Her drink came and she took a sip. “I looked you up, Decker. You have never failed to solve any case the Bureau put you on.”

  “My very first case as a rookie detective back in Ohio, I put the wrong man in prison. A bunch of years later he told me so. He challenged me to prove I was wrong and he was right.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes. But it was too late to help him. Someone killed him the same day he made his challenge. I found his body.”

  “And how did that make you feel?”

  He finished his beer and waved for another. He turned to her. “How do you think it made me feel? It made me feel like shit. I carved years off a man’s life because I fucked up. I went into a case with preconceived notions and I never deviated from them.”

  “Did you learn from that?”

  “Yeah, I did, but too late for him.”

  She raised her glass. “Congratulations, you’re not perfect.”

  “Is that what you think this is about?”

  “What this is about is us trying to do our job to the best of our ability. When I was a rookie, I messed up chain of custody once. Then I wasted time on following dopey leads. Got torched on the witness stand twice by slick defense lawyers because I didn’t prepare hard enough. This is not TV, Decker. We make mistakes. We’re human. We don’t always get it right. We don’t always solve the case in one hour including commercials.”