The police had kept them for hours, so it was now around six in the morning. Mars had driven Decker home. Decker was sitting at the kitchen table, still looking a little pale.
Mars eyed him. “Man, it was hairy in there. I can hold my own in pretty much any fight, but those dudes had some serious firepower. Good thing Alex told me where you were. I got in from the airport about ten minutes after you left. I drove my rental car right over to the place. Looked around and then heard all the noise from the basement. When I got down there it wasn’t looking too good.”
“You saved my life, Melvin,” said Decker. “I’d be under a slab of concrete now but for you.”
“Payback, man. How many times did you save my butt? Besides, I just treated it like running plays. Blow through the line and deliver some hurt.”
He looked at Jamison. “You’re doing good work with him, Alex. He’s even skinnier than when I saw him last time.”
Jamison did not appear to be listening. “Amos, you told me you weren’t going to do anything dangerous. You almost got yourself and Melvin killed!”
“Look, I’m sorry. But something was obviously going down in there.”
“Then you should have called the police. Like you told me you were going to.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have given Melvin the address, then he wouldn’t have come.”
“Hey, man, don’t get mad at her. I made her do it. Had to make sure you were okay.”
Decker looked at Jamison, who was still scowling at him.
“Because he’s your friend, Amos. Friends don’t put other friends’ lives in jeopardy.”
“Okay, Alex, message delivered loud and clear.”
“Has it been really? What, until next time you ignore it?”
No one said anything for a long moment.
Finally, Decker turned to Mars and said, “How are things in Alabama?”
Mars sat down on one of the barstools and Jamison poured him out a cup of coffee, though it was easy to see that she was still upset at Decker.
“Not bad. I did my thing with the high school football team and then decided to take some time off.”
“Are you living down there?” Jamison asked tersely.
“Had a short-term rental. I’m looking around now to find a permanent place. Maybe somewhere up here.” He glanced at Decker. “How about that, Decker? Me living up here?”
“You can live wherever you want, Melvin,” Decker answered. “You can buy a mansion if you want.”
Grinning, Mars said, “I spent twenty years in a little box, what would I do with a mansion? I’d get lost.”
“There are a lot of nice places around here,” said Jamison. “And it’s a fun area. Lots to do.”
Mars sipped his coffee. “So you guys working on something? I mean, besides what happened last night?”
“If Decker doesn’t go off and get killed, yeah, we are working on something,” said Jamison with one more glare at Decker. “And it’s pretty complicated. We haven’t made a lot of headway.”
Mars motioned to Decker. “That dude’s middle name is ‘complicated.’ What he can’t figure out can’t be figured out.”
“Well, this might be the one,” said Decker, heaving himself to his feet and plopping down on a stool next to Mars.
“Want to tell me about it?” asked Mars.
“You heard about the guy who shot the woman outside the FBI headquarters?” asked Jamison.
“Yeah. Saw the story a few days ago on CNN when I was having lunch. Saw some more stuff when I was waiting at the airport.”
“Well, that’s the case.”
“We know part of what happened,” said Decker. “But we don’t know why Walter Dabney shot Anne Berkshire.”
“We think he was blackmailed by someone to do it.”
“Blackmailed? How?”
“This is confidential, Melvin,” said Jamison.
He chuckled. “Hey, who do you think I’m going to tell? Hell, I don’t know anybody to tell.”
Decker said, “Apparently, Dabney was stealing secrets from a military project he was working on. He sold those secrets to raise money to help his daughter. Her husband was in to some bad guys for gambling debts. Russians. It was either pay or get slaughtered.”
“Damn, so this Dabney guy was caught between a rock and a hard place?”
“He committed treason, Melvin,” said Jamison.
“Yeah, but it was his family, Alex. Tough to turn your back on that.”
“So that part we know,” said Decker. “What we don’t know is the Berkshire piece. We can’t find a connection between them. But there may not be one if he was blackmailed to do it. Which means we have to try to get there from Berkshire’s side and the people who wanted her dead.”
“Bogart and Milligan are tackling it from Dabney’s end,” interjected Jamison.
“And Dabney shot himself, right?”
“Yes, but he had terminal brain cancer,” said Jamison. “He’d be dead in six months or less. So maybe he didn’t care.”
Mars frowned and slowly shook his head. “Wow. Blackmail, gambling debts, brain tumor. This Dabney guy had a dark cloud over him.”
“It is pretty sad,” said Jamison. “You think you’re having a bad day, think about what happened to him. His family is devastated.”
“What about the daughter whose husband got him into this mess?” said Mars.
“What about her?” asked Jamison.
“Well, she must feel pretty bad.”
“She does. We’ve seen that firsthand.”
“Yeah, I get that. But what about something her old man might have told her?”
“Told her about what?”
“Well, I take it this whole gambling thing was a secret between them?”
“It was,” said Decker. “His wife didn’t know anything about it. Neither did the sisters. At least so they claimed.”
“So maybe he had a closer relationship with this daughter. Parents do, you know, have that special thing with certain kids. And if he did something illegal to help her and then he gets blackmailed to do something else bad, he might have talked to her about it.”
“Why?” asked Jamison.
“Because he’d want her to know why he did what he did. He wouldn’t want her to think he was some kind of crazy murderer. If they were blackmailing him for stealing secrets that he stole and sold to help her, I think he’d want her to know.”
Mars looked between Decker and Jamison. “Hey, just my two cents.”
Jamison stared at Decker. “But didn’t Agent Brown say that Natalie knew nothing about what her dad was planning in the way of stealing secrets to pay for the gambling debts?”
“She did. But there’s no way she could know that for sure. I’m not sure she even talked to her.”
“But if Natalie and her dad communicated via phone or email or text, there’d be a record of it.”
“But what about face-to-face? We checked on Dabney’s travel schedule. We never looked at Natalie’s.”
“So you mean she could have come here, or met up with him somewhere?”
Decker looked at her. “If you were sick and suspected what was wrong, would you go to MD Anderson, or any hospital, alone? Or would you want a family member with you?”
“I’d want someone with me,” replied Jamison. “But why not his wife?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to freak her out. She seems the nervous type. And if he was closer to Natalie, like Melvin suggested, she might have gone with him. I mean, she owed him big for saving her husband’s butt.”
Jamison said, “We never asked the hospital if someone was with him. But do you really think Natalie might know who was blackmailing her father?”
“If there’s even a remote possibility that she does, or has information that could lead us to whoever it is, we have to follow it up.”
“But Decker, Agent Brown told us that Natalie—”
He snapped, “I know what Agent Brown told us. That doesn?
??t make it true.”
“But we’re working the Berkshire angle. Ross and Todd are doing the Dabney side of the equation.”
“I don’t care who’s doing what, Alex. I go wherever a case takes me.”
Decker rose.
Jamison looked at her watch. “What, you mean go now? It’s not even six-thirty yet.”
The next moment, Decker was out the door without responding.
With twinkling eyes, Mars looked at Jamison and said, “Dude doesn’t change, does he?”
“That’s the problem, Melvin,” retorted Jamison.
CHAPTER
30
IT WAS NEARLY seven o’clock when they arrived at the Dabney home. A couple of cars were in the circular driveway. They were probably rentals being used by the daughters while they were here. The house looked dark, with only the front porch light on.
Mars had come with them. They had driven over in his car because Jamison’s would barely fit her and Decker. But he waited in the car while they walked up to the house.
Decker knocked on the front door. No one came.
“Do you think the housekeeper’s here yet?” asked Jamison.
“I don’t know anything about housekeepers,” said Decker.
They turned toward the door when they heard footsteps.
Jules Dabney opened the door. She was dressed in sweatpants and a GW sweatshirt. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she was barefoot.
She looked at them and said crossly, “Jesus, it’s a little early, you know.”
“Is your sister Natalie here?” asked Decker.
“Yes, but she’s asleep.”
“We need to talk to her.”
“Can’t this wait?”
“If it could we wouldn’t be here this early.”
“Look, I’m going to have to insist—”
Decker held out his creds and said, “We need to talk to her.”
Jamison stepped in front of him. “Just tell your sister that we want to talk to her about Corbett.”
“Corbett? Is he okay?”
“Just tell her. If she still doesn’t want to talk to us, we’ll leave and come back later.”
Jules hesitated and then closed the door. They heard her walking away.
As they were standing there waiting, a small Kia SUV pulled up and parked off the main drive. The housekeeper, an older black woman whom Decker and Jamison had seen on a previous visit, got out of the car and walked past them, nodding and smiling. She opened the front door with a key and went in.
Jamison looked at her watch. “Okay, now we know. Housekeepers to the rich get in at seven sharp.”
Another few minutes passed, and when the door opened again, it was Natalie. She had on an ankle-length robe. Her hair was stringy and matted on one side. Her eyes were bloodshot.
“Jules said you wanted to talk about Corbett?”
“Maybe we can come inside?” suggested Jamison.
“I guess,” she said sullenly. She stepped back and they walked past her.
She led them to the library and closed the door behind them. They sat on the couch and she sat across from them. Natalie wouldn’t look at them. Her gaze remained directed at the floor.
“My mom’s not up yet.”
“That’s okay, we don’t need to bother her,” said Jamison. She glanced at Decker.
He said, “We know about the gambling debts. And we know how your father got the money to pay them off.”
“Oh, God!” Natalie put her face in her hands and started sobbing.
Jamison rose, crossed the room, and sat down next to her, wrapping an arm around her quaking body. She gave Decker a scowl.
Natalie started to gasp for air.
“Are you okay?” asked Jamison.
Natalie reached into her pocket and pulled out an inhaler. She took two quick puffs and her breathing rapidly settled down.
“I’m okay now. Asthma,” she added, holding up the inhaler. “We all have it, except Dad. We got it from Mom.” She leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes, breathing deeply.
Jamison sat back next to Decker and whispered, “I think you need to go a little easy.”
Decker waited for Natalie to regain her composure. She slowly sat up, rubbed her eyes dry with the cord of her robe, and looked at him.
“I didn’t know who else to turn to,” she said, her voice scratchy and raw. “They were going to kill him. They were going to kill all of us.”
“Did you know about the gambling?” asked Decker.
“I didn’t know the extent of it. And I didn’t know he was mixed up with the sort of people who would murder you.”
“Are you sure he’s not going to do it again?” asked Jamison.
“This scared the shit out of Corbett. But at this point, I don’t really care. I’m divorcing him. He cost me my father. I hate him. I hate everything about him. I’m coming back to the States with my daughter. I just have to find a place to live.”
“Do you know where your father got the money?”
She shook her head. “I know he and Mom are well-off. But the amount was so huge.”
“Ten million, we heard,” said Decker.
She nodded. “I didn’t think they had that kind of money in cash. But maybe if they sold the house and some other stuff.”
Decker said, “And you were expecting your father to do that? Sell everything they had. Everything they’d worked for?”
“I…I don’t know. I don’t know what I was expecting him to do, I guess.” She paused. “When I was a kid and got into trouble my father always fixed things. Always. He made things right. I guess…I guess I got used to that.”
Decker said firmly, “That works with falling off your bike and getting your feelings hurt when someone calls you a name. But you’re not a kid anymore, Natalie.”
She gazed fixedly at him. “I know that. I don’t need a lecture from the FBI, okay?”
“So he said nothing to you about where he was going to get the money?”
“No. He just told me he’d take care of it.”
“How was the money sent?” asked Jamison.
“I think he had it wired. But I’m not sure. I just know that it was received. Corbett told me. He was so relieved.”
“I’m sure,” said Decker harshly. “So when you heard about your father, what did you think had happened?”
“I didn’t know what to think. I thought, I thought maybe he had snapped or something. When Jules called she was so calm and