“I know them very well, because they’re us.”
Decker blinked. “Come again?”
“Bogart’s team, meaning us, has been assigned to the case.”
“But we do cold cases.”
“Well, that’s what the meeting today was about. They were changing our assignment. Cold to hot cases. And since you were on the scene of this one, it made sense to let us work it. So we’re a go.”
“Even though I’m a witness to the crime?”
“It’s not as though there’s going to be any doubt as to what happened, Decker. And there were lots of witnesses to what he did. They don’t need you.”
“But I came here to do cold cases,” protested Decker.
“Well, we don’t get to decide that, Decker. The higher-ups do.”
“And they can just pull the rug out from under us like that? Without even asking?”
Milligan attempted a smile, but when he saw the troubled expression on Decker’s face, the look faded. “It’s a bureaucracy, Decker, and we have to follow orders. At least Ross and I do. I guess you and Jamison could call it quits, but my career is locked up with the Bureau.” He paused. “We’ll still be catching bad guys. Just for newer crimes. You’ll still get to do what you do so well.”
Decker nodded but hardly looked appeased by Milligan’s words. He looked down at Berkshire’s body. The pulse of blue assailed him from all corners. He felt slightly sick to his stomach.
Wainwright glanced over and registered on the name on Decker’s ID. “Wait a minute. Amos Decker. Are you the guy who can’t forget anything?”
When Decker didn’t say anything, Milligan said quickly, “Yes, he is.”
Wainwright said, “Heard you guys have solved quite a few old cases over the last several months. Principally the Melvin Mars matter.”
“It was a team effort,” said Milligan. “But we couldn’t have done it without Decker.”
Decker stirred and pointed to a purple smudge on the back of Berkshire’s hand. “What’s that?”
“Let’s have a closer look,” Wainwright said. She gripped a magnifying glass set on a rotating arm and positioned it over the mark. She turned on a light and aimed it at the dead woman’s hand. Peering through the glass, she said, “Appears to be a stamp of some sort.”
Decker took a look through the glass. “Dominion Hospice.” He looked at Milligan, who was already tapping keys on his notebook.
Milligan read down the screen. “Okay, got it. It’s over near Reston Hospital. They handle terminal cases, obviously.”
Decker looked down at Berkshire. “If the mark is still on her hand, presumably she went there today. A shower would have taken it off.”
“Do you think she went to visit someone?” asked Milligan.
“Well, she wasn’t exactly terminal, until Dabney killed her.”
He abruptly walked out without another word.
Wainwright looked at Milligan with raised eyebrows at this sudden departure.
“He kind of just does that…a lot,” said Milligan. “I’ve sort of gotten used to it.”
“Then you’re a better person than I am,” replied Wainwright. She held up the Stryker saw. “Because if he kept walking out on me like that, I might just clock him with this.”
CHAPTER
3
WALTER DABNEY’S CHEST rose and fell with the spasmodic twitch of someone not long for this world. It was as though the lungs were the weary rear guard holding out as the spirit prepared to exit the body.
Alex Jamison was in her late twenties, tall, slim, and pretty with long brunette hair. She sat on the right side of the hospital bed in the CCU. Ross Bogart, an FBI special agent in his late forties, with a bit of gray the only thing marring his perfectly combed dark hair, stood ramrod-straight on the left. His fingers clutched the bed’s safety rail.
Dabney lay in the bed, hooked up to a complex array of monitoring lines and tubes carrying medications. His right eye was an empty crater because the bullet he’d fired into his chin had burst from there after catapulting through parts of the brain. His facial skin was deathly gray, where it wasn’t swollen and stained purple by burst capillaries. His breathing was erratic and the monitor showed his vitals to be fluctuating all over the place. He was in the critical care unit, the place designated for the sickest and most badly injured patients at the hospital.
But he wasn’t just injured; Walter Dabney was dying.
The doctors who had been in and out during the day had all confirmed that it was simply a matter of time before the brain told the heart to stop pumping. And there was nothing they could do about it. The damage was such that no medicine and no surgery could bring the man back. They were just counting down the time until death.
Mrs. Eleanor Dabney, better known as Ellie, had arrived thirty minutes after the FBI had told her what had happened. They would have to question her, but right now the woman was simply a grieving widow-to-be. She was currently in the bathroom throwing up, a nurse assisting her.
Bogart eyed Jamison. She seemed to sense his attention and glanced up.
The monitor started to beep and they both glanced at it, but the device quieted down.
“We are sure, Mrs. Dabney. I wish I could tell you otherwise. There were a lot of witnesses.”
Ellie blew her nose on a tissue and said in a firmer voice, “He’s not going to recover, is he?”
“The doctors aren’t hopeful, no.”
“I…I didn’t even know he owned a gun.”