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The spark of electricity. The fire. The discovery of the bodies. All that had followed.
He sat in a deck chair and continued to stare at the place, even as his thoughts wandered to other facets of the investigation. And then he arrived at one particularly disturbing one.
If Babbot had been killed because of somethingat Maxus, then what about Frank Mitchell?
Was the accident not really an accident?
After all, if you could program a robot to do one thing, you could program it to do another thing.
But why kill Frank Mitchell? What would have been the motivation?
He pulled out his phone and called Todd Milligan, a team member of his at the FBI. He asked Milligan to checkout anything he could find on the Maxus Corporation.
Milligan knew Decker well enough to not ask any questions. He simply said, “On it.”
Decker put the phone away and continued to stare at the house where the bodies of two DEA agents had been left. They had been killed elsewhere, that was now clear, but Decker had no idea why. Or why that house had been chosen as the locationfor their bodies.
He closed his eyes and let his memory flash back to the first time he’d met Frank Mitchell.
They had been sitting in the living room after Frank had gotten home from work. Frank had been naturally upset at two murders having taken place almost in his backyard. He’d been curious about the killings, but that was normal too. It would have been unusual if hehadn’tbeen curious.
Then Decker moved on to another image.
It was a photo. Of a Little League baseball team.
And maybe something more than that.
***
He met Jamison on his way out. She was holding Zoe’s hand as they came up the front walk. In her other hand was a bag of groceries.
“Where are you going?” sheasked him.
“Just back out to check on a few things.”
“How’s it going?”
“It’s going.”
“Don’t do anything—” She stopped and glanced at Zoe. “You know.”
“I know.”
As he hurried away, Zoe called after him, “Mr. Amos, you’re going to come back, right?”
Decker stopped and slowly turned. “I’ll be back, Zoe. I promise.”
Hedrove over to Bradley Costa’s apartment and used the key Lassiter had given him to let himself in.
He walked right over to the photo on the shelf.
A smiling John Baron stared back at him.
The boys all looked happy too. They should have after winning the state championship.
What had been bugging Decker ever since he’d found out about Bradley Costa was onequestion:
Why would a young and single banker leave New York City and come to this place? Decker had to imagine that especially for a young person with money, the enticements of the Big Apple would trump anything Baronville had to offer.
