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Chapter5
ROSS BOGART SAID,“This is unacceptable, Decker. And I mean totally unacceptable.”
Decker was on his phone, heading to the Burlington police station.
“I understand how you could think that, Ross.”
“There’s no understanding anything. I let you go rogue once before with the Melvin Mars case. And then when you wanted to stay back in Baronville and work the case there because it was connected to Alex’s family. But I can’t let you go off willy-nilly whenever you feel like it.”
“This is different,” said Decker.
“You say that every time,” barked Bogart. “You’ve not only blown up the exception to the rule, you’ve blown up the rule. The bottom line is you work for the FBI.”
“I’m sorry, Ross. This is my hometown. I can’t turn my back on it.”
“You’ve made your choice, then?”
“Yes.”
“Then you force me to make mine.”
“This is all me. Alex has nothing to do with it.”
“I’ll deal with Special Agent Jamison separately.”
The line went dead.
Decker slowly put the phone away. It seemed that his days at the FBI were numbered.
He looked over at Lancaster, who was in the car with him.
“Problems?” she said.
“There are always problems.”
They drove on.
***
Susan Richards was not pleased. “You’re shitting me, right? You think I killed that son of a bitch? I wish I had.”
Decker and Lancaster had just walked into the interrogation room at police headquarters. Jamison had gone back to her hotel because Decker had not received authorization from Bogart to work on the case. And that permission obviously would not be forthcoming. Bogart had probably already contacted her.
They had had to wait for a few hours while the paperwork was drawn up to bring Richards in after she angrily refused to voluntarily comply with their request. And the fuming woman had apparently taken her time getting ready while the uniforms impatiently waited.
Thus it was now nearly five in the morning.
Lancaster looked ready to fall asleep.
Decker looked ready to question the woman for the next ten years.
The interrogation room’s cinderblock walls were still painted mustard yellow. Decker had never known why, other than maybe that was the color of some old paint the custodians had found somewhere in the basement. Leaving the cinder blocks their original gray would have been nicer, he thought. But maybe no one wanted “nicer” in an interrogation room.
Richards had been forty-two when her family was wiped out. She was in her midfifties now. She had aged remarkably well, Decker thought. He remembered her as tall, but plump and mousy-looking, her light brown hair hanging limply around her face.
Now she was much thinner, and her hair was cut in a chic manner, with the tresses grazing her shoulder. She had colored her hair and blonde highlights predominated. Her mousy personality had been replaced by an assertive manner that had made itself known with her outburst the moment the two detectives walked into the room.
Richards looked from Lancaster to Decker as they sat down across from her. “Wait a minute, you’re the two from that night. I recognize you now. You know what he did.” She sat forward, her sharp elbows pressed against the tabletop. Her face full of fury, she snapped, “Youknowwhat that bastard did.”
