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Chapter20
TALK ABOUT COMING FULL CIRCLE.
Decker dropped his duffel on the floor of his new digs.
It was the next evening and after a night’s stay in the hospital he had moved into the Residence Inn. This was actually his old room when he’d lived there.
He’d gotten a new rental car after spending considerable time on the phone trying to explain to Hertz exactly what had happened to the other one.
“Someone was trying to kill you?” the customer service rep had said skeptically. “I’ve been doing this a long time and that’s a first for me.”
“Not for me,” Decker had truthfully replied.
He sat in the one chair next to the window and overlooking the street. He popped the cold beer he had brought with him.
That was dinner. Well, really it wasn’t, but after nearly getting blown up the night before, he didn’t have much of an appetite.
He touched his head where the bandage still was. It was another knock up there to add to all the others. How many more could he endure without something major popping?
And he was tired of getting nearly blown up. He’d almost bought it in a similar way back in Baronville. The only good thing to come out of his almost being killed was the fact that someone was afraid of what he would find out. That meant there was a truth out there that needed to be discovered.
And Decker meant to find it.
One floor down was the room where Meryl Hawkins’s life had ended, a bit prematurely.
And violently.
Sipping his beer, Decker walked down to the space. It was still off-limits and stickered with yellow tape, but the officer guarding the door knew Decker and let him pass.
“What happened to you?” the cop asked, eyeing the bandage around the big man’s head.
“When I find out, I’ll let you know.”
Decker closed the door behind him and surveyed the space. Nothing had been touched other than Hawkins’s body being removed. He wondered briefly about the man’s burial, or cremation. Part of him wanted to haul his daughter down here to take care of her father’s remains. Part of him understood why she wanted nothing to do with it.
At the end of the day that was really none of his concern.
He looked at the chair where Hawkins had been sitting. There were traces of blood on it, not from the exit wound since there hadn’t been one. The splatter from the entry wound had been the source.
Pillow, gun, dead guy. No witnesses.
He looked around the rest of the room. It had already been thoroughly searched and nothing else had been found.
They’d gotten the postmortem report on Hawkins but not the tox screen yet. His stomach had been empty. But what was in his bloodstream?
Decker closed his eyes and dialed up his cloud. Hawkins had told him at the cemetery that he was going to take something to help him sleep, after spending a few hours throwing up. There had been no evidence of that in the bathroom, but he might have cleaned it up. But there had also been no sign of meds, either illegal or not.
They’d checked the Dumpster at the rear of the building and found nothing there either. Had whoever killed him taken the meds for some reason? Why would that be? What could they have revealed?
He went back to his room, put his few clothes away, cleaned up, and, suddenly hungry, went in search of dinner.
He chose Suds because it was close and cheap. He sat at the bar and ordered a beer, and a burger and fries with chili. He involuntarily looked over his shoulder once, thinking that Jamison might swoop in and chastise him for the cardiac killer meal plan.
He turned to his right when the person sat down next to him a few minutes later.
Rachel Katz eyed the bandage around his head. “What happened to you?”
“Cut myself shaving,” replied Decker as he took a sip of beer.
