Long Shadows

Chapter 45

The lights in the house were all on and Steve Kelly answered on the first knock. He looked beleaguered and unfocused.

“I... I thought you might be the police with word on Patty.”

“Can we come in?” asked Decker.

He stepped aside and they moved into the house.

“Y-you’re not here to tell me that she’s—”

“No, we’re not,” said Decker. “We’re doing our best to find her. Alive.”

After they all sat down Decker said, “Your wife got a warning from someone shortly before she fled.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kelly. “A warning about what? And from who?”

“We don’t know, for sure. It came close to the disappearance of another person named Alice Lancer. Do you know her?”

“No, I don’t. Never heard of her.”

“And your wife?”

“She never mentioned that name to me. Who is she?”

“Someone of interest” was all Decker would say. “How about a man named Alan Draymont?”

Kelly shook his head.

Decker turned to Andrews. “Show him pictures of both.”

Andrews did so, and Kelly pointed at Draymont. “Now, I did see that young man once.”

“Where?” asked White.

“He was walking down the street and stopped to talk to Patty. I was inside reading the newspaper and saw them. When I asked her who it was, she said he was just asking for directions.”

“Did you believe that?” asked Decker.

Kelly looked offended. “Of course I did.”

Decker glanced around and saw some pictures on a shelf. He walked over to look at them. “Is this your wife, from some years back?”

“Yes. She was thirty-eight. I know because those are from our honeymoon in Mexico. It was my second marriage and Patty’s first.”

“No kids?” said Decker.

“I had two from my first marriage. Patty didn’t want children and I was fine with that.”

“Do you know anything of her earlier life?” asked White.

“She was from the West Coast originally. She moved to Florida at some point. She was a paralegal for a while and then got the job at the courthouse. She had no family to speak of. Or she never mentioned any.”

Decker picked up one of these photos and brought it over to show White and Andrews.

They both gaped, while Kelly looked confused. He said, “Is her picture important somehow?”

Andrews held the photo of Alice Lancer on his phone next to Kelly’s picture. Now Kelly gaped.

In the photos, the two women looked like nearly identical sisters.

“My God, what the hell does that mean?”

Decker said, “We ran a check on Lancer. We know that she was adopted and her adopted parents were killed in a plane crash. But I think we may know who her biological mother was. Your wife. We’ll have to confirm it with DNA.”

This was the memory that had come back to Decker earlier. It was the reason why Patty Kelly had looked familiar to him when he’d first seen the woman’s picture. It was because she so closely resembled her daughter, Alice, even as an older woman. Now comparing the women’s images at around the same age, it was clear they were probably related.

“What in the hell is going on?” exclaimed Kelly.

“Your wife and Alice Lancer and Alan Draymont, the man she said was asking about directions, were apparently involved in something together,” said Decker. “Lancer and Draymont are dead. They were killed at different times but in the exact same way and left in the exact same spot. But before all that happened Lancer, or someone acting for her, sent your wife a text message telling her to run. And she did.”

The entire time Decker was talking Kelly seemed to be growing smaller and smaller until the couch threatened to swallow him.

“D-dead?”

“If your wife wanted to hide out somewhere, where would she go?” asked White.

Kelly gummed his lips and looked hopelessly confused. “I... I don’t know. I mean, I never thought she would have to hide from anything.”

“Okay, let me recalibrate the question,” said White. “Where would she go to get away from things? Meditate? Chill?”

“We have a little beach cottage in Key Largo. I inherited it from my parents. I call it a cottage but it’s really just a fishing shack. If I fixed it up I could probably get some good money for it, but I never got around to doing that. I haven’t been there in a couple years, but Patty loved it. She could really get away from it all there, she said. And she loved the movie. You know, the one with Bogart and Bacall?”

“Yeah, and the murderous gangster played by Edward G. Robinson,” Decker amended. “We’ll need the address, right now.”