Long Shadows

Chapter 46

T​hough it was after eleven, they got on the road right away.

“Should we alert the local cops about this?” Andrews asked as they drove off.

Decker shook his head. “No. I don’t want them to spook Kelly into doing something stupid or going even deeper into hiding. Let’s just get there as fast as we can.”

Andrews steered them to I-75 and took it across Florida west to east. Then they turned south on the Florida Turnpike and took it to Route 1.

“Okay, we’re five minutes out,” said Andrews.

Decker looked at his watch. The trip had taken a little over three hours.

“Stop just short of the place,” he said a few minutes later.

They pulled down a narrow lane that paralleled the beach. It was quiet and still, and clouds covered the moon, throwing everything into a grim darkness.

Andrews stopped the car. He said quietly, “It must be that one down there at the end.”

Steve Kelly hadn’t been exaggerating. The homes here really were little more than fishing shacks, some near to falling down, others in little better shape. The tide was coming in and the breakers were noisy.

They got out and started to walk quietly toward the house, keeping off the street.

“There’s her car out front,” said White softly.

It was indeed the SUNNY license plate on the white Camry.

Decker took the front, and White and Andrews went around back. The yard was littered with palm leaves and trash and rotting fish heads. The shacks on either side were dark, and there were no cars in front of them. It seemed the only shack occupied was the Kellys’.

Or was it?

Decker edged up to the front door and peered into the small window to the left of the door. He slipped his gun from its holster and placed his finger near the trigger.

He stepped to the side of the door and knocked.

“FBI, Mrs. Kelly, open the door.”

He could hear movement inside.

“I’ve... I’ve got a gun,” said a woman’s tremulous voice.

“So do we,” said Decker. “I’ll slide my credentials under the door. Take a look at them. We need to talk.”

He did so and a few moments later the door opened, revealing a woman who looked like a decades-older version of Alice Lancer. She had on jeans and a light blue sweater. Her feet were bare. She had a gun in her right hand and Decker’s credentials in her left.

She handed them back to him and he asked her to put the gun down, which she did, laying it on a side table.

She turned around as White and Andrews came in the rear door.

“Mrs. Kelly, we need to ask you a lot of questions,” said Andrews.

She pursed her lips and nodded. “I suppose so. Let’s sit down.”

She led them over to a couch with worn upholstery and two rickety chairs set around a small, scarred coffee table. The interior held the musty odor of having been closed up for a while.

They sat, and Kelly clutched her knees with her long, bony fingers.

Decker studied her and said, “First off, are you Alice Lancer’s biological mother?”

“Yes. I gave her up for adoption right after she was born. I had no job, no way to support a baby. But it was still the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

“But you two reconciled at some point,” said White.

“We did. I don’t know how Alice did it, but she found me.”

“Was that why she moved here, to be nearer to you?” asked Andrews.

“That’s what she said. She had lived and worked in the DC area before that. Now she was only a couple hours’ drive away.”

“You must have been surprised when she showed up,” said Decker.

“Stunned, more like it. But as soon as I opened the door and saw her, I knew she was my daughter.”

“Yes, I noticed the resemblance, too.”

“Have they found Alice? Is she all right?”

Andrews and White looked uneasily at one another, but Decker kept his gaze squarely on Kelly.

“She sent you a message, telling you to run?”

Kelly looked down at her lap. “Yes, yes, she did.”

“We need to know all about that.”

“I’m not sure I know all that much.”

“Then tell us what you do know.”

“Alice works at Gamma Protection Services.”

“We know. She supervised Alan Draymont, who was killed at Judge Cummins’s house.”

Kelly’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe Judge Cummins is dead. I really can’t. She was the nicest person.”

“Do you know why she wanted protection?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Did she receive any threats?”

“Not that I knew of.” She was turning red in the face and her words were growing softer.

Decker said, “But she didn’t need protection, did she?”

Kelly looked up at him. “Then why have Gamma at her house?”

Decker didn’t say anything; he just stared at her. He finally said, “If you want to avoid trouble, the truth is your best path forward. If you decide to go a different route, things will get dicey. And keep in mind that Draymont was murdered.”

“But I thought he was killed guarding Judge Cummins?”

Decker decided to bring the conversation full circle to where they started. “Then why would your daughter tell you to run? Run from what? And why?”

The woman closed her eyes, and tears seeped from under her lids. “Alice and Alan... found out something.”

“What?” asked Decker.

“I don’t know, she wouldn’t tell me. But it was something important. And... and they were going to use it to...”

“To what? Make some money?”

Kelly opened her eyes and looked up at him. “I told her not to do it. But she wouldn’t listen. I... I hope she’s okay. I never liked Alan. He was too... slick.”

“So why tell you to run if you knew nothing?” asked Andrews.

“The people involved in this might think she had told me something. They might learn of the connection between us. That’s why Alice warned me.”

“You left your husband behind,” noted Decker. “They might have assumed that he knew something, too. They might have killed him.”

She looked up at him in fear. “I wasn’t thinking. I was so scared. They... they haven’t hurt him, have they?”

“Not yet, but he’s very worried about you. You left without saying anything to him. Haven’t answered his calls or texts.”

She let out a gush of air. “I didn’t know what to do. When that text came in... I tried to call Alice, but she didn’t answer. I tried so many times to call her before I turned off my phone.” She looked up at Decker again. “Is she... is she...?”

“You’ll need to come with us, Mrs. Kelly,” said Decker. “We can protect you. But we’ll need your full cooperation.”

“I’ve told you all I know.”

“I don’t think so. And at the very least, there are probably things you can remember better.” He put a hand under her elbow. “Let’s go. We’ll drive you back.”

“My car!”

“Will be taken care of. Do you have a bag?”

“Just over there.” She pointed to a small duffel in the corner.

White snagged it, checked her watch, and said, “Let’s go. Long drive. We should be back in time for breakfast.”

They stepped outside, Andrews in front and Decker next to Kelly. White closed the door behind them and they stepped off into the sandy front yard.

The first shot dropped Andrews. The second round drilled a hole right through Patty Kelly’s forehead.

Decker and White flattened themselves to the sand, guns out and searching for something to shoot. When the car started up, they rose and ran forward. They both fired at the taillights of the car but missed.

They ran back to the fallen people.

Andrews was breathing, but Kelly had reached the end of her life.

White called for help, while Decker staunched the blood coming from the unconscious Andrews’s shoulder.

When the ambulance showed up along with the police, Decker helped them load Andrews onto a gurney, and it sped off with the man to the closest hospital. White rode in back with the wounded agent.

Decker turned to look at Kelly, lying there dead in the sand in front of her now-widowed husband’s fishing shack. She looked at peace when her life had ended in any way but peacefully.

The electric light blue was engulfing him, like a big wave on the beach. He was surprised that he wasn’t used to it by now. But it still took his breath away, still made him feel sick and lightheaded. But perhaps death deserved to have that effect, particularly the deaths Decker typically encountered.

He glanced away from the body and closed his eyes. Kelly dead and Andrews wounded, none of that was fair. Not one single bit.

Decker opened his eyes, let the electric blue dissipate, along with the nausea, and then he went back to work.