Long Shadows

Chapter 71

They sat in the parking lot while Decker accessed the digital archives of the Miami Herald. To do the searches necessary Decker had to activate a free membership. He plugged in Reagan’s name and the year and hit the search key.

A story came up about Reagan’s speech. Decker read that it was well received, but he didn’t really care about that. What he did care about was the fact that the fund-raiser was being held for the benefit of Mason Tanner, who was seeking the seat of a retiring U.S. senator in Florida.

Decker looked at a picture of Reagan and Tanner shaking hands. Tanner was tall, in his midforties, with thick dark hair and an easy smile. However, Decker didn’t like the look of the man. He seemed fake and smarmy. Then again he didn’t care for most politicians, so that might just have been his own bias.

He held up his phone so White could see the image. “Mason Tanner. Candidate for the U.S. Senate.”

“The fund-raiser was for him?”

“Yeah. Although according to this, he didn’t really need the money. The story says his grandfather was a bigwig in Standard Oil and he inherited a ton. And his wife was one of the heiresses to the E. F. Hutton fortune.”

“Nice birth luck, if you can get it.”

Decker Googled something on his phone. “Says here he won the following year, by quite a large margin.” He looked at another article. “He served three terms and is now retired and living in New York.”

“Whatever happened to Kanak Roe back in 1981 may have nothing to do with the speech or Tanner.”

“We won’t know for sure until we rule it out.”

“So do we go to see Tanner and try to get some answers from him?”

“I don’t think it would be much help.”

“Why?”

“According to this article he’s now in his late eighties, lives in New York City, and has late-stage Alzheimer’s.”

White let out a long sigh. “Great. Nothing like running into a brick wall around every corner.” She glanced at him. “I thought you solved your cases fast?”

Decker shot her a look. “We’ve only been on this sucker a few days.”

“Says Superman.”

“You called me shrimpy before.”

“I didn’t know you then,” she shot back.

He wrote out a long email and sent it off.

“Who did that go to?” she asked.

“Alex.”

“Trying to replace me already?”

“She’s in New York. I asked her to check and see if Tanner maintained an office there, or had relatives who we could talk to.”

“Good idea.”

“For a guy to change his whole life over something that happened one night, it must’ve been something really terrible. I mean, Kanak was a seasoned agent by then. And whatever happened rocked him to his core.”

“If that’s what happened, yeah.”

“Yeah,” said Decker thoughtfully.

“But?”

Decker didn’t answer. He had nothing to say.