“Lose something maybe?” asked Decker.
Green looked sheepish as he sat down behind his desk. “My damn badge. I usually put it in my locker at the gym, but I can’t find it. I play racquetball next door. It’s pissing me off. You lose your badge, that’s a ton of paperwork.”
He started searching through one of his drawers.
“One question,” said Decker. “The night Dan Bond was killed, someone said they saw a squad car parked in front of his house.”
“Who said that?” Green asked, quickly looking up.
“It was an anonymous tip,” interjected Kemper.
“Any idea who it could have been?” asked Green.
“Well, you’ve been on that street a lot,” said Decker. “Could it have been you there that night?”
Green quickly shook his head. “I don’t drive around in a squad car.”
Decker nodded. “But you have met Dan Bond before, right?”
Green shook his head. “No. I’ve never been to the man’s house. At least not while he was alive. I did go there after he was found murdered.”
“You absolutely sure of that?” said Decker.
Green looked at him curiously. “Yeah, why?”
“What are you getting at, Decker?” interjected Lassiter. “I was the one who interviewed Dan Bond, not Marty.”
Decker kept his gaze on Green. He said, “You can stop looking, because Agent Kemper has your badge.”
Green shot Kemper a surprised glance. “You? Why?”
Kemper pulled out a plastic evidence bag from her coat. There was a badge inside it.
The blood slowly drained from Green’s face. “What is my badge doing in an evidence bag?”
“Because it’s evidence,” said Kemper flatly. “In a murder investigation.”
“What are you talking about? What murder?”
“Dan Bond.”
“I told you, I never even met the man.”
Decker said, “Which raises the question of why Dan Bond’s fingerprints were found on your badge.”
“What!?”
Decker took out his own badge. “Dan Bond was a careful man. I knocked on his door after dark, and he wouldn’t let me in until I put my badge through his cat door. He told me he didn’t like to let strangers inside his house. He used his fingers to make sure the badge was legit before he let me in. And, really, who else besides a cop would he let in at that hour of the night?” He held up the badge. “So that was how his prints got on my badge. But you just said you never met him, and yet his prints are on your badge. So how do you explain that, Detective Green, unless you were the one who visited Bond that night and killed him?”
“That’s bullcrap!”
Green looked at Lassiter, who was staring at him openmouthed. “Those can’t be his prints on my badge. It’s impossible.”
Decker said, “The day you threw your badge down and I picked it up? I saw it was smudged with prints, and something else that I realized later was…flour. Bond told me he liked to bake at all hours. He got flour on my badge too when he was checking it out. Agent Kemper also informed me that traces of flour were found on your badge. Now, I don’t know if we can match it to the flour in Bond’s kitchen but we really don’t have to since we have your prints.”
Green said nothing. He just glared at Decker.
“The thing is, Detective, if you’re going to the trouble of killing someone, you really need to sweat the details,” added Decker.
Green turned on Kemper. “You bitch! You took my badge without a warrant. That makes it inadmissible.”
Kemper held up a piece of paper.
“I got a warrant, signed, sealed, and delivered.”
“Based on what?”
“Based on the fact that we checked Alice Martin’s phone records. Dan Bond called her the night he was killed. Then she immediately called Fred Ross’s number. Shortly after that, you received a call from Fred Ross. And an hour after that, Dan Bond was killed. So our theory is that Bond called Martin and told her something that alarmed her, and she phoned Fred Ross to have it taken care of. And he dialed you up to do it.”
“But what could have alarmed Alice?” said Lassiter. “She’s just an old lady who used to teach Sunday school.”
Decker said, “She’s actually a lot more than that. I believe Bond was killed because he recognized that the sound he’d heard the night the two DEA agents’ bodies were discovered was Alice Martin’s recently broken quad cane hitting the pavement. Maybe she walked past his house the day he was killed, said hello to him, and so he knew the sound was being made by Martin’s cane. He might have later called and asked her what she was doing out that night. That was not good, because Bond might tell somebody else, like me.”
Green barked, “I want a lawyer.”
“Yeah, well, maybe your lawyer will convince you to talk so you get life instead of the needle,” said Decker.
Kemper looked at her men. “Cuff him, read him his rights, and take this scum to to the holding cell downstairs.”
The men moved forward and handcuffed Green.
“You don’t know who the hell you’re messing with, Decker!” the detective shouted as he struggled helplessly.
“Funny, I was going to say the same thing to you.”
Chapter 67
YOU HAVE NO reason to protect anyone,” said Decker.
He was sitting in an interrogation room at police headquarters with Lassiter on one side of him and Kemper and Jamison on the other.
Across from them was Alice Martin sitting very primly in her seat. She didn’t answer.
“We checked the big game freezer in your basement,” said Decker. “The one presumably your husband used to store his venison in. But you didn’t just keep deer meat in there. Whoever put Beatty and Smith in there wasn’t all that careful. Their DNA has been recovered by the DEA.” He glanced meaningfully at Kemper. “And that particular federal agency is out for blood. So, I say again, you have no reason to protect anyone.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “How can you possibly know that?”
“Convince me otherwise.”
She smoothed out her long skirt and rested her hands in her lap.
“I have children and grandchildren, and soon I’ll have great-grandchildren. I have to think of them.”
“How did you even get mixed up with something like this?” asked Lassiter.
“I outlived what little money I had a long time ago. I’m eighty-eight and in reasonably good health. Once you’ve reached this age, your odds of living another ten years or so are pretty good. I did not wish to do so in abject poverty. I’m tired of never going anywhere. Of never having anything.”
“Your kids couldn’t help?”
“My children are barely making ends meet themselves. I have Social Security and that’s it. And even here that does not go a long way.”
“Lots of people have only Social Security, and they don’t join a drug cartel to earn more money,” pointed out Kemper.
“I did not join a drug cartel!” she said sharply.
“Then why don’t you tell us what you did do,” said Lassiter.
“I merely looked the other way,” she said, her gaze perhaps symbolically averted from them. “When things began to happen on our street.”
“What sorts of things?” asked Decker.
“When certain equipment was brought into the house where those men were found and in the one next to it. When unsavory types started coming and going at all hours.”
“They were pill presses,” said Decker. “And they picked this street because it only had three people living on it and one of them was blind.”
“And one of them was also in on it,” added Lassiter. “Fred Ross. Was he the one who approached you and asked you to look the other way?”
Martin nodded. “That’s why they picked this street. Like you said, Dan was blind. Fred was just a horrible person. And I…” Her voice trailed off. “If I hadn’t gone along they would have just killed me. What was I supposed to do?”
“Call the cops?” said Jamison.
“The cops?” she scoffed. “Fred told me that half the force is in on it.”
“That’s bullshit!” exclaimed Lassiter. “You could have come to me, Alice. I would have done something about it.”
“What did they offer you?” Decker asked.
“Compensation.”