“What did you see in the room?”
“This agent, and another man…and a woman. A young woman.”
“What were they doing?”
“The…” She looked away and rubbed at her eyes with the tissue. “I really had forgotten all this. And now you come here and stir everything back up again. It can’t possibly matter one bit now.”
“It does matter,” said Decker. “A great deal to some people. Enough to kill over, in fact. And I don’t think you ever forgot it. You just didn’t want to ever think about it again. Because the possibilities were too frightening.”
She shuddered. “Are there really innocent people who might go to prison, after all this time?”
“There is no statute of limitations on murder,” White pointed out.
“Oh my God. I can’t believe this has come back to bite me in the ass.” She looked out toward the Gulf for a few moments before turning back to them and saying in a low voice, “They were…wrapping her in…sheets.”
“Was she dead?” asked White.
“I…I don’t know, but I think so. She wasn’t moving. She looked…limp.”
“Who was the other man?”
“I…I think he might have worked on my…”
“On your father’s campaign?” prompted White.
“Yes, but I never knew his name. Hell, I’m not even sure he did work for my father. He just looked the type.”
“Didn’t they see you?” asked White.
“No. I was very quiet and just peering through the slight gap.”
“So they were wrapping up the body?” said Decker in a prompting manner.
She closed her eyes and dipped her head. “They…they put her in a suitcase. I…I ran away before…they could see me.”
“So you don’t know what they did with it?”
“No.”
“Did you recognize the woman?”
Fellows shook her head.
“Can you describe her?” asked White, taking out a notebook and jotting some things down. “I know it was a long time ago.”
Fellows said quietly, her gaze downcast, “She was Black, in her twenties, long dark hair, slender, quite beautiful, even in…death. And she…was naked.”
“You saw all that peeking through a crack in the door?” said White skeptically.
“Well, maybe it was open more than a crack.”
“Why would they have left the door open at all if they were putting a dead, naked woman in a suitcase?” asked White.
“It wasn’t the door going into the hotel room. It was a two-room suite. It…it was the door going into the bedroom.”
“But then how did you get into the room?” asked White.
Decker held up a hand. “Just continue with your story,” he told Fellows. “Did you see any wounds? Any signs of trauma, or blood?”
“No, nothing like that. And I think I would have on the white sheets. She was just…not breathing, or moving.”
Decker leaned in. “Why didn’t you alert someone in the hotel? Or call the police?”
“I…I don’t know. I was just a kid, really. I was scared. Confused. I…I just wanted to run away and forget what I saw. And I have, all these years.” She snapped, “Until you showed up.”
Decker said, “I think there was more to it than that. Far more.”
“What the hell do you mean?” she exclaimed, looking fearful.
“It was your father’s room, wasn’t it? That’s how you got in, right? You had a key to his room.”
Fellows broke down and started to sob.
Chapter 75
S?O, WE HAVE TO FIND a missing and maybe murdered person from over four decades ago, no problem,” said White as they drove back to Ocean View.
“We have some things to go by,” noted Decker.
“Fellows also said her father wasn’t in the room and had nothing to do with the dead woman.”
“What else did you expect her to say? And he might have left by then so Roe and the other guy could clean things up.”
“What do you think happened that night?”
Decker shrugged. “Young Black woman dead in the bed of an older, powerful, rich, and married white guy running for the Senate? That’s a career-ender. Either things went sideways and he killed her, or she had some sort of medical emergency and died in his bed. He called a trusted aide to deal with it, and Kanak Roe stumbled on it somehow. I think the fact that Roe didn’t raise the alarm leads me to believe the woman wasn’t murdered but died of natural causes. Otherwise, I think Roe would have blown the whistle.”