She gaped. “You?”
“We have it all on audio,” said White. “Your husband is some kind of Soviet spy from way back.”
She looked at White. “A Soviet spy? You must be delusional.”
White squared off with the woman. “Are you saying you knew nothing about any of it?”
“Of course I didn’t. Because none of it is true.”
Decker said, “Well, then you might want to ask your hubby why he keeps demanding to speak with someone at the Russian embassy.”
Perlman shot him a terrified look. “The Russian embassy?”
“Yeah. If you listen closely you can hear him.”
She looked down at the floor. “Oh my God, what is happening?”
White said, “A lot is happening, Mrs. Perlman, and none of it good. Your husband is a bad guy, a real bad guy who blackmailed Americans into turning against their country.”
She put a hand to her mouth and sobbed. “This isn’t happening. It can’t be.”
White’s look softened. “Okay, I know this is a lot to process. Let me get you some water before you pass out. Then I’ll find you a room where you can have some privacy. I recall you have kids from your first marriage, right?”
Perlman dumbly nodded.
“You can call them. They can come and be with you. Okay? Help you get through this?”
Perlman shot her a grateful look and nodded. “Y-yes, thank you.”
White led her away and then returned to Decker.
“She’s either a Viola Davis–level actress or the woman was clueless about old Trevor.”
“He probably didn’t tell her. No reason to. Need-to-know spy bullshit.”
She sat down next to him. “You solved this sucker and brought the bad guys down.”
“We did, Freddie. I wasn’t solving anything without you.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she said warmly. “But it seems like Perlman didn’t have the judge killed. And Barry couldn’t have done it. So are we back to Dennis Langley?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who else is out there? Langley has no alibi, really. And Barry now has two alibis, Tyler, and the neighbor.”
Decker looked at her funny. Barry has two alibis. Tyler and…But the neighbor’s alibi was enough. Tyler’s wasn’t needed.
“Decker, I know that look. You thought of something, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer her. He was suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. What if Tyler wasn’t Barry’s alibi? What if Barry was Tyler’s alibi?
Chapter 92
D?ECKER FINALLY PUT HIS HEAD on his pillow at two in the morning, and yet his mind would not shut off. It was racing like it had never done before; images flashed across the spectrum of his brain at a frightening pace. Yet he could see every single image with great clarity, though what was being presented held little rhyme or reason. But still, it was unnerving.
New lesions, new anomalies. Maybe this is what my future looks like.
But I’m not going to let it control me.
He focused, pushing the stream of consciousness away, and willed himself to concentrate on the case. Four murders had been solved, but there was one outstanding.
Julia Cummins’s killer was still out there. And he couldn’t leave here with that unresolved. And why did I never consider the possibility that it might be Tyler? Because he was a football player working his ass off? Because he…reminded me…of me?
They would have to follow up on Langley, but Decker’s gut was telling him the man was not Cummins’s murderer. Langley believed he had a new sugar momma in hand. Why risk that? But had Perlman’s men killed the woman and lied about it to Perlman? If so, they might never reveal the truth.
But things about Tyler’s potential complicity were now clicking into place and taking Decker to conclusions that he didn’t want to draw. The mother always demanding perfection. The mother with all the rules. The mother always hovering over her only child. Then throwing out Tyler’s father, and maybe Tyler as well, and going off on her own midlife crisis, while complaining about her husband doing the very same thing. What might that have done to her son?
Decker knew that Tyler could have slipped out of the condo while Davidson was on his Zooms. He could have run to his mother’s home; he had done it the night they’d found Davidson there. If he had found his mother there with a dead man? Dressed as she was? What would have happened? A kitchen knife snatched, a chase ensuing, a slaughter to follow? Then he could have run back, gotten back into bed, and no one the wiser.