“What will you do next?” asked Andrews.
“We learned from Duncan Trotter that Judge Cummins’s death resulted in her ex being the trustee of a twenty-million-dollar-plus fortune.”
Andrews nearly dumped his wine. “Shit. I knew she was loaded, but not that loaded.”
Decker’s phone vibrated and he read the message that had just come in. “This is from the ME. I had a hunch about something and it turned out I was right.”
“What was the hunch?” asked Andrews.
“That Alan Draymont wasn’t guarding the judge, he was sleeping with her.”
“What!” Andrews blurted out.
Decker briefly explained what he had found at the crime scene and also the confirmation from the ME. He also told Andrews about his theory of there being two different killers.
Andrews nodded, looking thoughtful. “I have to admit, the different methods of the killings were bothering me. You either see one or the other. But Decker, Trevor Perlman said he recommended Gamma to the judge. And she told others, including her son, that she was having protection.”
“Doris Kline told me that Draymont wasn’t there every night. And no one else was taking up the protection. Funny way to guard someone.”
“But then why go to Gamma at all if there were no threats?” asked White.
“Not really sure. But it looks like that’s what happened. You don’t sleep with your security guard. And your security guard doesn’t just not show up to guard you.”
“So she wasn’t really afraid of anyone?” said White.
Decker glanced at her. “Oh, I think she was afraid of someone. And that person killed her.”
Chapter 37
AFTER DINNER, DECKER SAT IN his hotel room staring at a wall.
He was not thinking of the case right now. He was thinking about the letter he’d gotten from the Cognitive Institute in Chicago.
Dear Mr. Decker, Your latest brain scans have shown various anomalies that will require further testing and monitoring. Preliminarily, new lesions are presenting, and it seems that previously unaffected sections of your cerebrum are at risk of being transformed in ways that…
Here, Decker stopped thinking about what the letter had said.
Lesions. Previously unaffected. Anomalies. Transformed in ways that…
Not a single bit of that sounded good.
Added to that was the fact that four men whom Decker had played football with or against in college and then in the NFL had died prematurely over the last three years.
One from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, one from a heart attack, and another from a stroke caused by his Type-2 diabetes.
And the fourth man had died by suicide, with his brain donated to Boston University’s CTE Center for further analysis to see if he had the disease. Which he did.
Realistically, how much time do I have left? I didn’t play long in the pros, for sure. But I’ve played a lot of football, and the shot I took that day probably did as much damage as five years in the NFL would have.
He looked around the confines of the small room. And is this really how I want to spend it?
But he also knew he could not make any life-altering decisions right this minute. So he lay back on the bed and thought about the case. It was puzzling, as all cases were. But this case was different in that the more he got into it, the more puzzling it became. Even the things he believed he had figured out, namely that Cummins and Draymont had had a sexual relationship, and that they were dealing with two unrelated murders committed in the same house and within minutes of each other, became more inscrutable the further he went into it.
The foreign currency in Draymont’s mouth seemed to connect with Kanak Roe, or at least the Roe family. Kasimira seemed to think it was directly tied to her father’s disappearance and apparent death three years earlier, but Decker had no evidence of that being the case. If the Roes had enemies in what was now Slovakia, had the killer or killers of Alan Draymont gone back there? If so, he had little chance of bringing them to justice.
And then there was Julia Cummins’s murder. It was personal, unlike Draymont’s. The multiple stabbings evidenced a frenzy fueled by hatred.
Was Barry Davidson, the ex who was, by all accounts, including perhaps his own, still in love with Cummins, also behind the woman’s murder? The problem was the man’s alibis were pretty solid. And if Davidson had hired a hit man, would that person have unleashed such a frenzied attack on the woman? With up-close encounters you could leave behind your DNA and other forensic markers. It made no sense.
But if Davidson was out as a suspect, who then? Was Cummins seeing anyone else? He doubted that Alan Draymont had been Cummins’s only romantic interest since her divorce years before. She was young, attractive, a federal judge, wealthy. She would be quite the catch for someone.