“Who called overseas to tell them she’d died?” said Jamison.
“Actually, that was me. I was in charge of the investigation. Hardest call I’ve ever had to make. As soon as I told Caroline she started sobbing. I couldn’t make out another word after that. And I felt bad because I couldn’t do anything to help her. I just felt so helpless,” Kelly said miserably.
They dropped him off at the police station and watched him go inside.
Jamison said somberly, “He’s still very much in love with Caroline Dawson.”
“Yes he is. And I wish him luck, but if I was Kelly, I wouldn’t hold my breath. I don’t think she’s going to suddenly run into his arms.”
As they pulled away, Jamison said, “But this may very well have nothing to do with why we’re up here. Figuring out the time-bomb comment by Ben Purdy. That has to be our focus.”
“Our focus is finding out who killed Irene Cramer.”
“But isn’t one connected to the other?”
“Not necessarily.”
As they pulled in front of their hotel, Baker hailed them from the street.
Decker rolled down the passenger window and said, “Stan, what’s up?”
“Was just coming to see you. That photo you gave me, of the dead woman?”
“Irene Cramer. What about it?”
“I asked around about anyone that might have, you know, been with her.”
“And did you find anybody?”
“Three guys. All oil field workers.”
“And?”
“And they all said that they hadn’t had sex with her.”
“So what did they do with her?” asked Jamison.
“She bought them food and drinks.”
“That’s interesting,” said Jamison.
Decker said, “But it makes sense. Why get into bed with strangers if she could get the info she wanted by springing for food and booze? Be a lot easier for her.”
“Boy, I hear you on that,” said Jamison a bit too quickly. When Decker glanced at her she blushed and looked away.
Baker said, “As I was saying, she bought them food and drinks, and asked a lot of questions.”
“Questions about what?”
“That Air Force installation.”
“But why ask oil workers about a military base?”
“Beats the hell out of me. She might have talked to some of the guys who worked there before the Air Force pulled out. And I never saw any of the Vector guys come into town, so she might not have been able to ask them.”
“What sort of questions did she ask?” Decker wanted to know.
“Anything suspicious they might have seen. Whether they knew the history of the facility. And she asked about the auctioning off of the land around the facility.”
Decker nodded thoughtfully. “Now, that is interesting. Anything else?”
“That’s about it. Hope it helps.”
“Thanks, Stan.”
Baker moved off and Decker rolled his window back up.
“Did that help?” asked Jamison, who had listened to the whole exchange.
“I don’t know. I can understand her wanting to know about the military base and the land around it. I mean that’s where Daniels worked, after all.”
“But it’s still puzzling,” conceded Jamison.
“Everything about this damn case is puzzling.”
Chapter 64
Later that night Decker and Jamison were summoned once more to a meeting with Blue Man. Robie and Reel picked them up outside their hotel and drove them to a home about fifteen miles outside of town.
As they pulled up to the house Decker said, “Looks abandoned.”
“That’s what we like about this place,” said Reel. “So many free spaces to meet.”
“That’s the only thing we like about this place,” added Robie. “Otherwise, it’s turning out to be more dangerous than the Middle East.”
They were led inside, where Blue Man was sitting in a wooden-backed chair, dressed in a perfectly tailored suit and looking like he had just started his day.
“We have some things of interest to share,” he began. “Patrick McIntosh and Mark Sumter are currently lawyering up, if only to enter guilty pleas.”
“And Vector?”
“They should be permanently barred from future defense contracting, along with all their executives.”
“But will that actually happen?”
“We’ll see. Washington, DC, is full of successful second acts. But the uniforms involved in this are going to take a tumble. At least the ones who can’t find a chair to sit in before the music stops will.”
“Anything else?” asked Decker.
“For your purposes, something far more important. And ominous.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“It may mean nothing, or it may mean everything, but we’ve been getting some curious chatter from the Middle East lately.”
“What sort of chatter?”
“The sort that we do not like to get. We often get enhanced communication activity when something significant is going down. It happened before 9/11 but no one registered it. Now we take these occurrences very seriously.”
“Is there any indication where it might be coming from?” asked Jamison.
“Not precisely. But from what we can tell, there is a nexus to this country.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing good, I’m afraid.”
“What can we do about it?” asked Jamison.
“We need to solve this thing faster rather than slower. Time is not on our side.”
“You’ve said that before. And we’re working as fast as we can.”
“Then we must work faster.”
Decker stared down at him. “Do you know what was going on at London, AFS decades ago? And it had nothing to do with radar or prisoners.”
“Tell me.”
“They were making biochemical weapons,” said Jamison.
Blue Man nodded and said, “That was before my time, though I knew of the past military efforts in that regard. But those programs were ended and all stockpiles destroyed.”
“Maybe nobody told the folks over at London.”
“And this information came from...?”
“An old man in a nursing home named Brad Daniels. He worked there back then. He saw things. And he knew both Ben Purdy and Irene Cramer. We placed a security guard at the facility to look after him.”
“And Daniels told Cramer and Purdy about this past work?”
“Yes.”
“And the relevance today?”
“If people who knew about it are dying, there must be some relevance. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“What do you think?”
“If the stockpiles weren’t destroyed, where might they be?”
“We were at the facility and didn’t see anything, but we didn’t come close to searching the whole place,” noted Jamison.
“Perhaps it would be a good idea to get a team in to more thoroughly go through it,” said Blue Man. “As discreetly as possible.”
“I think that would be a great idea,” said Decker.
“Then we will make that happen. Now, Purdy was transferred out of the facility, so if the stockpile is still there, I wonder what he was going to do about it. It’s not like he could have gone back to London AFS. And it also makes me wonder what Cramer’s plan was. What could she possibly think she could do about a weapons stockpile at an Air Force facility? She couldn’t go near the place.”