The Last Mile (Amos Decker 2)

He heard the footsteps and turned to see the other man standing there. He looked back at Davenport. Her clothes were dirty, her face the same. There was a bruise on her cheek and a cut on her forehead. She was thinner, pale, and her voice hoarse from disuse.

“Why are you doing this?” she said. “Please, I don’t know anything. Just let me go.”

McClellan slid out his service pistol and placed it against her temple. She stiffened when she felt the metal against her skin.

He said, “Just compose yourself and tell me what he told you. Then we’ll talk about your future.”

Trembling, Davenport recounted for him what Mars had said under hypnosis.

“That’s it?” he said when she was finished.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you’re not holding anything back?” He pressed the gun muzzle harder against her temple.

“I swear to God I’m not.”

McClellan removed the gun and slid it back into his holster. He looked at her closely, trying to piece together in his head what all of this meant.

He heard the other man move behind him.

“Okay, we need to take care of her,” said McClellan. “And we need to do it right now.”

“I think we got that covered,” said the voice.

McClellan jerked around to see Agent Bogart standing there with his gun pointed at him.

The other man was being cuffed by Milligan.

Decker, Mars, and Jamison came into the room.

Bogart said to McClellan, “Stand up and put your hands on your head. You even think about going for the gun I’ll drop you right here. With great pleasure.”

McClellan slowly

stood and put his hands on his head.

Davenport cried out, “Agent Bogart?”

Mars and Jamison hurried over and untied her, sliding off the blindfold. Her eyes were puffy and she blinked rapidly to adjust to the light. Assisted by Mars, she rose on shaky legs.

McClellan only had eyes for Decker. As Milligan came over and cuffed him, he screamed, “You fat son of a bitch. You used Oliver to trick me.”

“Yes, we did,” said Decker. “She’ll get a better deal. And you can too. If you give up the other two Musketeers.”

McClellan lunged, trying to get to Decker, but Milligan tackled him from behind.

Bogart said, “You’re only going to hurt yourself, McClellan, so cool it. We have a transport vehicle coming to get you and your friend here.”

They walked out into the sunshine. As they waited for the vehicle to arrive, Decker said, “They’d give you up in a minute if the positions were reversed, you understand that, right? Do they even know you kidnapped Davenport?”

McClellan turned to look at him. “What the hell do you know about anything?”

“I know you three bombed a church and an NAACP office.”

McClellan sneered. “You don’t know jack about shit.” He spit on the ground next to Decker’s boots.

“If you give them up your time in prison will go down, maybe not by much, but at least it’s something. And why should Eastland and Huey get a free pass?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Fine, upstanding men, both of ’em.”

“So you’re really willing to take the fall alone?”

“What fall? I came up here with my friend over there to check on my place and found this lady all tied up,” he added, indicating Davenport. “I was about to untie her when you boys showed up.”

“That’s not her story.”

“He said, she said. Or we said, she said.”

“You know that no one is going to buy that bullshit,” said Bogart.

Milligan added, “And we have Mary Oliver. She fingered you.”

“I don’t know what she told you, but it’s all crap.”

“We recorded her call with you. That’s why you came up here.”

“Well, that’s why we have trials, I guess. To get to the truth. And in Cain, folks will believe me.”

“Well, I doubt we’ll try this in Cain,” said Bogart.

“What we got lawyers for. So I’ll post bail, but don’t worry, I’ll be around for the trial. I’m a highly decorated police chief with strong ties to the community. Not one mark on my record. I’m not a flight risk,” he added, with a tiny smile tacked onto his words.

Milligan said, “Gotta hand it to the asshole, he talks a good game.”

Decker said, “Despite what you may think, Chief McClellan, we have you dead to rights on the kidnapping. You’re going to prison for the rest of your life. Now is your opportunity to ensure that your two buddies get the same treatment. I’m sure the FBI can arrange for you three to go to the same prison. The Three Musketeers in orange jumpsuits. Think about that visual.”

The transport vehicle cleared a rise in the land and rumbled to a stop near them.

Bogart said, “Let’s go.”

He reached out to grip McClellan’s arm.

The round impacted McClellan directly in the forehead, tattooing a third eye there. He fell back against Bogart and then dropped to the ground.

Milligan pulled his weapon. Mars grabbed Jamison and Davenport and pushed them to the dirt.

Decker looked at McClellan’s body, blood from his head wound pooling around him. Then he launched himself toward the other man, who stood there, shell-shocked.

The second round hit the cuffed man in the chest and blew out between his shoulder blades. He fell back against Decker, who had felt the wake of the bullet as it exited the man’s back before slamming into the dirt.

McClellan’s buddy slid down to the ground. He had died the second the bullet ripped into his heart.

Two dead men lay on the ground along with six people who were still alive, for now.

The two agents in the transport vehicle had leapt from the front seats and taken cover behind it. “The shots came from over there,” one of them called out, pointing to the east.

Bogart called back, “Get us some reinforcements up here. And dial a chopper up and see if they can track whoever it is.”

But as Decker lay in the dirt with the dead man draped over him, he already knew that it was too late.

CHAPTER

71

DAVENPORT WAS IN a hospital where she would stay overnight to be checked out thoroughly. It seemed that she would make a quick and full recovery, at least physically. The mental and emotional part might take a while.

Jamison and Milligan were there with her now, along with several other FBI agents. They were taking no chances that anything else would happen to her.

McClellan and the other man were in the local morgue.

Their killer had gotten clean away. By the time reinforcements arrived at that remote area of Mississippi, Decker figured he could have walked to Tennessee.

Now he, Bogart, and Mars were sitting around a table in an office at the morgue contemplating the loss of their prime witness.

“Oliver can’t tie anything to Huey and Eastland,” said Bogart. “She never met with them, never had any contact with them in any way. It all went through McClellan.”

“I’m sure that was intentional,” said Decker. “Eastland and Huey had a lot more to lose. But they were far smarter and more sophisticated than the late police chief. He was their attack dog, nothing more.”

“We’re looking into all of his stuff, but his computer was mostly empty and he apparently didn’t write anything down. Whatever communication he had with the other two Musketeers must have been face-to-face.”

“And it’s a long road filled with potholes trying to connect the dots on this,” noted Decker. “Particularly for crimes nearly fifty years old.”

Mars absently nodded at this comment but said nothing.

Decker said, “They had McClellan and his partner killed, of course. They must have been watching him, or us. McClellan runs out of his office and they follow him up here. Or maybe Eastland and Huey knew about this place. McClellan’s dad left it to him. McClellan might have told them he was keeping her here.”