The Fix (Amos Decker 3)

and feed her.”

“Nice of you to do that.”

“Oh, they paid me. They insisted on that. Mr. and Mrs. Dabney were very kind, Mrs. Dabney especially. I saw a lot more of her. Mr. Dabney was always working or traveling. Momma and I would be long gone before he got home from the office.”

“Do you know where Mr. Dabney traveled to?”

“Why?”

“We’re looking into his death as well.”

“I heard he killed himself.”

“He did. But we still have to figure out why.”

“Oh, well, I’m not really sure where he went. I think a lot of places in this country, different states. One time I was helping Momma put his luggage away after he came back from a trip and the airline baggage sticker was still on it.”

“Do you remember the initials of the airport on it?”

“No. But I do remember it wasn’t an American airline. I just can’t remember which one it was. But I remember Momma telling me that he traveled a lot overseas too.”

“How did she know that?”

Kaine smiled. “When she was little, Samantha got ahold of her daddy’s passport and hid it in the kitchen. They were looking all over for it. Momma found it in the sugar bin. She had to open it up to clean off the pages and get all the grains of sugar off it. And she said it was full up with stamps and stuff from all the countries he’d been to.”

“Did your mother ever tell you anything out of the ordinary about the Dabneys?”

“Out of the ordinary?” Kaine gave him a penetrating look. “Where is all this going?”

“To the truth, I hope.”

“The Dabneys are good people.”

“I’m sure they are, but Mr. Dabney did murder someone.”

Kaine’s expression changed to one of bewilderment and then sadness. “I still can’t believe he did it. He would have been the last person in the world I would have thought was capable of that. And him killing himself? And leaving Mrs. Dabney? They were so much in love. They were the perfect couple.”

“Well, looks can be deceiving.”

Decker glanced down at the box. “What’s in there?”

Kaine smiled. “This was my old bedroom. It was just Momma and me. I had a brother, but he died when he was a baby, and my daddy passed when I was four.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She kept some of my stuff. I’ve got two daughters, so I thought they might want it, but they’re getting a little old for some of it.”

“You mean toys?”

“Yeah.”

She stepped back and opened the door more fully. Decker saw a neatly made bed, a white chest of drawers, and two tall shelves packed with items.

“These days if you can’t hook up to the Internet kids don’t want it. Dr. Seuss books, Easy-Bake Oven, puzzles. And even dolls. Now it has to be that American Girl thing. Do you know how much those cost? Mine were way cheaper and just fine. All you had to do was use your imagination.”

Decker was only half listening. On one shelf he was staring at a series of dolls all lined up in a row.

“Are those your old dolls?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that they’re exactly like the ones the Dabney daughters have?”

“Are they? Well, I guess that makes sense.”

“Why?”

“Because the Dabneys bought them for me.”

CHAPTER

71

“THEY ALL HAVE the same secret compartments,” said Milligan.

Decker was standing next to him while Bogart sat in his desk chair. Jamison and Brown were seated across from Bogart.

Jamison said, “So Cecilia Randall’s daughter’s dolls were identical to those of the four Dabney girls and they all had places to hide stolen information?”

Decker nodded and picked up two of the dolls. “This is Missy, which was Jules Dabney’s doll. This doll belonged to Randall’s daughter, Rhonda. Care to try to tell them apart?”

They all drew forward and looked at the two dolls.

“There’s even paint on the same shoe,” said Brown.

Decker said, “Smell the hair of each.”

Brown and Jamison did so. Jamison said, “They smell the same.”

“Exactly. Jules identified her doll by the paint and the smell. My daughter used to do the same thing with the smell test. Lots of little kids do. Whoever was behind this was good at sweating the details.”

Brown said, “So does that mean Randall was also part of the spy ring? Hell, she must have been.”

“Not necessarily,” said Decker. “Her participation might have been unwitting.”

“How could it be?” scoffed Brown.

“After she told me about the dolls, I had a long discussion with Rhonda Kaine. She went on to tell me that she went with her mother to the Dabneys’ every day when she was too young for school. After she became school-age, Randall would go and pick her up from the local school. Apparently the Dabneys arranged for her to attend a school near their house. Randall would bring her back to the Dabneys’ and she would stay there and play or do her homework until it was time to go home. When she got older she helped with the kids and did some babysitting. She even helped her mother with tasks around the house. This was all after school as well, but she was there most days.”

“But as she got older surely she didn’t carry a doll around with her,” said Jamison.

“No. She didn’t. But for years she did. And she couldn’t tell me for certain whether the dolls were ever switched. I couldn’t really get into it with her without revealing confidential elements of the investigation, so I didn’t go there.”

“Okay, but let’s say the dolls were used to convey stolen information,” said Brown. “How do you see it playing out? How did they do it?”

“Walter Dabney brings secrets home from work. I don’t know how he got them out of NSA, but we know that people in the past have succeeded in doing that. Once he started his own business, taking secrets home would be much easier. Next, he has to get them to his buyer or handler. He puts them in one of the dolls. When Rhonda Kaine comes with her doll it gets switched out somehow. Rhonda takes her doll home. She told me that when she was little she would take her doll to school sometimes, or else her mom would bring it with her to work so she could play with it when she got to the Dabneys’. And when I asked her about it, she said that she would rotate her dolls out, play with one one day and another the next. So they wouldn’t get lonely.”

“And then what would happen?” asked Brown. “If Cecilia Randall isn’t in on it?”

“When Randall went to work someone could come into their house, take the information from the doll, and leave. She had no security system. It would have been easy enough.”

“That could work,” observed Bogart.

“That way Dabney never has to come into contact with the other person. Cecilia Randall was the go-between and would never have even known it. And it wasn’t like they were doing the doll thing every day. Dabney might have had a system in place that would somehow alert the other party when something would be in the doll.”

“And when the kids got older and the dolls stayed on the shelf, Dabney probably turned to another technique,” said Bogart. “Like Berkshire and her use of the book.”

Brown said, “So this guy has been spying and selling out this country for well over thirty years?”

“Looks to be,” said Bogart.

“You would have thought he would have been caught at some point,” noted Milligan. “I mean, other spies, even ones who got away with it for years, were eventually found out.”

“We know about them because they got caught,” pointed out Decker. “There could be lots of spies out there who were never caught.”