Redemption

Chapter 42

“So what do you think?” asked Mars. He and Decker were driving together back to the Residence Inn.

“I think you’d make a great interrogator.”

“I didn’t want Katz to think I was drilling down on her.”

“That’s not what I meant. The really good questioners don’t seem like they’re prying at all. That’s what you did. You did a good job of gaining her confidence and not trying too hard.”

Mars fist-bumped Decker. “Thanks. So what else? You think she’s in on whatever this is?”

“She’s hiding something, I just don’t know what. And so is Mitzi Gardiner. And maybe so was Susan Richards, for that matter.”

“Lot of people hiding shit in this town.”

“Nothing new there,” grumbled Decker. “Happens in every town.”

Mars checked his watch. “It’s midnight. How about some sleep? We’re not as young as we used to be, you know.”

“Sure,” said Decker, although sleep was the last thing on his mind.

After Mars went to his room at the Residence Inn, Decker came back down to the parking lot, climbed into his car, and set off. He drove out of the downtown area and, his mind on autopilot, made his way to the neighborhood and house that he had called home for over a decade.

He pulled to the curb, rolled down the driver’s-side window, and cut his engine and lights. He looked out the window at his old house, which was dark, the only illumination a single streetlight and the moon.

He had no real understanding of why he was here. It was punishing to see the place. Memories flooded back to him as easily as drawing breath. He closed his eyes as the images suddenly careened out of control just like last time; they were coming at him like flocks of hurtling birds or fired bullets. He couldn’t make them stop. He felt his heart flutter, his gut lurch.

The sweat started to pool on his forehead, his skin grew clammy, and his armpits were suddenly soaked with sweat, the sudden stink assailing his nostrils.

His heart was now racing, and he thought he might be having a coronary. But slowly, ever so slowly, as he gripped the steering wheel as though that might allow some semblance of control over what was happening to him, things settled down in his mind. He finally lay back against his seat, exhausted without having moved at all. He hung his head out the window and sucked in the crisp air as the moisture evaporated off his skin.

This is getting old. And so am I.

He waggled his head, spit some stomach bile out the window, and kept taking deep breaths. He remembered when he’d come out of the coma at the hospital after getting crunched on the football field on opening day. A bunch of people he didn’t know were hovering over him, asking him questions. He had IV and monitoring lines running all over him. He felt like Gulliver just awoken as a prisoner of the Lilliputians.

He had come to learn that he had died on the field, twice, only to be resuscitated each time by the team trainer. He’d been hit so hard his helmet had flown off and was lying in the grass far away from his body. The crowd had been cheering the blindside hit until they realized he was not getting up. When the trainer started pounding on his chest, the crowd of seventy thousand people quieted. The network had cut away to another game. It was not good for the NFL brand to show dead football players lying on the turf.

He learned he’d suffered a traumatic brain injury. Later, he discovered his brain had rewired itself around the damaged areas, accessing domains that had never been triggered before. This had left him with the twin conditions of hyperthymesia and synesthesia.

But he didn’t know he had them until later. It wasn’t like an X-ray could reveal this. The first time he had seen a color burst into his head, associated with something as incongruous as a number, Decker had seriously thought he was going insane.

Then, when he was able to recall things he never had been able to before, the doctors had started testing his cognitive abilities. He had looked at sheets of numbers and words and was able to regurgitate them all, because he could see them in his head, just as they had lain on the page. Then off he had gone to a special cognitive institute in Chicago that dealt exclusively with people like him.

Decker didn’t know what was more amazing — his newfound abilities, or the realization that he was far from the only one who possessed them.

Now he snatched one more glimpse at his old home, briefly imagining that it was five years ago and Molly and Cassie were still alive, waiting for him to come home from being a cop. He would play with Molly, kiss Cassie, and... be a family.

He held on to that image for another few seconds and then let it go, a phantom that had to be released into the ether where it would simply vanish, because it was no longer real.

You can live in the past, or you can live in the present, but you really can’t live in both, Amos.

He started the car, rolled the window back up, put his rental in gear, and drove off.

He was a loner, had always been a loner after he’d died on the field. Cassie, though, had been the one to make sure he did not shrivel up inside his cocoon and keep everyone away. After she died, there had been no one to do that.

Then Alex Jamison had come into his life and somewhat filled Cassie’s role.

Decker didn’t know where his thirst for justice, for right over wrong, had come from. He did know that he had possessed it long before his family was taken from him.

Maybe because that hit on the field stole me from me. And I’ve been looking for something to fill that hole all these years. And catching killers seems to be the only thing that cuts it. Because they steal the most precious thing of all: somebody’s life.

He had no idea if that was the whole story or not. He just knew that right now, that’s all he had to hold on to.

As he drove, he focused on the problem at hand. What he desperately wanted to know was, if David Katz had arranged to meet with Don Richards, and that had been communicated by a phone call that had involved only the two men, how had their killers known the men were going to be meeting that night?

He couldn’t believe that Susan Richards had been party to it, because that would necessitate Decker’s believing that she would sacrifice both her kids as well. Decker had seen the woman that night. As Lancaster had said, Susan had been hysterical, utterly out of her mind with disbelief and rage. She was a woman who had been truly shocked to learn that she had gone out for the evening and come home to find out she had no family left.

Decker slowed the car down as he thought back over all these points.

He settled on the phone call between Katz and Richards.

There was actually no way to know that it was Katz who had called Richards. It was just Katz’s phone. Anyone could have made that call. And there was no guarantee that it was Richards who had answered, for the same reason.

The possibility was obvious: There could have been no scheduled meeting between the men. Decker had just assumed there was. The killer could have orchestrated all that to make it look like there was a meeting, or just Katz coming over for a beer. The fact that Decker believed that the killer or killers had driven an unconscious Katz over there made sense under that scenario. They could have gone in, held the Richardses hostage, brought in Katz, methodically killed them, laid their evidence casting guilt on Meryl Hawkins, departed the house through the back, and an hour later called in a disturbance.

So now the question was, who was really meant to be killed? Richards or Katz? The banker or the borrower?

And why?

And why did their killers pick that night to do it?

Decker knew if he could find an answer to any or all of those three questions, he might be able to blow this sucker wide open.

But he wasn’t there yet. Maybe not even close.

He drove to a very familiar place: Burlington High School, where a little over two years before, a horrific mass shooting had stunned the town.

Decker parked his car and made his way to the dilapidated football field. Burlington no longer fielded a football team — they didn’t have enough guys interested in playing the game. He climbed up into the bleachers as a light drizzle began to fall.

He took a seat and stared down at the field where he had been a superstar many years before. The only player in Burlington High history to go on to play in the NFL, if only for one play. He wrapped himself in his coat and stared moodily out.

As his gaze drifted to the right, he flinched as he saw her coming toward him. Mary Lancaster slowly made her way up the metal steps and sat down next to him.

“Didn’t we do this before?” she said.

He nodded. “In the rain. After the school shootings. How’d you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. You know my house backs up to the school. I take walks late at night. I saw you.”

He nodded again. “But it’s after one in the morning. It’s not really safe for you to be out alone.”

“And it is for you?”

“Well,” he said. “I’m a lot bigger than you.”

She opened her coat and he saw her pistol riding in its holster. “Someone wants to try to mug me, they’ll be eating a round.”

“I can see that. So, how’s it going?”

“It’s going. I hear you’re making progress on the case.”

“From who do you hear that?”

“Of all people, Natty. He seems to have had a change of heart about you after Sally was killed.”

Decker said, “Did you know they were seeing each other?”

Lancaster looked stunned. “What? No, I didn’t. Natty’s married.”

“Sally had ended it with him. She knew it wasn’t right.”

Lancaster shook her head. “I never saw that coming. And I still can’t believe she’s dead.”

He glanced at her as the rain picked up. She had on a long trench coat and a ball cap. Her gray hair flowed out from underneath it. She looked to Decker like she was carrying an enormous weight on her slender shoulders.

“Are you ill, Mary? I mean really ill?”

She didn’t look at him, but kept her gaze on the field. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because you’re not the same. You’ve changed. And I don’t think it’s just because of what’s happening with you and Earl.”

She clenched her hands and then flexed them straight. “I’m not terminal, if that’s what you want to know. I don’t have cancer, despite my smoking.”

“What, then?”

She didn’t answer right away. When Lancaster did respond, her voice held a resigned tone. “Ever heard of early onset dementia?”

Decker gaped. “Dementia? You’re still young, same age as me.”

She gave him a sad smile. “That’s why they call it ‘early,’ Amos.”

“Are they sure? When were you diagnosed?”

“About six months ago. And they are sure. Brain scans, more MRIs than I can remember, blood work, biopsies, everything. I’m on meds, treatment.”

“Then they can turn it around?” he said, with a small measure of relief in his voice.

She shook her head. “No, there is no cure. It’s just holding the progression back as long as possible.”

“What’s the prognosis, then?” he said quietly.

“Hard to say. It’s not like there are a million cases like me. And everyone’s reaction is apparently different.”

“Can they give you an estimate?”

She drew a long breath and her face quivered with emotion. “In a year I might not be able to recognize myself or anyone else. Or it could be five years. But not much beyond that. I won’t even be fifty.”

A long moment of silence passed, as tears slid down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, Mary.”

She wiped her eyes and waved this off. “I don’t need sympathy, Decker, least of all from you. I know it’s not your thing.” She patted his shoulder and added in a kinder tone, “But I appreciate the effort.”

“How did you know something was wrong?”

“When I woke up one morning and couldn’t remember Sandy’s name for about a minute. I blew that off, chalked it up to overwork. But little things like that started to happen with more frequency. That’s when I went to the doctor.”

Decker sat back and thought about his momentary inability to remember Cassie’s favorite color. “Is that the reason for you and Earl splitting up?”

“Earl is a good guy, couldn’t ask for a better one. But he has enough to do taking care of Sandy. I do not need to add to his burden.”

“A good guy would not see it as a burden.”

She looked at him. “Cassie never saw you as a burden, I hope you know that.”

Decker looked away, his gaze drifting over the field where he had run like the wind, opposing players bouncing off him like pebbles flung against a mighty oak, people cheering him on, a normal kid with abnormal, even freakish athletic talent. Those had been some of the happiest times of his life, only to be dwarfed on the happiness scale by his time as a husband and father.

“I know that,” he said quietly. “But I don’t think you should give up on Earl that easily. The words are ‘in sickness and in health.’”

“‘Till death do us part.’ Those vows are easy to make when you’re young, healthy and happy and in love, your whole life ahead of you.”

“Are you still in love with Earl?”

She looked at him, startled. “What?”

“I’m still in love with Cassie. I’ll always love her. I don’t care if she’s dead. But Earl isn’t dead. Earl is right here. I would give anything for Cassie to be here. And nothing, not early onset dementia or anything else, would keep me from her. Any second without her would be a waste of my life.”

Decker rose and walked down the steps as the rain picked up.

Mary Lancaster watched him every step of the way.