The Fix

Chapter 2

Darkness. It awaited us all, individually, in our final moments. Amos Decker was thinking that as he sat in the chair and studied the body.

Anne Berkshire lay on a metal table in the FBI’s morgue. All her clothes had been removed and placed in evidence bags to be later analyzed. Her naked body was under a sheet; her destroyed face was covered as well, although the fabric was stained with her blood and destroyed tissue.

A postmortem was legally required even though there was no doubt whatsoever as to what had caused the woman’s death.

Walter Dabney, by an extraordinary twist, was not dead. Not yet, anyway. The doctors at the hospital to which he’d been rushed held no hope that he would recover, or even regain consciousness. The bullet had tunneled right through his brain; it was a miracle he had not died instantly.

Alex Jamison and Ross Bogart, two of Decker’s colleagues on a joint task force composed of civilians and FBI agents, were with Dabney at the hospital right now. If he regained consciousness they would want to capture anything he might utter that would explain why he had murdered Anne Berkshire on a public street and then attempted to take his own life. Dabney’s recovering to the point of being questioned was simply not going to happen, the doctors had told them.

So for now, Decker simply sat in the darkness and stared at the covered body.

Although the room was not actually dark for him.

For Decker it was an ethereally bright blue. A near-fatal hit he’d received on the football field had commingled his sensory pathways, a condition known as synesthesia. For him, death was represented by the color blue. He had seen it on the street when Dabney had killed Berkshire.

And he was seeing it now.

Decker had given statements to the D.C. police and the FBI, as had the security guard who had joined him at the scene. There hadn’t been much to say. Dabney had pulled a gun and shot Berkshire and then himself. That was crystal clear. What wasn’t clear was why he had done it.

The overhead lights came on and a woman in a white lab coat walked in. The medical examiner introduced herself as Lynne Wainwright. She was in her forties, with the compressed, slightly haunted features of a person who had seen every sort of violence one human could wreak on another. Decker rose, showed her his ID, and said he was with an FBI task force. And also that he had witnessed the murder.

Decker glanced over as Todd Milligan, the fourth member of the joint task force, entered the room. A fifth member, Lisa Davenport, a psychologist by training, had not returned to the group, opting instead to go back to private practice in Chicago.

Milligan was in his midthirties, six feet tall, with close-cropped hair and a physique that appeared chiseled out of granite. He and Decker had initially butted heads, but now the two men got along as well as Decker could with anyone.

Decker had trouble relating to people. That had not always been the case, because he was not the same person he had once been.

In addition to the synesthesia, Decker also had hyperthymesia, or perfect recall, after suffering a brain trauma on the same vicious hit in his very short career in the NFL. It had altered his personality, changing him from gregarious and fun-loving to aloof and lacking the ability to recognize social cues — a skill most people took for granted. People first meeting him would assume he was somewhere on the autism spectrum.

And they might not be far off in that assumption.

“How you doing, Decker?” said Milligan. He was dressed, like always, in a dark suit with a spotless crisp white shirt and striped tie. Next to him, the shabbily attired Decker looked borderline homeless.

“Better than she is,” said Decker, indicating Berkshire’s body. “What do we know about her so far?”

Milligan took out a small electronic notebook from his inside coat pocket and scrolled down the screen. While he was doing that Decker watched as Wainwright removed the sheet from Berkshire’s body and prepared the instruments necessary to perform the autopsy.

“Anne Meredith Berkshire, fifty-nine, unmarried, substitute schoolteacher at a Catholic school in Fairfax County. She lives, or rather lived, in Reston. No relatives have come forward, but we’re still checking.”

“Why was she down at the Hoover Building?”

“We don’t know. We don’t know if she was even going there. And she wasn’t scheduled to teach at the school today.”

“Walter Dabney?”

“Sixty-one, married, with four grown daughters. Has a successful government contracting business. Does work with the Bureau and other agencies. Before that he worked at NSA for ten years. Lives in McLean in a big house. He’s done very well for himself.”

“Did very well for himself,” corrected Decker. “His wife and kids?”

“We spoke with his wife. She’s hysterical. The kids are spread all over the place. One lives in France. They’re all coming here.”

“Any of them have any idea why he would do this?”

“We haven’t spoken to them all, but nothing pops so far. They’re apparently still in shock.”

Decker next asked the most obvious question. “Any connection between Berkshire and Dabney?”

“We’re just starting out, but nothing as yet. You think he was just looking to shoot someone before he killed himself and she was the closest?”

“She was definitely the closest,” said Decker. “But if you’re going to kill yourself why take an innocent person along? What would be the point?”

“Maybe the guy went nuts. We might find something in his background to explain his going off the deep end.”

“He had a briefcase and an ID. It seems he was heading to the Hoover Building. Was he going to a meeting?”

“Yes. We confirmed that he was meeting to go over a project his firm was handling for the Bureau. All routine.”

“So he goes off the ‘deep end’ but he could still put on a suit and come downtown for a routine meeting?”

Milligan nodded. “I see the inconsistency. But it’s still possible.”

“Anything’s possible, until it’s not,” Decker replied.

Decker walked over to stand next to Wainwright. “Murder weapon was a Beretta nine mil. Contact wound at the base of the neck with an upward trajectory. She died on impact.”

Wainwright was readying a Stryker saw that she would use to cut open Berkshire’s skull. She said, “Definitely jibes with the external injuries.”

“If Dabney dies will you be doing the post?”

She nodded. “The Bureau is taking the lead on this since Dabney was a contractor for them and it happened on their doorstep. So I’m your girl.”

Decker turned away from her and said to Milligan, “Has the FBI assigned a team to the case yet?”

Milligan nodded.

“Who’s the team? Do you know them?”

“I know them very well, because they’re us.”

Decker blinked. “Come again?”

“Bogart’s team, meaning us, has been assigned to the case.”

“But we do cold cases.”

“Well, that’s what the meeting today was about. They were changing our assignment. Cold to hot cases. And since you were on the scene of this one, it made sense to let us work it. So we’re a go.”

“Even though I’m a witness to the crime?”

“It’s not as though there’s going to be any doubt as to what happened, Decker. And there were lots of witnesses to what he did. They don’t need you.”

“But I came here to do cold cases,” protested Decker.

“Well, we don’t get to decide that, Decker. The higher-ups do.”

“And they can just pull the rug out from under us like that? Without even asking?”

Milligan attempted a smile, but when he saw the troubled expression on Decker’s face, the look faded. “It’s a bureaucracy, Decker, and we have to follow orders. At least Ross and I do. I guess you and Jamison could call it quits, but my career is locked up with the Bureau.” He paused. “We’ll still be catching bad guys. Just for newer crimes. You’ll still get to do what you do so well.”

Decker nodded but hardly looked appeased by Milligan’s words. He looked down at Berkshire’s body. The pulse of blue assailed him from all corners. He felt slightly sick to his stomach.

Wainwright glanced over and registered on the name on Decker’s ID. “Wait a minute. Amos Decker. Are you the guy who can’t forget anything?”

When Decker didn’t say anything, Milligan said quickly, “Yes, he is.”

Wainwright said, “Heard you guys have solved quite a few old cases over the last several months. Principally the Melvin Mars matter.”

“It was a team effort,” said Milligan. “But we couldn’t have done it without Decker.”

Decker stirred and pointed to a purple smudge on the back of Berkshire’s hand. “What’s that?”

“Let’s have a closer look,” Wainwright said. She gripped a magnifying glass set on a rotating arm and positioned it over the mark. She turned on a light and aimed it at the dead woman’s hand. Peering through the glass, she said, “Appears to be a stamp of some sort.”

Decker took a look through the glass. “Dominion Hospice.” He looked at Milligan, who was already tapping keys on his notebook.

Milligan read down the screen. “Okay, got it. It’s over near Reston Hospital. They handle terminal cases, obviously.”

Decker looked down at Berkshire. “If the mark is still on her hand, presumably she went there today. A shower would have taken it off.”

“Do you think she went to visit someone?” asked Milligan.

“Well, she wasn’t exactly terminal, until Dabney killed her.”

He abruptly walked out without another word.

Wainwright looked at Milligan with raised eyebrows at this sudden departure.

“He kind of just does that... a lot,” said Milligan. “I’ve sort of gotten used to it.”

“Then you’re a better person than I am,” replied Wainwright. She held up the Stryker saw. “Because if he kept walking out on me like that, I might just clock him with this.”