Authors: David Baldacci
A
FTER THEY LEFT
Rabinowitz, Jamison and Decker stopped to grab some lunch. While they were at a café, Decker called Lancaster and filled her in.
She said, “Okay, we’ll track down this Sizemore guy if we can. And if his prints are online somewhere we’ll subpoena them and compare them to Leopold’s. As soon as we find out anything I’ll call you.” She paused. “So, back at your old stomping grounds. I never knew you were at this institute place.”
“No one knew, other than Cassie.”
“We were partners for a long time, Amos.”
“It never occurred to me that you would be interested in my past, Mary.”
“Well, that goes to show, even people with big brains make mistakes,” she said curtly, her frustration and disappointment evident.
She clicked off and Decker set his phone down next to his plate containing a half-eaten cheeseburger and a small mound of fries.
“Everything okay?” asked Jamison.
“Yeah,” said Decker as he picked at a fry.
Jamison said, “If it turns out Sizemore is Leopold, he must be one sick dude.”
“If he killed thirteen people he
is
one sick dude.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“So explain.”
She slid her plate aside and leaned in. “The ‘diss’ was you got more attention than some of
his
protégés? Like it was a beauty pageant for brains? Really? So in retaliation he kills all those people?”
“Correction, if he
is
Leopold, he killed no one. Well, we don’t know who killed Agent Lafferty. But Leopold was in jail when my family was killed and also when the shootings at Mansfield happened. He has a rock-solid alibi. And it seems that both incarcerations were planned.”
“Meaning he knew your family was going to be killed
and
he knew the shooter was going to attack Mansfield?”
“The timing of his coming in to confess to the Burlington police was a little too coincidental. And I checked on the arrest record from Cranston. Disorderly conduct. He spent one night in jail and that was it. They didn’t even bother arraigning him. They just let him go the next morning. But that unequivocally proved he could not have committed the murders of my family.”
“Right, so he’s partnered with someone, our five-foot-eleven skinny dude turned broad-shouldered maniac, to do the actual murdering.”
“And there is no way that person is Sizemore.”
“So if Sizemore
is
the one you dissed, he’s partnered with this person who impersonated a waitress at the bar. I wonder who that person is that kills so readily?”
“I wonder too.”
“But still, if Sizemore is behind this, how does someone that effed up become a psychologist?”
“Something in his mind could have snapped. He could be bipolar and the meds aren’t working anymore. Leopold apparently told his lawyer he was bipolar and had gone off his meds, or at least that’s what the PD told the judge. Or he could have had some sort of trauma, either physical or emotional, that changed him. He had a lump on his neck and drug tracks on his arm. Could be a lot of stuff going on inside him. A lot can happen to someone in twenty years. If it is Sizemore, he took a risk in letting me confront him. He knows how my mind works. I don’t forget anything. If it is him, I
could
have recognized him.”
“But you didn’t. So maybe it’s not him.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s still all so scary.”
“Of course it’s scary. Because something like that could happen to any of us.”
“Or he could be just plain evil.”
“Or he could be,” agreed Decker. “Does that make you feel better?”
She shivered. “I don’t think anything about this case could make me feel better.”
Decker’s phone buzzed. He answered it.
Rabinowitz said, “Amos, I don’t know if this is good or bad news, but the institute has been forwarding professional mail to Chris since he left. Enough time has passed that it’s slowed to a trickle, but they did have an address.”
Decker wrote it down, thanked Rabinowitz, and then looked up the address on his phone.
He said, “It’s halfway between Chicago and Burlington. We passed it coming up here.”
“Meaning if he still lives there he could get to Burlington and back relatively easily.”
“Let’s go.”
“Decker, shouldn’t we call in the police on this?”
“On what? We have no proof that he’s done anything wrong. Not a shred. We can track this down. And if it turns out we’re right, we bring in the cops.”
He walked briskly out the door of the café and she more slowly followed.
Four hours later they pulled off the highway and spent another twenty minutes on surface streets before Decker, who was using the GPS on his phone, directed Jamison to a many-decades-old, run-down neighborhood.
“The guy looks like he’s fallen on hard times,” noted Jamison.
Decker remained quiet, but his gaze moved steadily around, taking in everything.
“That’s it, the third on the left with the black shutters. Pull past it.”
Jamison drove on, and then Decker had her park at the curb on the opposite side of the street about a half dozen homes down from Sizemore’s.
“Decker, Rabinowitz said that Sizemore had left the institute several years ago.”
“That’s right.”
“I just thought of this. Could he really be Leopold? I mean, the guy really looked homeless and out of it. Could Sizemore go downhill that fast?”
“Yes,” said Decker. “I did. And it didn’t take me years.”
She looked at him openmouthed for a moment and then slowly turned away before saying, “Oh. Okay.”
Decker extricated himself from the back of the car and stepped out. When Jamison started to do the same he ducked his head back in and said, “You’re staying in the car.”
“What!”
“Anything bad goes down, drive away and call the cops.”
“Decker, I’m not going to let you—”
“Yes you are.” He closed the car door and set off toward the house.
He went down the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets, his head down, seemingly trying to avoid the stiff, chilly breeze.
But he kept gazing to the right, observing the house as he went. It was growing dark, but there were no lights on inside. No car in the driveway. Sizemore, if he still lived here, might not be home. He might be in Burlington planning his next murder.
He actually thought it improbable that Sizemore and Leopold were one and the same. Though it had been twenty years, and people could change, Decker felt like he would have recognized the man, even though he hadn’t had that much interaction with Sizemore at the institute. But still, one couldn’t be sure without digging further. And right now it was the only viable lead he had.
He crossed the street, stepped between two parked cars, one of which was up on cement blocks, and walked down the crumbling sidewalk. He passed by the house, went around the block, cut through an alley, and ended up behind the house’s backyard. He struggled over the sagging chain-link fence and approached the house from the rear. There were no lights visible from here either.
He sidled up to the rear door, slipped one hand over the butt of his gun, and waited, listening intently. No footsteps. No sounds at all.
He looked left and right. He saw no one in the backyards of the houses on either side. The night was too chilly for folks to be sitting outside.
He put his elbow through the glass, reached through, unlocked the door, and entered.
He was now in a small foyer. On his left were a washer and dryer. Up a short set of stairs was the kitchen. The smell of fried foods was in the air, along with the stale stink of cigarette smoke. He remembered that Sizemore had been a smoker. He’d seen him taking his smoke breaks, the pack of cigarettes in his hand, and it appeared the man had never kicked the habit. But Decker had sat in a bar with Leopold and the man had never lighted up. If you were a smoker, you were going to light up in a bar if you could, and it was legal in Burlington to do so. And Decker hadn’t smelled smoke on Leopold’s clothes. And he would have. This lead was starting to go sideways, but he had to follow it through.
He glided up the steps and looked around the small kitchen. There were some dishes in the sink. A newspaper was in the wastebasket. He checked the date. Two weeks ago. This was looking more and more squirrelly.
He left the kitchen and looked into each of the rooms on the main level. There was no evidence that anyone had been here recently. He walked up the short flight of stairs to the upper floor.
Then, growing impatient, he raced forward, kicking open doors as he went. He cleared the first room, the second, and then came to the third and last door.
He pushed it open and started taking deep breaths, not because he wanted to, but because it was the only way to deaden his sense of smell.
He walked over to the bed and looked down.
He wasn’t sure whose corpse was lying on the sheets, because it was too badly decomposed. The height was about right. But the face was too far gone. From the state of decay, it looked like the body had been here for quite a while.
The body had commanded his attention. He had not looked anywhere else.
Now he did. His gaze drifted around the room and then held on one spot.
He walked over to that wall and stared dumbly at the writing there.
Wrong again. If he’s rotted now, it took you long enough. Keep trying. Maybe you’ll get there. Or maybe not. Xoxo, bro.
A
GENT BOGART SAID
, “It’s Chris Sizemore. They just confirmed the ID from prints and teeth.”
Decker had called the police and then the FBI agent. The law had descended on the small run-down house like a hailstorm.
They were in Sizemore’s house. Thankfully, the remains had long since been removed.
Alexandra Jamison was in her car with strict instructions not to write about a word of this.
Decker nodded. “Of course it is.”
“Why?”
Decker pointed to the writing on the wall. “Because of that.”
Bogart stood next to him. “Explain.”
“They said I was wrong again. This is Sizemore’s house. I would only have come here because I thought he was involved. He wasn’t. He was just another victim.”
“So they’re playing you. Pulling your chain at every step.”
Decker nodded. “Making like they’re smarter than I am, and maybe they are.”
“Well, let’s hope to hell you’re wrong about that.”
“They’ve been a step ahead the whole way. ‘If he’s rotted now’? He was pretty decomposed by the time I figured it out.”
“Well, they had a long time to plan this. You might just catch up. The tortoise and the hare. And you have the FBI behind you. It’s not like you have to do this alone.”
They walked outside; it was now the early hours of the morning.
“So 711 Duckton,” said Bogart. “Your old stomping ground, you said.”
“Yes.”
“So if it’s not Sizemore who had the grudge against you there, who could it be?”
“The other doctors and people working at the institute had no problem with me that I can recall.”
Bogart sat down on the concrete stoop and sighed. “Okay. Anyone else? Because there has to be something. Otherwise, why point you to this place? How else would he even know about it if he wasn’t a patient or a staffer there?”
Decker sat next to him. “It’s not simply his being there. There has to be something I did, or that he perceived I did, that would have made him undertake something like this.”
“To an unbalanced mind, pretty much anything could be deemed to be a slight, Decker. You walked in a door ahead of him. You sneezed on him. You answered a question he wanted to answer. Who the hell knows?”
“
I
have to know. I’m the only one who can know.”
“Well, you never forget anything, so I have to believe that it will come to you.”
“That’s the problem. If it hasn’t come to me then it’s not there.” Decker tapped the side of his head. “I don’t have things
come
to me. I go inside my head and retrieve them. There’s a difference.”
Bogart rose and looked down at him. “I guess there is, now that you explain it.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well, the ME estimates that Sizemore has been dead about two weeks. No telling where Leopold and his ‘friend’ were then. We’re going to canvass the neighborhood, see if anything turns up.”
“I doubt it will. I slipped in the backyard while it was still light and broke in. And big as I am, no one apparently saw anything.”
“Well, we’re still going to do it.”
“Did Sizemore have a job?”
“We’re checking that now. If he did, you’d think someone would have reported him missing when he didn’t show up.”
“Some jobs don’t require you to show up anywhere.”
“I’ll let you know what we find.”
Bogart left him and Decker rose and walked back over to Jamison’s car and climbed in.
She looked sleepily at him from the driver’s seat.
“You could have gone on to a motel,” he said. “I’m sure I could have hitched a ride with one of Bogart’s guys.”
She shook her head and said, “No, I couldn’t have slept anyway. So was it Sizemore?”
“It was. Dead about two weeks.”
“When you came out of the house before, you said the message on the wall was another taunt?”
“That I had gotten it wrong but to keep trying. He also implied that maybe I wasn’t as smart as I thought. And he called me ‘bro’ again.”
“He’s really playing mind games with you.”
“Appears to be.”
She stretched and yawned. “So what now?”
“We get some sleep. We both think about things. Maybe some ideas will come.”
“You really think that will happen?”
“No, I don’t.”
He thought,
Because things don’t come to me. There’re already there. Or else they’re not.
T
HEY LEFT THE
next day and began the long drive back to Burlington. Decker hardly spoke at all, and any questions posed to him by Jamison went largely ignored. She finally gave up and turned on the radio. They stopped to eat at a truckers’ grill off the highway. Amid a sea of big rigs, Jamison pulled her minnow of a vehicle into an available slot and they climbed out.
Decker was moving stiffly. She noted this.
“Sorry about the cramped quarters,” she said.
He rubbed his neck, straightened his back until he heard a little pop, and said, “I’m hungry.”
The place was crowded and they were led to a corner table in the back adjacent to the pool hall where truckers smacked balls and bet on the outcomes. Next to that was a gift shop where the most popular items seemed to be lingerie and sex toys for the missus or girlfriend back home.
They ordered and Decker spooned sugar into his coffee while he stared at the laminated tabletop.
A Bonnie Raitt song started wafting over the room from a jukebox.
Jamison looked around at the beehive of activity, including one man wearing a Stetson who rode an electronic bucking bronco for a few seconds before being pitched off, to the delight of his buddies.
Decker scratched at his beard and lifted his gaze to her.
“You need to get on a plane and get as far away from me as you can. You understand that, don’t you?”
“I thought we’d been through this and it was settled. Andy Jackson was—”
“He was your friend and mentor. And being your friend and mentor he would not want you to be murdered.”
“I have my Mace and—”
“They could be here right now, you know. Watching us. Watching you.”
“You’re just trying to scare me.”
“I don’t have to try to scare you, Jamison. You’re a smart woman, which means you’re already scared.”
Their food came and they ate in silence, each seemingly unwilling to meet the other’s gaze. When the check came, Decker paid.
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said.
“I ate a lot more than you. Splitting the tab wouldn’t be fair.”
They walked back to the car. Decker, without seeming to, kept vigilant observation of their surroundings.
* * *
“Where do you want me to drop you?” asked Jamison as they drove along the city streets after having reached Burlington. “Your place, the school, the police department? Another life?”
“Are you going to be getting on that plane?”
She turned to look at him. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.
“I hear Florida is nice this time of year. Maybe Miami?”
“I don’t like running away from trouble.”
“This isn’t trouble. It’s something more than that. It’s more about survival.”
“And what about you? You’re staying, right? You’re not hopping on some plane and getting the hell out of Dodge.”
“I’m staying,” was all Decker would say. “And you can drop me off at my place.”
She did. As he climbed out of the car Decker said, “Stay or go. Either way, let me know, okay?”
She nodded and then drove off.
Decker went to his room, took a shower, grabbed some sleep, and then headed back out, taking a crosstown bus to Mansfield.
He got off at the corner, looked up at the faded façade of the high school, and trudged inside.
Lancaster met him in the library. She looked thinner and paler, and her left hand was trembling so badly she stuck it in her pocket. They sat at the back and he filled her in on the events of the last two days.
“So you think Jamison will take your advice?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I hope so. I can’t make her leave.”
“Well, Chris Sizemore was out of town, and look what happened to him.”
“They can’t run everyone down, Mary. This is not some secret organization with unlimited resources. It’s two people. Capable and methodical, but only two.”
“That’s not a fact. That’s speculation on your part. Just like my speculation on 7-Eleven.”
He considered this and nodded. “Actually, you’re right. What’s happened here, anything?”
She shook her head. “We’ve gotten lip service from the Army. Not that it’s likely they could add much. Forensics has been a dead end. We know how the shooter got in, moved around, and left, but that doesn’t really lead us where we need to go, Amos.”
“The only proven point is my connection. It led me to Chicago and the institute. That lead was confirmed with the murder of Chris Sizemore. The only way they could possibly know about him, and the grievance he held against me, was if they were there, or had some inside knowledge of what went on there twenty years ago.”
“And you remember nothing that could help us? From all the folks who went in and out of that place while you were there?”
Decker slumped back in his chair and looked around at the investigators at their various stations poring over details of the case. But he could see in their eyes and movements an ebbing energy, a malaise settling upon them. He had seen cases go sideways like this before. They were coming to believe that they were not going to solve this case. That they were not going to catch whoever had done this. It was draining everyone.
He looked back at Lancaster. “The only link right now is Leopold, but I know for a fact that he was not at the institute. The only person he could have been was Sizemore. And even that was a long shot, now disproved.”
“Well, we’ve seen that these people can play with physical perceptions. They made a smaller person look massive. And we’ve had a BOLO out on him for a while now and nothing. Guy’s just vanished.”
“And no sign of our waitress from the bar?”
“None. Waitress or waiter, according to the barman.”
“Physical perception again. The guy impersonated a woman. And he did it well. I was sold on it. And he served me a beer. Was inches from me and I never suspected anything.”
“And you’re convinced that the waitress was in on it?”
“The barman told the FBI that she vanished about five minutes before Leopold left, and never came back. Could be a coincidence, but I don’t think so.”
“Okay, but it’s still not a fact. Not yet.” She riffled through some papers. “But I have something here that
is
a fact.”
He sat up. “What?”
“Six students and three adults were killed at the school. Five of the students were male.”
“And Debbie Watson was the lone female.”
“But the five males were all on the football team. Or three were, technically. One was a team manager, and one had gotten kicked off recently for some rule violation.”
Decker sat up even straighter. “Beth Watson said that Jimmy Schikel was on the team. But I didn’t make a connection with the others. Because of Debbie and the adults.”
“And, Joe Kramer, while the gym teacher, was also the
football
coach.”
“And the assistant principal?”
“Barry Dresden has no connection to the team that I could find. He has no kids at the school, so none of them could be on the team. And then there’s Andy Jackson.”
“But he was killed because he confronted the shooter. It might be that the others were targeted because of their connection to the football team.”
“But Dresden had no such ties.”
“But all of the male student victims plus the coach? That can’t be a coincidence, Mary. The odds are way too long. There were lots of targets in each of those classrooms. He had to know who he was shooting. Wait a minute, were the victims all large? Did they look like football players?”
“Two did, the others were normal-sized. So I doubt he could have picked them solely on their physical appearance. They wear their game jerseys on Fridays before the football game, but the shooting didn’t happen on a Friday. But he could have easily found out which ones were on the team. And he could have found their class schedules too. Or Debbie could have told him. And if so, maybe she knew what he was planning to do.” She paused. “But anyway, I wanted you to know what I had found out.”
He looked at her appreciatively. “That’s good work, Mary. No one else saw that, including me.”
She smiled wearily. “Well, I’m not used to getting somewhere before you, so it does feel good. But what does it mean, Amos?”
“I played on the football team here. They took all of my trophies. It could be just another way of getting back at me. Another facet of their vendetta.” He lapsed into silence.
“What?”
“Dresden, the assistant principal, was targeted. The shooter went to the office to kill him. Debbie and Jackson can be explained away. But not Dresden. If he has no ties to the football team, then why was he killed?”
“You mean the reason might not be your playing football here? Despite their taking the trophies?”
“Yes. But if not that, what?”
“I have no idea,” admitted Lancaster.
“Well, it won’t do us any good beating our heads against the wall on it until we find out more. But we do have someplace to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“The bar.”
“You thirsty?”
“Yeah, but not for a beer.”