The Last Mile (Amos Decker, #2)(5)
The men looked surprised.
Mars said, “Let me know when you get this all figured out, okay? You know where to find me.”
“We actually had some more questions for you, Mr. Mars,” said the first man.
“You can send them through my attorney,” he said. “I’m done talking. Figure the ball’s in your court. You know everything about me and the case against me. What you need to do now is do the same on this Montgomery dude. If he did kill my parents, then I want out of here. Sooner the better.”
The guards took him back to his cell. Later that morning he was transported via prison van back to death row at the Polunsky Unit.
As he was being escorted to his old cell one of the guards whispered to him, “You think you gettin’ outta here, boy? I don’t think so. Don’t care what them suits say. You a killer, Jumbo. And you goin’ to die for your crimes.”
Mars kept walking. He didn’t even turn his head to look at the man, a reedy-looking punk with a huge Adam’s apple. He was always the one to give Mars a hard jab in the back with his baton for no reason at all. Or spit in his face when no one was looking. Yet if Mars took a swing at him he’d be rotting in here forever, regardless of what happened with this Montgomery guy in Alabama.
The cell door clanged shut and Mars, his legs oddly wobbly, lurched over and fell rather than sat on his bunk.
He immediately hauled himself up and from long habit put his back against the concrete wall and faced the door. No one could attack him through concrete. But the door was another matter.
His mind went over all that had just happened in the last ten hours.
His execution was to take place. He was prepared for that, or as much as anyone could be.
And then it had been called off. But if they weren’t convinced by this guy in Alabama, could they still execute him? The answer to that, he knew, was probably hell yes.
Don’t mess with Texas.
He closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure exactly what emotions he was supposed to have. Happy, nervous, relieved, anxious?
Well, he was feeling all of them. Mostly, he was feeling that somehow, some way, he was never leaving this place. Regardless of what the “investigation” showed.
He wasn’t being fatalistic. Simply realistic.
He started to sing a tune under his breath, so the guards wouldn’t be able to hear. Perhaps it was stupid under the circumstances, but it felt right anyway.
Oh when the saints, oh when the saints, oh when the saints go marching in, oh Lord I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in.
CHAPTER
3
ON THE VERY last day of the year, Amos Decker sat in his rental car in the drive-through line at a Burger King near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border pondering what to order.
Most of what he owned was in the backseat and trunk of the car. He still had some things back at a storage unit in Burlington. He could not part with them, but he didn’t have the room to bring them with him either.
He was a big man, six-five, and about halfway between three and four hundred pounds—the exact number depended on how much he ate at a particular meal. He was a former college football player with a truncated stint in the NFL, where a vicious blindside hit had altered his mind and given him pretty much a perfect memory. Hyperthymesia, as it was technically known.
It sounded cool.
It wasn’t.
But it had been nothing compared to walking into his house one night to find his wife, brother-in-law, and daughter brutally murdered. That killer was no longer among the living. Decker had seen to that. But the conclusion of that case had also led him to move from Burlington, Ohio, to Virginia to take up a unique position with the FBI.
He still didn’t know how he felt about it. Thus he ordered two Whoppers, two large fries, and a Coke so big he had difficulty holding it even in his huge hand. When he was anxious, he ate.
When he was really anxious he was a garbage disposal.
He sat in the parking lot and devoured his meal, the salt on the fries sticking to his fingers and sprinkling across his lap. Outside the snow was falling lightly. He had started his journey late and was tired, so he wouldn’t finish the drive tonight. He would grab a bed at a motel in the Keystone State and then complete his journey the next day.
Special Agent Ross Bogart, the man he would be working for at the FBI, had told him that all of his traveling expenses, within reason, would be covered. He’d actually offered to fly Decker to Virginia, but Decker had declined. He wanted to drive. He wanted some time to himself. He would be working at the FBI with a woman he’d met in Burlington, a journalist named Alexandra Jamison. She’d shown her smarts during the investigation of his family’s murder, and Bogart also wanted her as part of his unusual team.
Bogart had laid out to Decker the details of his vision of this team when they’d both been back in Burlington. It would operate out of the FBI’s Quantico platform. It would bring together FBI agents and civilians with special skills to reopen and, one hoped, solve cold cases.
Maybe we’ll be a team of misfits, Decker thought.
He didn’t know how he actually felt about moving to the East Coast and essentially starting over. But he’d figured he had nothing left in Burlington, so why not? At least that was how he had felt last week. Now he wasn’t as confident.
Christmas had come and gone. Today was New Year’s Eve. People would be out partying and celebrating the coming new year. Decker would not be among them. He had nothing to celebrate, despite the new job and new life. He had lost his family. Nothing could replace them, thus he would never have anything to celebrate.