Redemption (Amos Decker #5)(67)

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.”