Текст книги "Memory Man"

Автор книги: David Baldacci

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Bogart glanced at him sharply and nodded. “Right. Sorry I jumped down your throat.” He paused and then declared, “Okay, we’re going to tear that damn alley apart.” He got on the phone and called in his team. Then he turned to Decker. “We need to work on this together. We have got to stop this guy.”

Decker shook his head. “Not guy. Guys.”

“What makes you say that?” asked a startled Lancaster as Bogart stared at him. “The shooter appears to be a loner. You said that.”

“And I was wrong,” Decker said decisively.

“But what specifically makes you think there could be more than one man involved?” asked Bogart.

“Because no one can be in two places at the same time.”

Chapter

31

SUNRISE.

The clouds had gone and with them the rain. So it was a true sunrise, where the colors changed at first subtly and then suddenly transformed the heavens in a way that no other occurrence could. Short of a nuclear bomb and its towering mushroom cloud.

Yet both were transformative in their own right. One side of the world was lit, the other enveloped in blackness. The bomb’s kiss was for real. The sun’s movement was a metaphor for either darkness descending or light arising.

Decker stood there on the pavement and watched this all take place. Despite the coming light his mood remained trapped in the deepest darkness. He had not gone back to sleep after leaving Bogart and Lancaster. There would have been no point.

The 7-Eleven faced him across the width of the asphalt. It was open. It was always open. Through the glass he could see the same woman counting packs of smokes. But a different punk was mopping the floors. Perhaps “Billy” had moved on to another bucket in another town. Or maybe he was recovering from a night out with the ladies.

He didn’t know why he had come here after leaving Lancaster and Bogart. But this place kept drawing him back like metal to a magnet.

He stepped through the door, and when the little bell tinkled it felt like a drill bit boring right through his skull.

“Are you all right?”

Decker refocused and found the woman’s gaze on him. She looked a bit frightened, and when he caught his reflection in the mirrored door of a chiller cabinet containing soda he could understand why. He looked wild and demented and his clothes were dirty and his hair disheveled.

“You…you were in here the other day,” she said. “Looking for someone.”

Decker nodded and looked around. “Where’s Billy? The floor mopper?”

“Today he comes to work in the afternoon. Did you find the man you were looking for?”

Decker shook his head. “But I’ll keep looking.”

“You look like you could use some coffee. It’s fresh. I just made it. In the back there. Only one dollar for a large. It’s a good deal. Maybe some food?”

The doorbell tinkled again and two men in dungarees, work boots, and flannel shirts stomped in. One went to the counter for some cigarettes. The other went to the soda fountain and proceeded to fill a giant cup with Coke.

While the woman attended her new customer, Decker drifted to the back of the store, got his coffee, hooked a packaged pastry from a shelf, and went up to the counter. He waited behind the guy ordering smokes, who also wanted lottery tickets with particular numbers. As Decker waited his gaze flicked absently to the newspaper stand next to the counter. The paper lay flat on it, the upper fold of the front page fully exposed. He nearly dropped his coffee and pastry. He set them down, snatched up the paper, and commenced reading.

He unconsciously started to walk out of the store as he did so.

The woman called after him, “Hey, you need to pay for this.” She indicated the coffee and pastry. “And the paper.”

Decker stuck a hand into his pocket, pulled out a five and dropped it on the counter, and walked out, leaving the coffee and pastry behind. The woman and the two men stared after him.

He stumbled across the street and perched on the edge of a trash can under a flickering streetlight.

The story was long, detailed, and had a picture.

My picture. My story. No, not my story. Someone’s version of a story that holds far less truth than blatant speculation. And lies.

He glanced at the byline, though he needn’t have bothered. He already knew who it was.

Alexandra Jamison.

He caught a bus to the Residence Inn, hustled to his room, sat on the bed, and read the story three more times. It didn’t change, of course. But it beat into his head with a little more force each time, like a knife repeatedly stabbing flesh.

He fell back on the bed and finally slept for a bit. When he woke it was nearly nine in the morning.

He went to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, went down to the buffet, stuffed his plate with food, poured out three cups of black coffee, carried it all to his table, and then sat there staring down at it.

The sun was well up now and light flooded through the front plate glass windows. The illumination seemed to broadcast him in stark relief, like he was an actor performing onstage under the withering heat blast of a spotlight.

He waited, staring at the food. Then his gaze drifted to the newspaper he had set beside his plate.

His phone buzzed. He looked at it, hit the answer button.

Lancaster said, “Shit, Amos, what the hell did you do?”

“Nothing. Apparently that’s the problem.”

“Anybody reading this story will come away thinking you hired Sebastian Leopold to kill your family.”

“That’s what I thought, even though I know better.”

“Why is she after you?”

“Because I wouldn’t talk to her.”

“So you left her no option but to make shit up?”

“I did meet with Leopold.”

“You mean in his cell.”

“Afterward.”

“What?”

“I followed him after he was released. It’s the picture that’s in the article. We were at a bar.”

“Why in the hell did you follow him?”

“Because I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to understand why he had told the cops and me that he had murdered my family when he couldn’t possibly have.”

“And did he tell you?’

“No. He disappeared.”

“You mean you lost him?”

“I mean he got in a car and disappeared.”

“You saw this?”

“No, but it’s the only possibility.”

He heard her let out a long sigh. He had often heard Lancaster let out long sighs, usually after Decker had done something totally off the wall, even if it had eventually led to the truth in a case they were investigating.

“Amos, I really don’t get you sometimes.”

He had heard this so many times he knew that she did not expect an answer and thus he didn’t bother giving one.

“So Leopold is gone?”

“For now,” he said.

“People are going to eat you alive over this article. And the witch even included the fact of where you’re currently living.”

“I have an ace in the hole.”

“What’s that?” she said curiously.

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Amos, I don’t think you understand—”

“I have to go.” He hung up on her and put his phone on the table next to the uneaten mound of food. As he stared down at the pile of eggs, sausages, bacon, and roasted potatoes, he saw not food, but the photo of him and Leopold in the bar. He knew it must seem odd to folks that he would be sitting and drinking a beer with the man who had confessed and then recanted to killing his family. But if he was going to solve those murders, he had to go down any path that presented itself. And Leopold was one such path.

He sighed, pushed his plate away, and looked up. June was standing off to the side holding a pan of muffins. She wasn’t looking at Decker. She was looking toward the doorway.

Decker followed her gaze. And saw her.

Alex Jamison stood at the door to the breakfast area. She had on black slacks and a frayed black overcoat out of which peeked a turquoise turtleneck. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had on heels that kicked her height up several inches.

She walked over to his table and looked down at the paper next to his plate.

“I guess you’ve read it,” she said quietly.

Decker said nothing. He picked up his fork, pulled his plate toward him, and started to eat.

She stood awkwardly next to his table. When he didn’t say anything she said, “I gave you an opportunity to talk to me.”

Decker kept eating.

She sat down across from him. “It’s not like I wanted to do this.”

He put his fork down, used a paper napkin to wipe his mouth, and looked at her. “I find that people almost always do exactly what they want to do.”

She tapped the paper. “You still have a chance to make it right.”

“People who make things right do so because they’ve done something wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“You were meeting with a man who allegedly killed your family.”

“Allegedly. And now all charges are dropped, which you knew before you wrote this story. And which I knew before I met him in the bar.”

“Why did you meet with him?”

“I had questions for him.”

“What sorts?” She took out her recorder, pad, and pen, but Decker held up his hand.

“Don’t bother.”

She sat back. “Don’t you want your story to get out?”

Decker shoved the plate of food away, leaned across the table, and said, “I don’t have a story to tell.” He sat back, pulled the plate toward him again, and resumed eating.

“Okay, fair enough. But do you think Leopold had a hand in the murders? Even if he didn’t commit them personally? And then there’s the fact that the same gun was used at the high school.”

Decker eyed her grimly. “Brimmer could get fired for that one. It’s not public knowledge. And you know it’s not, or else you would have already written about it. I could call her out on that. You want to see your contact lose her career? Or is that just considered fair game for the story?”

“You’re a very unusual man.”

“I have no context with which to frame a reply to that observation.”

“Sort of proves my point, doesn’t it?”

Now Decker sat back and looked at her. “Tell me about yourself,” he said abruptly.

“What, why?” she said warily.

“I can find out easily enough. Everyone’s life is online. So, to borrow your phrase, I’m giving you the opportunity to tell your story.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to say, ‘Touché’?”

“You have something to hide?”

“Do you?”

“No. But you know all about me.” He tapped the paper next to his plate. “Proof is right there. So tell me about yourself.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Hometown, family, education, career, life goals.”

“Wow, you don’t ask for much.”

Decker waited. He had no problem with silence, with waiting. His patience, like his mind, had no bounds.

She folded her arms across her chest and said, “I’m from Indiana, Bloomington. I went to Purdue, graduated with a degree in mass comm. Started out at some small papers in the Midwest basically fetching coffee, writing the crap stories no one else wanted to write, and pulling the shifts no one wanted to pull. I tried some online journalism and blogging but hated it.”

“Why?”

“I like to talk to people, face-to-face, not through a machine. That’s not real journalism. It’s data management fed to you by schmucks you don’t even know. It’s reporting for lazy people who live in their PJs. Not what I wanted. I want a Pulitzer. In fact, I want a shelf of them.”

“Then you came here. Why? Burlington is not a rip-roaring metropolis.”

“It’s bigger than any other town I was in before. It’s got crime, interesting politics. Cost of living is low, which is important, because when you add up my hours worked I don’t even make minimum wage. And they let me work my own beat and follow up my own stories.”

“Family?”

“Large. All back in Bloomington.”

“And the other reason you came here?”

“There is no other reason.”

He pointed to a finger on her left hand. “There were two rings there. The marks are slight but distinct. Engagement and wedding rings. No longer there.”

“So I’m divorced. Big whoop. So are half the people in this country.”

“Fresh start away from your ex?”

She rubbed at the spot on her hand. “Something like that. Okay, are we done with me?”

“Do you want to be done?”

“You understand that you’re not actually playing me, right? I’m just feeling generous, sort of going along for the ride, seeing where we end up.”

“You follow up your own stories, you say?”

“I do.”

“Do you intend to try to trace a connection between the killings of my family and the shootings at Mansfield?”

“Of course.”

“What do your friends call you?”

“You’re assuming I have friends?”

“What does Brimmer call you?”

“Alex.”

“Okay, Alexandra, let me be as clear about this as I possibly can be.”

She did an eye roll and looked at him disdainfully. “Do I sense a patronizing lecture coming?”

“Would you like a scoop?”

Her expression changed. She picked up her recorder. “Is this on the record?”

“So long as your source is anonymous.”

“You have my word.”

“Do you normally give it that quickly?”

“You have my word,” she said tightly.

“An FBI agent was killed last night and her body was left hanging just above our heads on the catwalk up there. She was a skilled, armed federal agent who really can take care of herself. Now she’s a murder victim who was dispatched as easily as someone crushing a bug underfoot.” He slid the plate out of the way again, reached over, and clicked off her recorder.

She made no move to stop him.

“I’ve seen a lot in my twenty years on the force, but I have never seen—” He stopped, grappling for the right words. “I have never seen menace like this. But it’s not just that. It’s—” Again he stopped, tapping his fingers on the table and closing his eyes. When he opened them he said, “Menace coupled with brains and cunning. It’s a very dangerous combination, Alexandra. And I asked about your family only because I wanted to know if you would have anyone to mourn you when you’re murdered too. Because please make no mistake, he will kill you as easily as exhaling smoke from a cigarette.”

“Look, if you’re trying to—”

Decker didn’t let her finish. “He could be watching us right now for all I know, and sizing up where and how exactly he plans to take your life. It seems that he likes to screw with me that way. Kill people I’m close to or associated with. You wrote a big story on me. That ties you and me together in just the way this guy seems to love. And I have no doubt he plans to keep killing until he gets down to his last planned victim.”

Jamison no longer looked disdainful. She looked frightened, though trying hard not to show it.

“And who would that be?” She tried to say this flippantly but her voice cracked halfway through.

“That would be me.”

Chapter

32

ALEXANDRA SCOOPED UP her recorder, pad, and pen and put them back into her bag and rose. She wouldn’t look at Decker.

“Okay, if it makes you feel better, you have officially scared the shit out of me,” she said.

“Did you see Leopold leave the bar?”

“What?”

He tapped the newspaper. “The bar where this picture was taken?”

Now she looked at him, her features wary. “I’m not going to answer that.”

“You just did. Okay, I have one more question for you.”

“What?”

He held up the newspaper. “Where did you get this photo of me and Leopold at the bar? There’s no attribution for the photographer. I know the profession is a stickler for that, so I’m wondering why there’s no name there.”

“I took it.”

“No you didn’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m pretty observant. And I happen to know you weren’t in the bar. Whoever did take the picture was watching Leopold and me. Which means he followed us both there though I was following Leopold too.” He paused. “I wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t important. How did you get the photo?”

“I got it from an anonymous source,” she finally admitted.

“And did this anonymous source also supply you with elements of the story you wrote?”

“I really can’t get into that.”

“If you don’t know the name of the source, you don’t have to worry about protecting his identity.” Decker let the paper fall to the table. “Did it come by email, text? Surely not snail mail. You wouldn’t have had time to write the story.”

“Email.”

“Can you send me the email trail?”

“Why is this so important to you?”

“Because the person who sent you the email is also the person who killed all those people.”

“You can’t possibly know that.”

“I know it absolutely. And I would assume that the email said that you should write this story because things smelled bad on this. That here I was meeting with the man accused of killing my family. There must be more to it, right?”

As he had spoken, Jamison’s eyes had continued to widen. “Did you send the email to me?” she hissed.

“You mean so I could see a story plastered in the newspaper basically accusing me of conspiring to murder my own family?”

She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, that was stupid.” She swallowed with difficulty. “Do you really think it was him?”

“He was there. He was within ten feet of me and I never saw him. And I’m just not sure how that’s possible.”

“You said he was cunning.”

Decker nodded. “He is. He obviously wants to destroy me professionally before he kills me.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Decker looked up at her. “Go ahead.”

“Who the hell did you piss off so badly that he’s doing all this to you?”

Decker didn’t answer, because he had no answer to give. He wrote down his email address on the back of a napkin and slid it across to her.

Jamison pocketed it, turned, and left.

Decker continued to sit there.

A few moments later his phone buzzed. He looked at the screen and allowed himself a brief smile.

Jamison had just forwarded to him the email trail from her anonymous source. Decker knew that the trail would not lead them back to the sender. That was too obvious. But he wanted to study what the man had written.

He pushed his plate aside and stared down at the message. The sender’s name was Mallard2000. That meant nothing to him. He read the message. It basically mirrored what Decker had already deduced. The sender wanted Jamison to write a story raising suspicion about Decker and his family’s murder. The word choices were simple and direct. In his mind Decker imagined Sebastian Leopold uttering each of those words out loud, trying to match the cadence of his stilted speech to the components of the message. But it was off, at least in his mind. They didn’t seem to match.

There were two of them. In this together. One person can’t be in two places at the same time. Leopold in jail during both sets of murders. So if he is involved, and I believe he is, there’s someone else. Yet there is a problem with that theory.

One man with such a vendetta against him, okay. But two of them?

He forwarded the email to Lancaster and asked her to try to track it down. He doubted she or the FBI could, but they had to try. He had no computer, so he walked to the public library and used one there.

He was not very much of a techie, and his ability to track someone from an email address was limited. He soon exhausted his possibilities on that and got up from the computer. He wandered the shelves, arriving at the nonfiction section.

Something had occurred to him on the way over, and a library was a perfect place to check out a theory forming in his mind.

The Clutter family.

He worked his way to the authors whose last name ended in C. Not for Clutter, but for the author of their tragic story.

He found the book and slipped it out.

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote.

The story was both simple and complex. Decker had read it years ago and, as with everything else, had every page of the book neatly stored in his mind.

A guy in prison gets a tip from another inmate that a farmer named Clutter in rural Kansas keeps a lot of money in a safe. The guy gets out of prison, hooks up with a former cellmate, and they head to the farmer’s home. They break into the house, only to find there is no safe and no money; the tip was bullshit. It should have ended there, but unfortunately for the Clutter family, it didn’t. The more timid, though unstable, of the two crooks decides that they must kill the family. His partner, who had been the leader of the pack and the one who had gotten the tip, reluctantly goes along. One by one the family is murdered. The killers are not smart. They are pursued and caught. After their respective trials and lengthy appeals they are both hanged at the Kansas death house.

Tragic all around. Both killers had issues in their backgrounds, problems, troubles, bad stuff. But nothing to justify what they had done, not that anything could.

That part of the story did not interest Decker very much at the moment. What did interest him was the possibility of two men from very different backgrounds coming together at just the right moment and forming a partnership that would lead to the slaughter of so many people. He didn’t know Leopold. He had never met the man until he sat in that prison cell. So it wasn’t Leopold who had the vendetta against him. It had to be the person whom Leopold had hooked up with. But who was he?

He put the book back on the shelf and left the library.

As he was walking his phone buzzed again. It was Lancaster.

“Nothing yet on the email,” she said. “You really think it was the guy?”

“I do.”

“The FBI is checking it out too.”

“Anything on Lafferty yet?”

“That was the real reason I was calling. Can you meet me at the morgue?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Just meet me there. You can see for yourself.”

*  *  *

Decker took a bus over to the morgue, which was on the outskirts of Burlington in an area that, like much of the city, had seen better days. He had pondered Lancaster’s words on the ride over but could not make much of them. What did she want him to see for himself?

When he arrived at the morgue’s front entrance she was waiting for him. Her expression was tight, edgy, her hand tremor even worse.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Come on, Bogart is already back there.”

They walked down halls reeking with the smell of antiseptic. And death. The dead had their own aroma that invaded one’s eyes, nose, and throat. Morgues were not clean places. In fact, they were extraordinarily dirty. No one had to worry about their patrons dying from infections.

Lancaster led the way and finally pushed through a pair of swinging doors. Decker followed her in. The space was large and filled with shelves and stainless steel autopsy tables, three of which were occupied by corpses draped with sheets. Water wands hung down from the ceiling, and there were cabinets filled with both bottles of liquids and the instruments necessary to cut up bodies. The whir of a Stryker saw sounded from another room. Decker had heard that one before. Someone’s skull was being opened up. He wondered if it was a victim from Mansfield about to have his or her brain plucked out for measuring, weighing, and probing.

A group of people was clustered around a table in the far back, Bogart among them. He was once more dressed in a suit, the tie and tie clip just so, the collar tab perfectly horizontal, not a hair out of place, the very picture of professionalism. But in the puffy face, reddened eyes, and slump in posture, Decker read a very different man. There were two other agents with him and a man Decker knew to be the chief medical examiner. They weren’t going to put anyone junior on cutting up an FBI agent. Indeed, Decker was surprised the Bureau hadn’t flown in its own guy.

Bogart looked up when he heard them approach. He nodded briefly, gave Decker a stiff hello with his eyes, and then looked back down at the body under the sheet.

Lancaster said to the ME, “What do we know so far?”

“As was noted preliminarily at the crime scene, cause of death, stab wound to the heart. The body was moved after death. Livor mortis showed that. Blood pooled into the interstitial tissues in her back, but she was found hanging from a light fixture.” He uncovered one of Lafferty’s arms. With difficulty he lifted it up because it was still stiff. “She’s starting to come out of rigor now, extremities backward to the jaw and neck, which more or less confirms the TOD preliminary at midnight.”

“But the ambient temp?” asked Decker. “It was cold.”

“My colleague on site made allowances for that. And the deceased was injected with a very powerful sedative. We found traces of it. It would have rendered her unconscious and incapable of defending herself.”

“And there was mutilation of the genitals,” said Decker.

The ME nodded. But when he started to lower the sheet to reveal this area, Decker stopped him. “We’ve already seen it.”

He looked at Lancaster expectantly. She in turn glanced at Bogart and said, “I haven’t told him. Thought he should just see it for himself.”

Bogart nodded and then looked at the other two agents, both burly men who looked like they wanted to kill someone, anyone. “Turn her over.”

The ME pulled back the sheet, revealing the body of Special Agent Lafferty. Her skin was very pale in front. The ME had of course already cut her open; the Y-incision track sutures across her upper torso looked brutal, menacing, like twin zipper tracks cut into human flesh. Her facial skin drooped a bit because it had been sheared off in one large piece and then put back up. Her skull had been sawed open and her brain taken out before the procedure was reversed and everything was put back together.

When they turned her over the paleness was gone. Her skin there was red, almost burnt-looking from where the blood had pooled.

Decker was not focused on that.

He was looking at what was on her back.

He drew closer because the skin discoloration made it hard to see clearly.

But then he did see it.

Someone had cut something into Lafferty’s back.

Someone had carved out words with the blade of a knife using her body as paper. There were two lines of writing, one directly below the other.

When will it end bro

You tell me