Текст книги "Memory Man"

Автор книги: David Baldacci

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Chapter

59

THE POLICE CHIEF from two decades ago had died six years before of a heart attack. There were two officers from that time who were still with the department. Neither of them knew anything about the Wyatt case, they had told Bogart when he and the others showed up at the single police station in town. The group was rapidly shown the door.

As they drove away Lancaster said, “They’re lying. I could see it in their faces.”

“Small town, small enough that everyone knows everyone else’s business,” said Decker. “I say we go to the top of the list.”

“You mean Giles Evers’s father?” said Jamison. “Clyde Evers?”

“If he’s still alive.”

Bogart was looking at his smartphone, on which he had been doing a search. “Apparently he is. And it looks like he still lives here.”

*  *  *

The address they drove to turned out to be a small house on the edge of town. As they pulled up they could see lights on in the front windows. A porch ran along the front of the plank-sided house. Smoke curled upward from a chimneystack. The snow had started to fall once more.

The house was run-down. The lawn was lumpy, the trees and bushes diseased and mangled, and the single car in the driveway was an ancient Ford truck.

Lancaster muttered, “The town’s patriarch, huh? Must’ve fallen on hard times.”

“There might be a good reason for that,” said Decker.

At their knock the front door opened and an old man, bloated and bent, stood there. His white beard reached to his chest, and his frayed pants were held up by knotted rope suspenders.

Bogart identified himself, flashed his badge, and said they needed to speak to him about his son. Evers nodded dumbly and led the four of them into a tiny room where a fire crackled in a soot-smeared stone-faced fireplace.

The inside of the house was dark and smelled both of mildew and mothballs and of whatever meal the man had microwaved that night.

Decker’s gaze shot everywhere before coming to rest on the old man, who fell back into a recliner, his shoeless feet off the floor. He scratched his cheek and looked at each of them in turn before his gaze returned to Decker.

“You don’t look like FBI.”

“That’s because I’m not.”

“Uh-huh,” Evers said absently, as his gaze settled onto the fire. “So you’re here to find my boy?” he said to the flames. “Didn’t think they’d get the Federals involved. But so be it. All I got left is that boy. Not much, but that’s it.”

“You sacrificed a lot for him, didn’t you?” said Decker. He looked around again. “Pretty much everything, right?”

Evers shot him a glance before looking back at the fire. “What the hell do you know about anything?”

“So you don’t know where he is?” said Decker.

Evers turned a fierce gaze on him. “What are you saying? That I took my own damn son? Are you simple or what?”

“I’m saying that Belinda Wyatt took him. But you already knew that.”

For a moment Evers looked like he might collapse to the floor. But then he regained his composure and even flung his flabby hand out dismissively. “Belinda Wyatt! Ghosts-of-the-past bullshit. What’s she got to do with anything?”

Decker said, “She has to do with everything. She took Giles. And if we do find him, it’ll just be his body, there can be no doubt of that. Something you also know, Mr. Evers. Your son is dead.”

Bogart, Jamison, and Lancaster all stared in alarm at Decker because of this provocative statement. But Decker never took his gaze off Evers.

The old man’s lips trembled and his breathing accelerated. He reached to a side table, picked up a cigarette and lighter, and ignited his smoke. He put it to his lips and inhaled. The nicotine seemed to calm him.

“You got his damn body?” he asked, blowing smoke out his nostrils. “Is that why you’re really here?”

“I doubt we’ll find it. Unless she wants us to.”

Evers exploded, “Then why don’t you go arrest that queer-ass bitch!”

Decker said, “That’s why we’re here. To get your help so we can do that.”

Evers sat up straighter. “Why my help? I don’t know anything. It’s been over twenty years.”

Decker continued. “And we came to you because your son and the other police officers who raped and nearly beat her to death apparently aren’t around anymore. But you are.”

Evers sat up straighter. “Nothing was ever proved. Hell, no case was ever even brought. My boy, not a mark on him. God’s honest truth.”

“Because you paid off the Wyatts and worked with the police chief back then to cover up the whole thing, including not filing a police report. They left her for dead. But she didn’t die. She identified each one of them. Mercy may be extraordinarily misnamed, but it’s a small town. Everybody knows everybody else. She knew who her assailants were. You’re a prominent citizen here. She would have known your son. She would know he was with the police. But she was only sixteen. She would have believed that the police would protect her even from other cops. She was probably always told that if you have a problem or feel threatened in any way, go to the police.” He paused. “Because they’ll help you.” He paused again, keeping his gaze steady on the old man. “Well, they didn’t help her. They raped her, nearly killed her, and then covered it up.”

“No proof.”

Bogart said, “We’ll trace the money that was paid to the Wyatts by you, Mr. Evers.”

“And we talked to the Wyatts,” Decker added, drawing a quick glance from Bogart and Jamison. “They told us what you did. So you can stop with the denials. We’re on a tight time frame. I’m actually surprised you’re still alive. I would have thought they would have taken you at the same time they took your son.”

The matter-of-fact tone employed by Decker seemed to deflate all the remaining fight in the old man. He jerked forward in the recliner so his feet touched the floor.

He pointed a stubby nicotine-stained finger at Decker. “Damned statute of limitations has run on all this.”

“It probably has,” conceded Decker. “So you can tell us everything without fear that you will go to prison for any of it, no matter how much you should go to prison for what you did. But murder has no statute of limitations, so we can still find and punish Wyatt. You can help us do that.”

Evers stubbed out his cigarette and seemed to gather his thoughts for a few moments. “I think what you got to understand is that the girl was weird, asking for it, yes sir.”

“Asking to be gang-raped and nearly beaten to death?” said Jamison, her mouth curved in disgust. “What woman would ask for that?”

“Well, not that, of course. But those boys got carried away is all. Boys being boys. Hell, you know.”

“No, I really don’t,” said Lancaster, with even more disgust in her voice than Jamison’s.

“And the ‘boys’ would include your son?” interjected Bogart.

Evers nodded curtly. “He was always in trouble. Got him to join the police force. Chief was a longtime buddy of mine. Owed me. Hell, the whole town owed me. Thought that would get him straight. Swear to God I did. Shows how wrong I was. Just gave him a gun and a chip on his shoulder and an attitude that what he wanted he just took.”

“How did his attention get drawn to Wyatt?” asked Bogart.

“Well, see, there was talk over at the school about her. Like I said, weird shit. Never acted normal. Hell, like I said, she was queer-like. Disgusting crap. My boy’s a red-blooded American man. He wasn’t gonna brook none of that vileness. It’s a sin.”

“Actually, it’s not,” said Lancaster. “But keep going.”

Evers lit another cigarette and puffed as he talked. “Well, he and some others decided to go teach her a lesson.”

“How’d they do that?” asked Decker.

Evers pointed a finger at Decker. “You don’t have it exactly right. It wasn’t a bunch of police officers. Just my boy. He was the only cop.”

“I don’t understand,” said Decker, looking taken aback. “Belinda was gang-raped.”

“She was. But my boy was the only one in uniform.”

“Who were the others?” asked Lancaster.

“Oh, just some punks from the high school football team and—”

Decker interrupted, “And the coach?”

Lancaster hurriedly added, “And the assistant principal?”

Evers looked amazed. “That’s right. How’d you know that?”

Lancaster looked at Decker. “Amos, that’s how she chose her targets at Mansfield. That’s how she chose the location.”

Decker said, “How many football players were involved?”

Evers shrugged. “I don’t know. Four, five.”

“Try six.”

“Hell, man, come on, how do you know that?” said Evers. “Even I can’t remember. And I was here.”

“Belinda Wyatt told us.”

“But you said—”

“Just keep going. Where did the rape take place?”

“In the cafeteria, my son told me. Don’t know why they picked that place. But that’s where he said it happened. Did her up on a table, I believe,” he added nonchalantly.

Bogart, Jamison, and Lancaster all exchanged glances.

“How did your son get a hold of Belinda?” asked Decker.

“He picked her up in his patrol car when he saw her walking on the street one night. Apparently she walked at night a lot. He’d seen her before. He told her he was going to look after her.”

“What did he mean by that?” asked Bogart sharply.

“Like I said, she was a freak, and folks here made a point of telling her so to her face. No, they were none too kind. Me, I say the Lord makes ’em in lots of different ways. What will be will be. But not some others ’round here. So her life was pretty bad in Mercy. Giles knew that. So he used that to sort of lure her in.”

“Why would he even care about her?” asked Decker.

“Hey, he played football at the high school. Went there with the coach, Howard Clarke, and Conner Wise, the assistant principal, when they were all younger, o’course.” He lowered his voice, “And word at the school was that Wyatt was part man, part woman. Girls in gym class said she had balls. My God, can you believe that? I bet the Wyatts were into drugs and such. Maybe they were hippies. Get that in your body and have a kid, shit like that happens. A girl with balls.”

“That is absolutely ridiculous,” blurted out Bogart.

“So you say, don’t make it true,” countered Evers. “Anyway, some fellers on the football team, they dated some of these girls. So they got wind of it. They told Howard and my son and Conner. They all got together and figured they’d teach her a little lesson.”

“By nearly killing her?” snapped Lancaster.

Evers got a thoughtful look on his face. “You know what? I think they were maybe trying to help her. You know, let the girl feel what it was like to have a man doing things to her. Get her back to normal. Make her see she was really a gal and all. And how good it was to be with a man.”

Bogart said, “Don’t try to spin this into something positive. Mr. Evers. The statute of limitations might have run out on the rape and assault, but if you try to obstruct justice, I’ll have your ass in a prison cell faster than you can take another puff on that cigarette.”

Evers stared at him for a moment and then hurried on with his story. “Well, I guess things got outta hand. She fought back real hard. So they had to, well, beat her up some. I guess one of ’em hit her so hard they thought they’d killed her. She was unconscious and bleeding and everything. And Giles told me she stopped breathing. So they got a little scared and they threw her in the Dumpster behind the school and then they all took off. But she come to and dragged herself outta there. She went to the cops and reported it. Like I said, the chief was my old buddy, owed me for things in the past. Called me. Her parents knew, of course. She told ’em. I scraped every dime I could get my hands on to keep it quiet.” His face turned into a mask of fury. “The Wyatts sucked me dry. The bastards.”

“Is that the way you saw it?” asked Bogart. “A negotiation?”

“It’s the way they saw it. Look around. I live in this shitpile now. Wife long dead. It killed her. She knew. Killed her dead. Took every penny I got. Sold every property I had, all my assets, gone. The damn Wyatts probably built some mansion somewhere, hell, I don’t know. And they were the ones brought that freak into this world. And I live here after busting my hump for sixty years. This is all I got to show for it.” He looked around. “My fridge is twenty years old. Haven’t had a new car in forever. One out there don’t even run.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s been painful for you,” said Bogart dryly.

Decker said, “But why do anything? Why pay any money? It was they-said, she-said. The whole town was against her. The cops could have gotten rid of the evidence. Protecting their own. And the chief was your buddy. The Wyatts suckered you.”

Evers puffed on his cigarette and shook his head resignedly. “No sir, they weren’t bluffing. They had evidence.”

“How?” asked Bogart.

“Before Belinda Wyatt went home she walked herself on over to the damn hospital and they did a rape and assault kit. No question she’d been raped and beat up bad. Had my boy’s evidence on it. And everybody else’s. DNA, blood, and skin under her fingernails, all that shit. Dead to rights. Then, like I said, Belinda told her parents what happened.”

“But they didn’t call the cops,” said Decker.

“No, they knew the lay of the land in Mercy. The Everses were at the top. Everybody else, not so much. No one here woulda given a damn, but the Wyatts played it smart. Had to hand it to them. They threatened to turn everything over to the state police, the FBI even. Well, I had to do something.” He finished his cigarette and stared over at Decker. “Couldn’t let my only son go down over messing up some piece of trash.”

Decker said, “I thought you were of the mind to live and let live? The Lord makes ’em in lots of different ways? What will be will be?”

Evers looked at him cagily. “Yeah, well, the Lord wasn’t going to get my boy off a rape charge if we let it get outside’a Mercy, was he?”

“What were the circumstances of your son’s disappearance?” asked Decker.

“Pretty damn simple. Went out drinking one night and never came back.”

“Is he married, have any kids?”

“Divorced. Wife’s gone and took the kids. Got his ass kicked off the police force. He lived here with me.”

Well, that’s some justice, thought Decker.

“Why all this interest now?” Evers wanted to know.

“Have you received anything that seemed off, weird, inexplicable?” asked Decker, ignoring the old man’s question.

Evers thought for a moment. “Well, there’s that one thing.”

“What thing?” said Decker quickly.

“Hell, I’ll go fetch it.” The old man struggled up and was gone for a minute.

Bogart looked at Decker. “Well, this explains why Wyatt is doing what she’s doing. Revenge. She picked Mansfield because of what happened to her at the high school here.”

Lancaster added, “And she picked her victims the same way. Mirrored the people who nearly killed her. Six football players, the coach, and the assistant principal.”

Jamison looked at Decker. “But it still doesn’t explain why she came after you.”

Decker stared back at her. “No, it doesn’t.”

Evers returned with a single piece of paper. “Somebody slipped this under my door a few months back. Never could make heads nor tails of it.”

He handed it to Decker. The others gathered around to look at it.

It was a printout of a Web page. Its title was “Justice Denied.” Underneath was a list of names, and next to each was a crime: murder, rape, assault, kidnapping.

At the bottom of the page there was a declaration. “Each of these crimes was committed by a man in a police uniform. And every single one was covered up. But we will not forget. Justice will not be denied.”

Decker quickly read down the list of names until he came to one that made him stop. “We just found how Belinda Wyatt and Leopold hooked up.”

All three of them stared at the names: Caroline and Deidre Leopold. Next to their names was the crime committed against them.

Murder.

Chapter

60

DURING THE FLIGHT back to Burlington they all read over the case notes of the Leopolds’ murders in a village twenty kilometers from Vienna. At the request of the FBI the Austrian police had also sent along information on Leopold’s background.

“There is nothing in here about cops possibly killing Leopold’s family,” said Lancaster.

“Well, if it was true, I doubt they’d put that in the file,” said Bogart.

Decker, who had been reading over the autopsy reports on the two victims, looked up at Bogart. “You have any string on this jet?”

“String?”

“Or rope.”

They found some rope in an emergency kit stowed in a storage bin, and Bogart watched as Decker took lengths of rope and started forming knots out of them.

“What’s that?” asked Bogart.

“It might be something or it might not,” was all Decker would say.

Later he read down the “Justice Denied” paper that someone had left at Clyde Evers’s door. Then he looked at the knots he had formed with the rope and then at the page. He read over the Leopold murder file, again absorbing every bit of information. Finished, he closed his eyes and began putting the pieces together. His eyes were still closed when the jet touched down.

“Amos, time to go,” said Lancaster.

As they drove away in the SUV, Bogart said, “My people will trace this website and see what we can find out.”

Lancaster nodded and then glanced at Decker, who was staring out the window.

“What do you think, Amos?”

He was sitting in his seat still holding the knotted lengths of rope.

“I’m thinking that a lot of people are dead because of a bunch of ignorant folks.”

“Wyatt and Leopold made choices, bad ones,” said Bogart. “Horrible ones. They’re responsible for this and no one else.”

“And human beings have limits,” said Decker. “And you can say all you want about the world being unfair and people rising above the atrocities done to them, but everyone is different. Some are hard as steel, but some are fragile, and you never know which one you’re going to get.”

“They killed your family, Decker,” barked Bogart.

Lancaster and Jamison exchanged nervous glances.

Decker didn’t look at the FBI agent. “Which is why we’re going to catch them and their lives will end either in prison or in a death chamber. But don’t expect me to fully blame Wyatt for this. Because I can’t, and I won’t.”

“I wonder where Giles Evers is,” said Jamison.

“In hell, I hope,” replied Decker.

*  *  *

Decker asked to be dropped off at the Residence Inn. He walked up the steps to the second floor and gazed back as the SUV rolled out of the parking lot. Jamison was staring out the window at him. She gave him a tiny wave.

He didn’t return it.

He went into his room and sat on the bed, the springs sagging under his girth.

He closed his eyes and let his mind whir back to two images of the same person but in different situations and garb.

Billy the waitress at the bar.

Billy the mop boy at the 7-Eleven.

He had gotten a good look at Billy the mop boy’s face, not so with Billy the waitress. He scrunched his eyes tighter as though refocusing a camera. The chin was the same on both. The line of the jaw. And the hands. People always forgot about the hands, but they could be as distinctive as a fingerprint if you knew what to look for.

Long, delicate fingers, short right pinky, no nail polish on the waitress, split nail on the left index, small wart on the right thumb. Same person absolutely.

He opened his eyes wide in surprise.

He had just seen Billy. In color. For the first time.

Gray.

For him, as for many folks, it was a confusing color. It lent itself to no particular interpretation. It was a color that could go one way or the other. People desperately wanted the world to be clear-cut in black and white. It made life so much easier: Tough decisions faded away; everything was nicely organized and cataloged. And so were people. But the world was not like that. And neither were the people who inhabited it. At least for those who bothered to explore its complexity.

Its grayness.

Now, for him, Leopold was yellow. Yellow was not ambivalent. Yellow was hostile, cunning. Sometimes colors were spot on. As clear-cut as numbers, actually.

The pieces were falling into place.

But why target me? What the hell did I ever do to you, Belinda/Billy? What?

Their only contact had been at the institute twenty years ago. His family had been killed more than sixteen months ago. Quite a gap. Why the wait? Because she had run into Sebastian Leopold during that time? And he had given her a way to get back at Decker? Avenge herself? But for what?

The institute. Ground zero for them both. Interaction limited. Words spoken directly to each other? Exactly none.

He closed his eyes again. He had to get this right. He had to be thorough. Wyatt had a reason for everything. She had been amazingly meticulous. The symmetry was spellbinding in its depravity. In its horror. So there had to be a reason for this too.

His DVR whirred back and forth. Images flashed past with astonishing speed, but he missed nothing. He saw everything that was there as though it was happening to him right then and at normal speed. No, in slow motion. Every word, every moment, everything moving at the pace of a snail.

In the group sessions he had spoken of his future. His hopes and dreams. But so had everyone else. Well, everyone except Belinda. She had been given the opportunity, but had not volunteered any information about her future plans. She apparently didn’t have any future plans, at least not then.

Well, that changed.

Some knew of Decker’s past, of his trauma, his near death on the playing field. He had not known of Belinda’s plight, though perhaps she didn’t know that. She might have thought that if she knew about him, he knew about her. But what did that matter, really?

He opened his eyes, his brow creasing with the failure of his mind—his extraordinary brain-traumatized, bastardized mind that had been born to him after his death and resurrection—to solve the one conundrum that would make all the other pieces fall into place.

He left because he could not stay here.

Thirty minutes later he walked into the Burlington police station. Captain Miller was there. Bogart had already briefed him on the trip to Utah, Miller informed him.

“You don’t look so good, Amos,” Miller said.

“Should I?” Decker said back.

Miller tapped his head. “It’s not coming?”

“It’s there. I just can’t make it tell me what I need to know.”

“You have an exceptional mind, but it’s still a lot to figure out.”

“Well, someone has to. And if it’s not me, it has to be someone else.”

“You think they might pull up their tent and leave?”

“Not yet.”

“What are they waiting for?” asked Miller.

“Me.”

He went down to the evidence locker and filled out the necessary paperwork with Miller’s authorization to step inside the locker and look through the evidence gathered thus far. Since he was no longer with the police, someone had to accompany him.

That person was Sally Brimmer, who explained, “It’s not like I have a higher priority than this case, Decker.”

They sat at a table as Decker went over every evidence bag, many of them twice. He finally came to his uniform the second time around.

“Technically, you should have turned in your badge,” admonished Brimmer. “It’s no good anymore anyway. The way they defaced it.”

Decker picked up the bag and looked through the plastic at the badge with the X cut through it.

X-ing me out, he thought. Like you did Giles Evers. He was wearing a uniform when he took you under false pretenses, Belinda. In a sense they were all in uniform. The cop, the football players, the coach, even the assistant principal, cloaked in the authority of the school. You were surrounded by people who should have protected you, but they didn’t. Instead, they destroyed you. Starting with a cop. With a badge. Just like mine.

He rubbed the metal through the plastic. Then he stopped. It was like rubbing a genie’s lamp. He had made a silly wish, never thinking it would come true. But it just had.

The last piece had just fallen into place.

And Amos Decker finally understood what he had done to deserve all this.