DECKER LAY IN his bed at the Mitchells’ house rubbing his glued-together scalp.
It was late, and he was tired and his head was throbbing.
He hadn’t been entirely honest with Jamison. It was true he had taken many hits as a football player. And he’d suffered a number of concussions over the course of his football career. But this injury felt different. It felt deeper. More invasive.
The X-ray had shown that whatever had hit him had not penetrated his skull. There was no crack, no fracture, yet he still felt weird, and not just because his brain had bounced off the inside of his skull, which was basically the definition of a concussion. He just wasn’t sure why he felt so different.
Sleep would not come, so at around three in the morning, he showered, dressed, and went downstairs.
On the kitchen counter, he saw a slip of paper. He picked it up. It was the sheet of numbers that Zoe had shown him to see if he could remember them.
On a whim, he decided to put the matter to a test. He set the paper down.
He dialed the page up in his head and went down the columns. Everything was going fine until he got near the end. Then something in his head skipped, like a DVD with a scratch on its surface.
I can’t see the last two numbers.
In a semi-daze, he walked out the back door and sat down in a wicker chair on the rear deck. It was fortunate that where he was sitting was partially covered by an overhang, because a fine rain was falling. Although it wouldn’t really have mattered to Decker. He had certainly sat out in the rain before. And even slept in the rain when he’d been temporarily homeless back in Ohio.
He rubbed his temples. His perfect recall had been with him so long that he often took it for granted. There were elements of it that he also hated, like not being able to let time erode the horrific memories of his family’s having been murdered. But still, he had come to count on his remarkable gift to help him solve crimes. And if it was now becoming fallible?
He closed his eyes and brought the page of numbers back up. This time he could see the last two numbers, but not three in the middle. They were fuzzed over, like someone had smudged the ink in which they’d been written.
Well, that’s great.
He stared across at the house that had been the genesis of the current investigation. If he hadn’t been standing out here having a beer and looking around, he and Jamison would never have been involved in any of this.
Who murdered you?
Decker wanted to know the answer to that question more than any other.
“Are you okay, Mr. Amos?”
Decker turned to see Zoe Mitchell standing in the doorway of the house in her pink PJs. She was holding a neon green blanket and her thumb hovered near her mouth. She looked anxious.
“I’m fine, Zoe.”
“Aunt Alex said you hurt your head.”
“It was nothing. Just a bump. You can’t sleep?”
She walked out and sat cross-legged on the deck next to him, her blanket held tightly to her chest. “Sometimes I just wake up. Then I go get some milk, but Mom forgot to get it today.” She stopped talking and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
When Decker looked down at her, he was suddenly seeing another little girl: his daughter, Molly.
“Does your blanket have a name?” he asked quietly.
Zoe shook her head.
“My daughter had a blanket too. She named it Hermione. You know, from Harry Potter? Hermione Granger.”
“My mom won’t read the books to me or let me see the movies yet. She says I’m not old enough.”
“Well, when you are old enough you’ll love them.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Molly.”
“Is she older than me?”
Decker looked away, a sudden catch in his throat. It had been stupid to bring up Molly.
He nodded. “About six years older than you.”
“How come she didn’t come here with you?”
Yeah, a really bad idea.
“She had—school.”
“Oh. So, her mom is with her?”
“Yes, they’re both together, that’s right.”
Zoe gazed over at the house where the two men had been found.
“Are you and Aunt Alex doing stuff with what happened over there?”
“We’re helping the police look into it.”
Zoe put her thumb back in her mouth and sucked on it, her eyes wide and her brow furrowed. “Mommy said people died in that house,” she mumbled.
“Look, Zoe, you don’t have to think about any of that, okay? It has nothing to do with you or your family.”
“Aunt Alex is my family. And you said you were helping the police.”
This caught Decker off guard. “Right. I know that. I mean…” His voice trailed off as Zoe looked up at him hopelessly.
“You…you should go back to bed, Zoe. It’s really late.”
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Sometimes you have so much going on inside your head, you just can’t sleep.”
“This helps me,” Zoe said, holding out her blanket for Decker to take.
He smiled at this kind gesture by the little girl. He touched the blanket and said, “Thanks, but I think you and your blanket need to stay together. It’s just better that way.”
Zoe cuddled with her blanket, stood, and walked back to the door.
She turned and said, “I hope you don’t get hurt any more, Mr. Amos.”
Decker looked at her. “I’ll try not to.”
After she went back inside, Decker stared again at the house behind them. He closed his eyes and let his memories unspool like film across his mind.
His eyes popped open.
And for good reason.
Normally, his memories came back to him just as he had seen them. He had always considered the process pristine. Just like when Zoe had shown him the sheet of numbers and he had memorized them.
But now, like the problem in trying to see the numbers, the memories were erratic and disjointed, as though frames were jumbled together and running out of order through his mind. It was disconcerting, annoying, and Decker eventually put it down to his head injury.
The weird head injury.
He settled back in his chair and made his meandering way through the frames of their first night in Baronville. What he had seen. What he had heard.
The car driving away.
The plane flying over.
The spark of light in the window.
The grisly discoveries.
Then, out of order, the two noises he had heard. Thud and scrape.
Decker didn’t like not knowing something. Yet not knowing something was part of being an investigator. He often didn’t know anything right up until he knew everything.
He suddenly wanted to take a walk.
He went back inside and quietly searched for an umbrella to protect him against the rain. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have cared about getting a little wet, but he had to take into account his head wound.
He opened the closet door off the front entrance.
Inside there was an umbrella leaning against the wall.
And there was something else.
It was a roll of architectural blueprints leaning next to a cheap battered briefcase.
At first, Decker figured they might be for the house, but it was a big sheaf for such a modest residence.
Curious, he unrolled the plans and laid them out on the foyer floor. He took out his cell phone and used the flashlight feature to look over the top page.
It was a large building, laid out in grids.
Decker noted the writing at the top.
It was the fulfillment center where Frank Mitchell worked.
That made sense. He was in management there. The facility was relatively new.
He rolled the plans back up and put them away.
He stepped outside, put up the umbrella, and started to walk down the street. He reached the end, turned the corner, and walked over to the next block.
He wanted to see something.
The Murder House, as he now termed it.
There were lights on in the house and a police cruiser was parked in front.
Behind the cruiser were parked two black SUVs. As he watched, an officer in a yellow slicker got out. A guy in a DEA windbreaker climbed out of one of the SUVs and joined the cop on the property patrol.
Kemper was clearly relying on the locals for nothing.
Decker ran his gaze over the house, the plot of land, the few parked cars on the street, and all the dark houses up and down it.
He looked up at the sky where the plane had flown over.
Then he looked down the street again.
That was odd. He checked his watch.
Three-forty.
There were lights on in one of the houses about six doors down and on the opposite side of the street.
He headed in that direction.