THE NEXT MORNING Decker blinked himself awake and looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings.
But they weren’t unfamiliar. They were the new digs. Big place, not a cardboard box. But with tenants. And maybe a pissed-off drug dealer lurking. The FBI had delivered his few personal belongings from his place in Quantico late last night. It had taken Decker about five minutes to put away all of his worldly possessions.
He sat up and got out of bed. He walked over to the window and peered out. It was still dark outside, but the sun would soon begin to rise.
As he continued to peer out, Decker saw a short, wiry man and a little boy walk outside and get into the car with the plastic bags taped over the rear side windows. The man was dressed in jeans, work boots, and a sweatshirt. He carried a yellow hard hat. The little boy had a large bag slung over his shoulder. They drove off, the car’s tailpipe peppering the air with dark fumes.
Down the road paralleling the building, Decker saw two people, a man and a woman, staggering along under the glow of a streetlight. They didn’t look homeless, but to Decker’s experienced eye, they weren’t too far removed from it. The man cuffed the woman on the side of the head and she fell. He kept going. Finally, the woman struggled up and followed. She pulled something from her pocket, raised her hand to her mouth, and swallowed whatever it was.
Decker watched them go, then used the bathroom, showered, and dressed. It was not yet seven o’clock. He walked down the hall to the kitchen and made himself coffee and a bowl of cereal. He had passed Jamison’s room and heard her soft snores through the partially open doorway.
He sat and drank his coffee and ate his cereal, but mostly stared out the window into the gathering light.
He had come a far distance from his former life in Burlington, Ohio.
He had lost his family, his job, and his home.
He had avenged the murders of his wife, daughter, and brother-in-law. But that did nothing to take away the loss, the pain. Nothing ever could. Time did not heal wounds for Decker. The passage of time was irrelevant to his unique mind. Everything he had ever experienced in life was as freshly minted in his brain as the moment it was created.
That was the vast downside of having a perfect memory. He had so much he wanted to forget. And couldn’t.
But that wasn’t all.
He was no longer who he used to be. He knew that he did things that irritated others. Leaving rooms too abruptly. Zoning out and becoming unresponsive. Not having as much empathy as others would have liked.
As he would have liked.
He rubbed his head. What was up there had changed. Meaning he had changed along with it. There was no separating the two: his brain and the rest of Amos Decker. That was just the way things worked.
That’s the way I work now.
He put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, sat back down, and thought about the case.
Berkshire the victim. Dabney the killer.
Berkshire’s hazy past. Did the answer lie there?
Or would the truth come from Dabney’s end?
Or a combination of the two?
He thought back to the shooting. He went through each frame in his head, looking for anything that would lead him in the right direction.
They had tracked Dabney’s movements that day. He had taken an Uber from his home in McLean to a coffee shop near the Hoover Building. Decker knew he had walked from there toward the FBI building, where he had murdered Berkshire.
As the frames whirred through his head an inconsistency popped up.
Decker loved inconsistencies. They tended to point him in the direction of the truth, or at least to a lead.
And right now he would dearly love a lead.
Ellie Dabney had told Decker that she had made her husband breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast, and roasted potatoes. Dabney had eaten it all, she had told them. Plus three cups of coffee.
So why would he stop at a coffee shop on the way to his destination?
It could be nothing. He might have been killing time before his meeting. Or else he had a quick cup of coffee while going over some notes.
Although why do that if he knew he was never going to have that meeting? The man assuredly couldn’t have expected to murder someone in broad daylight with lots of witnesses around and then attend his meeting with the FBI as though nothing had happened. And it couldn’t have been a spur-of-the-moment thing commencing after he left the coffee shop. He had the gun in his briefcase. They had found traces of gun oil and other forensic fragments in there that proved this was so.
Decker made a mental note to go to the coffee shop and find someone who had seen Dabney. Maybe he met with someone there. They had checked his phone records. He had made no calls that morning and sent no texts and no emails.
Was that because he was about to commit murder? And he was steeling himself to do the deed? But if he did know Berkshire, how would he know she would be there that morning? The FBI had determined that she hadn’t called or scheduled a meeting with anyone. But then again, she might have been going there unannounced for some reason. Maybe she had something she wanted to tell the FBI.
And Dabney stopped her from doing that. That was an interesting theory.
Although it was just possible that she wasn’t going to the Hoover Building at all. She might have been turning that way to go somewhere else.
Lots of possibilities and nothing conclusive. But then most cases started out that way. The truth was always hidden on the inside, the core, Decker thought. And you had to peel away every single layer of the outside to get to that core.
He looked up to find a sleepy-eyed Jamison dressed in gym shorts and a U2 T-shirt, staring at him.
“You’re up early,” she said hoarsely.
“I’m always up early. You’ll find that out now that we live together. Roomie.”
She padded over to the coffee machine, put in a coffee pod, and slid a cup under the dispensing slot. As it did its thing she leaned against the counter and said groggily, “Any brilliant revelations in the night?”
“Apparently Dabney had two breakfasts. I’d like to know why.”
“Okay.”
The coffee machine dinged and Jamison doctored her coffee with raw sugar and cream and took a sip.
“We’re scheduled to search Dabney’s house this morning.”
Decker drummed his fingers on the table and didn’t answer.
“I understand some of their kids will be there,” she added.
“A little boy and his dad.”
“What?” she said in confusion. “Dabney had four grown daughters.”
“The car with the plastic bag windows in the parking lot here. The gray Sentra.”
“Oh, what about them?”
“Who are they?”
“Tomas Amaya and his eleven-year-old son, Danny.”
“He goes to school nearby?”
“Yes. Did you see them?”
“They left before six.”
“Tomas drops him off at the school. They have a before-school program for parents who have to go to work early. Tomas works construction and has to be at work by six-thirty.”
“And the mother?”
“As far as I know it’s just Tomas and Danny.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I told you that I met with all the tenants. I wanted to introduce myself to everyone after Melvin bought the building. I just wanted to assure them that everything would be okay. That they weren’t being evicted or anything. And I spent time with Tomas and Danny. Tomas is devoted to his son. And Danny is very bright. He draws. I’ve seen some of his sketches. The kid has talent.”
“And all the tenants are nice?”
“Well, that’s a relative term.”
“Give me a relative answer.”
“Some are nicer than others. And I get where some of them are coming from. They’re all people of color. And I’m not sure all of them are here legally. And I’m this white woman knocking on their door and telling them that an unknown investor has bought the building and I’ll be their landlord? I’d be suspicious too.”
Decker sighed. “It’s 2017, but it doesn’t feel like it. When I was a kid they had those TV shows on about what the future would look like. Robots cleaning houses and people flying their cars to work. And instead we’ve got…this.”
“Preaching to the choir, Decker. Hey, Melvin said he would come in soon to meet the people here and look over the property.”
Decker perked up. “It’ll be good to see him again.”
“I know you two really hit it off.”
“He’s my best friend.”
Jamison frowned slightly at this comment but didn’t respond.
Decker’s phone buzzed. It was Bogart. Decker listened for a few moments and then clicked off.
“Change of plan. Bogart wants us at the morgue.”
“Why?”
“They just completed the autopsy on Dabney.”
“Okay, but we know what he died of. A self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
“Yeah, but there’s something else.”
“What?”
“The man was apparently already dead when he shot himself.”