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 pe
rson but in different situations and garb.
Billy the waitress at the bar.