“What are you doing?” asked Jamison.
Decker scrunched up his face as her voice interrupted him while he was trying toprecisely conjure the noises he’d heard.
“Decker, it’s nearly one in the morning and I’m beat. We drove over six hours to get here. Well,Idrove over six hours to get here.”
Decker relaxed his features. “She’s your sister. If we ever visit my sisters, I’ll drive.”
“Your two sisters live in California and Alaska, respectively. We’renotdriving to California or Alaska.”
“Well, then I guess we won’t be visiting them.”
She sighed and sat back, fiddling with the turn signal on the steering column. “Why does this matter to you so much? I get that it’s murder. And it’s horrible. But you can’t investigate every murder you run across.”
“Why can’t I?” he said brusquely.
She sputtered, “Because you just can’t.”
He shookhis head. “We can agree to disagree.”
A few moments of silence passed before she said, “You found who killed Cassie and Molly, Amos. They got what they deserved. But you can’t solve every murder you come across. It’s impossible. You’ll just be setting yourself up to fail.”
Decker said nothing in reply. He just stared out the window at the house where he had found the two deadmen.
Finally, Jamison said, “Can we go back to my sister’s house now? Or I’m just going to curl up in the back and go to sleep.”
“We can go now.”
She quickly drove off.
They were staying with the Mitchells in two guest bedrooms upstairs. Amber told them it had once been one large bedroom but they’d converted it into two. Although Zoe was nearly six yearsold, Amber and Frank wanted more children.
Jamison spoke briefly to her sister, who was still up waiting for them, and then said good night. She and Decker walked up the stairs and Jamison went to her room and Decker to his.
Later, he sat at the window and looked out onto the street. It looked a lot like his hometown in Ohio. Half alive and half dead. Maybe more dead than alive,actually.
He undressed and lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
In a way, perhaps in a significant way, Jamison had hit it right on the head.
I’m trying to catch Cassie and Molly’s killer over and over again.
And it will never end, because killers will always be out there.
So this is my world and welcome to it.