Chapter42
“SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?”asked Mars. He and Decker were driving together back to the Residence Inn.
“I think you’d make a great interrogator.”
“I didn’t want Katz to think I was drilling down on her.”
“That’s not what I meant. The really good questioners don’t seem like they’re prying at all. That’s what you did. You did a good job of gaining her confidence and not trying too hard.”
Mars fist-bumped Decker. “Thanks. So what else? You think she’s in on whatever this is?”
“She’s hiding something, I just don’t know what. And so is Mitzi Gardiner. And maybe so was Susan Richards, for that matter.”
“Lot of people hiding shit in this town.”
“Nothing new there,” grumbled Decker. “Happens in every town.”
Mars checked his watch. “It’s midnight. How about some sleep? We’re not as young as we used to be, you know.”
“Sure,” said Decker, although sleep was the last thing on his mind.
***
After Mars went to his room at the Residence Inn, Decker came back down to the parking lot, climbed into his car, and set off. He drove out of the downtown area and, his mind on autopilot, made his way to the neighborhood and house that he had called home for over a decade.
He pulled to the curb, rolled down the driver’s-side window, and cut his engine and lights. He looked out the window at his old house, which was dark, the only illumination a single streetlight and the moon.
He had no real understanding of why he was here. It was punishing to see the place. Memories flooded back to him as easily as drawing breath. He closed his eyes as the images suddenly careened out of control just like last time; they were coming at him like flocks of hurtling birds or fired bullets. He couldn’t make them stop. He felt his heart flutter, his gut lurch.
The sweat started to pool on his forehead, his skin grew clammy, and his armpits were suddenly soaked with sweat, the sudden stink assailing his nostrils.
His heart was now racing, and he thought he might be having a coronary. But slowly, ever so slowly, as he gripped the steering wheel as though that might allow some semblance of control over what was happening to him, things settled down in his mind. He finally lay back against his seat, exhausted without having moved at all. He hung his head out the window and sucked in the crisp air as the moisture evaporated off his skin.
This is getting old. And so am I.
He waggled his head, spit some stomach bile out the window, and kept taking deep breaths. He remembered when he’d come out of the coma at the hospital after getting crunched on the football field on opening day. A bunch of people he didn’t know were hovering over him, asking him questions. He had IV and monitoring lines running all over him. He felt like Gulliver just awoken as a prisoner of the Lilliputians.
He had come to learn that he had died on the field, twice, only to be resuscitated each time by the team trainer. He’d been hit so hard his helmet had flown off and was lying in the grass far away from his body. The crowd had been cheering the blindside hit until they realized he was not getting up. When the trainer started pounding on his chest, the crowd of seventy thousand people quieted. The network had cut away to another game. It was not good for the NFL brand to show dead football players lying on the turf.
He learned he’d suffered a traumatic brain injury. Later, he discovered his brain had rewired itself around the damaged areas, accessing domains that had never been triggered before. This had left him with the twin conditions of hyperthymesia and synesthesia.
But he didn’t know he had them until later. It wasn’t like an X-ray could reveal this. The first time he had seen a color burst into his head, associated with something as incongruous as a number, Decker had seriously thought he was going insane.
Then, when he was able to recall things he never had been able to before, the doctors had started testing his cognitive abilities. He had looked at sheets of numbers and words and was able to regurgitate them all, because he could see them in his head, just as they had lain on the page. Then off he had gone to a special cognitive institute in Chicago that dealt exclusively with people like him.
Decker didn’t know what was more amazing—his newfound abilities, or the realization that he was far from the only one who possessed them.
Now he snatched one more glimpse at his old home, briefly imagining that it was five years ago and Molly and Cassie were still alive, waiting for him to come home from being a cop. He would play with Molly, kiss Cassie, and…be a family.
He held on to that image for another few seconds and then let it go, a phantom that had to be released into the ether where it would simply vanish, because it was no longer real.
You can live in the past, or you can live in the present, but you really can’t live in both, Amos.
He started the car, rolled the window back up, put his rental in gear, and drove off.
He was a loner, had always been a loner after he’d died on the field. Cassie, though, had been the one to make sure he did not shrivel up inside his cocoon and keep everyone away. After she died, there had been no one to do that.
Then Alex Jamison had come into his life and somewhat filled Cassie’s role.