Cassandra Decker. Molly Decker. Mother and daughter. His wife, their child. The love of his life, his flesh and blood, taken from him by a murderer’s hand. The flowers he had laid here on his last visit had long since disintegrated, much like the bodies lying below. He brushed these fragments away and knelt down next to the twin graves.
Once, when he had been here visiting his dead family, a dying man named Meryl Hawkins had wandered out of the woods and demanded justice from Decker, in connection with the first case Decker had worked as a homicide detective. Decker had accepted the challenge, and in doing so had proved his younger self wrong and his older self correct. And Hawkins had been given justice, however belatedly, and posthumously.
Decker had also tracked down his own family’s killer.
He had served justice in both cases, but it was, without doubt, a hollow outcome, marred by the fact that the justice was delivered too late for the victims. No amount of justice could return the dead to the living; the satisfaction gained from learning the truth was dwarfed by the loss.
He said the words he needed to say to his wife and child, and then rose from the cold ground and glanced to the left. There was an empty plot there.
Mine.He had come close to filling it on several occasions, once by his own hand, while staring at his murdered child as she sat, in death, in her own house.
Will my perfect memory fail one day and I’ll forget I had a daughter?
He had still been on the line when the police had arrived at Lancaster’s house. He had talked first to the officer, and then the detective, a man he knew from the old days. There had been sadness exchanged on the loss of a life well known to them, a grudging acceptance of the choice made, and of the motive behind it.
He walked back to his rental car. His flight to DC was scheduled for the next morning. He had no idea what would await him when he got there.
And Amos Decker wasn’t sure he cared anymore.
Chapter4
THE LETTER WAITING FOR DECKERwas from the Cognitive Institute in Chicago, or CI as Decker and everyone else there referred to it.
He had gone there the month before for some routine tests, which they had done on him annually ever since he had been there as a patient after his football injury.
He put his suitcase down inside the door of his apartment, and tore open the letter with his thick finger.
It was several pages long, which surprised him. Usually, they were much shorter. But usually there was nothing really to tell him. This time was different.
He sat down and read it through twice, though his perfect memory had already imprinted all of the contents in his mind forever.
He slowly tore the pages into strips and threw them into the trash can.
Well…okay.
His phone buzzed. He looked at the text and groaned.
He was to come to the Washington Field Office immediately, or so commanded his superior at the Bureau. He glanced once at the trash can where the destroyed letter rested and then grabbed his car keys and walked out the door.
***
“Amos Decker, meet your new partner, Special Agent Frederica White,” said John Talbott in a voice that sounded like a game show host introducing a new prize.
The massive Decker looked all the way down at the five-foot-three-inch Black woman, and she looked back up the mountain at him. It was unclear which one was more surprised by this announcement.
“New partner?” said Decker, glancing at Talbott, who had taken over for Ross Bogart. “I didn’t ask for a new partner. Alex—”
“Special Agent Jamison is not coming back, or at least not anytime soon. And so we have transferred in Agent White from Baltimore to work with you.”
White had never taken her eyes off Decker. Her expression was unreadable. She was in her midthirties, lean and wiry, packing about 105 pounds on her petite frame. Her caramel-colored hair was cut to FBI regulation length and held in place with a pair of tortoiseshell barrettes.
Decker noted the small hole in her left nostril for a stud, although FBI regulations forbade the wearing of any such item while on duty. At the end of her right jacket cuff he could just make out a greenish mark protruding from under the cloth.
A tat.
She had on two-inch zipper boots that lifted her within a foot of his height. No stilettos for FBI agents, despite what the TV cop shows had their female actors wear. Black jacket and slacks, white shirt, buttoned to the top. No cleavage—ditto on the TV shows. Thin lips, green flinty eyes, slender dark eyebrows atop them, a sharp-edged nose, high cheekbones, jutting chin—the woman was all sharp edges.
“Youcanshake hands, you two,” said Talbott encouragingly.