Davenport said in a soothing voice, “You can do it, Amos. Just like when you were talking to Tommy Montgomery.”
Decker nodded and began speaking in a halting low voice as he gave Mars the scenario on the field: The ball was snapped. Mars took the handoff. The A-gap was clogged, the B-gap a possibility. Mars had to read the linebacker’s eyes, strong safety coming up on the left, right guard just had to maintain his block for another second, a glimpse of daylight.
Davenport motioned for Decker to stop talking.
As Decker had been speaking, Davenport had slowed the movements of the pen and Mars had matched this with his gaze. Finally, she held the pen steady in the air and Mars stared at it, his eyes glassy and fixed, his features relaxed.
“Melvin, can you hear me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered, his voice unlike his usual one.
Davenport slowly lowered the pen, but Mars’s gaze remained fixed on the same spot.
She said, “You’re in college at the University of Texas. Do you remember that?”
He nodded.
“You’re home now with your parents, though. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“This is after ESPN showed your parents on TV. They found out, right?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Somebody at the pawnshop told my dad. He was pissed.”
“They’re acting strange now, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us how?”
“Nervous. And angry. My dad was really upset.”
“Because it showed him on TV?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say why that had upset him?”
“No.”
“What about your mother? Did she talk about it?”
“She said to just leave Dad alone and he’d be okay. She…she didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Did you see your father doing anything unusual during that time?”
“He worked late a lot. And he didn’t eat. And he drank a lot.”
“Did he and your mother argue?”
“I could hear them yelling, but I couldn’t really hear what they said.”
“Could you hear anything?”
Mars’s brow furrowed. “Some Spanish word. Funny one. My mom said it.”
“What was it?”
The brow furrowed more deeply. “Ch-chocha.”
“Chocha, you’re sure?”
Mars nodded. “Chocha. I looked it up. It actually has a couple of meanings in Spanish. It could refer to a prostitute, or”—here he squirmed a bit—“or the private parts of the female anatomy. I didn’t know what they were talking about. It made no sense.”
“Can you remember anything else about that time?”
Mars was silent for a few moments and Davenport waited patiently.
“I came home one night and he was sitting in his chair. Mom wasn’t there.”
“Okay, go on.”
“I asked him how he was doing. And he looked at me in a way…”
“Yes.”
Tears had appeared in Mars’s eyes. “In a way that scared me. Like…like he hated me.”
“Okay. Did you talk to him?”
Mars shook his head. “I was scared. I was going to go up to my room, but then he said something.”
“What did he say?”
“He said…he said he was sorry.”
Davenport glanced at Decker and Jamison. By her expression, she had evidently not been expecting this answer. But Decker didn’t look surprised.
She turned back to Mars. “Did he say what he was sorry about?”
Mars shook his head. “Then he just got up and walked out.”
“Do you have any idea what he was referring to?”
Mars shook his head again. “I asked my mother about it the next day.”
“And what did she say?”
“She just started to cry, and then she ran out of the room.”
“Did you tell the police about this?”
“No. I didn’t think to. I mean, I didn’t know what was wrong. I never thought that was connected to whoever killed them.”
Davenport looked at Decker. “Anything else?” she whispered.
Decker stepped forward but kept out of Mars’s line of sight. In Davenport’s ear he said something. She started, looked at him strangely, and then turned to Mars.
“Melvin, did your father…did your father ever tell you that he loved you?”
Jamison shot Decker a surprised look.
Mars kept staring straight ahead. “No. He never did.”
“Okay. When I count to three you’re going to wake up. You’re not going to remember anything that we discussed. Okay?”
Mars nodded.
She counted to three and his eyes slowly refocused. He looked up at them.
“I told you that you couldn’t hypnotize me,” he said.
“Chocha,” said Decker.
Mars shot him a glance. “What?”
“You were hypnotized. Do you remember your mom saying the word chocha while she and your dad were arguing?”
Mars looked surprised and then slowly nodded. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I do. Do you think that’s important?”
“It could be.”
Decker looked over at a corner of the room. “Those scratches on the floor? What was there?”
“A bookshelf.”
“What sort of books were on it?”
“Different kinds. From when I was little to when I got older. I didn’t read as much as a teenager.” He suddenly smiled.
“What?” said Decker quickly.
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s just that my dad would read a book to me when I was little. It was funny, you know, this big, tough guy reading a book to a little boy.”
“What sort of books?” asked Decker.
“It was just the one book.” Mars smiled again. “He would even act it out, you know, all goofy like. Never did that any other time.”
“What book was it?” asked Decker in a very serious tone.
Mars laughed. “The Three Little Pigs. He told me he was the Big Bad Wolf, gonna eat those little pigs up. Sometimes he got into it so much it kinda scared me.”
Decker stared at him for a long moment while Jamison and Davenport glanced at him.
“Decker, what is it?” asked Jamison.
Mars added, “It was just a picture book, Decker. A fairy tale.”
“Yeah,” said Decker, evidently lost in thought.
His phone buzzed. He looked down at the screen. “It’s Bogart.” He answered, listened, and asked a couple of questions. “Thanks, Agent Bogart, I really appreciate this.” He clicked off and looked at the others.
“Well?” said Jamison. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Bogart got an answer from the U.S. Marshals.”
“So my parents were in Witness Protection,” said Mars numbly.
“No,” said Decker. “They weren’t.”
CHAPTER
35
THE TWO WOMEN stared back at him. One grown, one still a child and who would forever remain so, while the other would not grow a minute older.
Because both were now dead.
Decker sat in a chair in his motel room and stared down at the photo of his wife and daughter.
He took out the picture whenever he was feeling sad or hopeless and simply needed to see their faces. He would never have to worry about forgetting them. About their memories fading into the dim recesses of his mind.
His mind had no dim recesses.
It was like Times Square all the time.
He was feeling claustrophobic, as though a compression of his entire being was taking place and he had no power to stop it.
The news that neither Roy nor Lucinda Mars had ever been in Witness Protection had been a staggering blow. He had been so certain that he was right about that. Yet Bogart had checked and then double-checked. And the U.S. Marshals would have had no reason or basis to lie. If they had lost a protectee they would have documented it seven ways from Sunday.
He had leads, he had developments, but that was all. Yet none of these things appeared likely to give him what he so desperately wanted.
The truth.
At times it seemed the most elusive thing in all of creation.
He had notched another belt hole as his appetite seemed to weaken along with the prospects of solving the case. Given a choice, he would gladly have packed the pounds back on to find out who had killed the Marses.
Even if they hadn’t been in the U.S. Marshals’ care, they could still be running from a dark past. In all likelihood they were. He just had to find out what that past was. And to do that he needed information.
That was the first part.