Brown dropped Decker off at his apartment and drove away. For a moment Decker stood there in the darkness staring up at the windows of the apartment where Danny and his father had lived.
Danny Amaya was a year older than Decker’s daughter was when she’d been killed. She’d never actually reached her tenth birthday. Her murderer had gotten to her before that could happen.
Molly Decker would have turned twelve this year. His wife, Cassie, would have turned forty-two.
They were dead and buried back in Ohio.
He was five hundred miles from them, farther than he ever thought he would be.
Five hundred miles farther than he thought he ever could be.
He sat down on the front steps of the building and stared down at his feet.
Though his memory was near perfect, there were many emotional tethers that Decker struggled to recall or even re-form in his head.
He had once been someone very different. And that was difficult if not impossible for most people to come close to understanding. There were many days when even Decker didn’t understand it.
He knew that he irritated people with his behavior. He knew that he drove Alex Jamison and the others to distraction sometimes. There was a part of him that wanted to do something about this. To let her and others see the person he used to be. But a larger part of him seemed to crush any attempt to enable himself to do this.
If it was frustrating for others, it was maddening for Amos Decker.
What they failed to fully comprehend was that the hit on the football field had done far more than give him perfect recall and the ability to see things in color. It had forced him into being a different person, as though a stranger’s personality and attendant quirks had been superimposed over his own.
But now the stranger’s footprint was Decker.
I am now the stranger. I’m a stranger in my own body.
He would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and wonder not where he was—as many people, confused and muddled by weariness, did—but rather who he was.
And sometimes the answer was not all that easy.
He stood, turned, and headed inside. It was after eleven now and he expected that Jamison would be asleep. So when he opened the door to their apartment he was surprised to see her sitting at the kitchen table fully dressed. He closed the door behind him.
“Where have you been, Decker?” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry, Alex. I was with Agent Brown. I came up with a theory and we’re going to work together to run it down.”
“That’s great, Decker, really wonderful.”
Decker did not appear to catch the edge to her voice.
“It had to do with—”
“The man who forgets nothing,” she said.
He looked at her strangely. “What?”
She stood. “But that’s not entirely right.”
“What’s not entirely right?” he said in a perplexed tone.
“That you don’t forget anything.”
He drew closer. “I’m not following where this is going.”
“Well, then let me enlighten you.” She paused, drew a long breath that seemed to swell her body, and said in a strident tone, “You forgot that we were supposed to have dinner with Melvin tonight. Cottons on Fourteenth Street, seven-thirty?”
The color drained from Decker’s face. “Oh, shit, Alex, I’m—”
She pushed on, her voice starting to crack now. “We waited at the restaurant for two hours for you. Two fucking hours, Decker. I called Bogart. I called 911. I called everybody I could think of.”
“But why didn’t you call me?”
“I did! Twelve times.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He turned even paler.
“I forgot I turned it to silent.”
“Forgot something else, huh? Wow, that perfect memory of yours is just going to hell in a handbasket.”
“Alex, I’m—”
Tears crept into her eyes. “You can listen to my frantic voicemails later. You’ll probably get a real chuckle out of them. You asshole!”
Before he could say anything else she had turned and stormed down the hall to her room. He heard the door slam behind her.
Decker looked down at his phone and saw all the missed calls. He sat down at the kitchen table and listened to the increasingly panicked voicemails. Jamison sounded like she was going out of her mind with worry. And with the fact that he had been nearly killed twice recently and had enemies still out there, he could hardly blame her.
The old Decker would have gone to her door, knocked, and profusely apologized.
The new Decker just sat there staring out the window at the darkness that was not so nearly as opaque as the one currently residing squarely in his head.
CHAPTER
34
BLEARY-EYED, JAMISON got up the next morning, washed her face, and walked down the hall to the kitchen to make coffee.
She stopped dead when she got to the kitchen.
“Have you been sitting there all night?”
Decker looked up from his chair.
She said, “Decker, it’s seven in the morning. Have you even been to bed?”
In answer he held up his phone. “I listened to the messages. All of them.”
She frowned and leaned against the wall, wrapping the folds of her robe around her because the apartment was chilly. “Okay,” she said slowly.
“I screwed up, Alex. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you were so worried. And I’m sorry I missed dinner.”
She came and sat down next to him. She rubbed her eyes and looked at him. “Knowing you, I probably shouldn’t have overreacted when you didn’t show up. I mean, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve stood me up.” She played with the cord on her robe and added, “But with all that’s taken place recently, with the Amayas and everything, I just thought something terrible had happened to you.”
“If you ever call again I will answer it. And if I don’t then you probably will need to call 911.”
She gave him a grudging smile, squeezed his arm, and rose to go make coffee. “I called Melvin last night and told him you were okay.”
Decker flinched because it had never occurred to him to do this.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“Thanks for doing that.”
“Maybe we can grab dinner tonight?” she said cautiously.
“Yes, we can.”
“Don’t be too quick to agree. You might live to regret it.”
She brought two cups of coffee over and set one down in front of him before retaking her seat. “Now, talk to me about this theory you came up with.”
Decker went through it step by step.
Jamison looked impressed. “A whistleblower, huh? That would explain a lot of the questions we’ve got.”
“The problem will be finding out which whistleblowing case. There have been a lot of them over the years.”
“But it shouldn’t be that hard. We can circulate Berkshire’s picture all over. Someone will have to recognize her.”