Well, that is interesting. My altered mind keeps throwing me curves.
He didn’t want to be here when Vitters died, because he didn’t want the navy to abruptly change to electric blue.
“I’m good,” he finally said.
He walked into the room, pulled up a chair, and sat next to the bed. Milligan stood next to him.
“Mrs. Vitters, I’m Amos Decker and this is Todd Milligan. We’re here to talk to you about Anne Berkshire. She was in to see you this morning, we understand.”
Vitters looked up at him from deeply sunken eyes. Her skin was a pale gray, her eyes watery and her breathing shallow. Decker could see the port near her clavicle where her pain meds were administered.
“Anne was here,” she said slowly. “I was surprised because it was earlier than usual.”
“Do you remember what you talked about?”
“Who are you?”
Decker was about to take out his creds when Milligan stopped him. Milligan said, “We’re friends of Anne’s. She asked us to stop in today because she wanted to come back and keep talking to you but then found out she couldn’t make it.”
The watery eyes turned to alarm. “Is she…is she all right? She’s not sick, is she?”
“She’s feeling no pain at all,” said Decker quite truthfully. He was counting on the fact that whatever meds the woman was on would slow her mental processes somewhat, otherwise Vitters might figure out that nothing they were saying made much sense.
“Oh, well, it was just the usual things. Weather. A book she was reading and telling me about. My cat.”
“Your cat?” said Milligan.
“Sunny’s dead now. Oh, it’s been ten years if it’s been a day. But Anne liked cats.”
“So nothing other than that?” asked Decker.
“No, not that I recall. She wasn’t here that long.”
“Did she seem okay to you? Nothing out of sorts?”
Her voice grew more strident. “Are you sure she’s all right? Why are you here asking these questions? I might be dying, but I’m not stupid.”
Decker saw the watery eyes turn to flint before flickering out again.
“Well, if you have to know the truth, the fact is—”
Milligan cut in. “We know you’re not stupid, Mrs. Vitters. As my colleague was about to say, the fact is, Anne fell down and hit her head today. She’ll be fine, but she’s got short-term amnesia. And she needs to remember the passcode to her phone and her apartment’s alarm system and her computer. She sent us here to find out what she was talking about to people so that we can tell her and maybe jog her memory. The doctors said that that might do it.”
Vitters looked relieved. “Oh, well, I’m so sorry she fell.”
Decker glanced at Milligan for an instant before gazing back at Vitters and saying, “So anything you can tell us would be appreciated.”
“Well, again, we didn’t talk about much. Although, it did seem that Anne was preoccupied. She usually led the conversations we had but today I had to prompt her a few times.”
Milligan glanced sharply at Decker, but Decker kept his gaze on Vitters.
“Did you ask her if anything was wrong?”
“I did actually. But she said everything was fine. She just had something on her mind, but she didn’t say what.”
“Do you know if you were the first person that Anne visited today, or were there others before you?”
“I think I was the last. She mentioned she had to leave after seeing me. She had somewhere to go.”
“She didn’t mention where that was?”
“No.”
Decker rose and turned to leave.
Milligan said hastily, “Thank you for your help. Is there anything we can do for you?”
Vitters smiled grimly. “Put in a good word for me with the man upstairs.”
As they left, Milligan whispered, “Hey, Decker, you need to go a little easy with these folks, okay? They’re dying.”
He passed by Decker, who turned and looked back at Vitters lying in the bed, her eyes now closed. He walked back over to her and looked down. The navy blue image in his mind was starting to turn electric blue. Decker didn’t believe he could foresee someone’s death, but his mind was obviously making the logical leap with the terminally ill Vitters.
He reached down and adjusted the woman’s pillow to make her head rest more comfortably. His hand grazed over the white hair and then he said in a low voice, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Vitters.”
He didn’t see Milligan watching him from the doorway. The FBI agent hurried off before Decker turned around.
CHAPTER
5
JOEY SCOTT WAS an even sadder case than Dorothy Vitters.
Decker and Milligan stood in the doorway with Palmer. Scott was only ten years old, but his short life was nearing its end. Eschewing patient privacy law, Palmer, who had escorted them here, had said in response to their blank looks, “Leukemia. The untreatable kind.”
Milligan said, “But why would Berkshire have to visit him? Don’t his parents come?”
Palmer bristled. “He was in the process of being adopted out of foster care. When he got sick his ‘adoptive’ parents pulled out. I guess they wanted a healthy model,” she added in disgust. “And it’s not like they couldn’t afford it. Anne visited him at least twice a week. She was really all Joey had.”
Then she turned and left, her face full of despair.
Decker looked down at the little body in the bed and his thoughts wandered back to the daughter he’d once had. Molly had been murdered before her tenth birthday. Decker had found her and his wife’s bodies at their old home. And because of his hyperthymesia, he would always remember every detail of this tragedy like it had just occurred that second.
There could be nothing that ever happened to Decker that could be more horrible and depressing than finding his family murdered. But seeing this came close.
He sat down next to the boy, who slowly opened his eyes. IV and monitoring lines ran all over his withered frame.
With a quick glance at Milligan, Decker said, “Hello, Joey, I’m Amos. This is my friend Todd.”
Joey raised a hand and made a little wave.
“I understand your friend, Anne, was in today?”
Joey nodded.
“Did you have a good talk?”
“She read to me,” Joey said in a small voice.
“A book?”
He nodded. “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s on the shelf over there. She said she’d be back tomorrow to finish it.”
Decker reached over and snagged the book, flipping through some pages until he came to the bookmark about ten pages from the end. He glanced at Milligan before looking back at Joey. “That’s great. Is that all she did? Read?”
Joey shook his head. “We talked some.”
“What about?”
“Are you friends with Anne?”
Decker said, “I just saw her this morning. She’s the reason we came to see you. She wanted us to meet her friends here.”
“Oh, okay.”
Milligan said, “How long have you been here, Joey?”
Joey blinked up at him. “I don’t know.”