Jamison yawned. “So if Sebastian Leopold is involved, why would he have told the cops you dissed him at the 7-Eleven if you didn’t?”
“You mean why would a murderer lie?”
“I mean, how could you not know him if you did something so bad he’s doing all this in retaliation? And his crazy act could just be that, an act. But this guy strikes me as literal. Your family, Mansfield High. The communications to you, can you tell me what they were about?”
“One was written on the wall at my old house.”
“What did it say?”
He repeated the message to her.
“And the others?”
He told her about the code embedded in the musical score on Debbie Watson’s wall. And then the words carved into Lafferty.
“Jesus,” she exclaimed. “So he refers to you as ‘bro’ in each message?”
Decker nodded.
“And he also says you two are a lot alike. That you’re all the other has.”
“Yes.”
“And with the last message he’s asserting that you actually have control of this thing. That you can determine when to end it.”
Decker looked at her. “Meaning him or me.”
“And he obviously wants to be the one left standing.”
“I would expect so.”
“Okay. But it seems to me that he feels like he’s in competition with you. Brothers. Part of something that we’re just not seeing.”
Decker opened his eyes. “Like a team?”
“You were never in the military?”
He shook his head.
“Then maybe like a team.”
“I already told you, I was never good enough to tick someone off in football. I never took somebody’s position and along with it a paycheck. Besides, I can’t see someone murdering all these people because he was third string to my second string on a college football team. And in the pros I was just a spare piece of meat. I was never missed.”
“But you’re convinced Leopold is involved in this?”
“Yes.”
“Based on your gut?”
“Based on the fact that he’s disappeared. I’ve checked every homeless shelter in town. He’s never been to any of them. He played me. He walked out of that bar knowing that he was going to disappear. And the waitress was working with him. The waitress is the other person. The one with the beef against me. She’s the one I really want.”
“But you mentioned that this waitress might be a man.”
“Yes. Our shooter, in fact. Leopold was in lockup both times. It had to be the other one.”
“And he used the stuff you found at the school to make himself appear bigger.”
“Pretty clever since the cops live and die by physical description. Once they get that height and size in their heads they never look at anyone outside that box. It’s just beaten into us.”
“So Leopold and/or the shooter might know how cops think?”
“Yes.”
Jamison mulled this over. “Then the only direct fact he’s really told anyone is that you dissed him at your local 7-Eleven. But you’re sure he’s lying about that. So we have to go back to that and start from there—Decker?”
Decker had lurched to his feet and was looking down at her.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You said it was our only direct fact.”
“Right, I know. But—”
“But it’s not.”
“Not what?”
“A fact.”
He hurried from the storage space without another word. She jumped to her feet, grabbed her bag, and followed.
Chapter
39
DECKER AND JAMISON sat across from Lancaster at police headquarters. Decker had briefly explained how he came to be working with Jamison and also why he was here.
“We’ve torn apart my storage unit but there was nothing there,” he added. “And then it occurred to me that I had made an assumption that was based on something that had not been confirmed. I accepted as a fact something that had not been proven to be a fact. That’s why we’re here.”
“And so you want to hear my interview notes with Leopold after he was taken into custody?” asked Lancaster.
“Yes. As precise as you can make them, Mary. Every word counts. Literally.”
Lancaster looked a little apprehensive but then collected her pages and set them in front of her. “Well, to start off, he didn’t say much. In fact, he wasn’t making much sense. As soon as he finished I thought his best bet would be to plead diminished capacity.”
“I don’t think his capacity is diminished at all. Quite the opposite,” replied Decker. “Just read me what he said. And if you can remember anything else, that would be helpful too.”
“Well, I guess we’ve got nothing to lose.” She looked sternly at Jamison. “But just so we’re crystal clear, one word of this ends up in a newspaper or other media outlet, I will lock you up personally and forget you’re there. You’re on my shit list already for that crap you wrote about Amos.”
Jamison held her hands up in mock surrender, but her tone was deadly serious. “It never will, Detective Lancaster. Not from me. And I am a shit for what I wrote. I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. And now I’m trying to make it right. It’s all I can do.”
Lancaster ran a critical gaze over her. “And Jackson was really your college professor?”
“He was a lot more than that. He was my mentor. Easily verifiable if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” Lancaster said curtly. “Then I guess we’re all on the same page and the same team.” She looked down at her notes and started reading. When she got to the part about Decker dissing Leopold at the 7-Eleven, Decker stopped her.
“Those were his exact words? I dissed him at the 7-Eleven?”
“Yes. I told you that before.”
“What did you ask him next?”
“Well, I asked him which 7-Eleven. I was trying to see if his story made any sense. We don’t get many folks walking into the precinct and copping to a triple homicide a year and a half after the fact.”
“And he said the local 7-Eleven near me?”
Lancaster looked down at her notes again and frowned. “No, he actually said that you’d know which one.” She glanced up. “I guess I just assumed that you would know at which 7-Eleven you had dissed the guy. At least dissed him in his mind.”
“So he never said the local 7-Eleven? The one near my house at Fourteenth and DeSalle?”
Lancaster paled, and when she spoke her voice was strained. “No, Amos, he didn’t. That was a leap of logic for us both, I guess. But I should not have made that assumption. That was a rookie mistake.”
“I made it too, Mary.”
Lancaster still looked crestfallen.
“Can I see your notes?” he asked.
She handed them across and he started reading through them.
Lancaster glanced at Jamison, leaned forward, and said in a low voice, “So how do you enjoy working with Decker? I did it for about ten years. No two days were ever the same.”
Jamison spoke in the same low tone. “It’s…um, unusual. He just jumped up and walked out of the storage unit. I had to race after him.”
Lancaster let out a rare smile. “Story of my life.”
The women drew apart when Decker dropped the notes on the table.
He looked sharply at Jamison. “The email address you got the story elements and photo from: Mallard2000 was the handle?”
“You know it was. I sent it to you.”
Lancaster said, “The FBI couldn’t trace it back, so I don’t see how it’s helpful.”
“It’s actually very helpful. And I should have seen it before.”
“Seen what before?” asked Jamison.
“That the answer I was looking for wasn’t in tracing it back to the sender. It was right there all along in the name.”
“In the name?” said Lancaster. “What name?”
Decker stood and looked at Jamison. “You have a car?”
She nodded and rose too. “A subcompact with a hundred thousand miles on it and held together with duct tape. But it gets great gas mileage.” She looked him up and down. “It might be kind of tight for you. Where are we going?”
“Chicago.”
“Chicago,” exclaimed Lancaster. “What the hell’s in Chicago?”
“Actually, it’s a suburb of Chicago. And what’s there is everything, Mary.”
“But how do you know where to look in Chicago?”
Decker said impatiently, “He gave me the address, seven-eleven.”
Lancaster shook her head and said incredulously, “Okay, but, Amos, do you know how many 7-Elevens there are in the Chicago metro area?”
“I’m not looking for a convenience store, Mary. I’m looking for the street number seven-eleven.”
Lancaster stared up at him blankly. “Shit, are you telling me it was never a 7-Eleven? It was a street number! But he said—”
“He said the numbers seven and eleven. Which can just as easily be seven-one-one. You just wrote it down the way anyone would have who lives in this country. You just assumed he meant the store chain, when he actually didn’t.”
“But he never corrected me.”
“Did you expect him to draw you a map? This is a game to them. Played by their rules.”
“Okay, you have the number, but that’s pretty useless unless you have a street to go with it.”
“I do have a street. That was in the email address.”
“Mallard two-thousand? But how do you even know it’s in Chicago? How does that city tie in to what happened in Burlington?”
“It doesn’t. It ties in to me.”
“But Amos, what does—”
Lancaster stopped in midsentence, because Decker had already rushed from the room.
“Son of a bitch!” yelled Lancaster.
Jamison shot her an apologetic look. “Story of your life?”
“Just keep me informed, Jamison. And watch him. He’s beyond brilliant, but even brilliant people do stupid things.”
“I will.”
And then Jamison hurried after Decker.
Lancaster slumped back in her chair and looked down at her notes. Then she balled them up and threw them across the room.
“Screw 7-Eleven!”
Chapter
40
AS IT WAS originally configured, the subcompact had not exactly fit Decker since they were roughly the same size. They had finally taken out the front seat and he had wedged himself into the tiny back with his long legs sticking into the front of the car over the hump where the seat had been.
He sat with his eyes closed and his hands resting over his substantial belly. They had stopped by his room and he had packed a canvas bag with some clean clothes. He had learned that Jamison kept a suitcase packed and in the tiny trunk of her car.
“Standard operating procedure for a reporter,” she informed him.
Jamison looked at him anxiously in the rearview mirror as they sped along. “I wish you could make the seat belt reach you back there.”
“Just don’t have an accident,” said Decker, his eyes still closed. “I will make a very large projectile, bigger than your car. You really don’t want to find out the mass times velocity of my ass in flight.”
She looked back at the road. They had been on the interstate for over three hours. They were now in Indiana. They had about another four hours to go.
“I got us rooms on Expedia,” she said. “At a Comfort Inn outside of Chicago. It won’t break my bank account.” She turned to look at him. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
“I did tell you. Brockton, Illinois. It’s a suburb twenty miles south of Chicago. Not to be confused with Brocton, Illinois, which is a village in Embarrass Township outside of Champaign with a population of about three hundred.”
“Embarrass Township? Seriously?”
“I didn’t name it.”
“Okay, but you haven’t told me where in Brockton we’re going.”
“To the street address Leopold left for me to find.”
“Seven-one-one what?”
“Mallard two thousand is the street name.”
“There’s not a street with that name in Illinois. I checked.”
“There is a street with that name, but it goes by something else.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was a thinly veiled code, Jamison. Try to figure it out.”
Minutes went by. “Okay, I give. I suck at crosswords.”
“The street is Duckton Avenue.”
“Duckton?”
“Now try to figure it out in reverse. It won’t take you long. I have faith.”
She focused back on the road. “Shit,” she said a few moments later. “A mallard is a duck and two thousand pounds equals a ton. Duckton.”
“Congratulations, you just made junior detective grade.”
“But what is at seven-one-one Duckton Avenue?”
“It’s a place I used to call home.”
She jerked around to look at him, but he was now gazing out the side window.
“Your home?”
“Later, Jamison. For now, just drive. No seat belt, remember?”
She angrily turned back around, popped the accelerator, and smiled appreciatively when she heard his head clunk against the back of the car’s interior from the sudden uptick in speed.
They stopped at a truck diner off the interstate for a bathroom break, a refueling, and a bite to eat.
Jamison ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a Corona. Decker had a large pizza and a Coke.
He eyed her food. “Despite the Chinese last night, I had measured you up as a health nut.”
She bit into the burger and let fatty juice roll down her chin