deserve that. I don’t think you had anything to do with what happened to your family. Like you said, I think some psychopath is looking to first screw you and then destroy you. And he used me to do that and I jumped at the bait just so I could write a story. But that got me wondering why. I mean, who could have that sort of vendetta against you and you not know it?”
Decker sipped his coffee while eyeing her directly but said nothing.
She added, “And I’m sure you’ve been racking your brain trying to think of the same thing.”
“I have.”
“It has to be personal,” she said.
“Murder almost always is.”
“No, I mean more than that. Brimmer told me there were a couple of communications the killer made. Again, she wouldn’t tell me what they said, but they were apparently directed at you.”
Decker said nothing, but his look clearly told her he was interested.
“So I did some digging.”
“Into what?”
“Into you.”
“How?”
“I’m a reporter. We have ways.”
“And what did you find?”
“You’re from Burlington. Biggest sports star the town ever had. The young man who made good.”
This comment made Decker think of the trophy case at the school. “The shooter took all the trophies with my name on them from the case at Mansfield.”
She sat back and looked satisfied and also puzzled by this. “I wonder when he did that. Surely not the day of the shooting. He’s not going to be hauling hardware around.”
“There are ways,” Decker said. “But I can’t get into that now. Maybe one day you can write the whole story.”
She said, “So the question becomes, is it someone who’s from Burlington who had a grudge against you all these years? Big football star versus some nobody in the background who was jealous of your success? The fact that he took the trophies might indicate it is someone local. Who you went to Mansfield with? He might have thought you were gone for good when you went on to college, and then you come back here and become a cop and do all these great things. And all these years the hatred is building and festering until the guy just explodes.”
“Guys,” said Decker.
“Guys? More than one, you mean?”
“You can’t write that.” He leaned forward. “You really can’t write that, Alexandra. If he reads it, he’ll assume you know not only that but more. More that could be dangerous to him. And then dangerous for you.”
“I get that, Decker. You thoroughly scared me before. I go nowhere without Mace and my phone on 911 speed dial.”
“But you came back. You’re here now trying to help me figure this out. They could be watching. Why take the risk?”
“I didn’t get into journalism to be safe. I got into this line of work because I wanted to take risks. You and I are a lot alike on that score.”
“How so?”
“I figure the only job riskier than pro football and police work is being in combat. So you’re a risk-taker. So am I. And if we can do a little good in the meantime, why not? So, any guys you remember from here that hated you?”
“I was good at sports, but I wasn’t good at anything else. And I wasn’t a prick. I had fun. I was a goofball. I made people laugh. I messed up. I was not Mr. Perfect by a long stretch. Aside from what I did on the field, I wasn’t that special.”
“I have a hard time seeing you as a goofball.”
“People change.”
“You did change, didn’t you?”
Decker took another sip of his coffee. “People change. I’m no exception.”
“People do change. But I think you changed more than most.”
“How do you mean exactly?”
“The hit. I watched it on YouTube.”
“Good for you.”
“It was horrible watching it. I can’t imagine how it was, actually being the recipient of it.”
“I don’t really remember it. They told me later I shit my pants. Violent collision like that overpowers the central nervous system. During the preseason the equipment guys came in after games to make sure all the girdles with feces in them were hidden from view and never given out to fans. Along with all the blood inside the helmets and on the uniforms. And they kept the reporters out when the guys were in the trainer’s room postgame so they wouldn’t hear the screams. And they gave players pops of ammonia or painkillers so they could talk to the media and hide the fact that half their brain was gone.”
“I’m not a big fan of football. Gladiators of the twenty-first century, wrecking each other for our amusement while we drink beer and eat hot dogs and cheer when a guy gets wiped out. You’d think we would have gotten beyond that. I guess there’s too much money in it.”
“See, people don’t actually change all that much.”
“After the hit you just disappeared for a long time. Got cut by the team, went into limbo. I couldn’t find anything on you. And then you turned up back here and joined the police academy. A buddy of mine got me your test scores.”
“You have a lot of buddies?”
“A good reporter needs all the help she can get. The scores were all perfect.”
“A fact my old captain told me too.”
“So Captain Miller looked into it as well?”
“Why all the interest in me?”
“Because I figure that to find this guy, or guys, we have to work backward, from the motivation to the source. You’re the motivation. So I have to understand you to get to them.” She paused and tapped a spoon against her coffee cup. “So where were you during that time?”
“That’s my business.”
“You don’t want to catch these murderers?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“But you know I’m right. You’re the key to what’s happening.” She leaned forward and tapped his thick hand. “I want to help, Decker.”
“What you want is a Pulitzer.”
“I tell you what. You let me help and I won’t write any story without your permission. You get to vet and approve the whole thing. Or you get to pull the trigger and it’ll never see the light of day.”
“You’d agree to that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Andy Jackson. You know him?”
“The English teacher at Mansfield. Last surviving victim of the shooter. He tried to stop the shooter.”
“He died an hour ago. Andy didn’t always teach at Mansfield. He was a professor at Purdue, where I went. He’s the reason I’m a reporter. He came here to take care of his ailing mother. Sort of person he was.”
“You never said this before.”
“Because that was my business. But I’m saying it now.” She put out a hand. “So that’s my deal. No story if you say so. But in exchange I get to help you track these bastards down. What do you say?”
Decker slowly put out his hand and they shook.
“So where do we start?” she asked.
He rose. “At a storage unit.”
Chapter
38
IT WAS LATE and they were sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor of the storage unit going through boxes. Jamison had returned a few minutes before with dinner in the form of Chinese takeout. She had laid out napkins, paper plates, and plastic utensils and filled Decker’s plate with food before doing her own.
He looked at her in some surprise.
She explained, “I’m not domesticated, but I am the oldest of seven kids. I’m used to playing parent at mealtime.”
He nodded and bit off a chunk of a spring roll while Jamison spooned some egg drop soup into her mouth. She had brought them each a beer as well. Decker took a swig of his and then set the bottle down.
Jamison looked around the unit. “You really kept everything, didn’t you?”
“Things that were important to me.”
“I don’t see anything here from your playing days.”
He shrugged and stabbed his fork at a piece of shrimp. “Not important to me.”
She nodded slowly. “But with what happened to your family doesn’t it hurt to keep all this stuff? Your daughter’s clothes? Your wife’s cookbooks? Letters? Pictures?”
“The only thing that hurts is not having them here.” He looked at her. “How long were you married?”
“Too long.”
He looked at her expectantly.
“Two years and three months,” she finally said. “I guess not that long, actually.”
“What happened?”
“Things just went sideways. He wasn’t the guy I thought he was. And I guess I wasn’t the woman he thought I was.”
“Kids?”
“Thank God, no. That would have made it a lot harder.”
“Yeah, it would. Kids make everything better. And harder.”
She leaned back against a cardboard box, drew her knees up, and sipped her beer. She tapped her head. “So the hit altered your mind somehow?”
Decker nodded and took a swig of beer.
“I saw some of the reports from that institute place in the box back there. Was it weird?”
He set the beer down and rubbed at his beard. “Do you mean did I feel like a guinea pig? Yes.”
“How did the others come by it?”
“None of us were told that officially. I guess patient privacy. But there’s always scuttlebutt. Most were probably born with it. A few, like me, suffered a brain trauma. I think some of the folks at the institute knew about me because the hit was on TV.”
“Did you all have similar…?”
“Gifts? There was a core part of it. Near-total recall of certain things. Aside from that, it differed quite a bit. One of them could play any musical instrument with pretty much no instruction. Another could divide any prime number in his head no matter how large. There was this other woman who had qualified as a grand master of memory when she was seven.”
“Grand master of memory? What did she have to do?”
“Three tasks. The first was to memorize one thousand random numbers in an hour. Next, she had to memorize the order of ten decks of cards in an hour. And lastly, memorize the order of one deck of cards in under two minutes.”
“Wow, who knew it would be so easy,” said Jamison sarcastically.
“There are around one hundred and fifty people in the world who have successfully performed the three tasks.”
“Didn’t think it would be that many.”
“It’s not, in the grand scheme of seven billion people.”
“Could you do it?”
“I’ve never tried. Never saw the point.”
They both fell silent.
Jamison watched Decker closely.
“Even though this guy’s motivation is you, it’s not about you, you realize that, don’t you?”
“Now thirteen people have been murdered because somebody has a problem with me. This is definitely about me.”
“You didn’t pull the trigger. Someone else did. And whatever he thinks you did, it doesn’t justify what he’s done.”
“Tell it to the victims’ families.”
“You are the family of victims.”
Decker pushed his plate away and struggled up. His knees and back were killing him and he had to take a leak.
He went outside and around the corner, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself.
He was surprised when Jamison spoke. She had apparently followed him.
“You don’t need to guilt-trip yourself. That’s what he wants. You know that. It’s all part of it. He gets inside your head, he wins, on two fronts. One, his brain beats your brain, so he gets personal satisfaction. And if you’re not thinking straight you have no shot at tracking him down. Win-win for him. He’s counting on that.”
Decker zipped his pants back up and turned to her. “I know that.”
“So don’t let him do it.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Maybe for someone with an average mind. You don’t have one of those.”
He advanced on her, backing her up against the wall of the storage unit. “You think having a freak mind means I don’t have emotions? That I don’t feel anything? Is that what you think? Because you’re wrong.”
“It’s not what I think. I think the other guy doesn’t feel anything. He’s abnormal in that way. You’re not.”
“Then what the hell are you saying?”
“You can feel anything you want, Decker. You’re pissed beyond belief right now. I get that. You think the slaughter begins and ends at your doorstep. Maybe you want to hit somebody or something. Drive your fist through that wall. Okay, but don’t let him mess with the part of your brain that you will need to one day put handcuffs on this son of a bitch and then watch him take his last breath in the death chamber. You want to score this game? That’s how you score it. Winner lives, loser gets the needle.”
Decker took a step back. She didn’t move.
He looked away, then down at the asphalt. Then he walked back to the storage unit to keep digging.
* * *
Two hours later they had gone through every box and had pretty much nothing.
Decker sat back against a shelving unit. “I’ve gone back to the first day I put on the uniform to see who I might have dissed that could have pulled this off. Nobody. I didn’t piss off anyone at the 7-Eleven. I busted bad guys, sure, but I didn’t do anything to give anyone this sort of personal vendetta.”
He rubbed his face and closed his eyes.
Jamison rubbed a kink out of her neck and looked across at him, suddenly looking puzzled.
“Why did you only go back to when you put on the cop uniform?”
He opened his eyes. “I also went through anybody at Mansfield that might have something against me. There’s nothing there, Jamison. Nothing.”
“So you covered your growing up in Burlington. And you covered your life after coming back to Burlington. What about in between?”
“What, you think the guy who laid me out on that hit is behind this? After his knees and shoulders gave out, he was cut from his team, went broke, turned to selling drugs, and he’s currently in the custody of the Louisiana prison system. And I was never a good enough football player to make anyone jealous of me in college or the pros.”