“I can appreciate that,” said Decker. “I hope it turns out you’re right.”
George blinked rapidly, as though he had never considered that he might be wrong. He shut the door behind them.
Decker and Lancaster walked down the sidewalk.
“Your bedside manner is as terrific as always,” said Lancaster sarcastically.
“I’m not here to be his friend and hold his hand, Mary. I’m here to catch whoever killed his daughter.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, “I got an email from forensics. They found nothing pertinent on Debbie’s phone or laptop. No photos, emails, texts, voicemails. And there are no online postings on any site they could think of or which Debbie had access to. Her mom said she had seen some alluding to this guy, but Debbie must’ve deleted them. But maybe our guys can still dig them up somehow.”
“This guy would never have let her take his picture. No electronic trails either. Far too easy. Our guy may not even have Web access.”
“How do you figure?”
“I’m seeing someone outside the mainstream. No ties. A loner. He floats from place to place.”
“Based on what? Something you saw?”
“No, something I felt. But one thing has me puzzled.”
“Just one, you’re lucky then,” she said, smiling grimly. “My list is six pages long.”
He went on as though he hadn’t heard her. “Why Debbie? Why pick her to team with?”
“Team with? What exactly did she do? I thought she was just his girlfriend.”
“She gave him something he needed.”
“Something he needed? At the school? You don’t mean the guns? There’s no way she’s lugging in a pistol and a shotgun.”
“I don’t necessarily mean the guns, no.”
“But why would he need her to bring him anything?”
“That’s what’s puzzling me too. Why her and why the meeting at the school on that day?”
“Whoa, Decker, you’re pulling way ahead of me. What meeting?”
“She pretended to be sick. She got out of class, met this guy, probably gave him something, and then he killed her. But there’s a time gap that I can’t figure right now.”
She asked him another question, only Decker wasn’t listening. His gaze was moving down the street, to his left. It was dark, the night air chilly with mist rising from both their mouths as they exhaled. There seemed to be nothing good out in that blackness. But to Decker the night was suddenly full of threes, his least favorite number.
It had first happened when he was a rookie cop. Thankfully he’d been out on patrol alone. He’d been sitting in his squad car sipping coffee when out of the darkness came movement. At first he thought it was some people trying to sneak up on him. Back then Burlington had a big gang problem, mostly consisting of young men with no jobs and no hope, too much testosterone, and access to too many guns.
He’d thrown his coffee out the window, his hand had gone to his gun, and his other hand to his radio. He’d been about to step out of the vehicle and give a warning to whoever was out there. That’s when the figures appeared clearly in front of him. Giant, towering number threes.
It was like he’d been suddenly propelled into a bad sci-fi novel.
He thought he was going mad. But something coalesced in the middle of his brain. A small scrap of memory from one of the doctors at the institute outside Chicago where he’d gone after his injury and all the weird things had started happening to him.
The doctor had said, “Amos, for you, a new day can mean new things. The brain never stops. It is relentless. It is constantly configuring and reconfiguring. I’m trying to tell you that what has happened to you so far may not be the only change you experience with your mind. Tomorrow, next month, next year, a decade hence, you may wake up and discover it is doing something else. There is no way for us to predict it, unfortunately. And it may be terrifying when it does happen. But just know that it’s your mind. It’s just all in your head. It’s not real.”
With that remembrance, Decker turned back to face the army of numbers, his initial fear receding, but it was replaced with a fresh one.
What new stuff will tomorrow bring?
He had gotten off duty, gone home, dropped into bed, and wept quietly so that he wouldn’t awaken Cassie. In the morning he told her what had happened. She was predictably supportive and encouraging. And Decker was predictably upbeat, blowing it off as something that was actually funny. But it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all. The threes had been gone for a while. In fact, he hadn’t seen them coming out of the darkness since Cassie and Molly died. But now they were back.
Wonderful.
And the threes had added a new dimension. A trio of knives was coming off each of the digits’ stems. No, not funny at all.
“Let me know if they crack the code,” he said as the threes charged forward, knives at the ready.
Then he turned left and headed down the street.
“Don’t you want a ride home?” asked Lancaster.
Decker kept walking, his hands shoved deeply into his coat pockets.
He didn’t need a ride. He needed to think.
He looked at his feet to avoid staring into the faces of the legions of numbers coming at him from out of the gloom.
What did Debbie Watson have that their shooter needed? Guns? No. Cammie gear? Maybe. But why couldn’t he have brought that on his own? He didn’t need her for that.
The heart and the picture. She was in love. She had a crush on the guy. Would do anything for him. But would she sacrifice her classmates? The picture of the cammie man had not included any weapons. Had Debbie not known what the actual plan was to be? So why had she come out of her classroom to meet the guy?
He lifted his eyes, saw the threes flying head-on at him, and lowered his gaze once more. When he had done stakeouts or pulled shifts at night he had worn special glasses that tinted the darkness into a golden color. Gold for him was a sky full of geese. No threes to bother him. He had lost the glasses a long time ago. Now the threes were back and they were armed. He would need to get new glasses.
He stopped walking, leaned against a tree, closed his eyes, dialed up his mental DVR, and replayed everything he had seen in the Watsons’ house. The spool unwound in his head and then he slowed the pace of the mental frames. And then he stopped his DVR and a row of images stared at him like figurines on a fireplace mantel. Actually, the image was quite literal.
They were on the fireplace mantel.
Decker turned around and walked quickly back to the Watsons’ house. He knocked and George answered.
“Did you forget something?” George asked, sounding a little annoyed.
“Pictures on your mantel. I saw them earlier. Can you walk me through them?”
“Pictures on the mantel?” said George with a perplexed look. “Walk you through them?”
Decker stepped inside the house, forcing the much smaller man to step back quickly.
“I’m assuming they’re family members?”
“Yes. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“I’ve worked cases long enough to know that it’s the one thing you let pass that ends up holding the answer you need. We can’t afford any lapses here, Mr. Watson, I’m sure you can understand that. If we’re going to find whoever killed Debbie and the others.”
What can the man say to that other than agree?
Watson slowly nodded, though he still looked unconvinced. “Okay, sure, follow me.”
He led Decker into the small living room and over to the mantel that topped an old brick fireplace that had mortar leaching from the seams.