“Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning that I’d like you to work more closely with us. Together we may be able to make headway.”
Decker looked over at Lancaster, who had clearly heard this last exchange.
Decker rose. “I’ve already got a partner. But we break anything we’ll let you know.”
He walked off. Lancaster waited for a moment, flicked Bogart a tight smile, and scurried after Decker.
Special Agent Bogart remained sitting, staring after them both.
Chapter 30
Decker opened his eyes. He was lying in bed, but sleep was elusive. It was raining outside his room at the Residence Inn. This time of year — as fall hunkered down before giving way fully to winter — was always loaded with rain, usually with strong winds that beat the moisture right into your brain.
A size nine shoe. They had confirmed the size. On a guy six-two, two hundred or more pounds, with shoulders as wide as his. He closed his eyes and his mind whirred back to the image on the camera. But it only showed the man from the waist up. Decker now was sure that was intentional. Waist up. He had also walked in front of the camera in a way that was designed to hide how he had actually come into the school. Not from the rear doors, but from the cafeteria via an underground passage.
Yet Decker had seen something that didn’t make sense; he just wasn’t sure what or where. He never forgot anything, but that didn’t mean everything was always placed in the proper context opposite either a complementary or conflicting fact.
He was just starting to do that when he heard the noise outside his door.
The Residence Inn was set up so that each room opened directly to the outdoors. Decker was on the second story. A catwalk with a wrought iron railing formed the exterior of this floor, with stairs down at each end to the parking lot.
The noise came again. A scraping, it seemed, against the wall outside his door. The rooms on either side of his were empty. The first floor of the inn was mostly full. He sat up in bed and looked at the door. He reached out and his fingers closed around his gun, which he kept on the nightstand.
He chambered a round, moving the slide slowly so the sound of it moving back and forth was diminished. He threw off the covers, pulled on his pants, slipped his phone into his pocket, and skittered over to the door in his bare feet.
He stood to the right of the door, his gun held down with both hands. He listened. There it was again. The scrape.
Something was out there. Maybe someone was out there.
He would do this as he had many busts as a cop. Except in reverse. Going out the door instead of in. He slipped off the security chain, stood to the side, gripped the knob, counted to three in his head, and threw the door open. He catapulted through the opening, swinging his gun first left then right.
He stopped and stared up at her. She had been hung on the bracket supporting the exterior light. Her feet hitting against the side of the wall were the source of the scraping he’d heard.
He checked her pulse at the carotid, but did so only mechanically. She was dead, her eyes open, glassed over and fixed in a way the living could never achieve.
FBI Special Agent Lafferty had written down her last note.
He looked over her body but could find no obvious signs of how she had died.
Then he turned and ran down the catwalk, reached the stairs, and hurtled down them. She couldn’t have been up there long. Whoever had done it might still be around. He pulled his phone and dialed 911. He told the dispatcher everything she needed to know in three succinct sentences. Then he called Lancaster. She answered on the fourth ring. It was three in the morning. She had no doubt been asleep. After his first sentence she was wide awake. After his second he could hear her fumbling for her clothes. He put his phone away and sprinted around the parking lot in front of the Residence Inn. He was looking and listening. Any vehicles starting up. Any feet running away.
He heard neither, only his own tortured breath. He stopped and bent over, trying to refill his lungs. He felt himself shaking, his stomach churning. When he looked up he saw them. The army of threes was charging him, knives raised, ready to kill. He knew they were not real, but this night the terror seized him, like it had the first time he had seen them.
He bent farther over and threw up on the asphalt, the sick splashing onto his bare and now frozen feet.
When he straightened he heard the first siren, and the army of threes seemed to dissolve with the sound. A minute later the first siren was joined by another. He walked unsteadily back up the steps to his room. He leaned against the catwalk railing facing Lafferty’s body. He wanted to close her eyes, lift her off the bracket and set her gently down on the concrete with her hands folded across her stomach. Peaceful. As if he could ever make violent death so. He certainly couldn’t do it for his family.
But he could do none of those things without corrupting the crime scene. So he just stood there. When the patrol cars lurched to a stop in the parking lot he slipped into his room and put his gun back in the nightstand. By the time he got back outside the officers had sprinted up the steps and come to a stop a few feet away.
Decker held up his lanyard. He didn’t recognize either patrolman and didn’t want them to think the wrong thing.
“Amos Decker. I’m the one who called it in. Detective Lancaster is on her way.”
The cops had their guns drawn and were scrutinizing him closely. One drew near to him and checked out his lanyard.
He said to his buddy, “I saw him at the school with the detectives yesterday. It’s okay.”
The cops holstered their weapons and stared up at the dead Lafferty.
“She’s FBI special agent Lafferty,” said Decker. “You might have seen her at the school too.”
Both cops shook their heads, but the first one said, “Shit, a Fed? How’d she die?”
“I don’t know. Nothing obvious that you can see.”
“Okay.”
Decker stepped back from the body. “Not telling you anything you don’t know, but I was a cop for twenty years. You should go ahead and secure the crime scene and call in the forensics team and the ME. I’m sure Detective Lancaster will also alert the proper people, but it’s a Fed like you said, and you need to follow the book tight on this one.”
The first cop said, “Good advice. I’ll phone it in.”
The other cop said, “I’ll get the perimeter tape.”
Decker pointed to the open door. “This is my room. I heard a noise and came outside to check. That’s when I saw her. I went down to the parking lot. But I saw no one. Didn’t hear a vehicle either. Or anyone running away. And the puke down in the parking lot belongs to me. I’m not used to running that fast or far anymore.”
“Okay, Mr. Decker. I’d like you to go inside your room. I’m sure Detective Lancaster will see you when she gets here.” He stared up at the body and suddenly looked uncertain. “We’re sure she’s dead?”
“No pulse. I checked. And she’s already cold. Been dead a while.”
Decker went inside his room, closed the door, went to the bathroom, washed his face and his feet, put on his shoes, sat on his bed, and waited.
He knew where Lancaster lived. He figured thirty minutes or so tops. Ten minutes later he heard activity start up outside his door.
Eighteen minutes after that there was a knock on his door. He opened it and there she was.