He walked briskly out the door of the café and she more slowly followed.
Four hours later they pulled off the highway and spent another twenty minutes on surface streets before Decker, who was using the GPS on his phone, directed Jamison to a many-decades-old, run-down neighborhood.
“The guy looks like he’s fallen on hard times,” noted Jamison.
Decker remained quiet, but his gaze moved steadily around, taking in everything.
“That’s it, the third on the left with the black shutters. Pull past it.”
Jamison drove on, and then Decker had her park at the curb on the opposite side of the street about a half dozen homes down from Sizemore’s.
“Decker, Rabinowitz said that Sizemore had left the institute several years ago.”
“That’s right.”
“I just thought of this. Could he really be Leopold? I mean, the guy really looked homeless and out of it. Could Sizemore go downhill that fast?”
“Yes,” said Decker. “I did. And it didn’t take me years.”
She looked at him openmouthed for a moment and then slowly turned away before saying, “Oh. Okay.”
Decker extricated himself from the back of the car and stepped out. When Jamison started to do the same he ducked his head back in and said, “You’re staying in the car.”
“What!”
“Anything bad goes down, drive away and call the cops.”
“Decker, I’m not going to let you—”
“Yes you are.” He closed the car door and set off toward the house.
He went down the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets, his head down, seemingly trying to avoid the stiff, chilly breeze.
But he kept gazing to the right, observing the house as he went. It was growing dark, but there were no lights on inside. No car in the driveway. Sizemore, if he still lived here, might not be home. He might be in Burlington planning his next murder.
He actually thought it improbable that Sizemore and Leopold were one and the same. Though it had been twenty years, and people could change, Decker felt like he would have recognized the man, even though he hadn’t had that much interaction with Sizemore at the institute. But still, one couldn’t be sure without digging further. And right now it was the only viable lead he had.
He crossed the street, stepped between two parked cars, one of which was up on cement blocks, and walked down the crumbling sidewalk. He passed by the house, went around the block, cut through an alley, and ended up behind the house’s backyard. He struggled over the sagging chain-link fence and approached the house from the rear. There were no lights visible from here either.
He sidled up to the rear door, slipped one hand over the butt of his gun, and waited, listening intently. No footsteps. No sounds at all.
He looked left and right. He saw no one in the backyards of the houses on either side. The night was too chilly for folks to be sitting outside.
He put his elbow through the glass, reached through, unlocked the door, and entered.
He was now in a small foyer. On his left were a washer and dryer. Up a short set of stairs was the kitchen. The smell of fried foods was in the air, along with the stale stink of cigarette smoke. He remembered that Sizemore had been a smoker. He’d seen him taking his smoke breaks, the pack of cigarettes in his hand, and it appeared the man had never kicked the habit. But Decker had sat in a bar with Leopold and the man had never lighted up. If you were a smoker, you were going to light up in a bar if you could, and it was legal in Burlington to do so. And Decker hadn’t smelled smoke on Leopold’s clothes. And he would have. This lead was starting to go sideways, but he had to follow it through.
He glided up the steps and looked around the small kitchen. There were some dishes in the sink. A newspaper was in the wastebasket. He checked the date. Two weeks ago. This was looking more and more squirrelly.
He left the kitchen and looked into each of the rooms on the main level. There was no evidence that anyone had been here recently. He walked up the short flight of stairs to the upper floor.
Then, growing impatient, he raced forward, kicking open doors as he went. He cleared the first room, the second, and then came to the third and last door.
He pushed it open and started taking deep breaths, not because he wanted to, but because it was the only way to deaden his sense of smell.
He walked over to the bed and looked down.
He wasn’t sure whose corpse was lying on the sheets, because it was too badly decomposed. The height was about right. But the face was too far gone. From the state of decay, it looked like the body had been here for quite a while.
The body had commanded his attention. He had not looked anywhere else.
Now he did. His gaze drifted around the room and then held on one spot.
He walked over to that wall and stared dumbly at the writing there.
Wrong again. If he’s rotted now, it took you long enough. Keep trying. Maybe you’ll get there. Or maybe not. Xoxo, bro.
Chapter 44
Agent Bogart said, “It’s Chris Sizemore. They just confirmed the ID from prints and teeth.”
Decker had called the police and then the FBI agent. The law had descended on the small run-down house like a hailstorm.
They were in Sizemore’s house. Thankfully, the remains had long since been removed.
Alexandra Jamison was in her car with strict instructions not to write about a word of this.
Decker nodded. “Of course it is.”
“Why?”
Decker pointed to the writing on the wall. “Because of that.”
Bogart stood next to him. “Explain.”
“They said I was wrong again. This is Sizemore’s house. I would only have come here because I thought he was involved. He wasn’t. He was just another victim.”
“So they’re playing you. Pulling your chain at every step.”
Decker nodded. “Making like they’re smarter than I am, and maybe they are.”
“Well, let’s hope to hell you’re wrong about that.”
“They’ve been a step ahead the whole way. ‘If he’s rotted now’? He was pretty decomposed by the time I figured it out.”
“Well, they had a long time to plan this. You might just catch up. The tortoise and the hare. And you have the FBI behind you. It’s not like you have to do this alone.”
They walked outside; it was now the early hours of the morning.
“So 711 Duckton,” said Bogart. “Your old stomping ground, you said.”
“Yes.”
“So if it’s not Sizemore who had the grudge against you there, who could it be?”
“The other doctors and people working at the institute had no problem with me that I can recall.”
Bogart sat down on the concrete stoop and sighed. “Okay. Anyone else? Because there has to be something. Otherwise, why point you to this place? How else would he even know about it if he wasn’t a patient or a staffer there?”
Decker sat next to him. “It’s not simply his being there. There has to be something I did, or that he perceived I did, that would have made him undertake something like this.”
“To an unbalanced mind, pretty much anything could be deemed to be a slight, Decker. You walked in a door ahead of him. You sneezed on him. You answered a question he wanted to answer. Who the hell knows?”
“I have to know. I’m the only one who can know.”
“Well, you never forget anything, so I have to believe that it will come to you.”
“That’s the problem. If it hasn’t come to me then it’s not there.” Decker tapped the side of his head. “I don’t have things come to me. I go inside my head and retrieve them. There’s a difference.”