Decker sat at the table, looking out the window. Jamison sat across from him, watching him nervously.
In an effort to lighten the mood, she said, “Okay, I have to admit, this beats my Suzuki.”
“You mean your clown car,” commented Decker, still peering out the window.
They were traveling at forty-one thousand feet and well over five hundred miles an hour in the Bureau’s sleek tri-engine Falcon.
He looked up when Bogart placed cups of coffee in front of him and Jamison, then sat down across from him. The FBI agent unbuttoned his jacket and took a sip from his own cup.
Jamison looked around the plush interior. “Nice ride.”
Bogart nodded. “The FBI pulls out all the stops for cases like this.” He eyed Decker, who was still staring out the window.
“So you took a hit on the football field and it changed your life forever?”
“It changed my brain, and with it my life.”
“And again, you don’t want to talk about it?”
Decker said nothing.
“What do you think we’ll find at the Wyatts’ house in Colorado?” asked Jamison, peering anxiously between the two men.
Decker said, “Whatever we find will tell us something we didn’t know before. And it will get us one step closer to Belinda Wyatt.”
Bogart took another sip of coffee. “What made you look in Wyatt’s direction? We were searching for a man and she’s a woman, or she was when you knew her.”
In answer Decker opened the laptop in front of him and spun it around so Bogart could see the screen. Then he ran the video.
Bogart looked at the frames and then turned back to Decker.
“Okay, it’s a woman getting out of a car. The waitress from the bar. Leopold’s accomplice. Maybe this Belinda Wyatt person. She certainly looks like a woman to me.”
“Did you notice how the person got out of the car?”
Bogart glanced at the screen. “You said it was a guy masquerading as a woman. But now that we know Wyatt has this intersex condition, we don’t really know what she is, male or female. So it could just be her being a woman because she is a woman. Maybe she never had the operation.”
“That’s right. She may be exactly what she was twenty years ago. We know Leopold couldn’t have committed the murders. If Wyatt is involved with him, that leaves her. She’s the shooter.”
“Okay, but I’m not getting what you mean about her climbing out of the car. She swung her legs out and stood up. Like a girl or a guy would.”
“No, not like a guy would. Nothing like a guy would.”
“I’m not following.”
“Turn to the side and stand up, like you’re getting out of a car.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now.”
“Decker!”
“Just do it.”
Bogart looked put out, but he turned to his side and put his legs out into the aisle. He was about to stand when Decker stopped him.
“Look at your legs.”
Bogart stared down at his splayed legs. “What about them? I swung them out into the aisle, which I have to do in order to stand up. The person on the screen did the exact same thing.”
“Look at the distance between your thighs.”
Bogart stared down at the large gap between his legs. “So what?”
“Look at the screen.”
Bogart glanced at the screen. There the person’s thighs were nearly touching.
“Look at the hand,” added Decker.
Bogart looked at the person’s hand. It was knifed into the narrow crevice between the thighs, edging the skirt down.
“Your legs were spread out and your hand was nowhere near your legs.”
“Well, she’s wearing a dress, I’m not.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re a guy and, wearing a dress or not, you wouldn’t do it. You’d spread your legs and stand. And the person’s in an alley. No one is there to catch a glimpse up the dress. So why keep the legs together? Why place your hand there for added security to prevent prying eyes?”
“I give up. Why?”
“It’s the difference between being raised female and male. Women do that motion automatically. It’s ingrained in them from an early age, as soon as they start wearing a jumper and tights, and then a dress or skirt. My wife taught our daughter that motion when she was just a little girl. Every mom does. But a guy would never think to do it. Never. Dress or no dress. Guys don’t worry about people looking, because guys are always the ones who are looking.”
Bogart stared down at his legs, and then at his hand, and lastly over at the screen where the frozen image showed explicitly everything that Decker had just explained. He looked at Jamison, who had been following this conversation closely. Before he could say anything, she swung her legs out into the aisle. She was wearing a skirt. Her knees were pressed together and her hand was in the same position as the person on the video.
“It is hammered into us, Agent Bogart,” she noted. “Just like Decker said. It’s just automatic, especially when one is wearing a skirt.”
Bogart exclaimed, “So let me get this straight. Are you saying that our shooter is a woman, Decker?”
“I’m saying that if our shooter is Belinda Wyatt — and I believe she is — then she has retained the muscle memory from when she was raised as a girl. Whether she’s now a man after having surgery, I don’t know. Ironically enough, she may like that, after having been considered a freak for straddling genders, because she’s now able to use it to her full advantage. She’s a chameleon gender-wise. She can play both roles. It makes for very effective cover.”
Bogart swung his legs back in and rested his elbows on the table. Jamison did the same.
“Why do you think she killed Sizemore?” asked Bogart.
“That’s the other reason I started to focus on Wyatt. She was his favorite. He made that clear to me. He never told me about her background, but he spent a great deal of time with her.”
“Okay, but why would she kill him, then?”
Decker gazed at Bogart with a look of disappointment. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? He seduced her and had sex with her while she was at the institute.”
Jamison and Bogart stared at him goggle-eyed.
“Damn,” said Jamison. “That does make sense. Sizemore was a slimeball. He got kicked out of the institute for doing that very same thing with another female patient.”
Bogart said, “So he seduced this physically and emotionally battered teenager when she was at her most vulnerable just so he could get laid? Some favorite.”
Decker said nothing to this. He had returned to gazing out the window.
“You don’t miss much, do you?” noted Bogart.
“So long as I see it or hear it, then it’s always with me.”
Jamison said, “But what if someone tells you a lie? You remember it, but not necessarily as a lie, right?”
“Unless I’m told something else that doesn’t align with the earlier statement. Then I can start to figure out what’s true and what’s not. Small things tend to lead to big results. People don’t mess up on the big details. They fall down on the small ones.”
“What about Leopold? How did those two hook up?”
Decker looked back out the window and watched the clouds pass by.
He had no answer to that question.
He might never have an answer to that question.
Belinda Wyatt and Sebastian Leopold. Two of the most unlikely partners ever. But like the two killers in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, people paired together could do things unimaginable to each of them acting alone.
And he wondered what they were plotting right now.
Chapter 53
The address in Colorado was at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, up a long paved road that had only a single house at the end that one reached through a motorized gate. But it was a substantial home, an estate really.