“Why, because he said he was innocent?” she said skeptically. “His prints and DNA were found at the crime scene.”
“You can fabricate that stuff.”
Katz looked taken aback by this. “I didn’t know that. Is that what Decker thinks?”
“Maybe. So, did your husband have enemies?”
“No, nobody I could think of. He was a nice guy,” she added quietly. “He treated people well. He treated me well. He wasn’t the type to screw people over and make them hate him or hold a grudge.”
“So maybe they were targeting Don Richards.”
“They?”
“In the event Hawkins is not the guy, there’s a murderer out there.”
“Do you have evidence that the fingerprints and such were fabricated?”
“This is where I pull out my official handbook and tell you that it’s an ongoing police investigation.”
“But you said you weren’t with the FBI.”
“Doesn’t matter, still can’t divulge anything, but you’re smart enough to read between the lines, right?”
She nervously drank her cocktail and didn’t answer right away. “If Hawkins didn’t do it, the real killer might still be out there? Any idea who he is?”
“He, or she?”
She gave him a withering look. “I have an alibi for when it happened.”
“Not my meaning. Lots of other ‘shes’ out there.”
“Wait a minute, what about Mitzi, what was her last name?”
“Mitzi Gardiner.”
“Did she have alibis for the murders?”
“Not sure.”
“Well, don’t you think you should check that?”
“I’m sure Decker is all over that.”
“I remember from some of the testimony at the trial that she was an addict back then.”
“I think she had problems in that area, yeah.”
“So maybe she needed money for drugs and tried to rob them.”
“And Susan Richards?”
“Seems obvious. She killed herself because she killed Meryl Hawkins.”
He looked at her doubtfully.
“You don’t think so?” she said.
“From how Decker described her to me, Mitzi was a skinny drug addict mostly stoned out of her mind. No way she killed four people, including two grown men. Besides, her DNA and prints weren’t found at the scene.”
“But you said that could be fabricated.”
“It’s easier to add stuff to a crime scene than it is to take stuff away, especially prints and DNA. Taking stuff away, you miss one little thing, you’re screwed. Trust me, I speak from experience.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Investigating a series of murders.”
“Do you think you’ll find out who did it, after all this time?”
“I bet once against Amos Decker. And I lost that bet.”
“Bad for you, then.”
“No, actually he saved my life.”
“Seriously?”
“As serious as it gets.” He rose. “Thanks for showing me the place. You got a real winner here.”
“Wait, do you have time for a nightcap? We could go back to my place.”
“Thanks, but it’s been a long day. Take a rain check?”
“Sure, okay,” Katz said, the disappointment clear on her features. “And it was great meeting you.”
“Same here. You gave me a lot to think about, and maybe I did the same for you.”
Her expression changed, becoming somber and detached. She recovered from this a moment later, stood, and held out her hand with a forced smile. “Until next time, Melvin.”
They shook hands and Mars said, “Look forward to it, Rachel.”
He left her there gazing at all the partiers, but perhaps not really seeing a single one.
Chapter 42
“So what do you think?” asked Mars. He and Decker were driving together back to the Residence Inn.
“I think you’d make a great interrogator.”
“I didn’t want Katz to think I was drilling down on her.”
“That’s not what I meant. The really good questioners don’t seem like they’re prying at all. That’s what you did. You did a good job of gaining her confidence and not trying too hard.”
Mars fist-bumped Decker. “Thanks. So what else? You think she’s in on whatever this is?”
“She’s hiding something, I just don’t know what. And so is Mitzi Gardiner. And maybe so was Susan Richards, for that matter.”
“Lot of people hiding shit in this town.”
“Nothing new there,” grumbled Decker. “Happens in every town.”
Mars checked his watch. “It’s midnight. How about some sleep? We’re not as young as we used to be, you know.”
“Sure,” said Decker, although sleep was the last thing on his mind.
After Mars went to his room at the Residence Inn, Decker came back down to the parking lot, climbed into his car, and set off. He drove out of the downtown area and, his mind on autopilot, made his way to the neighborhood and house that he had called home for over a decade.
He pulled to the curb, rolled down the driver’s-side window, and cut his engine and lights. He looked out the window at his old house, which was dark, the only illumination a single streetlight and the moon.
He had no real understanding of why he was here. It was punishing to see the place. Memories flooded back to him as easily as drawing breath. He closed his eyes as the images suddenly careened out of control just like last time; they were coming at him like flocks of hurtling birds or fired bullets. He couldn’t make them stop. He felt his heart flutter, his gut lurch.
The sweat started to pool on his forehead, his skin grew clammy, and his armpits were suddenly soaked with sweat, the sudden stink assailing his nostrils.
His heart was now racing, and he thought he might be having a coronary. But slowly, ever so slowly, as he gripped the steering wheel as though that might allow some semblance of control over what was happening to him, things settled down in his mind. He finally lay back against his seat, exhausted without having moved at all. He hung his head out the window and sucked in the crisp air as the moisture evaporated off his skin.
This is getting old. And so am I.
He waggled his head, spit some stomach bile out the window, and kept taking deep breaths. He remembered when he’d come out of the coma at the hospital after getting crunched on the football field on opening day. A bunch of people he didn’t know were hovering over him, asking him questions. He had IV and monitoring lines running all over him. He felt like Gulliver just awoken as a prisoner of the Lilliputians.
He had come to learn that he had died on the field, twice, only to be resuscitated each time by the team trainer. He’d been hit so hard his helmet had flown off and was lying in the grass far away from his body. The crowd had been cheering the blindside hit until they realized he was not getting up. When the trainer started pounding on his chest, the crowd of seventy thousand people quieted. The network had cut away to another game. It was not good for the NFL brand to show dead football players lying on the turf.
He learned he’d suffered a traumatic brain injury. Later, he discovered his brain had rewired itself around the damaged areas, accessing domains that had never been triggered before. This had left him with the twin conditions of hyperthymesia and synesthesia.
But he didn’t know he had them until later. It wasn’t like an X-ray could reveal this. The first time he had seen a color burst into his head, associated with something as incongruous as a number, Decker had seriously thought he was going insane.
Then, when he was able to recall things he never had been able to before, the doctors had started testing his cognitive abilities. He had looked at sheets of numbers and words and was able to regurgitate them all, because he could see them in his head, just as they had lain on the page. Then off he had gone to a special cognitive institute in Chicago that dealt exclusively with people like him.