“What kind of connection?” persisted Natty. “You’re not making sense.”
“Can you get us permission to visit Stevens?” asked Decker, ignoring the question. “Today?”
“I can try. But what could he possibly tell you?”
“I won’t know that until I ask him.” He paused. “You, um, you want to come along, Natty?”
The man didn’t answer right away. He glanced at Lancaster and then said in a low voice, “I’m... I’m actually taking my wife out to lunch today.”
Decker gazed at him for a few moments. “I think that’s a better use of your time. I’ll fill you in when we get back.” He pointed at the phone on Natty’s desk. “Make the call and tell them it’ll be two of us.”
“Make that three,” said Lancaster.
“Mary, you’re recused from—”
“Screw recusal, Amos. This doesn’t have to do with Meryl Hawkins’s murder where Earl is providing an alibi.”
Decker glanced at Natty, who shrugged. “I have no problem with that.”
Lancaster said, “Let’s go.” She walked out of the room without another word.
“Hey, Decker,” said Mars, grinning. “She just did a really good impression of you.”
It was a two-hour drive, and Mars dozed in the backseat. Decker had introduced Mars to Lancaster as they headed out.
Lancaster checked the backseat and then glanced at Decker. “At the football field?” she said quietly.
Decker kept his eyes on the road. “Yeah?”
“What you said made a lot of sense.”
Decker just kept staring at the road and the approaching storm.
“I talked to Earl this morning.”
Now Decker glanced at her, his expression prompting.
“I think we’re going to... give it another shot.”
“And his lady friend?” asked Decker.
“I don’t think it would be an untruth to say that I pushed him into that relationship. Don’t get me wrong. Nancy’s nice and Earl likes her. Hell, I like her.”
“But it’s not what Earl wants?”
“No. He made that clear this morning. What he wants...”
“Is you.”
Lancaster touched her wrinkled face and ran a hand down her stringy hair. “Can’t really understand why. I look like shit. Nancy, on the other hand, is a real babe.”
“Who’s being shallow now?”
Lancaster looked embarrassed and dropped her hands in her lap. “I have to say I was surprised that you thought enough about my situation to tell me what I needed to hear.”
“Meaning that I only look inward?”
“Meaning that I know those situations are very difficult for you with your special—”
“Maybe I’m growing out of it,” interrupted Decker.
Lancaster absently touched her temple. “What did it feel like, when your... when your brain changed?”
He glanced over to see Lancaster staring at him with such intensity that he instantly felt anxious in trying to answer her query. He could sense that she was counting on him to tell her it would be somehow okay, or at least not terrible.
“I didn’t have much time to make the transition, Mary. I woke up in a hospital and I was different. My mind was doing things it had never done before.”
“I, um, I guess you were scared.”
He glanced at her again to see the woman now staring at her hands.
“I won’t lie to you, Mary. It was unsettling. But I got professional help and I was able to adapt. I won’t tell you that it gets any easier. I will tell you that I was able to manage it. To live my life.”
“It will be a bit different for me, I imagine.”
“There’s no cure for what you and I have, though they are very different things. But every day they make progress. In five years, who’s to say they won’t have beat what you have?”
She nodded but her look of anxiety remained. “If I live that long.”
Decker reached over and gripped her shoulder.
She looked startled by this personal touch. It was not something that Amos Decker normally would ever do. She knew he didn’t like being touched by others.
“You have Earl and Sandy and me to help you through this, Mary.”
“You don’t live here anymore.”
“I’m here right now. And you know I’m going to keep coming back to Burlington.”
“Because of your family.”
“And now, also because of you.”
This declaration caught Lancaster off guard. A small sob escaped from her lips and she suddenly seized his hand with both of hers and squeezed, as the tears, like released water over a damn, broke free and slid down her cheeks.
“You’re a good friend, Amos. Sometimes I have trouble remembering that.”
“You put up with me for a lot of years, Mary. Longer than anyone else other than Cassie. You probably deserve a medal for that. But all I can offer you is my friendship.”
“I’ll take that over any medal.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence.
Chapter 45
With its concrete walls, concertina wire, attack dogs, and guards with sniper rifles on towers, Travis Correctional Center rose out of the Ohio soil looking every bit the max prison that it was.
Decker drove up to the entrance and they cleared security, right as the heavens opened up and the rain poured down, forcing them to sprint for cover. Natty had secured an interview with Karl Stevens, and they were escorted to the visitors’ room.
All three, Decker, Lancaster, and Mars, were well acquainted with prisons, for starkly different reasons. Catcalls, screams, the smells of over two thousand men kept in close proximity to each other in a facility designed for half that number, together with the comingled aromas of dozens of types of illicit contraband.
They sat at a table and awaited the arrival of Karl Stevens. He was brought in a few minutes later. Decker remembered him as tall and thin with long, dirty hair tied back in a ponytail, and a scruffy beard. The man appearing before them in his orange prison jumpsuit and shackles was thickened with dumbbell-driven muscle. His head was shaved, his facial hair gone. His knotted forearms were bedecked with tats that continued on his neck and up the back of his bald head.
He smiled at the trio as he was seated in front of them and his shackles locked into an eyebolt on the floor.
The guards stepped away but kept a watchful eye from across the room.
Stevens looked at Decker. “I remember you. Decker, right?”
Decker nodded.
Then the inmate turned to Lancaster. “Sure as hell remember you. You’re the reason I’m here.”
“No, let’s keep to the facts, Karl. The reason you’re here is because you killed a guy.”
“Details, details,” said Stevens with a smirk. He glanced at Mars and his expression soured. “Don’t know you.”
“No, you don’t,” said Mars.
“You a cop too?”
“He’s helping us on a case,” said Decker.
Stevens kept his gaze on Mars. “You got the look of somebody who’s done time.”
“You ever been locked up in Texas?” said Mars.
“No, why?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Stevens looked at Decker. “What do you want? I was going to work out, then I got the word you wanted to see me.”
Decker said dryly, “Sorry to interrupt your exercise. We wanted to know if you were Mitzi Hawkins’s dealer.”
“Who’s Mitzi Hawkins?”
“Meryl Hawkins’s daughter.”
Stevens shrugged. “That doesn’t mean shit to me. I dealt to a lot of people.” He laughed. “I didn’t ask for fuckin’ ID.”
Decker described Mitzi to him.
Stevens chuckled. “You got to be shitting me. You just described every whacked-out bitch I ever sold to.”
“How about Frankie Richards? You remember him? He was only fourteen. He died at his home along with his father and sister and a man named David Katz. They were murdered.”