Miller continued, “And I checked your scores at the police academy. And your tests for detective grade.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Because I was curious about you, Amos. Don’t think the department didn’t notice your success rate as a cop and then a detective. You had something extra that the others didn’t have.”

“Mary is a good cop.”

“Yes, she is. Good, but not great. Good, but not perfect. But, see, your scores at the academy and later the detective’s exams were perfect. You didn’t miss a single question. They tell me it’s the first time in the history of the state. Then I went back to your college days. You were a good student, but a B student. Nothing perfect about your record back then.”

“Football didn’t leave a lot of time for studying.”

Miller rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. “Let’s get back to it. What else you got?”

Decker could feel the migraine marching up the back of his neck. The lights in the room were dim, but right now they felt like three-ring circus illumination. The color blue, terrifyingly electric, was starting to seep out of all corners of life with the goal of converging on his very soul. He could sense it all building.

“I don’t think Leopold is our guy,” he managed to say.

“I already knew that before I sat down across from you.”

“How’s that?” Decker asked.

“You didn’t kill him before you left the precinct. Because that’s why you went in there, right? Size the guy up, ask your questions, stare him down, read his mind, see if he was the guy? And if you decided he was, no more Leopold.” He looked Decker over. “Easy enough. Football player, strong as a horse. You might be way out of shape now, but you are still one big dude. Leopold wouldn’t have had a chance.”

“You can’t arrest someone for thinking about committing a crime.”

“No, and sometimes that’s more a curse than a blessing.”

“So why the riot act with the cops and Brimmer here?”

“I’m the captain, but I have bosses too.”

“So this was a CYA visit?”

Miller surged to his feet and adjusted his tie, sliding the knot back up to his Adam’s apple.

Decker looked up at him, the migraine starting to beat against all sides of his brain. He half closed his eyes to keep out even the dim light that felt like a million incandescent bulbs. “So what are you going to do?”

“With you, nothing. Now Leopold will be arraigned based on his confession. After that we either confirm his story or we prove it false. I’ll seriously consider all that you’ve told me. At the end of the investigation he either stays locked up, goes to trial or cops a plea, or he goes free.”

“And if someone got him to do this?”

“Might give us an opportunity. I’m sure you thought of that already.”

“Will you let me know what you decide with Leopold?”

“You’re no longer on the force. I wish you were, but you’re not.”

“It was the choice I had to make at the time.”

Miller rubbed his nose and buttoned his jacket. “Well, different times call for different choices.”

He started to leave but turned back. He held up one finger. “Today was your freebie, Amos. You only get one, so you have none left. Don’t forget that. And forget Sebastian Leopold is even on the same planet as you. We’ll take it from here. You screw me over on that, I’m no longer your ally. I will crucify you. Have a good one.”

Amos Decker sat there for a minute and then rushed back to his room, locked the door, closed all the curtains, lay on the bed with the pillow over his face to block out all the remaining light, and succumbed to the beast devouring his vastly altered mind.

Chapter

11

THE HEAVY CLOUDS ate away at the fragile sky until there was no significant light left, although the sun was up there somewhere, diminished and vacant. It was akin to staring at a forty-watt light bulb while wearing a gauzy blindfold. For Decker, who was deeply influenced by color in everything, it seemed the only one left in the world right now was gray.

He had his hands in his pockets as the chilly wind bit into him. He had recovered from the migraine, gone to a local Wendy’s, and gulped down a Coke, letting the sugar drain the last vestiges of the discomfort away—an acid wash on dreary, stained metal—and allowing the sweat to dry off his pores. He had then bused back downtown and retrieved his gun and clothes from the trash can. Fortunately, they had not been discovered. He could not afford to lose his only other set of work clothes any more than he could his only weapon.

Now he was standing there in his old clothes, braced against a stiff wind and staring over at Mansfield High. It had been built, along with thousands of other schools across the country, in a postwar construction boom. The birth rate had spiked in 1946 and those kids would need to go to high school at some point. That’s what being away from home fighting a war for four years did to a man. It made him horny as hell. The wives of America’s returning veterans probably hadn’t slept for an entire year.

Mansfield was three stories high, all brick, and time had not been kind to it. Windows were boarded up or broken. Mortar had leached out from the neat lines around the rectangular bricks and mottled the school’s façade like meaningless graffiti. The grounds were full of chickweed and dirt patches, the asphalt cracked and the chain-link fences mangled, with gates hanging off twisted, rusted hinges. The place now looked more like an abandoned state mental asylum than a high school.

It had been built principally as a school for children of the military personnel who worked at the Army base right next door. The base had been one of the biggest employers in Burlington, and servicing all those soldiers was an economic boost to the area. And then the Pentagon downsized and the base in Burlington was one of the first to go. Now the defunct Army base just sat there a hundred yards from Mansfield High behind high chain-link fences and walls of vegetation that had partially reclaimed the land it was on. Burlington had never recovered from the soldiers pulling out, and the later economic downturn was the last nail in the town’s coffin.

Today, like many other schools, Mansfield was underfunded, beaten down, discipline was hard to find, teachers didn’t stay long, and drug and alcohol abuse was rampant. The student population was less than half of what it had once been, and graduation rates were heading south as fast as snowbirds fleeing to Florida before winter set in.

Burlington, even without the military base, had once been a prosperous manufacturing town, like thousands of other communities dotted across the middle of the country building what America and the rest of the world needed. Now, with all the manufacturing outsourced overseas, the only thing one could build here was misery. There were two grocery store chains here. From what Decker had seen, the two most popular food items purchased there were Hamburger Helper by the kilo and sugary orange pop by the barrel. And the fast-food places also did brisk business, fattening both the young and old to impossible degrees and foretelling diabetes, cancer, stroke, and heart disease stats blowing right through the roof.

And didn’t he know that firsthand?

In Burlington, the few rich lived in gated communities on the west side of town and pretty much never strayed from there. Everybody else lived on the three other compass points. The homeless lived on the streets in ratty sleeping bags, old blankets, and cardboard condos.

Just like I did.

Decker had attended school at Mansfield over twenty-five years ago. Some of the trophies bearing his name were still in the gym’s locked glass cabinet. He had been an outstanding high school athlete, lettering in three different sports. He was simply bigger, faster, and stronger than anybody else. He had been popular, dated all the hot girls, slept with a number of them, done okay in the classroom, and everyone had thought him a lock for a pro career.