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.”

Bogart rose and looked down at him. “I guess there is, now that you explain it.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well, the ME estimates that Sizemore has been dead about two weeks. No telling where Leopold and his ‘friend’ were then. We’re going to canvass the neighborhood, see if anything turns up.”

“I doubt it will. I slipped in the backyard while it was still light and broke in. And big as I am, no one apparently saw anything.”

“Well, we’re still going to do it.”

“Did Sizemore have a job?”

“We’re checking that now. If he did, you’d think someone would have reported him missing when he didn’t show up.”

“Some jobs don’t require you to show up anywhere.”

“I’ll let you know what we find.”

Bogart left him and Decker rose and walked back over to Jamison’s car and climbed in.

She looked sleepily at him from the driver’s seat.

“You could have gone on to a motel,” he said. “I’m sure I could have hitched a ride with one of Bogart’s guys.”

She shook her head and said, “No, I couldn’t have slept anyway. So was it Sizemore?”

“It was. Dead about two weeks.”

“When you came out of the house before, you said the message on the wall was another taunt?”

“That I had gotten it wrong but to keep trying. He also implied that maybe I wasn’t as smart as I thought. And he called me ‘bro’ again.”

“He’s really playing mind games with you.”

“Appears to be.”

She stretched and yawned. “So what now?”

“We get some sleep. We both think about things. Maybe some ideas will come.”

“You really think that will happen?”

“No, I don’t.”

He thought, Because things don’t come to me. There’re already there. Or else they’re not.

Chapter

45

THEY LEFT THE next day and began the long drive back to Burlington. Decker hardly spoke at all, and any questions posed to him by Jamison went largely ignored. She finally gave up and turned on the radio. They stopped to eat at a truckers’ grill off the highway. Amid a sea of big rigs, Jamison pulled her minnow of a vehicle into an available slot and they climbed out.

Decker was moving stiffly. She noted this.

“Sorry about the cramped quarters,” she said.

He rubbed his neck, straightened his back until he heard a little pop, and said, “I’m hungry.”

The place was crowded and they were led to a corner table in the back adjacent to the pool hall where truckers smacked balls and bet on the outcomes. Next to that was a gift shop where the most popular items seemed to be lingerie and sex toys for the missus or girlfriend back home.

They ordered and Decker spooned sugar into his coffee while he stared at the laminated tabletop.

A Bonnie Raitt song started wafting over the room from a jukebox.

Jamison looked around at the beehive of activity, including one man wearing a Stetson who rode an electronic bucking bronco for a few seconds before being pitched off, to the delight of his buddies.

Decker scratched at his beard and lifted his gaze to her.

“You need to get on a plane and get as far away from me as you can. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I thought we’d been through this and it was settled. Andy Jackson was—”