even if she hadn’t understood exactly what that meant.
Maybe I don’t either.
Everything seemed to come back to Walter Dabney. That was partly by default. They had been able to thoroughly dig into his past, whereas they had had far less to go on when it came to Berkshire.
By far his biggest asset was his memory, so he turned to it once more.
His eyes closed and the frames flipped past.
There was something that someone had said. He wasn’t sure it was even related. For some reason it seemed an outlier comment, but perhaps with a secondary meaning that would shed light on something.
The frames slowed and his brow furrowed.
It was almost like the reels of a slot machine clacking away and then slowing as the cycle neared its end, showing you to be either a loser or a winner, if the images all lined up perfectly.
Come on. Line up for me. Make me a winner. I could use it.
Surprisingly, the image of Melvin Mars came into his head. They had been talking about something at Harper Brown’s house right before they had been attacked.
The clacking sound diminished; the frames continued to slow.
Mars had said something about Brown. It had sounded perfectly innocuous when he had said it. It had flowed very naturally from the conversation they had been having. It wasn’t related to the case at all.
One…two…three.
The clacking slowed down more. The whirring images too, so that Decker could start to see a firm image taking shape.
Mars had been telling Decker how impressed he’d been with Brown. How well traveled she was, but how she put on no airs even with all the wealth she possessed. Mars had said he had admired that. He liked hanging with her.
She was fun and cool and she made him feel good.
But, no, it was not that. It was something else.
It was like he was holding a piece of flypaper, and bits of confetti, representing the facts of the case, were swirling in the air. If he could just get them to drop down and stick to the flypaper, things might start making sense.
More clacking and more spinning images.
Five…six…seven…eight.
Jackpot.
The single word burst into his head, jumping out in the same way the highlighted ones in the Harry Potter book had leapt from the page.
He sat up so fast he became a little dizzy.
Athlete.
CHAPTER
73
DECKER WALKED OUT of the FBI morgue after having talked to Lynne Wainwright again. He had had new questions and she had given him helpful answers.
He went to the WFO, sat at a computer, and started searching. The information started to flood in, and the pieces started dropping into place at an increasing pace. It was like the dam had opened and the water was flowing freely.
Finally.
He found terms he had never encountered before, including several he couldn’t come close to pronouncing. He looked at pictures of people from decades ago.
So many of them.
Disgraced now.
Diseased now.
In pain. Dying before their time.
It had all been monstrous. And the world had largely looked the other way.
But it had obviously given others opportunities. And they had seized them.
And he had also remembered something else.
A picture where a picture should never have been.
He should have seen it before, but he hadn’t. It had seemed unimportant, when he should have realized that there was no such thing as something unimportant in an investigation.
He got up, walked out, and headed to Bogart’s office.
The FBI agent was there with Milligan and Jamison. They told him that Agent Brown was on her way.
Decker said, “Tell her to meet us at the Dabneys’.”
“Why?” asked Bogart. “What’s there that we need to go back?”
“Pretty much everything.”
* * *
“Yes! I had nothing left except the clothes on my back. I had no family left. I was sent to an orphanage.”
Decker nodded. “So where did this photo come from, then?”
Ellie started to say something but then stopped. She cleared her throat and said, “Fortunately, I had it with me. I carried it with me always.”
Decker nodded. “I thought you might say that.”
“Because it’s the truth.”