His execution was to take place. He was prepared for that, or as much as anyone could be.
And then it had been called off. But if they weren’t convinced by this guy in Alabama, could they still execute him? The answer to that, he knew, was probably hell yes.
Don’t mess with Texas.
He closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure exactly what emotions he was supposed to have. Happy, nervous, relieved, anxious?
Well, he was feeling all of them. Mostly, he was feeling that somehow, some way, he was never leaving this place. Regardless of what the
“investigation” showed.
He wasn’t being fatalistic. Simply realistic.
He started to sing a tune under his breath, so the guards wouldn’t be able to hear. Perhaps it was stupid under the circumstances, but it felt right anyway.
Oh when the saints, oh when the saints, oh when the saints go marching in, oh Lord I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in.
CHAPTER
3
ON THE VERY last day of the year, Amos Decker sat in his rental car in the drive-through line at a Burger King near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border pondering what to order.
Most of what he owned was in the backseat and trunk of the car. He still had some things back at a storage unit in Burlington. He could not part with them, but he didn’t have the room to bring them with him either.
He was a big man, six-five, and about halfway between three and four hundred pounds—the exact number depended on how much he ate at a particular meal. He was a former college football player with a truncated stint in the NFL, where a vicious blindside hit had altered his mind and given him pretty much a perfect memory. Hyperthymesia, as it was technically known.
It sounded cool.
It wasn’t.
But it had been nothing compared to walking into his house one night to find his wife, brother-in-law, and daughter brutally murdered. That killer was no longer among the living. Decker had seen to that. But the conclusion of that case had also led him to move from Burlington, Ohio, to Virginia to take up a unique position with the FBI.
He still didn’t know how he felt about it. Thus he ordered two Whoppers, two large fries, and a Coke so big he had difficulty holding it even in his huge hand. When he was anxious, he ate.
When he was really anxious he was a garbage disposal.
He sat in the parking lot and devoured his meal, the salt on the fries sticking to his fingers and sprinkling across his lap. Outside the snow was falling lightly. He had started his journey late and was tired, so he wouldn’t finish the drive tonight. He would grab a bed at a motel in the Keystone State and then complete his journey the next day.
Special Agent Ross Bogart, the man he would be working for at the FBI, had told him that all of his traveling expenses, within reason, would be covered. He’d actually offered to fly Decker to Virginia, but Decker had declined. He wanted to drive. He wanted some time to himself. He would be working at the FBI with a woman he’d met in Burlington, a journalist named Alexandra Jamison. She’d shown her smarts during the investigation of his family’s murder, and Bogart also wanted her as part of his unusual team.
Bogart had laid out to Decker the details of his vision of this team when they’d both been back in Burlington. It would operate out of the FBI’s Quantico platform. It would bring together FBI agents and civilians with special skills to reopen and, one hoped, solve cold cases.
Maybe we’ll be a team of misfits, Decker thought.
He didn’t know how he actually felt about moving to the East Coast and essentially starting over. But he’d figured he had nothing left in Burlington, so why not? At least that was how he had felt last week. Now he wasn’t as confident.
Christmas had come and gone. Today was New Year’s Eve. People would be out partying and celebrating the coming new year. Decker would not be among them. He had nothing to celebrate, despite the new job and new life. He had lost his family. Nothing could replace them, thus he would never have anything to celebrate.
He threw the bag of trash into a receptacle in the parking lot, climbed back into his car, and drove off. He turned on the radio. The top of the hour was coming up as he found the local NPR station. The news was coming on. The lead story had to do with a death row inmate whose life had been spared, melodramatically, at the last minute.
It had been a last-second Christmas present, the announcer said.
The man’s name was Melvin Mars. And he had been convicted over twenty years ago of killing his parents. Now, all of his appeals had been denied and the state of Texas was ready to take the man’s life as punishment for his crimes.
But startling new evidence had emerged, the announcer said.
A name from the past.
Decker did not believe in fate, or even its little cousin, serendipity.
Yet something had made him turn on the radio right at that very moment. If he had taken a couple minutes longer to eat his meal, or stopped to take a leak, he might never have heard the story.
But he had heard the story.
So what did that mean?