I don’t know enough. The man who can
’t forget anything doesn’t know enough. How ironic is that?
But if Decker didn’t know enough, then maybe the shooter didn’t either. Maybe the shooter had had to turn to someone who did know enough.
Or who knew someone who knew enough.
Now, that theory, if played out, might answer several questions.
The school was a facility, a building. Changes could be made. Changes undoubtedly were made here over the decades. The drop ceiling over his head had assuredly not been here in 1946. What else had been added or taken away?
Or covered up? Because it was no longer necessary? And then forgotten?
Decker slipped into the library and motioned for Lancaster to join him. She finished up a phone call and then hurried over to the entrance to the library where Decker was standing. Decker was acutely aware that Special Agent Bogart and his special agent note taker Lafferty were both watching him from a distant corner of the space.
He spoke to Lancaster in a low voice, his features relaxed. He might just be shooting the breeze with her. They turned and left together.
Once outside in the hall, Lancaster said, “Do you really think it’s possible? I mean, I never heard of such a thing.”
“Just because you haven’t heard of it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
“You went here. Did you ever hear talk of something like that?”
“No. But then again I never thought to ask, either. And it might’ve been from a long time ago. In fact, it probably was.”
“But who would know for sure? From what you said, it could have been put in over sixty years ago. And maybe never used. Anybody who might have known about it is probably dead or nearly so.”
“How about students from back then?”
“Well, they’d be pretty elderly too. And the teachers are almost certainly all dead.”
“There has to be a way, Mary. Records have to be kept—”
They had walked outside, and Decker broke off his sentence as he looked to his left, where the old military base was.
“The Army might have record of it,” he noted.
“The Army! Why them?”
“That base has been here since, what, the thirties?”
“That’s right. My grandfather worked there along with half the other people in Burlington. They had a big buildup during World War II, like every other military installation in the country.”
“So clearly it was there before the school was built. And lots of parents who worked at the base sent their kids to Mansfield.”
Lancaster appeared to understand where he was going with this. “So you think they might have initiated it?”
“And what if Debbie Watson’s great-grandfather, who worked at the base starting in the late sixties, knew all about it, and told little Debbie when he went to live with them?”
“And you think she might have told the shooter?”
“I can’t think of another reason why he would have needed her.”
“But how would he have found out that Debbie would know something like that?”
“It could have been any number of ways. That’s not important. But if I’m right, we’ll know how the shooter got from the cafeteria to the back hall unseen. And if we can nail that down we might be able to work backward to where the son of a bitch came from.”
They hurried off to Lancaster’s car.
At the window watching them was Special Agent Bogart. And the man from Washington did not look pleased.
Next to him Special Agent Lafferty was busily writing down notes.
Chapter
27
GEORGE WATSON ANSWERED their knock. He looked disheveled and there was a yellow and purplish bruise on his right cheek.
Beth Watson screamed, “That little son of a bitch called the police? Just because I hit him? Well, he hit me first, the one-armed prick.”
“It’s not about that. It’s about your daughter.”
The door was wrenched open and Beth Watson stood there in heels and a white slip and nothing else. Her pale flesh seemed even paler with that backdrop. The skin around her arms was sagging. One of her cheeks was red and swollen. Decker did not have to take a step closer to sniff out her sobriety status. But apparently, she could be drunk, stand erectly, and talk coherently at the same time. At least she hoped she was coherent.
“What about her?” Beth demanded.
“I asked your husband when we were here last time about his grandfather.”