“Was…was that supposed to be Earl?” said Lancaster.
“I think so,” said Miller hesitantly, with a quick glance at Decker. “Sick bastard.”
Decker also noted that an X had been drawn over each of the mannequin’s eyes.
Everyone had seen mannequins before. They were ubiquitous and thus innocuous. But this mannequin—it was the most sinister thing Decker had ever seen. It was like the threes marching in the dark at him. Pale, bloody, staring, silent, lifeless; the symbolism reeked of depravity.
Decker looked toward the stairs. And then he looked all around. He had been here several times in the past. But his mind, while obviously registering this fact, had now connected it to another fact.
This house was nearly an exact copy of Decker’s. Not unusual in working-class cookie-cutter communities, where one builder used the same set of plans in constructing hundreds of houses that were essentially the same structures, but for a different color paint or some minor architectural differences.
“So there’s another one of, what, Sandy?” said Lancaster. She put a hand out and snagged the back of a chair to steady herself.
“There’s another mannequin up there, yes,” said Miller, again nervously eyeing Decker.
In Decker’s mind he thought back to when he had bolted up stairs very much like these at his house the night he had lost everything.
“So there’s just one more of…of these things in my house,” barked Lancaster.
Decker looked back at the mannequin with the “slit” throat and then his gaze settled on Miller. And some
thing in those eyes, coupled with what he had just deduced, made Decker say, “No, there’re two more there.”
“Yes,” said Miller miserably. “Two more.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Lancaster. “There’s just Earl and Sandy. Wait, is one supposed to be me?”
Decker was already heading for the stairs.
The first door they came to was partially open. Decker pushed it all the way open and they stepped inside.
A leg was sticking up on the other side of the bed, just as he knew it would be. He stepped to that side of the bed and looked down. As he knew it would be, this mannequin was a female dressed in a see-through nightgown. There was a blackened dot drawn in the center of its forehead to represent a bullet being fired into its head. Her eyes, too, had been marked with Xs.
Miller said to Decker, “I guess you know where the third victim is?”
Lancaster gaped as the truth struck her. “Oh my God, that’s supposed to be…”
“Cassie,” Decker finished for her.
Miller put an arm on Decker’s shoulder. “Amos, why don’t you go on back downstairs?”
Decker shook his head. “No.”
“Amos, please.”
“No!”
He bolted down the hall and opened the door to the bathroom. The others rushed after him.
On the toilet was the third mannequin, smaller, a child. They had even drawn in curly hair on the head, like Molly’s. The robe belt held her upright. Ligature marks had been drawn in around her throat; Xs had been drawn over the eyes.
The killers had indeed replicated exactly what had happened at Decker’s home, but fortunately substituting mannequins for real people.
But there was one difference, a significant one.
Above the toilet were words inked onto the wall:
This could so easily have been real. But ask yourself this. How much pain will you cause, bro? End it now. Do the right thing. Like you should have back then. Find the courage. Don’t be a coward, bro. Not now. Or next time the blood will be real. Last chance.
Decker stared at the words for the longest time.
Then he turned and left the room, took the steps two at a time, and walked outside. Lancaster and Miller followed him. She caught up with him at the end of the driveway.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“I’m sorry for all this, Mary.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. My family is fine.”
“They won’t be next time. They’ll be dead.”
“No they won’t. Look, this is not about you. It’s about them.”
“No, it’s about me and them.”
He set off down the street as snowflakes swirled around him.
“I want to talk to you,” said Miller. “Right now.”
He didn’t wait to be invited in. He strode past Decker into the small room. His gaze alighted on the pistol on the bed where Decker had dropped it. Miller glanced sharply at him.
“You do that, they win, you know.”
“Do they?” Decker said.
Miller picked up the pistol, engaged the safety, and placed it