Дэвид Балдаччи - The Fix

“My wife’s a schoolteacher. And while I know she loves working with the kids, if she had millions in the bank, she might be doing something else.”

“What grade does she teach?”

“Eighth. Where kids make the jump from nice, innocent kids to something a lot more complicated and emotional drama runs deep and hormones are out of control. Some days she comes home looking like she got hit by a bus.”

“In my book, all teachers are underpaid,” said Decker.

There were wooden steps leading down to a dank cellar. The floor down there was dirt. Milligan had pulled out his flashlight and shone it around.

Behind massive cobwebs there were wooden planks set on top of cinderblocks, forming crude shelving. Stacked on the planks were rotting cardboard boxes. Decker opened each of them and Milligan pointed his light inside.

“Junk,” said Milligan, after examining old lamps and ragged magazines and broken bric-a-brac. “I bet all this belonged to the former owners,” he added.

Decker nodded absently. He looked around the small space, his gaze, with the aid of Milligan’s powerful light, reaching into each corner.

“I bet she’s never even been down here,” noted Milligan.

“No, she has.”

“How do you know that?”

“Point your light at the steps coming down.”

Milligan did so and saw the new wood that had replaced boards that had obviously rotted away.

“The cellar door also had a new hinge on it.” Decker took the flashlight from Milligan and aimed it at a patch of dirt in a far corner.

Milligan drew closer and said, “Footprints. Small. A woman’s.”

“Berkshire’s.”

“Good eye, Decker,” said Milligan.

Decker didn’t seem to hear him. He leaned against the stone wall of the cellar and cast the light beam around. The illumination flitted over the walls and rough ceiling like a horde of fireflies.

“So why would she come down here?” asked Milligan.

“To hide something. We just have to find the place.”

Milligan glanced toward the door. “Wait a minute. If the Honda is here, how did she come and go from this place?”

“There’s a small clearing on the right side when you enter the road this house is on. There were tire marks on it. My hunch is she’d drive the Mercedes here, park, and then walk. She might not have come that often, only when she taught class and needed the Honda, so that would jibe with the low mileage on the Mercedes. Then she’d reverse that path, leave the Honda here, and drive off in the Mercedes.”

“But why do that at all?”

“A substitute teacher arriving in a six-figure luxury car would no doubt invite gossip among the teachers, staff, and students. And I don’t think Berkshire liked to encourage attention. It’s why she kept to herself.”

Milligan nodded. “I guess you’re right. But she did have the car and the condo.”

“Which means the woman didn’t dislike living in the lap of luxury. And maybe she enjoyed the secret double life she was leading. It might have been quite a kick for her.”

Decker kept gazing around. He looked at the spot in the dirt where the footprints were. Then he looked at the new planks on the crude shelving. Then he gazed upward at the cellar door with new hinges.

A moment later he pushed his bulk off the wall and rushed up the stairs.

“Decker!” Milligan called out. He hurried after him.

By the time Milligan reached the doorway Decker had disappeared down the hall. Milligan found him in the bathroom.

“What is it?” Milligan asked.

“Why have a roll of toilet paper if the toilet doesn’t even work?”

Decker reached down and popped the roll off the holder. He set it down on the sink. The tube the toilet paper had been mounted on was the usual kind, with a spring keeping the two ends together inside the wall holder.

Decker separated the two ends and the car keys dropped into the palm of his hand.

“The Honda,” he said. He looked inside the tube. “And that’s not all.” He dug inside the hollow piece and slid out a flash drive.

“Damn, Decker, you might have just hit the jackpot.”

“Well, let’s get to a computer and see.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

They went back outside. Decker took out the Honda keys and said, “I’ll drive her car back. We didn’t find anything of interest at her condo, so maybe something will be in the car that’ll help.” He held up the flash drive. “And this might answer all our questions.”

They separated and Milligan climbed into the Bureau car.

Decker went to the Honda and had to put the car seat all the way back to accommodate his long legs. The car’s interior was battered. Before Decker had climbed inside he had calculated that the vehicle was probably over fifteen years old. Then he had checked the glove box and found the original owner’s manual that confirmed that the model was actually seventeen years old.

Milligan led the way down the dirt road to the asphalt one they had originally turned off from. Thick trees on either side of the road and the cloud cover overhead dissipated the light, turning things gloomy.

When Decker looked up, Milligan had already turned onto the asphalt road and had sped up. Decker pulled out onto the road.

“Shit.”

The car was wobbling along.

He put it in park, got out, and looked down at the front tire. It was flat.

He glanced down the road. Milligan was already out of sight.

Decker pulled out his phone to call him and tell him what had happened.

The call did not go through because there was no service in this area.

“Shit again.”

He popped the trunk, figuring that Milligan would finally notice he was not behind him and would circle back.

He got out the jack, lug wrench, and the spare.

When he knelt down in front of the tire, he saw it.

He had started to pull his gun when the blow hit him. He slumped forward, hit the front fender of the Honda with his face, and toppled sideways to the asphalt.

“You need to stop waking up in hospital beds.”

Decker rapidly blinked his eyes and Alex Jamison’s face came into tighter focus. The room was very dark.

He rubbed his head.

“Concussion,” said Bogart, who was standing next to Jamison.

“Not my first one,” said Decker, wincing as he sat up and moved around a bit.

Bogart added, “It’s why the lights have been turned off. Doctors said your brain needs to rest and you need to avoid light.”

Milligan was on the other side of the bed. “I’m sorry, Amos. I should have noticed sooner that you weren’t behind me. But I was trying to make a call and it wouldn’t go through.”

Decker slowly nodded. “Someone shot the tire out,” he said. “I noticed the entry hole on the tire’s sidewall when I got down to change it.”

“We saw that too,” said Bogart.

“So they must have been watching us,” said Milligan.

Decker said, “They took it, didn’t they?”

Milligan said, “We searched your pockets. And we didn’t find the flash drive, so yeah, they took it.”

“How did they even know you found it?” asked Jamison.

“They either had the place bugged or they had some sort of long-range surveillance pointed at us,” said Milligan. “Or they may have just searched you as a matter of course and found it.”

Decker sat up more. “I held the flash drive up when we got out of the house. If they were watching they’d know that I had it, and not you.” He paused. “When can I get out of here?”

Milligan said, “The doctors said you’re good to go, you just have to take it easy for a few days. You have quite a knot on the back of your head. And you have some bruises on your face where you hit the car fender. But they did X-rays and other tests. There was no significant damage.”