Дэвид Балдаччи - Walk the Wire

“There’s no concrete proof that what happened tonight and Robie’s appearance on the scene are tied to Irene Cramer’s murder.”

“Can a place like London, North Dakota, support two simultaneous dark conspiracies?”

Decker swiped his wet hair with his hand. “Let’s look at this logically. Cramer was thirty. She came here a year ago, and had a college degree.”

“We just have the people at the Colony’s word for that. And they said they didn’t have any record of that other than what Cramer showed them.”

“That’s true. But if she did earn her college degree, then from the age of eighteen to twenty-two or so she was in school. Then she comes here about eight years later and we can find no record of her before that? And the FBI’s alarm bells go off when her prints come through their system?”

“And your point?”

“Cramer didn’t have all that much time to establish herself as some international spy, like we were speculating before. In fact, she didn’t have much time to do anything so remarkable that the Bureau would be hopping when her prints came through. But that’s exactly what happened. And that’s why I seriously doubt she was the catalyst for whatever had happened in her past. So we need to find out what was the actual catalyst.”

“But if not WITSEC, what then?” asked Jamison, her brow furrowed. “Because I can’t think of anything else.”

“Well, I thought of one thing.”

“What was that?”

He gazed at her with a pensive expression. “The sins of the parents can carry over to their children, Alex.”

Jamison’s puzzled look turned to one of understanding. “Cramer’s parents? So it might have been something they did that led Irene to go underground? And maybe change her name?”

“I’m sure she changed her name. We just have to find out who she really was.”

“We don’t have a lot to go on.”

“We usually don’t.”

“And we don’t know that what happened to Cramer is tied to this ‘ticking time bomb’ comment.”

“No, we don’t. But we will figure it out.”

“I wish I were as confident as you.”

“Now, get some sleep.”

“Wait, will you tell Kelly about what happened tonight?”

“For now, let’s keep it between you and me.”

“Are you sure? He is a local cop.”

“I’m not sure, but I’m trusting my gut.”

He headed to the door.

“Decker, promise me you’re not going back out,” she said imploringly.

“I’m going to slide the bureau up against my door, and sleep with one eye open and my gun in my hand.”

Decker didn’t go to sleep, at least not right away.

He sat fully dressed in his wet clothes on the floor.

From his wallet he took out two pictures. They were of his wife and daughter. Each had been taken shortly before their deaths.

Tonight, he had come as close to dying as he ever had, he supposed. If this Robie fellow had been a second slower, or not there at all?

I’d be dead. Like Cassie and Molly.

He peered down at their images. He hadn’t looked at these pictures in quite a while. On the day of their funerals, he had been unable to speak, unable to really function. Tearful, devastated people kept coming up to him and saying how sorry they were. And he couldn’t comprehend at the time what they were even trying to communicate. He felt as dead as his wife and daughter were. He had actually wanted to be dead, because he had no desire to keep on living while they could not.

But then time passed, he grieved, mightily at first, too mightily because he came close to losing everything, including his own life. Then more time passed and his days and nights were taken up with doing his job, interacting with others, even making new friends. The loss was still there, it would always be there, but the phrase “Life goes on” appeared to be an accurate one.

And from time to time Decker would feel guilty that he was becoming so absorbed in his work that the memories of his family were receding into a little box in his head, only to be taken out from time to time and wept over. And for him that equated with forgetting about his wife and daughter, or at least allowing other priorities in life to supersede what they had meant to him while alive. And this after he had promised them faithfully, while standing over their graves, that they would be the center of his life until he joined them. A sense of betrayal steadily crept over him.

A tear from his right eye fell onto Molly’s photo. He very carefully brushed it away from the picture, fearful that it would mar her final captured image.

He had told himself back in Burlington when he had been visiting their graves that he could live in the past or live in the present, only he couldn’t do both. Although part of him desperately wanted to.

So what’s it going to be, Amos?

He supposed all who had suffered such a loss struggled just as he did. That notion didn’t console him at all.

We all feel alone. We all feel unique in our pain.

He slid the photos back into his wallet and put it away.

It was then that he noticed the bulge in his jacket pocket.

He slowly put his hand in there and pulled out... a phone?

The answer hit him a second later.

Robie.

The man had slipped this phone into his jacket when he had helped Decker up in that alley. He had said he would figure out a way for them to communicate, and this must be it. He looked more closely at the device. It both looked and did not look like a typical mobile phone.

He punched in the number of his own cell phone to see if it would go through. It didn’t.

He looked down at the phone, then simply pushed the green talk button.

The phone made a small buzzing sound and then the voice came on.

“I expected you to be a little quicker on the uptake,” said Robie. “I’ve been waiting for your call for an hour.”

“I just found the phone and figured out how to work it.”

“Anything up or are you just checking in?”

“The latter. So if I push the green button you come running?”

“No. If you push the red button I do. But I don’t have a cape and superpowers, so don’t expect me to be there in seconds.”

“So it’s like a panic button, then?”

“And only use it when you are indeed panicked. Now if there’s nothing else, I’m going to get some shut-eye.”

“Sorry to bother you,” said Decker brusquely.

“I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, Decker. But this is a job. A critical one. We’re not here to make friends.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Good.”

“One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for saving my butt tonight.”

“You’re welcome.” Robie clicked off.

Decker stood, put the phone on the nightstand, stripped off his wet clothes, and changed into dry skivvies. He lay back on the bed, suddenly wanting to be anywhere other than here. That was surprising, shocking even, because normally he wanted to be wherever there was a crime that needed solving. And right now that was squarely in London, North Dakota.

The first victim, Irene Cramer, had a mysterious past and might not have been who everyone thought she was. She was a teacher by day, and doing something else entirely at night. She had been murdered and a postmortem performed on her body, presumably by her killer. Something had perhaps been taken from her stomach or intestines.

The man who had found her, Hal Parker, was looking for a wolf that had killed some cattle owned by Hugh Dawson. And now Parker was missing. And Pamela Ames was dead. Had Parker killed Cramer and Ames? But if he had, why pretend to find the body and call the cops? That put him right in the middle of the investigation, which made no sense.