David Baldacci: The Last Mile

The cell door clanged shut and Mars, his legs oddly wobbly, lurched over and fell rather than sat on his bunk.

He immediately hauled himself up and from long habit put his back against the concrete wall and faced the door. No one could attack him through concrete. But the door was another matter.

His mind went over all that had just happened in the last ten hours.

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.

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 prisoner in Alabama had confessed to the crime and had allegedly offered up details that only the real killer could have known. Mars, a former college All-American, Heisman Trophy finalist, and top NFL prospect, was currently still behind bars as he awaited the results of the ensuing investigation. But if that investigation verified the confession, reported the announcer, then Melvin Mars could go free, after two decades behind bars. His NFL dream was over, of course, but perhaps justice would finally be served, if a bit late.

Damn , thought Decker, as he turned off the radio. Some justice for Melvin Mars .

Then his mind started whirring, his memories flashing past in neat chronological order, though Decker did not really need his hyperthymesia to remember this one.

Melvin Mars was a star running back at the University of Texas. The Longhorns had played Decker’s team, the Buckeyes of Ohio State, on the last week of the regular season in a nationally televised game. Decker had played linebacker on his squad. He was tall for a linebacker and was a good player, but not great. He had the size, strength, and toughness, but didn’t have the wheels and pure athleticism of the truly outstanding players.

Mars had made life miserable that afternoon for Decker and the Buckeyes. Texas had ended up winning by a whopping five touchdowns and ruining any chance Ohio State had for a national championship.

Mars himself had scored four times. Three by running and once with a nifty catch-and-run starting at the Buckeyes’ thirty-five yard line. Decker remembered that one well. He had been covering Mars on the play as he came out of the backfield.

He had hit Mars with everything he had as soon as he caught the ball. But Mars had somehow managed to keep on his feet, juked the corner and then the safety, and then run over another safety coming in near the goal line as Decker lay on the field thirty yards back. It had seemed like the fifth time Mars had gotten the better of him that day. As his coaches later pointed out on film day, it was actually the tenth.

Decker had gone to the bench after that hit and miss. The Longhorns were up by twenty-eight points with less than six minutes remaining. They would tack on one more score when they got the ball back after an interception. It was Mars again who hit the Buckeyes’ starting middle linebacker — a wall of granite named Eddie Keys, who would go on to play twelve years with the Forty-Niners — so hard that the man had been blown backward into the end zone as Mars made his last score of the day.