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Chapter2
DECKER STOOD ALONEon the porch. He had asked Jamison to not accompany him here. He preferred to conduct this visit alone, for a number of reasons.
He remembered every inch of the more than four-decades-old split-level ranch. This was not simply due to his perfect recall, but also because this house was nearly an exact copy of the one in which he and his family had once lived.
Mary Lancaster and her husband, Earl, and their daughter, Sandy, had resided here for as long as Lancaster had been on the Burlington police force, which matched Decker’s tenure there as well. Earl was a general contractor who worked sporadically owing to the fact that Sandy was a special needs child who would always require a great deal of time and attention. Mary had been the family’s primary breadwinner for a long time.
Decker stepped up to the door. He was about to knock when it opened.
Mary stood there dressed in faded jeans, a blood-red sweatshirt, and dark blue sneakers. Her hair had once been a pasty blonde. It was now full of gray and hung limply to her shoulders. A cigarette was perched in one hand, its coil of smoke drifting up her slender thigh. Her face was as lined as a thumbprint. Lancaster was the same age as Decker yet looked about ten years older.
“Thought I might see you tonight,” she said in a smoker’s gravelly voice. “Come on in.”
He checked for the tremor that used to be in her left hand, her gun grip hand. He didn’t see it.
Okay, that’s a good thing.
She turned, and he followed the far shorter woman into the house, shutting the door behind him, a tugboat guiding a cargo ship safely into port. Or maybe onto the rocks, he didn’t know which. Yet.
Decker also noted that Lancaster, always thin to begin with, was even more gaunt. Her bones seemed to jut out at odd angles within her loose clothing, as though she had left multiple hangers in them.
“Did the gum stop working?” he asked, glancing at her lit cigarette.
They sat in the living room, a small space littered with toys, stacks of newspapers, open cardboard boxes, and a layer of chaos that was palpable. Her home had always been like this, he knew. They’d started using a maid service before Decker left town, but that had come with its own set of problems. They’d probably decided terminally junky was preferable.
She took a drag on her Camel and let the smoke trail out her nostrils.
“I allow myself one a day, about this time, and only when Earl and Sandy are out. Then I Febreze the hell out of the place.”
Decker took a whiff and coughed. “Then use more Febreze.”
“Meryl Hawkins found you, I take it?”
Decker nodded. “He said you told him where I was.”
“I did.”
“That was taking a liberty. You knew why I was in town. I gave you a heads-up.”
She sat back and scraped away at a spot on her skin with her fingernail. “Well, I sure as hell didn’t do it lightly. But I thought you’d want to know.”
“Hawkins also said you believed him.”
“Then he went too far. I told him I could see his point.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“Why would he come back here, dying, to ask us to clear his name if he’s not innocent?”
“I can think of one reason, benefiting him.”
She took another puff and shook her head. “I don’t see it that way. You get to the end of the line, you start to think differently. Not a moment to waste.”
Decker looked at the open cardboard boxes. “You guys moving?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? How can you not be sure?”
