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Synopsis
Amos Decker, David Baldacci's unique special agent, who suffered a head injury that resulted in giving him the gift of a remarkable memory together with a condition called synaesthesia, takes on another case in The Fix.
Walter Dabney is a family man. A loving husband and the father of four grown daughters , he’s built a life many would be proud of.
But then the unthinkable happens.
Standing outside the FBI Headquarters in Washington, D C, Dabney shoots school teacher Anne Berkshire in cold blood before turning the gun on himself.
One of the many witnesses is Amos Decker; a man who forgets nothing and sees what most miss.
Baffled by what appears to be a seemingly senseless and random killing, Decker is thrust into the investigation to determine what drove this family man to pull the trigger.
As part of an FBI special task force, Decker and the team delve into the lives of Dabney and Berkshire to find a connection that doesn’t seem to exist. What they do find are secrets that stretch back a lifetime and reveal a current plot of impending destruction that will send the world reeling, placing Decker and his team squarely in the crosshairs.
Release date: April 18, 2017
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Print pages: 432
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The Fix
David Baldacci
Chapter
1
IT WAS NORMALLY one of the safest places on earth.
But not today.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building was the world headquarters of the FBI. It opened in 1975 and had not aged well—a blocks-long chunk of badly dilapidated concrete with honeycomb windows, and fire alarms and toilets that didn’t work. There was even safety netting strung around the top of the building to catch chunks of crumbling concrete before they could fall to the street below and kill someone.
The Bureau was trying to build a new facility to house eleven thousand employees, but a new location hadn’t even been chosen. So the opening of a new headquarters was about two billion dollars and seven years away.
For now, this was home.
The tall man striding down the tree-lined sidewalk was Walter Dabney. He had taken an Uber to a coffee shop down the street, ordered some food, and was now walking the rest of the way. He was in his sixties, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair parted on the side. It looked recently cut, with a bit of cowlick in the back. His suit was expensive and fit his portly frame with the touch of a tailored hand. A colorful pocket square adorned the front of his dark suit. He wore a lanyard around his neck loaded with clearances sufficient to allow him access into the inner sanctums of the Hoover Building with an escort along for the ride. His green eyes were alert. He walked with a determined swagger, his briefcase making pendulum arcs in the air.
A woman was coming from the opposite direction. Anne Berkshire had taken the Metro here. She was in her late fifties, petite, with gray hair cut in parentheses around her long, oval face. As she approached the Hoover Building she seemed to hesitate. There was no lanyard around her neck. The only ID she possessed was the driver’s license in her purse.
It was late morning and the streets were not as crowded as they would have been earlier. Still, there were a great many pedestrians and the street hummed with activity as cars passed up and down with some vehicles making their way into an underground parking garage at the Hoover Building.
Dabney picked up his pace a bit, his Allen Edmonds wingtips striking the stained pavement with purpose. He started to whistle a cheery tune. The man seemed not to have a care in the world.
Berkshire was now walking faster too. Her gaze went to the left and then swung right. She seemed to take in everything with that one sweeping glance.
About twenty yards behind Dabney, Amos Decker trudged along alone. He was six-five and built like the football player he had once been. He’d been on a diet for several months now and had dropped a chunk of weight, but he could stand to lose quite a bit more. He was dressed in khaki pants stained at the cuff and a long, rumpled Ohio State Buckeyes pullover that concealed both his belly and the Glock 41 Gen4 pistol riding in a belt holster on his waistband. Fully loaded with its standard thirteen-round mag, it weighed thirty-six ounces. His size fourteen shoes hit the pavement with noisy splats. His hair was, to put it kindly, disheveled. Decker worked at the FBI on a joint task force. He was on his way to a meeting at the Hoover Building.
He was not looking forward to it. He sensed that a change was coming, and Decker did not like change. He’d experienced enough of it in the last two years to last him a lifetime. He had just settled into a new routine with the FBI and he wanted to keep it that way. Yet apparently that was out of his control.
He stepped around a barricade that had been set up on the sidewalk and that stretched partway into the street. A manhole cover surrounded by an orange web barrier had been opened and workers were congregated around the area. One man in a hard hat emerged at the opening of the manhole and was passed a tool by another man. Most of the other workers stood around, some drinking coffee and others chatting.
Nice work if you can get it, thought Decker.
He saw Dabney up ahead but didn’t focus on him. Decker didn’t see Berkshire because he wasn’t looking that far up the street. He passed by the garage entrance and nodded at the uniformed FBI security officer in a small windowed guard shack situated on the sidewalk. The ramrod-straight man nodded back, his eyes covered by sunglasses as his gaze dutifully swept the street. His right hand was perched on top of his holstered service weapon. It was a nine mil chambered with Speer Gold Dot G2 rounds that the FBI used because of their penetration capability. “One shot, one down” could have been the ammo’s motto. Then again, most ammo would do that so long as it hit the intended target in the right place.
A bird zipped across in front of Decker, perched on a lamppost, and looked down curiously at the passersby. The air was chilly and Decker shivered a bit even in his thick pullover. The sun was hidden behind cloud cover that had materialized on the horizon about an hour before, passed over the Potomac, and settled upon Washington like a gray dome.
Up ahead, Dabney was nearing the end of the block, where he would turn left. The FBI’s “business appointments” entrance was located down there. Years ago public tours were freely given and people could view the famed FBI lab and watch special agents practicing their aim on the shooting range.
In the modern era of terrorism that was no more. After 9/11 the tours were canceled but then restarted in 2008. The FBI had even put in an education center for visitors. But a request for a visit had to be filed at least a month ahead of time to allow the FBI to do a thorough background check. Most federal buildings were now simply fortresses, hard to get into and maybe harder to get out of.
Dabney slowed as he approached the corner.
Berkshire, by contrast, quickened her pace.
Decker continued to lope along, his long strides eating up ground until he was only about ten yards behind Dabney.
Berkshire was about five yards on the other side of Dabney. Moments later that distance was halved. A few clicks after that, they were barely three feet apart.
Decker now saw Berkshire because she had drawn so close to Dabney. He was about ten feet behind the pair when he started to make the turn too.
Berkshire glanced over at Dabney, seemingly noticing him for the first time. Dabney didn’t look back at her, at least not initially.
A few seconds later he saw her gazing at him. He smiled, and if he’d been wearing a hat, he might have even doffed it to her in a show of courtesy.
Berkshire didn’t smile back. Her hand went to her purse clasp.
Dabney slowed a bit more.
Across the street Decker spotted a vendor selling breakfast burritos from a food truck and wondered if he had time to buy one before his meeting. When he decided he didn’t and his waistline would be worse off for it he looked back; Berkshire and Dabney were now beside each other.
Decker didn’t think anything of it; he just assumed they knew each other and were perhaps rendezvousing here.
He looked at his watch to check the time. He didn’t want to be late. If his life was going to change, he wanted to be on time for it.
When he looked back up, he froze.
Dabney had fallen two steps behind the woman. Unknown to Berkshire, he was aiming a compact Beretta at the back of her head.
Decker reached for his weapon, and was about to call out, when Dabney pulled the trigger.
Berkshire jerked forward as the round slammed into the back of her head at an upward angle. It blew out her medulla, pierced her brainpan, banged like a pinball off her skull, and exited through her nose, leaving a wound three times the size of the entry due to the bullet’s built-up wall of kinetic energy. She fell forward onto the pavement, her face mostly obliterated, the concrete tatted with her blood.
His pistol out, Decker ran forward as others on the street screamed and ran away. Dabney was still wielding his weapon.
His heart pounding, Decker aimed his Glock at Dabney and shouted, “FBI, put your gun down. Now!”
Dabney turned to him. He did not put down his gun.
Decker could hear the running footsteps behind him. The guard from the shack was sprinting toward them, his gun also out.
Decker glanced quickly over his shoulder, saw this, and held up his creds with his free hand. “I’m with the FBI. He just shot the woman.”
He let his lanyard go and assumed a two-handed shooting stance, his muzzle aimed at Dabney’s chest. The FBI uniform ran up to stand next to him, his gun pointed at Dabney. “Put the gun down, now!” the guard shouted. “Last chance, or we will shoot.”
It was two guns versus one. The response should have been obvious. Lie down and you won’t fall down.
Dabney looked first at the guard and then at Decker.
And smiled.
“Don’t!” shouted Decker.
Walter Dabney pressed the gun’s muzzle to the bottom of his chin and pulled the trigger for a second and final time.
CHAPTER
2
DARKNESS. IT AWAITED us all, individually, in our final moments. Amos Decker was thinking that as he sat in the chair and studied the body.
Anne Berkshire lay on a metal table in the FBI’s morgue. All her clothes had been removed and placed in evidence bags to be later analyzed. Her naked body was under a sheet; her destroyed face was covered as well, although the fabric was stained with her blood and destroyed tissue.
A postmortem was legally required even though there was no doubt whatsoever as to what had caused the woman’s death.
Walter Dabney, by an extraordinary twist, was not dead. Not yet, anyway. The doctors at the hospital to which he’d been rushed held no hope that he would recover, or even regain consciousness. The bullet had tunneled right through his brain; it was a miracle he had not died instantly.
Alex Jamison and Ross Bogart, two of Decker’s colleagues on a joint task force composed of civilians and FBI agents, were with Dabney at the hospital right now. If he regained consciousness they would want to capture anything he might utter that would explain why he had murdered Anne Berkshire on a public street and then attempted to take his own life. Dabney’s recovering to the point of being questioned was simply not going to happen, the doctors had told them.
So for now, Decker simply sat in the darkness and stared at the covered body.
Although the room was not actually dark for him.
For Decker it was an ethereally bright blue. A near-fatal hit he’d received on the football field had commingled his sensory pathways, a condition known as synesthesia. For him, death was represented by the color blue. He had seen it on the street when Dabney had killed Berkshire.
And he was seeing it now.
Decker had given statements to the D.C. police and the FBI, as had the security guard who had joined him at the scene. There hadn’t been much to say. Dabney had pulled a gun and shot Berkshire and then himself. That was crystal clear. What wasn’t clear was why he had done it.
The overhead lights came on and a woman in a white lab coat walked in. The medical examiner introduced herself as Lynne Wainwright. She was in her forties, with the compressed, slightly haunted features of a person who had seen every sort of violence one human could wreak on another. Decker rose, showed her his ID, and said he was with an FBI task force. And also that he had witnessed the murder.
Decker glanced over as Todd Milligan, the fourth member of the joint task force, entered the room. A fifth member, Lisa Davenport, a psychologist by training, had not returned to the group, opting instead to go back to private practice in Chicago.
Milligan was in his midthirties, six feet tall, with close-cropped hair and a physique that appeared chiseled out of granite. He and Decker had initially butted heads, but now the two men got along as well as Decker could with anyone.
Decker had trouble relating to people. That had not always been the case, because he was not the same person he had once been.
In addition to the synesthesia, Decker also had hyperthymesia, or perfect recall, after suffering a brain trauma on the same vicious hit in his very short career in the NFL. It had altered his personality, changing him from gregarious and fun-loving to aloof and lacking the ability to recognize social cues—a skill most people took for granted. People first meeting him would assume he was somewhere on the autism spectrum.
And they might not be far off in that assumption.
“How you doing, Decker?” said Milligan. He was dressed, like always, in a dark suit with a spotless crisp white shirt and striped tie. Next to him, the shabbily attired Decker looked borderline homeless.
“Better than she is,” said Decker, indicating Berkshire’s body. “What do we know about her so far?”
Milligan took out a small electronic notebook from his inside coat pocket and scrolled down the screen. While he was doing that Decker watched as Wainwright removed the sheet from Berkshire’s body and prepared the instruments necessary to perform the autopsy.
“Anne Meredith Berkshire, fifty-nine, unmarried, substitute schoolteacher at a Catholic school in Fairfax County. She lives, or rather lived, in Reston. No relatives have come forward, but we’re still checking.”
“Why was she down at the Hoover Building?”
“We don’t know. We don’t know if she was even going there. And she wasn’t scheduled to teach at the school today.”
“Walter Dabney?”
“Sixty-one, married, with four grown daughters. Has a successful government contracting business. Does work with the Bureau and other agencies. Before that he worked at NSA for ten years. Lives in McLean in a big house. He’s done very well for himself.”
“Did very well for himself,” corrected Decker. “His wife and kids?”
“We spoke with his wife. She’s hysterical. The kids are spread all over the place. One lives in France. They’re all coming here.”
“Any of them have any idea why he would do this?”
“We haven’t spoken to them all, but nothing pops so far. They’re apparently still in shock.”
Decker next asked the most obvious question. “Any connection between Berkshire and Dabney?”
“We’re just starting out, but nothing as yet. You think he was just looking to shoot someone before he killed himself and she was the closest?”
“She was definitely the closest,” said Decker. “But if you’re going to kill yourself why take an innocent person along? What would be the point?”
“Maybe the guy went nuts. We might find something in his background to explain his going off the deep end.”
“He had a briefcase and an ID. It seems he was heading to the Hoover Building. Was he going to a meeting?”
“Yes. We confirmed that he was meeting to go over a project his firm was handling for the Bureau. All routine.”
“So he goes off the ‘deep end’ but he could still put on a suit and come downtown for a routine meeting?”
Milligan nodded. “I see the inconsistency. But it’s still possible.”
“Anything’s possible, until it’s not,” Decker replied.
Decker walked over to stand next to Wainwright. “Murder weapon was a Beretta nine mil. Contact wound at the base of the neck with an upward trajectory. She died on impact.”
Wainwright was readying a Stryker saw that she would use to cut open Berkshire’s skull. She said, “Definitely jibes with the external injuries.”
“If Dabney dies will you be doing the post?”
She nodded. “The Bureau is taking the lead on this since Dabney was a contractor for them and it happened on their doorstep. So I’m your girl.”
Decker turned away from her and said to Milligan, “Has the FBI assigned a team to the case yet?”
Milligan nodded.
“Who’s the team? Do you know them?”
“I know them very well, because they’re us.”
Decker blinked. “Come again?”
“Bogart’s team, meaning us, has been assigned to the case.”
“But we do cold cases.”
“Well, that’s what the meeting today was about. They were changing our assignment. Cold to hot cases. And since you were on the scene of this one, it made sense to let us work it. So we’re a go.”
“Even though I’m a witness to the crime?”
“It’s not as though there’s going to be any doubt as to what happened, Decker. And there were lots of witnesses to what he did. They don’t need you.”
“But I came here to do cold cases,” protested Decker.
“Well, we don’t get to decide that, Decker. The higher-ups do.”
“And they can just pull the rug out from under us like that? Without even asking?”
Milligan attempted a smile, but when he saw the troubled expression on Decker’s face, the look faded. “It’s a bureaucracy, Decker, and we have to follow orders. At least Ross and I do. I guess you and Jamison could call it quits, but my career is locked up with the Bureau.” He paused. “We’ll still be catching bad guys. Just for newer crimes. You’ll still get to do what you do so well.”
Decker nodded but hardly looked appeased by Milligan’s words. He looked down at Berkshire’s body. The pulse of blue assailed him from all corners. He felt slightly sick to his stomach.
Wainwright glanced over and registered on the name on Decker’s ID. “Wait a minute. Amos Decker. Are you the guy who can’t forget anything?”
When Decker didn’t say anything, Milligan said quickly, “Yes, he is.”
Wainwright said, “Heard you guys have solved quite a few old cases over the last several months. Principally the Melvin Mars matter.”
“It was a team effort,” said Milligan. “But we couldn’t have done it without Decker.”
Decker stirred and pointed to a purple smudge on the back of Berkshire’s hand. “What’s that?”
“Let’s have a closer look,” Wainwright said. She gripped a magnifying glass set on a rotating arm and positioned it over the mark. She turned on a light and aimed it at the dead woman’s hand. Peering through the glass, she said, “Appears to be a stamp of some sort.”
Decker took a look through the glass. “Dominion Hospice.” He looked at Milligan, who was already tapping keys on his notebook.
Milligan read down the screen. “Okay, got it. It’s over near Reston Hospital. They handle terminal cases, obviously.”
Decker looked down at Berkshire. “If the mark is still on her hand, presumably she went there today. A shower would have taken it off.”
“Do you think she went to visit someone?” asked Milligan.
“Well, she wasn’t exactly terminal, until Dabney killed her.”
He abruptly walked out without another word.
Wainwright looked at Milligan with raised eyebrows at this sudden departure.
“He kind of just does that…a lot,” said Milligan. “I’ve sort of gotten used to it.”
“Then you’re a better person than I am,” replied Wainwright. She held up the Stryker saw. “Because if he kept walking out on me like that, I might just clock him with this.”
CHAPTER
3
WALTER DABNEY’S CHEST rose and fell with the spasmodic twitch of someone not long for this world. It was as though the lungs were the weary rear guard holding out as the spirit prepared to exit the body.
Alex Jamison was in her late twenties, tall, slim, and pretty with long brunette hair. She sat on the right side of the hospital bed in the CCU. Ross Bogart, an FBI special agent in his late forties, with a bit of gray the only thing marring his perfectly combed dark hair, stood ramrod-straight on the left. His fingers clutched the bed’s safety rail.
Dabney lay in the bed, hooked up to a complex array of monitoring lines and tubes carrying medications. His right eye was an empty crater because the bullet he’d fired into his chin had burst from there after catapulting through parts of the brain. His facial skin was deathly gray, where it wasn’t swollen and stained purple by burst capillaries. His breathing was erratic and the monitor showed his vitals to be fluctuating all over the place. He was in the critical care unit, the place designated for the sickest and most badly injured patients at the hospital.
But he wasn’t just injured; Walter Dabney was dying.
The doctors who had been in and out during the day had all confirmed that it was simply a matter of time before the brain told the heart to stop pumping. And there was nothing they could do about it. The damage was such that no medicine and no surgery could bring the man back. They were just counting down the time until death.
Mrs. Eleanor Dabney, better known as Ellie, had arrived thirty minutes after the FBI had told her what had happened. They would have to question her, but right now the woman was simply a grieving widow-to-be. She was currently in the bathroom throwing up, a nurse assisting her.
Bogart eyed Jamison. She seemed to sense his attention and glanced up.
“Any word from Decker?” he asked quietly.
She checked her phone and shook her head. “He was going to be at the morgue with Berkshire’s body.” She thumbed in a text to him and sent it off. “I copied Todd on it,” she said.
Bogart nodded. “Good. He’ll keep Decker on track.”
They both knew that Decker was not always the best at communicating. In fact, he pretty much sucked at it.
Bogart looked down at Dabney again. “Nothing in the guy’s record to indicate something like this happening. And no connection that we can find to Berkshire.”
Jamison said, “There must be something unless it was completely random. And that doesn’t make much sense either.”
Bogart nodded in agreement and then glanced at the monitor. The dying man’s heart rate and respiration danced around like bare feet on sizzling coals.
“Chances are very good he’s going to die without saying anything.”
“But if he does say something we’ll be here,” replied Jamison.
The bathroom door opened and out came the nurse and Ellie Dabney. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with long legs and a slender waist and narrow hips. Her features were quite attractive, the jaw elegantly structured, the cheekbones high and firm, the eyes large and a pleasing light blue. Her hair was long and she had let it go naturally silver. She looked like she might have been quite the athlete in her youth. Now in her early sixties, the mother of four grown children with three grandchildren and one mortally wounded husband, the stricken woman appeared about as close to death as one could get without actually being dead.
Bogart placed a chair next to the bed for her as Jamison rose and helped the nurse guide Ellie over to the chair, into which she fell rather than sat.
The nurse checked the monitor, gave Bogart an ominous look, and left, closing the door behind her. Ellie had reached through the rails and gripped her husband’s hand, her forehead resting against the top of the bed rail.
Bogart stepped back and Jamison resumed her seat. They exchanged glances while listening to the woman’s quiet sobs.
“Mrs. Dabney, we can arrange to have your children brought here when they get into town,” he said after a few moments.
She didn’t respond to this at first but finally nodded.
“Do you have that information or is there someone else we can—?”
She lifted her head and without looking at him said, “My daughter, Jules, she…she’ll know that.” She pulled a phone from her pocket, tapped some keys, and passed it to him. Bogart wrote the phone number down, handed Ellie her phone back, and walked out of the room.
Jamison put a hand on the older woman’s shoulder and said, “I’m so very sorry, Mrs. Dabney.”
“Did he…did Walt really h-hurt someone? The FBI…they…they said…”
“We don’t have to talk about that now.”
Ellie turned her tearstained face to Jamison. “He couldn’t have. Are you sure someone didn’t shoot him? You see, Walt wouldn’t hurt anything. H-he…” Her voice trailed off and she placed her forehead back on the rail.
The monitor started to beep and they both glanced at it, but the device quieted down.
“We are sure, Mrs. Dabney. I wish I could tell you otherwise. There were a lot of witnesses.”
Ellie blew her nose on a tissue and said in a firmer voice, “He’s not going to recover, is he?”
“The doctors aren’t hopeful, no.”
“I…I didn’t even know he owned a gun.”
After studying the woman for a few seconds, Jamison asked, “Did you notice a change in your husband recently?”
“In what way?” Ellie said absently.
“Mood? Concerns at work? Appetite changed? Maybe he drank more than normal? Any signs of depression?”
Ellie sat back in her chair, wadded the tissue up in her hand, and stared down at her lap.
Outside the door footsteps could be heard, along with occasional running feet, the sounds of a monitor alarm, voices over a PA, and equipment and patients being rolled up and down the corridor. The air smelled like hospitals always did: antiseptic. And the air was perpetually chilly. There was also an ominous tenseness present in the CCU, as though only a monitor’s sudden warning screech separated the living from the dead.
“Walt didn’t talk about business at home. He didn’t really drink at home either, although I know that he did at business dinners and industry events, that sort of thing. I attended some with him. But he only drank enough to socialize, to get deals done, build contacts, you know, that sort of thing.”
“I understand. Were there any financial worries?”
“Not that I knew of. But Walter handled all that. We never had any bill collectors show up at the house, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did his mood change?”
She dabbed at her eyes and shot a glance at her husband before quickly looking away, as though she was uncomfortable conveying information about him to a stranger. “He had a variety of moods. He worked very hard and when business was good he was happy, when it was down, he got depressed, just like anybody would.”
“So nothing out of the ordinary?”
Ellie balled up the tissue even more and then tossed it into the trash can.
With finality.
She turned to Jamison, who waited patiently. If being around Amos Decker had taught her anything, it was patience, for both positive and negative reasons.
“He went on a trip recently.”
“Where?”
“That was the unusual thing. He didn’t tell me where. He had never done that before.”
“How long was he gone?” Jamison asked.
“I think about four days. It could have been longer. He was on another trip in New York and left from there. He called me and said something unexpected had come up and that he had to attend to it and wasn’t sure how long he’d be gone.”
“Plane, train? Another country?”
“I don’t know. He did tell me it had to do with a potential client. He had to smooth over something. The way he described it the matter didn’t seem too significant. I suppose his office would have handled the travel arrangements.”
“Okay, and he mentioned nothing to you about it when he got home?”
“Nothing. I just assumed it was business. But from that day on, there was something, I don’t know, off.”
“And when was this?”
“About a month ago.”
“And your husband has his own government contracting firm?”
Ellie nodded. “Walter Dabney and Associates. It’s located in Reston. Everything they work on is pretty much classified. It started out with just my husband, but now about seventy people work there. He has partners at the firm, but Walter is president and owns a controlling interest.” Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, I guess I’ll own it now.” She looked in alarm at Jamison. “Does that mean I’ll have to run it? I don’t know anything about his business. I don’t even have a security clearance.”
Jamison gripped her hand. “I don’t think you need to worry about those details right now, Mrs. Dabney.”
Ellie relaxed and looked back at her husband. “What was the person’s name again? That Walter…? They told me, but I can’t remember. Everything is just a blur right now.”
“Anne Berkshire. She was a substitute teacher at a Catholic high school in Fairfax. Do you know her?”
Ellie shook her head. “I never heard of her. And I don’t know why Walt would know her either. High school teacher? Walt and I had our children fairly early. Jules, our oldest, is thirty-seven. And our oldest grandkid is only in first grade. And they don’t even live in Virginia anyway. And we’re not Catholic. We’re Presbyterian.”
“Right. Well, thank you for the information. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Will I need to get a lawyer?” Ellie blurted out.
Jamison looked uncomfortable. “I’m really not the one to advise you about that. If you or your husband used a lawyer or know one, you should check with that person.”
Ellie nodded dumbly and then reached through the rails and gripped her husband’s hand once more.
A minute later Bogart came back in. “It’s all taken care of, Mrs. Dabney,” he said. “According to your daughter, everyone except Natalie will be in by tonight.”
“Natalie lives in Paris. I tried to phone her but no one answered. And it wasn’t…it wasn’t something I could leave on a voicemail or tell her by email.”
“Your daughter Jules reached her and told her the situation. She’s trying to get a flight here as soon as possible.”
“I really can’t believe this is happening,” said Ellie. “When Walt left this morning everything was…perfect. And now?” She looked up at them. “It’s all gone. Just like that.”
Just like that, thought Jamison.
CHAPTER
4
THEY HAD TRAVELED from a place filled with dead bodies to a place filled with dying people.
After making inquiries at the f
1
IT WAS NORMALLY one of the safest places on earth.
But not today.
The J. Edgar Hoover Building was the world headquarters of the FBI. It opened in 1975 and had not aged well—a blocks-long chunk of badly dilapidated concrete with honeycomb windows, and fire alarms and toilets that didn’t work. There was even safety netting strung around the top of the building to catch chunks of crumbling concrete before they could fall to the street below and kill someone.
The Bureau was trying to build a new facility to house eleven thousand employees, but a new location hadn’t even been chosen. So the opening of a new headquarters was about two billion dollars and seven years away.
For now, this was home.
The tall man striding down the tree-lined sidewalk was Walter Dabney. He had taken an Uber to a coffee shop down the street, ordered some food, and was now walking the rest of the way. He was in his sixties, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair parted on the side. It looked recently cut, with a bit of cowlick in the back. His suit was expensive and fit his portly frame with the touch of a tailored hand. A colorful pocket square adorned the front of his dark suit. He wore a lanyard around his neck loaded with clearances sufficient to allow him access into the inner sanctums of the Hoover Building with an escort along for the ride. His green eyes were alert. He walked with a determined swagger, his briefcase making pendulum arcs in the air.
A woman was coming from the opposite direction. Anne Berkshire had taken the Metro here. She was in her late fifties, petite, with gray hair cut in parentheses around her long, oval face. As she approached the Hoover Building she seemed to hesitate. There was no lanyard around her neck. The only ID she possessed was the driver’s license in her purse.
It was late morning and the streets were not as crowded as they would have been earlier. Still, there were a great many pedestrians and the street hummed with activity as cars passed up and down with some vehicles making their way into an underground parking garage at the Hoover Building.
Dabney picked up his pace a bit, his Allen Edmonds wingtips striking the stained pavement with purpose. He started to whistle a cheery tune. The man seemed not to have a care in the world.
Berkshire was now walking faster too. Her gaze went to the left and then swung right. She seemed to take in everything with that one sweeping glance.
About twenty yards behind Dabney, Amos Decker trudged along alone. He was six-five and built like the football player he had once been. He’d been on a diet for several months now and had dropped a chunk of weight, but he could stand to lose quite a bit more. He was dressed in khaki pants stained at the cuff and a long, rumpled Ohio State Buckeyes pullover that concealed both his belly and the Glock 41 Gen4 pistol riding in a belt holster on his waistband. Fully loaded with its standard thirteen-round mag, it weighed thirty-six ounces. His size fourteen shoes hit the pavement with noisy splats. His hair was, to put it kindly, disheveled. Decker worked at the FBI on a joint task force. He was on his way to a meeting at the Hoover Building.
He was not looking forward to it. He sensed that a change was coming, and Decker did not like change. He’d experienced enough of it in the last two years to last him a lifetime. He had just settled into a new routine with the FBI and he wanted to keep it that way. Yet apparently that was out of his control.
He stepped around a barricade that had been set up on the sidewalk and that stretched partway into the street. A manhole cover surrounded by an orange web barrier had been opened and workers were congregated around the area. One man in a hard hat emerged at the opening of the manhole and was passed a tool by another man. Most of the other workers stood around, some drinking coffee and others chatting.
Nice work if you can get it, thought Decker.
He saw Dabney up ahead but didn’t focus on him. Decker didn’t see Berkshire because he wasn’t looking that far up the street. He passed by the garage entrance and nodded at the uniformed FBI security officer in a small windowed guard shack situated on the sidewalk. The ramrod-straight man nodded back, his eyes covered by sunglasses as his gaze dutifully swept the street. His right hand was perched on top of his holstered service weapon. It was a nine mil chambered with Speer Gold Dot G2 rounds that the FBI used because of their penetration capability. “One shot, one down” could have been the ammo’s motto. Then again, most ammo would do that so long as it hit the intended target in the right place.
A bird zipped across in front of Decker, perched on a lamppost, and looked down curiously at the passersby. The air was chilly and Decker shivered a bit even in his thick pullover. The sun was hidden behind cloud cover that had materialized on the horizon about an hour before, passed over the Potomac, and settled upon Washington like a gray dome.
Up ahead, Dabney was nearing the end of the block, where he would turn left. The FBI’s “business appointments” entrance was located down there. Years ago public tours were freely given and people could view the famed FBI lab and watch special agents practicing their aim on the shooting range.
In the modern era of terrorism that was no more. After 9/11 the tours were canceled but then restarted in 2008. The FBI had even put in an education center for visitors. But a request for a visit had to be filed at least a month ahead of time to allow the FBI to do a thorough background check. Most federal buildings were now simply fortresses, hard to get into and maybe harder to get out of.
Dabney slowed as he approached the corner.
Berkshire, by contrast, quickened her pace.
Decker continued to lope along, his long strides eating up ground until he was only about ten yards behind Dabney.
Berkshire was about five yards on the other side of Dabney. Moments later that distance was halved. A few clicks after that, they were barely three feet apart.
Decker now saw Berkshire because she had drawn so close to Dabney. He was about ten feet behind the pair when he started to make the turn too.
Berkshire glanced over at Dabney, seemingly noticing him for the first time. Dabney didn’t look back at her, at least not initially.
A few seconds later he saw her gazing at him. He smiled, and if he’d been wearing a hat, he might have even doffed it to her in a show of courtesy.
Berkshire didn’t smile back. Her hand went to her purse clasp.
Dabney slowed a bit more.
Across the street Decker spotted a vendor selling breakfast burritos from a food truck and wondered if he had time to buy one before his meeting. When he decided he didn’t and his waistline would be worse off for it he looked back; Berkshire and Dabney were now beside each other.
Decker didn’t think anything of it; he just assumed they knew each other and were perhaps rendezvousing here.
He looked at his watch to check the time. He didn’t want to be late. If his life was going to change, he wanted to be on time for it.
When he looked back up, he froze.
Dabney had fallen two steps behind the woman. Unknown to Berkshire, he was aiming a compact Beretta at the back of her head.
Decker reached for his weapon, and was about to call out, when Dabney pulled the trigger.
Berkshire jerked forward as the round slammed into the back of her head at an upward angle. It blew out her medulla, pierced her brainpan, banged like a pinball off her skull, and exited through her nose, leaving a wound three times the size of the entry due to the bullet’s built-up wall of kinetic energy. She fell forward onto the pavement, her face mostly obliterated, the concrete tatted with her blood.
His pistol out, Decker ran forward as others on the street screamed and ran away. Dabney was still wielding his weapon.
His heart pounding, Decker aimed his Glock at Dabney and shouted, “FBI, put your gun down. Now!”
Dabney turned to him. He did not put down his gun.
Decker could hear the running footsteps behind him. The guard from the shack was sprinting toward them, his gun also out.
Decker glanced quickly over his shoulder, saw this, and held up his creds with his free hand. “I’m with the FBI. He just shot the woman.”
He let his lanyard go and assumed a two-handed shooting stance, his muzzle aimed at Dabney’s chest. The FBI uniform ran up to stand next to him, his gun pointed at Dabney. “Put the gun down, now!” the guard shouted. “Last chance, or we will shoot.”
It was two guns versus one. The response should have been obvious. Lie down and you won’t fall down.
Dabney looked first at the guard and then at Decker.
And smiled.
“Don’t!” shouted Decker.
Walter Dabney pressed the gun’s muzzle to the bottom of his chin and pulled the trigger for a second and final time.
CHAPTER
2
DARKNESS. IT AWAITED us all, individually, in our final moments. Amos Decker was thinking that as he sat in the chair and studied the body.
Anne Berkshire lay on a metal table in the FBI’s morgue. All her clothes had been removed and placed in evidence bags to be later analyzed. Her naked body was under a sheet; her destroyed face was covered as well, although the fabric was stained with her blood and destroyed tissue.
A postmortem was legally required even though there was no doubt whatsoever as to what had caused the woman’s death.
Walter Dabney, by an extraordinary twist, was not dead. Not yet, anyway. The doctors at the hospital to which he’d been rushed held no hope that he would recover, or even regain consciousness. The bullet had tunneled right through his brain; it was a miracle he had not died instantly.
Alex Jamison and Ross Bogart, two of Decker’s colleagues on a joint task force composed of civilians and FBI agents, were with Dabney at the hospital right now. If he regained consciousness they would want to capture anything he might utter that would explain why he had murdered Anne Berkshire on a public street and then attempted to take his own life. Dabney’s recovering to the point of being questioned was simply not going to happen, the doctors had told them.
So for now, Decker simply sat in the darkness and stared at the covered body.
Although the room was not actually dark for him.
For Decker it was an ethereally bright blue. A near-fatal hit he’d received on the football field had commingled his sensory pathways, a condition known as synesthesia. For him, death was represented by the color blue. He had seen it on the street when Dabney had killed Berkshire.
And he was seeing it now.
Decker had given statements to the D.C. police and the FBI, as had the security guard who had joined him at the scene. There hadn’t been much to say. Dabney had pulled a gun and shot Berkshire and then himself. That was crystal clear. What wasn’t clear was why he had done it.
The overhead lights came on and a woman in a white lab coat walked in. The medical examiner introduced herself as Lynne Wainwright. She was in her forties, with the compressed, slightly haunted features of a person who had seen every sort of violence one human could wreak on another. Decker rose, showed her his ID, and said he was with an FBI task force. And also that he had witnessed the murder.
Decker glanced over as Todd Milligan, the fourth member of the joint task force, entered the room. A fifth member, Lisa Davenport, a psychologist by training, had not returned to the group, opting instead to go back to private practice in Chicago.
Milligan was in his midthirties, six feet tall, with close-cropped hair and a physique that appeared chiseled out of granite. He and Decker had initially butted heads, but now the two men got along as well as Decker could with anyone.
Decker had trouble relating to people. That had not always been the case, because he was not the same person he had once been.
In addition to the synesthesia, Decker also had hyperthymesia, or perfect recall, after suffering a brain trauma on the same vicious hit in his very short career in the NFL. It had altered his personality, changing him from gregarious and fun-loving to aloof and lacking the ability to recognize social cues—a skill most people took for granted. People first meeting him would assume he was somewhere on the autism spectrum.
And they might not be far off in that assumption.
“How you doing, Decker?” said Milligan. He was dressed, like always, in a dark suit with a spotless crisp white shirt and striped tie. Next to him, the shabbily attired Decker looked borderline homeless.
“Better than she is,” said Decker, indicating Berkshire’s body. “What do we know about her so far?”
Milligan took out a small electronic notebook from his inside coat pocket and scrolled down the screen. While he was doing that Decker watched as Wainwright removed the sheet from Berkshire’s body and prepared the instruments necessary to perform the autopsy.
“Anne Meredith Berkshire, fifty-nine, unmarried, substitute schoolteacher at a Catholic school in Fairfax County. She lives, or rather lived, in Reston. No relatives have come forward, but we’re still checking.”
“Why was she down at the Hoover Building?”
“We don’t know. We don’t know if she was even going there. And she wasn’t scheduled to teach at the school today.”
“Walter Dabney?”
“Sixty-one, married, with four grown daughters. Has a successful government contracting business. Does work with the Bureau and other agencies. Before that he worked at NSA for ten years. Lives in McLean in a big house. He’s done very well for himself.”
“Did very well for himself,” corrected Decker. “His wife and kids?”
“We spoke with his wife. She’s hysterical. The kids are spread all over the place. One lives in France. They’re all coming here.”
“Any of them have any idea why he would do this?”
“We haven’t spoken to them all, but nothing pops so far. They’re apparently still in shock.”
Decker next asked the most obvious question. “Any connection between Berkshire and Dabney?”
“We’re just starting out, but nothing as yet. You think he was just looking to shoot someone before he killed himself and she was the closest?”
“She was definitely the closest,” said Decker. “But if you’re going to kill yourself why take an innocent person along? What would be the point?”
“Maybe the guy went nuts. We might find something in his background to explain his going off the deep end.”
“He had a briefcase and an ID. It seems he was heading to the Hoover Building. Was he going to a meeting?”
“Yes. We confirmed that he was meeting to go over a project his firm was handling for the Bureau. All routine.”
“So he goes off the ‘deep end’ but he could still put on a suit and come downtown for a routine meeting?”
Milligan nodded. “I see the inconsistency. But it’s still possible.”
“Anything’s possible, until it’s not,” Decker replied.
Decker walked over to stand next to Wainwright. “Murder weapon was a Beretta nine mil. Contact wound at the base of the neck with an upward trajectory. She died on impact.”
Wainwright was readying a Stryker saw that she would use to cut open Berkshire’s skull. She said, “Definitely jibes with the external injuries.”
“If Dabney dies will you be doing the post?”
She nodded. “The Bureau is taking the lead on this since Dabney was a contractor for them and it happened on their doorstep. So I’m your girl.”
Decker turned away from her and said to Milligan, “Has the FBI assigned a team to the case yet?”
Milligan nodded.
“Who’s the team? Do you know them?”
“I know them very well, because they’re us.”
Decker blinked. “Come again?”
“Bogart’s team, meaning us, has been assigned to the case.”
“But we do cold cases.”
“Well, that’s what the meeting today was about. They were changing our assignment. Cold to hot cases. And since you were on the scene of this one, it made sense to let us work it. So we’re a go.”
“Even though I’m a witness to the crime?”
“It’s not as though there’s going to be any doubt as to what happened, Decker. And there were lots of witnesses to what he did. They don’t need you.”
“But I came here to do cold cases,” protested Decker.
“Well, we don’t get to decide that, Decker. The higher-ups do.”
“And they can just pull the rug out from under us like that? Without even asking?”
Milligan attempted a smile, but when he saw the troubled expression on Decker’s face, the look faded. “It’s a bureaucracy, Decker, and we have to follow orders. At least Ross and I do. I guess you and Jamison could call it quits, but my career is locked up with the Bureau.” He paused. “We’ll still be catching bad guys. Just for newer crimes. You’ll still get to do what you do so well.”
Decker nodded but hardly looked appeased by Milligan’s words. He looked down at Berkshire’s body. The pulse of blue assailed him from all corners. He felt slightly sick to his stomach.
Wainwright glanced over and registered on the name on Decker’s ID. “Wait a minute. Amos Decker. Are you the guy who can’t forget anything?”
When Decker didn’t say anything, Milligan said quickly, “Yes, he is.”
Wainwright said, “Heard you guys have solved quite a few old cases over the last several months. Principally the Melvin Mars matter.”
“It was a team effort,” said Milligan. “But we couldn’t have done it without Decker.”
Decker stirred and pointed to a purple smudge on the back of Berkshire’s hand. “What’s that?”
“Let’s have a closer look,” Wainwright said. She gripped a magnifying glass set on a rotating arm and positioned it over the mark. She turned on a light and aimed it at the dead woman’s hand. Peering through the glass, she said, “Appears to be a stamp of some sort.”
Decker took a look through the glass. “Dominion Hospice.” He looked at Milligan, who was already tapping keys on his notebook.
Milligan read down the screen. “Okay, got it. It’s over near Reston Hospital. They handle terminal cases, obviously.”
Decker looked down at Berkshire. “If the mark is still on her hand, presumably she went there today. A shower would have taken it off.”
“Do you think she went to visit someone?” asked Milligan.
“Well, she wasn’t exactly terminal, until Dabney killed her.”
He abruptly walked out without another word.
Wainwright looked at Milligan with raised eyebrows at this sudden departure.
“He kind of just does that…a lot,” said Milligan. “I’ve sort of gotten used to it.”
“Then you’re a better person than I am,” replied Wainwright. She held up the Stryker saw. “Because if he kept walking out on me like that, I might just clock him with this.”
CHAPTER
3
WALTER DABNEY’S CHEST rose and fell with the spasmodic twitch of someone not long for this world. It was as though the lungs were the weary rear guard holding out as the spirit prepared to exit the body.
Alex Jamison was in her late twenties, tall, slim, and pretty with long brunette hair. She sat on the right side of the hospital bed in the CCU. Ross Bogart, an FBI special agent in his late forties, with a bit of gray the only thing marring his perfectly combed dark hair, stood ramrod-straight on the left. His fingers clutched the bed’s safety rail.
Dabney lay in the bed, hooked up to a complex array of monitoring lines and tubes carrying medications. His right eye was an empty crater because the bullet he’d fired into his chin had burst from there after catapulting through parts of the brain. His facial skin was deathly gray, where it wasn’t swollen and stained purple by burst capillaries. His breathing was erratic and the monitor showed his vitals to be fluctuating all over the place. He was in the critical care unit, the place designated for the sickest and most badly injured patients at the hospital.
But he wasn’t just injured; Walter Dabney was dying.
The doctors who had been in and out during the day had all confirmed that it was simply a matter of time before the brain told the heart to stop pumping. And there was nothing they could do about it. The damage was such that no medicine and no surgery could bring the man back. They were just counting down the time until death.
Mrs. Eleanor Dabney, better known as Ellie, had arrived thirty minutes after the FBI had told her what had happened. They would have to question her, but right now the woman was simply a grieving widow-to-be. She was currently in the bathroom throwing up, a nurse assisting her.
Bogart eyed Jamison. She seemed to sense his attention and glanced up.
“Any word from Decker?” he asked quietly.
She checked her phone and shook her head. “He was going to be at the morgue with Berkshire’s body.” She thumbed in a text to him and sent it off. “I copied Todd on it,” she said.
Bogart nodded. “Good. He’ll keep Decker on track.”
They both knew that Decker was not always the best at communicating. In fact, he pretty much sucked at it.
Bogart looked down at Dabney again. “Nothing in the guy’s record to indicate something like this happening. And no connection that we can find to Berkshire.”
Jamison said, “There must be something unless it was completely random. And that doesn’t make much sense either.”
Bogart nodded in agreement and then glanced at the monitor. The dying man’s heart rate and respiration danced around like bare feet on sizzling coals.
“Chances are very good he’s going to die without saying anything.”
“But if he does say something we’ll be here,” replied Jamison.
The bathroom door opened and out came the nurse and Ellie Dabney. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with long legs and a slender waist and narrow hips. Her features were quite attractive, the jaw elegantly structured, the cheekbones high and firm, the eyes large and a pleasing light blue. Her hair was long and she had let it go naturally silver. She looked like she might have been quite the athlete in her youth. Now in her early sixties, the mother of four grown children with three grandchildren and one mortally wounded husband, the stricken woman appeared about as close to death as one could get without actually being dead.
Bogart placed a chair next to the bed for her as Jamison rose and helped the nurse guide Ellie over to the chair, into which she fell rather than sat.
The nurse checked the monitor, gave Bogart an ominous look, and left, closing the door behind her. Ellie had reached through the rails and gripped her husband’s hand, her forehead resting against the top of the bed rail.
Bogart stepped back and Jamison resumed her seat. They exchanged glances while listening to the woman’s quiet sobs.
“Mrs. Dabney, we can arrange to have your children brought here when they get into town,” he said after a few moments.
She didn’t respond to this at first but finally nodded.
“Do you have that information or is there someone else we can—?”
She lifted her head and without looking at him said, “My daughter, Jules, she…she’ll know that.” She pulled a phone from her pocket, tapped some keys, and passed it to him. Bogart wrote the phone number down, handed Ellie her phone back, and walked out of the room.
Jamison put a hand on the older woman’s shoulder and said, “I’m so very sorry, Mrs. Dabney.”
“Did he…did Walt really h-hurt someone? The FBI…they…they said…”
“We don’t have to talk about that now.”
Ellie turned her tearstained face to Jamison. “He couldn’t have. Are you sure someone didn’t shoot him? You see, Walt wouldn’t hurt anything. H-he…” Her voice trailed off and she placed her forehead back on the rail.
The monitor started to beep and they both glanced at it, but the device quieted down.
“We are sure, Mrs. Dabney. I wish I could tell you otherwise. There were a lot of witnesses.”
Ellie blew her nose on a tissue and said in a firmer voice, “He’s not going to recover, is he?”
“The doctors aren’t hopeful, no.”
“I…I didn’t even know he owned a gun.”
After studying the woman for a few seconds, Jamison asked, “Did you notice a change in your husband recently?”
“In what way?” Ellie said absently.
“Mood? Concerns at work? Appetite changed? Maybe he drank more than normal? Any signs of depression?”
Ellie sat back in her chair, wadded the tissue up in her hand, and stared down at her lap.
Outside the door footsteps could be heard, along with occasional running feet, the sounds of a monitor alarm, voices over a PA, and equipment and patients being rolled up and down the corridor. The air smelled like hospitals always did: antiseptic. And the air was perpetually chilly. There was also an ominous tenseness present in the CCU, as though only a monitor’s sudden warning screech separated the living from the dead.
“Walt didn’t talk about business at home. He didn’t really drink at home either, although I know that he did at business dinners and industry events, that sort of thing. I attended some with him. But he only drank enough to socialize, to get deals done, build contacts, you know, that sort of thing.”
“I understand. Were there any financial worries?”
“Not that I knew of. But Walter handled all that. We never had any bill collectors show up at the house, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did his mood change?”
She dabbed at her eyes and shot a glance at her husband before quickly looking away, as though she was uncomfortable conveying information about him to a stranger. “He had a variety of moods. He worked very hard and when business was good he was happy, when it was down, he got depressed, just like anybody would.”
“So nothing out of the ordinary?”
Ellie balled up the tissue even more and then tossed it into the trash can.
With finality.
She turned to Jamison, who waited patiently. If being around Amos Decker had taught her anything, it was patience, for both positive and negative reasons.
“He went on a trip recently.”
“Where?”
“That was the unusual thing. He didn’t tell me where. He had never done that before.”
“How long was he gone?” Jamison asked.
“I think about four days. It could have been longer. He was on another trip in New York and left from there. He called me and said something unexpected had come up and that he had to attend to it and wasn’t sure how long he’d be gone.”
“Plane, train? Another country?”
“I don’t know. He did tell me it had to do with a potential client. He had to smooth over something. The way he described it the matter didn’t seem too significant. I suppose his office would have handled the travel arrangements.”
“Okay, and he mentioned nothing to you about it when he got home?”
“Nothing. I just assumed it was business. But from that day on, there was something, I don’t know, off.”
“And when was this?”
“About a month ago.”
“And your husband has his own government contracting firm?”
Ellie nodded. “Walter Dabney and Associates. It’s located in Reston. Everything they work on is pretty much classified. It started out with just my husband, but now about seventy people work there. He has partners at the firm, but Walter is president and owns a controlling interest.” Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, I guess I’ll own it now.” She looked in alarm at Jamison. “Does that mean I’ll have to run it? I don’t know anything about his business. I don’t even have a security clearance.”
Jamison gripped her hand. “I don’t think you need to worry about those details right now, Mrs. Dabney.”
Ellie relaxed and looked back at her husband. “What was the person’s name again? That Walter…? They told me, but I can’t remember. Everything is just a blur right now.”
“Anne Berkshire. She was a substitute teacher at a Catholic high school in Fairfax. Do you know her?”
Ellie shook her head. “I never heard of her. And I don’t know why Walt would know her either. High school teacher? Walt and I had our children fairly early. Jules, our oldest, is thirty-seven. And our oldest grandkid is only in first grade. And they don’t even live in Virginia anyway. And we’re not Catholic. We’re Presbyterian.”
“Right. Well, thank you for the information. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Will I need to get a lawyer?” Ellie blurted out.
Jamison looked uncomfortable. “I’m really not the one to advise you about that. If you or your husband used a lawyer or know one, you should check with that person.”
Ellie nodded dumbly and then reached through the rails and gripped her husband’s hand once more.
A minute later Bogart came back in. “It’s all taken care of, Mrs. Dabney,” he said. “According to your daughter, everyone except Natalie will be in by tonight.”
“Natalie lives in Paris. I tried to phone her but no one answered. And it wasn’t…it wasn’t something I could leave on a voicemail or tell her by email.”
“Your daughter Jules reached her and told her the situation. She’s trying to get a flight here as soon as possible.”
“I really can’t believe this is happening,” said Ellie. “When Walt left this morning everything was…perfect. And now?” She looked up at them. “It’s all gone. Just like that.”
Just like that, thought Jamison.
CHAPTER
4
THEY HAD TRAVELED from a place filled with dead bodies to a place filled with dying people.
After making inquiries at the f
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