The Fix

by David Baldacci

  ‘blowing’ it, as you said about the gambling debts. I thought you were supposed to have experience and be this hotshot agent. Decker saved your ass on that one. But what I can tell you is that he will never rely on anything else you say again. Because the man with the perfect memory is never going to forget that a veteran like you made a rookie mistake by assuming something was true when you hadn’t bothered to prove that it was actually true. He said your dad was on some honor wall at DIA. Maybe you want to be too. Well, in my humble opinion you’ll need to up your game. But then maybe you don’t care about that. I’ll leave you alone now so you can think about that, if you even want to bother. And tell Melvin I said hello the next time you see him. But if you hurt him in any way, I will kick your ass.”

  And with those biting remarks, Jamison got up and followed Decker out.

  CHAPTER

  53

  DECKER AND JAMISON drove home in silence. When they got to the apartment she said, “You want me to whip up some dinner? And I don’t mean in a microwave. I can do chicken and rice.”

  He shook his head. “No, thanks. Not really hungry.”

  “You don’t want to get too skinny,” she joked, but Decker had already walked down the hall to his room.

  He closed the door behind him, sat down on his bed, and picked up the doll. The rain had started back up and the plunks against the window came rhythmically. He stared down at the plastic face with the two large eyes, which looked unblinkingly up at him.

  Now every time he looked at this toy he only saw Molly’s face. Decker knew this was not healthy, and he also knew he could not stop doing it. At least not right now.

  He’d had a daughter, a beautiful little girl who would have grown up into an amazing woman. He had no doubt about that. Only she’d never had the chance. She had gone to her grave not knowing that some offhand remark in her dad’s past had set off a catastrophic chain of events eventually leading to her and her mother’s deaths.

  He stroked the doll’s hair with his finger and then laid it aside. He stretched out on the bed and stared up at the dark ceiling.

  It felt like they had been working on this case forever. And yet they had made not a jot of significant progress.

  Not a jot.

  In many ways, it seemed they had moved backwards.

  He had been telling the stark truth earlier. Unless they figured out why Walter Dabney had killed Anne Berkshire they were never going to solve this.

  And I witnessed the whole damn thing. And I still can’t figure it out.

  He sat up against the headboard.

  Okay, he needed to take this step by step.

  Fact: Dabney was duped into stealing secrets to pay off millions in fictional gambling debts.

  Fact: By her own admission Natalie had embroiled her father in this scheme.

  Speculation: Natalie did not know about the espionage angle.

  Fact: Dabney was terminally ill.

  Fact: Dabney shot Berkshire.

  Fact: Berkshire’s past was a mystery and the parts they knew were made up.

  Fact: Berkshire had an old cottage and a beat-up car.

  Fact: Berkshire had millions of dollars.

  Fact: Berkshire had what looked like spy paraphernalia in a storage unit.

  Fact: She was a substitute teacher and a volunteer at a hospice.

  Fact: She had a flash drive hidden at the cottage.

  Fact: Someone had ambushed Decker to get it.

  Speculation: The secrets stolen by Dabney had to do with backdoor access into critical national security sensitive platforms.

  This last one he had moved into the speculation section because Brown had been the one to provide that information and also because she had lied to him about this question earlier. He did not know it for sure, and Bogart had been unable to verify it because DIA had stonewalled access.

  So where did all this get him?

  He got off the bed and walked over to the window and peered out.

  He closed his eyes and went frame by frame in his memory.

  Oftentimes, this allowed him to see something that was off. A red flag where one slice of information did not jibe with another.

  Other times it gave him a sense of which direction he should go.

  And still other times he came away empty.

  As frame after mental frame rolled through he prayed that something, anything, would pop for him. What someone had said or done. An action that was off-kilter. Anything, really.

  Come on. Anything.

  Come on.

  He opened his eyes.

  His axiom on Berkshire had been that she did nothing without a good reason. If he was right about that, he had overlooked one-half of the equation.

  Shit!

  Jamison was startled when Decker came bolting out of his room and shot down the hall like a torpedo. She had just lifted to her mouth a spoonful of cereal that she was eating next to the kitchen sink.

  “What the hell?” she exclaimed.

  “We have to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Dominion Hospice.”

  * * *

  The rain had picked up and Jamison’s wipers were having a hard time keeping pace. Wedged into the passenger seat like a watermelon in a sock, Decker looked fidgety and upset.

  “You want to tell me why we’re going to the hospice?” said Jamison.

  “Why would she be volunteering there?”

  “I don’t know. Why would she be substitute teaching at a school?”

  “Because her storage unit was right across the street. I think she wanted to be close to that stuff for some reason. And remember her comments to Billings? I think she liked feeling superior to American teachers and students. If so, that scratches that one off the list. That leaves the hospice. And if she was still spying, I’ve crossed altruistic off my list. So why the hospice?”

  They arrived at Dominion Hospice. Visiting hours were over, but their credentials gained them access. The director, Sally Palmer, had gone home for the night, but the evening manager, a man named Alvin Jenkins, met with them in his office.

  Jenkins was short and flabby, in his late fifties with glasses and a circle of graying hair surrounding a bald pate. In answer to their inquiries he said, “I never met Anne Berkshire, though I had heard the name. I work evenings, and I understand that she would come in during the mornings.”

  “You have other volunteers?” said Decker.

  “Oh yes. Quite a few. Mostly older, retired folks who have the time to come in and visit.”

  “Do you have a list of them? And one with all of your employees? Nursing staff and admin, everybody.”

  He turned to his computer and hit some keys. “I can print them out for you, but what is all this about?”

  Before Decker could answer, Jamison said, “National security.”

  Jenkins’s jaw dropped, “Oh my goodness, right.” He handed them the printed pages.

  “I have to go and make my nightly rounds,” he said. “Feel free to use my office as long as necessary.”

  He left, and Decker and Jamison started going over the pages.

  “What are we looking for, Decker?”

  “Anything that seems out of the ordinary.”

  “I’m not sure how we can tell that by looking at people’s ages and pictures. I mean, what would she be doing here anyway? And we’re not even sure if these people were here at the same time she was. I mean, if she wanted to talk to someone they would have to be here, right? And she only visited with a few patients. Maybe we can ask Jenkins if he knows—”

  “Prisoner,” exclaimed Decker.

  He had jumped up and raced out, leaving Jamison sitting holding sheets of paper and looking stunned.

  She slumped back in her seat for a few moments before getting up and hustling after him. “I swear to God, one day I’m just going to kill him.”

  CHAPTER

  54

  DECKER STOOD in the darkened doorway and looked down at th
e little boy.

  Joey Scott was sound asleep in his bed.

  The rain continued to pour down outside.

  Decker’s gaze swept the room, taking it all in. Then he saw what he had come here for.

  A moment later Jamison came to stand next to him.

  “What are you—”

  When Jamison saw Joey she fell silent. She looked up at Decker.

  He said in a low voice, “He has leukemia. The really bad kind. He’s not going to make it.”

  Jamison’s mouth quivered. “How old?” she said in a crackling voice.

  “Ten. His name is Joey.”

  Jamison’s gaze ran along the lines running to his body from the IV stand. The monitor’s greenish screen was filled with the boy’s weak vitals.

  “But why are you here?”

  “Because of that.”

  He walked over and picked the book off the shelf next to the bed. He looked down at the cover.

  The Prisoner of Azkaban.

  “Hello?”

  Decker turned to see Joey staring up at him.

  “Hello, Joey.”

  “You’re the Cleveland Brown.”

  “That’s right. Amos Decker.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Decker looked over his shoulder and said, “I brought my friend Alex to meet you, Joey.”

  He eyed Jamison, who still stood in the doorway, and inclined his head toward Joey. She slowly came into the room and drew close to the bed.

  “Hi, Joey.”

  “Hi, Alex.”

  He glanced at Decker’s hand. “Did you come to read to me? Is it morning yet?”

  “No, it’s nighttime. We didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I wake up sometimes just because.”

  Decker and Jamison together watched the slender chest rise and fall, as Joey seemed to work to catch his breath.

  “Do you need us to get help?” asked Jamison nervously.

  Joey shook his head. “No. It happens sometimes. It’ll pass.”

  They waited another minute or so and Joey’s breathing became normal.

  Decker sat down in the chair next to the bed and held up the book. “Anne was reading this to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  A spear of lightning lit the sky. It was followed by a boom of thunder that made Jamison jump.

  “Did she read the first two in the series to you?” Decker asked.

  “The first two?”

  “Yeah, this one is the third one. There are two books before it and four that come after it. You learn where Harry Potter came from. And how he got to go to Hogwarts and meet his friends. Stuff like that.”

  Joey looked confused. “No. That was the only one she’d been reading to me.”

  “And she leaves it here?”

  “Well, sometimes. But other times she takes it with her. But then she always brings it back. We don’t have too many pages left. I think I can make it to the end.” He sucked in a huge breath. “I hope I can anyway.”

  At this, Jamison looked away, her eyes filling with tears.

  Decker looked very tense as he prepared to speak. “Does anyone else come here and read this book to you, Joey?”

  Jamison shot him a glance.

  “No. Just Anne. Nobody else.”

  Decker said, “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. Just Anne. I think it’s her book. Why?”

  “We were just wondering, Joey,” said Jamison hastily when it didn’t appear that Decker was going to answer. “Do you like the story? The Harry Potter series is great. I started reading them when I was in elementary school.”

  “Yeah, it’s good. I like Harry. But Hermione is my favorite.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She likes to read. I do too. I did anyway. Lots of books.” He pointed at Decker. “But I played football too, like him, before I got sick. I bet I would have been pretty good.”

  “I bet you would have been pretty great,” said Jamison, trying very hard to keep her voice from cracking.

  Decker looked down at the book as though it had somehow failed him.

  “Well, thanks, Joey,” he said. “Maybe I’ll come back and finish reading this book to you.”

  “And maybe I can come too,” said Jamison suddenly, seeming to surprise even herself with the comment.

  “That would be good,” said Joey. “Thanks. Maybe you can meet Anne.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Decker.

  “I used to do a lot of volunteer work,” said Jamison. “Maybe I can volunteer here. How about that, Joey?”

  “Sure,” he said, but then his smile faded and all his energy seemed to disappear along with it. He closed his eyes and his breathing deepened a bit.

  “This is beyond sad,” whispered Jamison. “He’s just a little boy. Doesn’t he have anybody?”

  “No. He was going to be adopted, but the people apparently pulled out when he got sick.”

  “What bastards!”

  “And the world is full of them, Alex.”

  “What were you hoping to prove with that book?”

  “Just trying to make sense out of something. I was pretty sure, but that goes to show that anybody can be wrong.”

  Decker rose and was about to put the book back when Joey opened his eyes and turned his head to look at him.