by Michael Beck
"Yeah. Impossible." Bob sat back and regarded me skeptically. "What have you been doing the past eleven years since high school?"
"Staying in shape, waiting for my big chance."
"That's about as believable as Chester doing charity work. Look, I have a deal for you. You give me something more on this Decker stalker story and I'll stop investigating your background. You're hiding something. I know it and you know it. But I'm not really interested in that. Decker is the big story. Like I said, if I can get a couple of more big stories it could be my big break. I like you. You seem like a great guy and I don't want to wreck whatever it is you have going here. Just help me out a little. "
She really was the most ruthless, shameless, guileful woman I had ever met. I shook my head in admiration. "How do you sleep at night?"
"By myself and like a baby. Every night."
"What's your number?"
"Why, Mr. Rennat, I don't know if I'm ready to take our relationship to the next level."
"Just give me your number."
"Well, okay, but I expect flowers on the first date and no kissing until the second."
"Do you ever stop?"
"Stopping doesn't get you ahead, Mr. Rennat. Here's my cell."
I looked at the number she had bought up on her cell and sent her the video text message I had obtained from the FBI. It beeped as the message was delivered.
"This should get you that promotion you're after." I held the cell away from her as she reached eagerly for it. "Two things. This came from a reliable, unnamed source and no more prying into my background, okay?"
"Sure, you got it," she said as she snatched her phone back.
She clicked on the message like a kid opening presents on their tenth birthday. As she watched it, her eyes widened and she glanced up at me, for the first time, with an unfeigned natural joy. She really was beautiful.
"Thank you," she said and kissed me hard on the lips before jumping up and walking quickly away. She stopped and looked back.
"Okay, then. We can kiss on the first date."
CHAPTER 23
The head of football recruiting for Syracuse for the past ten years was Rick Fensen. The football squad was running a cool down lap at the end of training and Fensen was packing some footballs into a mesh bag on the sideline when I walked out onto the ground.
"Thought you'd have ten guys paid to do that?" I picked up two balls and handed them to him.
"Thanks." Fensen was about fifty but already his hair was completely silver. He was known throughout college football as the Silver Fox. "You after a job? You look too old to be picking up footballs."
"No. I'm a friend of Troy Decker's. You remember Troy?"
Fensen stood up and stretched his back.
"Remember him? Not likely to forget the best damn quarterback we've ever had, am I?"
"Well, you might have heard that Troy has been having a little trouble lately and he's asked me to check into it for him. My name's Tanner." I gave him a card with Mark Tanner Investigative Services printed on it.
"Investigative Services? Does that mean you're a private dick?"
I waggled my hand. "In that ball park. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"I don't know anything bad about Decker so sure, fire away."
"Decker played for you for three years, right?"
"Right. He won two State Championships for us."
"Where did you recruit him from?"
"Erie Community College in Buffalo."
"That's unusual, isn't it? Picking up a player of his quality from a community college? Wouldn't you normally get a player like him direct from high school?"
"Damn straight. That was the luckiest day of my life. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a video tape of one of his games. The fastest, most agile quarterback I had ever seen. And here he was playing in a goddam community college in Buffalo. I drove down the same day and offered him a full scholarship. "
"Did you meet his parents?"
"Yeah. Quiet couple but very polite. You could see they wanted something better for their boy."
"So they weren't wealthy?"
"Heck, no. They were dirt poor. They lived in a two bedroom apartment in Buffalo and Decker took the bus to college."
"They ever say why Decker never got recruited from high school by a college?"
"Yeah, they said they travelled around a lot overseas with work and that Troy didn't start playing until he was fourteen or so."
How a family that was supposed to be struggling financially could be travelling around overseas I wasn't quite sure.
"What high schools did he attend?"
Fensen glanced away for a moment, thinking.
"Not quite sure. I have had so many boys go through it's hard to keep track of them. I'm sure it will be on file in his records."
"Yeah, I'm sure. So, you didn't hesitate in recruiting Decker even with his medical history?"
"Medical history? What are you talking about?"
"Osgood Schlatters. Didn't his knee condition discourage you from signing him?"
"Knee condition? There was nothing wrong with his knees. Decker could move around like a jack rabbit in the pocket. From memory, he had the fewest number of sacks of any quarterback in college history. Bad knees? Someone's pulling your leg, Sonny."
"Apparently so. That Troy is a real kidder, isn't he?"
"Don't know about that. He never was one for laughing much. I always found him to be a pretty serious guy. A damn good leader though. He played his senior year with a rotator cuff injury that would have stopped anyone else playing. Had a jab before every game to get through. He was as tough as nails and hated losing something awful."
This was the same Decker who didn't play much in high school because he was injured?
CHAPTER 24
The Deckers still lived in Buffalo near Erie Community College, where Decker attended before being offered a scholarship by Syracuse. Their phone was unlisted and their name wasn't on any utilities. In the end, Mole found their address by "checking" the Turbos members' data base. Every month a Turbos newsletter went out to a J and P Decker at 20 Knox Drive, Buffalo.
The house was quite at odds with the surroundings. This section of Buffalo was a low income area, and the houses were predominantly tidy but small. Except for the Deckers'.
The Deckers' property sprawled over an area the size of three normal house blocks and was surrounded by a six foot high wrought iron fence. The front gate was locked but there was an intercom mounted on it. The ground was covered in snow and a gray-haired man was shoveling the path to the house.
"Mr. Decker?"
He started and stood straight. He was lean and tall, just like Decker. "Can I help you?" he said. He had a faint mid-western twang to his voice.
"I'm Mark Tanner. I'm a friend of Troy's. I wondered if I could speak to you for a moment."
"I'm sorry. We don't take callers."
"Troy might have mentioned me? Mark Tanner. I've been helping Troy with this stalker case. I think you might be able to help Troy by talking to me."
"Yes, Troy has mentioned you but I don't think I can help in any way. I know nothing about what's been happening to Troy. Sorry." He picked up his shovel and began to walk away.
"Mr. Decker, I believe Troy is in danger," I called. "Did something happen to Troy in high school?"
He stopped. "What makes you say that?"
"There's no record of where he went to high school and he won't say. Can you tell me what school he attended?"
"What good will that do you?"
"I think it might have something to do with whoever is behind these things that have been happening to Troy."
I watched him consider this.
"No. You're wrong. That has nothing to do with what's happening to Troy now."
I heard the same hesitancy in his voice I had heard in Troy's.
"What has nothing to do with it, Mr. Decker?"
He glared at me. "Go away. I can
't help you." He turned and walked away.
"I can't help him unless I know what happened," I yelled.
He stopped again and stood still for several seconds before coming back. He had Troy's straight nose and gray eyes. He halted several feet from me and spoke quietly but intensely. "You're wrong. There's nothing from Troy's past that will affect him now. Just leave it. You will wreck his whole life if you continue."
Then he said something quite strange. "The past is dead. The future is for the living, so let him live it."
I spoke quietly, just like him, as he walked away again. "The past is never dead, Mr. Decker. It's with us all the time and will never let us go. Don't you know that?"
But Mr. Decker just kept walking.
CHAPTER 25
"Nothing. He doesn't exist before he enrolled at Erie Community College." I sat back tiredly and rubbed my eyes. It was after midnight and I had exhausted every idea trying to find out where Decker came from.
"How did he get into a community college without his high school transcripts?" Bear had dropped in on the way home from running a self-defense class. I would normally have been teaching it, but had to cut back with the time the Decker and Cupid cases were taking.
"He said he was living overseas for most of his high school life."
"But he still has to provide transcripts, doesn't he?"
"Yes, but they rarely ever get checked. He lists schools in Cambodia, Belgium and Albania. I've been on the phone to each of them and can't find a person who can confirm he went to any of them. I think he's forged each one and been clever about it by picking non-English speaking countries."
"They are also countries which are more likely to be given allowances by our educational authorities, due to their lack of technical resources and educational facilities."
"His transcripts seemed to have been accepted at face value," I agreed. "You know what's interesting? Fensen, the recruiting manager at Syracuse, said the family was so dirt poor that Decker had to catch the bus to community college. So how does a family that poor afford to live overseas in a number of different countries? It doesn't make sense."
"What about the NFL? Surely, they must run checks?"
"The NFL tends to accept the records that the Colleges send them. They had no reason to question the veracity of Decker's records."
"You could ask the League to review their records."
"I can't."
Bear, whose frame was so big it appeared he was sitting in a kindergarten chair, regarded me. Absently, he stroked Little Bear's head with his prosthetic hand.
"You don't want to get him in trouble?"
"If he lied on his applications it could go bad for him."
"It's not him you're worried about though, is it?"
"At the start, perhaps," I finally said.
"You like him?" Bear sounded surprised.
"I respect where he's came from. He has a fierce desire to succeed and he won't let anything get in his way."
"Remind you of someone?"
"What do you mean?"
"You. I once saw a pit-bull wrap its jaws around a suspect's leg. The cops repeatedly beat it over the head with their batons but it wouldn't let go. They put a tire iron in its mouth and broke a couple of its teeth. One cop dug his fingers deep into the dog's eyes. The dog never let go. Even when one cop pulled his gun and blew the dog's brains out, its jaws still did not release until they pried them open.
"You're kind of like that dog, Tan. You never let go." He smiled. "On the other hand, sometimes I think you're only as smart as that fucking dog, who was as dumb as a fence post."
"Would you give up?"
"No," Bear said unequivocally. "I assume you've checked the parents' tax returns, voting records, license, passport, properties they own, utilities, birth certificate and the like?"
"Birth certificate says he was born in Dallas, Texas. I think it's a phony. Mole ran all the others. Nothing... He didn't exist before college."
"Everyone leaves tracks, Tan."
"You're quoting me to me?"
"Just reminding you. His tracks are there. You're just not looking in the right places."
I stayed up after Bear left and still got no nearer to solving where Decker came from. The same with Cupid. Why had he chosen Abrahams, Symonds and my dad? A rich, single retired stockbroker, a merchant and a carpenter? Apart from the fact they were all men, what tied them together? My mind was like fudge.
I pulled on my running clothes at 5:00 a.m. and hit the road with Little Bear. It was pitch black with a strong, cold easterly. Little Bear never used to run with me. Now, with his new prosthetic, he pranced along in front of me, glancing back contemptuously over his shoulder as I struggled to maintain his pace.
"You wanna take that robot leg off and see how fast you are?"
Little Bear sniffed and bounded over a low wire fence into the local high school campus we always cut through. Schools were weird, fun places at night. Weird, because they were so still and quiet. Fun, because at night you could run wherever you liked. Look, sir, I'm jumping over fences.
We often came to the school after hours to do wind sprints and exercises on the oval, as it was so close to Heavenly Falls. We ran past the gym onto the oval and jumped the fence on the far side. As I landed, I stopped and inspected the school. Little Bear barked at me, sick of me wimping it, but I ignored him, engrossed with a crazy thought that had crossed my mind.
I shook my head. No, it couldn't be that easy.
As I ran through the front gates of Heavenly Falls a small, dark figure gestured to me from behind the front wall.
"Acilino, it's 6:00 a.m. Don't you ever sleep?"
"Mark, there are two policemen at your Winnebago. You run and I'll slow them down. See."
He held out a handful of tire spikes.
"I throw these on the road, they'll never catch you."
"Acilino, I don't have to run. I haven't done anything wrong."
He regarded me doubtfully. "You sure?"
This made me pause. Though I hadn't done anything lately, I had done some very quasi-legal, if not outright illegal things over time.
"If you see me running, throw the spikes," I compromised.
He grinned and nodded. It was pretty obvious he was rooting for the police to be after me. A green unmarked police car was parked next to my Winnebago. Sanders stood in the doorway.
"You going soft?" she asked nodding at the whiteboard. I love the FBI was still written on it.
"I realize now how important and valuable are our fine law enforcement agencies. This is my way of saying thanks to all you people with execrable dress sense."
She regarded me with a jaundiced eye.
"Kat, don't you find any of my stuff funny? You've had some of my best lines."
"I've got news for you, Tan. No one thinks you're funny," she said, as she disappeared into my Winnebago. Sanders was obviously ill. I followed her inside and found Fulton sitting in the one comfortable chair. Trust a cop to take the best seat.
"Love what you've done with the place," Fulton said.
"What do you call it?" Sanders gestured at the walls. "Serial killer art?"
"Kat, was that a joke?"
"This is no joke and stop calling me Kat. What is this one?"
She was studying the five-foot-wide corkboard I had attached to the wall. On it were pinned photos from each of the three crime scenes: my parents, Abrahams and...Symonds. Oops.
"Funny you should ask. I was just about to ring you guys."
"Sure you were. Who is it and why is it up there?"
"Geoff Symonds. I think he's another Cupid victim."
"Is that right? And would you like to tell me how come you have his photo and these other crime scene photos? I thought you were going to stay out of it."
"I am. This is just me spinning my wheels. You know, potting around."
"When and where did this one happen?" asked Fulton.
"Two years ago. Jessop Street, Queens."
<
br /> "What makes you think it might be Cupid? Was he missing his heart?"
"No, but his death was clearly suspicious." I explained about Symond's fire ant allergy. "He was wearing only a pair of boxers and had severe damage to the chest region."
"That's not much," said Sanders doubtfully.
"He also had a fractured skull. The impact was to the back of the skull."
They were both silent.
"You need to exhume the body and check the heart," I added. "The original autopsy was only cursory as the cause of death and identity of the body was obvious. We need to know why the heart wasn't taken."
"We do, do we?" said Sanders, ironically.
I ignored her and spoke to Fulton.
"Has Bensen found any other victims yet?"
"He has a couple of possibilities. But it's taking a long time, as there have been so many deaths by fire in the New York area. And, of course, any evidence in them has been completely destroyed. Symonds is probably on our list but Bensen may have not got to him yet."
"Or else already discarded it. Do you trust him?"
Fulton continued scrutinizing the burnt remains of Symonds as he spoke.
"Don't count him out because he's different from us, Tan. He was raised on Long Island and went to Harvard before switching to law enforcement. His family has lived on Long island for generations, so he comes from money. But he's ambitious and hungry. He wants to succeed in his own right."
"Just so long as the case comes before him being promoted to the DA's office. I hear that is what he's gunning for."
Fulton nodded. "I've heard that too. But that doesn't mean he won't try his damnedest to find the killer. In fact, it might give him more incentive. Finding Cupid could mean more to him than a free pass to the Mayor's office. I think he has higher ambitions than that in mind. Bensen might be still in charge of the case, Tan, but while I'm there, you know finding Cupid will be our main objective. I'll give Symonds' name to the task force and get the body exhumed."
Sanders walked up to the pin-board and stared at the photos. "Do you have any idea why he chose these three?"
