404: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  It was around that time that he first started seeing Dr. Foster at the Center.

  All this came flooding back to Decker as soon as he took one step into the Winhall Market off Route 30 in Bondville, Vermont. Freshly baked pies. The scent hit him like a slap in the face. It was so overwhelming that he had to step back out to the porch.

  “It’s just up the road,” Lulu said to him when she reappeared minutes later. “You ok?”

  “I’m fine,” he replied.

  “You’re as pale as a ghost.”

  “I said I’m fine.” Decker stood at the back of the parking lot, staring down at the rushing freestone stream in the gulch behind the market.

  Ice glazed the boulders. Icicles hugged the embankment. Sunlight beamed and blinked from the turbulent waters. It looked like a river of glass.

  “Let’s go,” Decker said, heading back toward the car.

  Police Chief Jackson Brody was waiting for them in his office. He seemed taller behind his desk, more imposing. As soon as he stood up to shake their hands, Decker realized just how short he really was—perhaps five feet four, wearing boots. He had a thin cut of a face, like a half moon, perpetually turned to one side, with brown hair and moody brown eyes. But there was nothing moody about his handshake. It was almost too much. He checked their IDs and sat back down behind his desk without saying a word. Once again, Decker was impressed by Lulu’s forging abilities.

  The office was large, girdled with accolades—framed diplomas and photographs, flags and other colorful regalia—befitting the local magistrate, which was probably the term favored by law enforcement officials of his type this close to the Canadian border, Decker thought. Decker had grown up in Iowa, after all, a land of small towns and small-minded sheriffs. His own father, a cop, had battled them his whole life. The Napoleon Complex was common in cops. Strapping on a gun always made you feel taller.

  “You kind of missed the party,” Chief Brody said. “Most of the reporters who came here when Zimmerman died left a long time ago.”

  “I know. We’re doing a follow-up,” Lulu said. She had changed into a pair of black slacks with a purple blouse and black fisherman’s sweater right before they’d left Boston. With her oversized canvas bag and Doc Martins, she looked more like one of her own graduate students than a reporter. But when she pulled out a small spiral notebook, started scribbling, the effect was complete. “You say that’s Jackson Brody, right? B—R—O—D—Y. Right? No e. Sounds like a stage name.”

  “So does Sarah Lee. Your parents must have a sense of humor.”

  “Lee is a very common Chinese surname,” Lulu said.

  “You know,” Chief Brody continued, leaning forward suddenly. He stared intently at Decker. “You look...” He pointed at Decker’s face. “You look like that guy. You know who I mean. The mega-tsunami guy.” He started snapping his fingers. “What was his name? Stecker. No, Decker. John Decker, Jr., right? Didn’t he just get shot in some holdup in Washington? I thought I saw that on TV.”

  Decker rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I get that a lot. But if you were to actually put us together, side by side, you’d realize we look nothing alike. Not really. It’s weird.” Then he laughed, a kind of half-formed throaty chuckle. “Especially now that he’s dead!”

  “Yeah, I guess—”

  “Back to Zimmerman,” Lulu said. “You have no reason to believe that his death was caused by anything other than an accident, do you?”

  The Police Chief scowled. “Nope. It was an accident all right. Caught it on tape. Plus, we found skid marks and animal tracks at the scene. He was obviously speeding. Lost control of his Land Cruiser trying to avoid hitting an animal. Happened not too far from here on 100, between Winhall and Londonderry, just north of Spring Hill. Ended up going through the guard rail, down the embankment, and into the beaver pond. Here,” he said. “I had them pull out the clip when you called.” The Police Chief leaned over and turned on a DVD player and TV parked on an AV stand by his desk.

  Moments later, some footage appeared on the screen. “Luckily, Tom Higgins just installed these webcams by the entrance to his lodge. Otherwise, the last we’d have seen was him traveling by the Mobil at the junction of 100 and 30,” Brody added. Just then, the picture became clear and Decker could see Zimmerman’s Land Cruiser veering off to the right, braking and spinning out of control.

  “With all those reported cases of sudden acceleration at the time, even though Land Cruisers weren’t part of the recall, Toyota sent a team in to look for electronic malfunctions, faulty floor mats, that sort of thing. But the car checked out clean.”

  The clip kept repeating, over and over again. For some reason it made Decker think of one of those funniest video shows on TV. After a while, as the white Toyota swerved off to the side for the umpteenth time, it took on the property of a clown car, crashing through the guard rail of the little bridge, tumbling off the edge, landing on its back upside down in the beaver pond.

  “I don’t see any animal,” Decker said. “He just spins off to the side.”

  “We figured it’s blocked by the guard rail.”

  When Chief Brody noticed Decker transfixed by the screen, he added, “I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. The crash didn’t kill him. According to the coroner, Zimmerman drowned, pure and simple, pinned like that upside down in the water.”

  “Mind if I get a copy of that?” Lulu said, handing Chief Brody a memory stick.

  “I guess not,” he replied. “Already been all over TV.” He slipped her flash drive into a vacant USB port.

  “Can you tell us if anything unusual happened before his death?” Lulu continued as he copied the file. “Anything that brought Mr. Zimmerman to the attention of your office, perhaps? Complaints? Calls in the night? Anything?”

  “Well, there was that trouble when Patrick Sailor, CEO of Gigity—”

  “What’s Gigity?” asked Decker.

  “Powers registration systems with social login,” said Lulu. “You know. Permission-based identity systems. Hello?”

  When Brody noticed Decker’s puzzled expression, he leapt into the fray. “They’re the guys who ask you, ‘Want to register onto this website using Facebook or Twitter?’”

  “Oh, right,” Decker said. “Didn’t realize they farmed that stuff out. Thanks.” Effortlessly, Lulu had given him the opening he needed to bond with Chief Brody.

  “Zimmerman had done some consulting work for Gigity two years earlier,” Lulu continued, “and they accused him of leaving a backdoor in his code that allowed him to see the personalization data being passed between Facebook and whichever site the user was trying to sign into. You know: user profile data, interests, activities, email address, location and social graph connections, friends, likes and dislikes. Whole thing turned into a lawsuit when Gigity said they could prove Zimmerman was cracking their data, but the case was eventually settled. Zimmerman paid a king’s fortune they said, though he swore he never intercepted the data. As if he could ever be an innocent bystander.”

  “You think he was lying?”

  “I’m just saying,” said Lulu. “Zimmerman was an absolute genius. Cuspy code all the way. Would have been hard to fool him.”

  “Later on,” added Brody, handing the memory stick back to Lulu, “weeks after the suit was resolved, Zimmerman started having problems with his environmental controls and security systems. He called down to the station several times, swore he saw someone on his property. But, whenever I sent a car out, my guys never found anything. Not a footprint. I went out there myself more than once. Frankly, he seemed to be losing it. Zimmerman was always a little bit weird. You know those millionaire types,” he said, glancing over at Decker and raising an eyebrow.

  “Tell me about it,” said Decker.

  “Went on and on about being watched. Paranoid, if you ask me.”

  “And they’ve always got some pricey condition, don’t they?” said Decker. “Of course, they can afford to be sick. They don’t have the ded
uctibles we do. Say, Chief,” Decker added. “You wouldn’t happen to know of a place we could stay around here, would you? While we’re working on this story, I mean. Some lodge or hotel? Nothing fancy. Ms. Lee here tried calling before but everything seems to be booked.” He shrugged helplessly.

  “It’s ski season. You won’t find anything this time of year,” Chief Brody said. “Hold on a minute. Now that I think about it, I did hear something about a room at the Jamaica House though. Two towns over. Some couple had a fight on their wedding day, if you can believe that,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  Decker laughed again, the same half-formed throaty chuckle. “Sounds like my second marriage.”

  A few minutes later, they were out in the parking lot, slipping back into Lulu’s Ford Fusion. As she buckled her seatbelt, Lulu looked over at Decker and said, “I didn’t realize you could be so folksy. I thought you were all elbows and hip joints, as my grandmother always says.”

  “At least I found us a hotel room.”

  “What’s with that laugh, though?” she added, her voice breaking like slate. “Like you’ve got something stuck in your craw. For a moment I thought I was going to have to perform the Heimlich on you right there on Chief Brody’s desk.”

  “It elicits a primitive caveman response, a phonic association,” said Decker. “Helps to bond men together. Like the sound of a baby crying to mothers.”

  “Jesus, you’re serious, aren’t you? You actually believe that.”

  “It’s based on a study,” Decker protested.

  Lulu started the car. She looked into the mirror and slowly began backing out of the parking lot. “I did like your comeback, though,” she continued, slipping the Ford into drive. “When he recognized you. ‘Yeah, I get that a lot,’” she said, imitating him, her voice dropping an octave. “‘But if you were to actually put us together, side by side.’ Too funny. So, tell me. Is it hard being such a celebrity? I mean, always being recognized wherever you go?” She flicked on the turn signal and checked her side mirror for traffic. “Or can you still make it out to the local Piggly Wiggly like the rest of us common folk?”

  “Go ahead and laugh,” Decker said. “Believe me, it isn’t very funny when everyone assumes that they know you just because they’ve seen your picture in the paper a couple of times, or on TV. Or, worse, they think you’re the actor who played you in the movie.”

  “I liked the movie. I thought Viggo Mortensen did a great job.”

  “Well, at least he’s a Dane. But he looks nothing like me.”

  “Too bad.” Lulu laughed.

  “Yeah, whatever,” said Decker. “The point is, absolute strangers are convinced they’re your BFF. And if you don’t treat them that way, God help you. They get...snippy.”

  “Snippy, huh?”

  “Yeah, snippy. I’m sure you know all about false assumptions.”

  “Is that a dig about my driving, Special Agent Decker, about my being Asian and all?”

  “Actually, I was thinking more about Lisbeth Salander. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. You know. She had a bunch of tattoos and piercings. She had that weird hair. And she was a programmer too. In fact, now that I think about it, wasn’t her lover Chinese?”

  Lulu bristled. She swung her head out to make sure Route 30 was clear. “I hate Stieg Larsson,” she said. “His books have made my life miserable.” Lulu turned toward Decker, a saccharine smile on her lips. “Just so we’re clear from the get-go, I’ve never set my father on fire. I don’t have a photographic memory. And, no, I’ve never been raped up the ass. Though, on occasion, I’ve been known to give it away.”

  “You see what I mean. TMI,” Decker said, as Lulu stepped on the gas. “TMI.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Thursday, December 12

  “Only one bed, I’m afraid,” said Jerry, the innkeeper. A transplanted New Yorker pursuing an encore career, tall and thin with a well-trimmed goatee, Jerry leaned against the counter and eyed Lulu up and down, appraising her piercings and EMO dyed hair. “That’s why we call it the honeymoon suite.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Decker said. “Cash okay?” He pulled out a large wad of bills.

  “Sure. Cash is king. It’s normally three hundred a night but I can let you have it for two, as you’re friends of Chief Brody. I feel bad for that couple who booked it but I’d rather not see it go empty. You’re lucky you called when you did. Snow’s meant to be powdery through New Year’s, they say.”

  They signed the register and Decker peeled off four hundred dollars. Just in case. He leaned down to help Lulu with her luggage and almost wrenched his arm out of its socket. Lulu had brought along a bright pink travel roller bag and a bright blue vintage ‘60s TWA airline tote, which is what Decker had picked up without thinking. “What the hell is in here, cannonballs?” he asked her.

  “Odds and ends. If it’s too heavy for you, I can take it,” she added, already halfway up the stairs.

  The honeymoon suite was a large corner room overlooking Route 30, the main drag through Jamaica. Appointed in a floral print wallpaper, all bright blues and pinks, even the bed was a heavily-brocaded four-poster Victorian affair. Vintage photographs of Jamaica and colorful maps of the county covered the walls. An over-gilded chandelier dangled unctuously from the ceiling. Winsome on the highway to cloying, thought Decker.

  The innkeeper hadn’t been kidding. There was only one bed.

  Decker dropped the TWA tote bag on the floor with a bang and Lulu grimaced at him. “I’ll take the sofa,” he said, looking over at the banquette by the window.

  “That’s a love seat, not a sofa. And it’s way too small even for me. Don’t be silly. Why be uncomfortable? The bed’s big enough. Or don’t you think you’ll be able to keep your hands off of me during the night?”

  “I’m sure I can manage,” Decker answered, trying to sound as casual as possible.

  They unpacked and headed back down to the lobby. The innkeeper was hovering behind the front desk, fussing with paperwork. Decker engaged him in conversation about the area’s legendary ski runs, the best luncheon establishments, the uptick in tourism due to the snow they were getting that season and, finally, in a roundabout way, to Matt Zimmerman.

  The innkeeper didn’t seem to know very much about the famous Net entrepreneur. Zimmerman had kept pretty much to himself at his house, he informed them, still staring at Lulu, and only visited Vermont a few weeks every year—for a month during summer, and two weeks around Christmas to ski. “Loved my crab cakes,” Jerry added with pride. “In fact, I’m serving them for dinner tonight.”

  They thanked him and took a stroll through the village, ending up at a diner where they wolfed down some breakfast. Decker wanted to head out to the scene of Zimmerman’s accident as soon as possible. But, when they finally arrived, as Lulu had feared, there was little to see. The skid marks they’d been hoping to examine in greater detail, the ones they had glimpsed in Chief Brody’s video, had been washed away by the elements long ago. Now, all they had left was Lulu’s recording.

  Decker stood on the side of the road, looking down at the beaver pond from the bridge. He imagined Zimmerman upside down in his car, pinned by his seatbelt, the water rushing in all around him. And then the water turned into flames and he saw his own parents burning, trapped once again in their Chevy Biscayne, strapped in by their seatbelts as the fire consumed them. He saw his father turn and reach for the lock in the door. But he couldn’t quite pull up the knob. The door was on fire and the little metal piece slipped through his fingers. And, try as he might, Decker couldn’t open the door from the outside, couldn’t pull them both free from the wreckage and flames, though he tugged at the handle, though he yanked as hard as he could as they blackened and burned.

  They headed back into town after that. Decker was sullen and quiet now, lost in a sea of dark thoughts. They spent the next few hours buying clothes for him, as he’d been forced to leave Georgetown without packing a thing. Then, they ended up back at t
he Jamaica House, where Decker took a nap, and Lulu wandered about the village asking questions. The day flew by. Before Decker knew it, it was already six o’clock and happy hour had started.

  They avoided Jerry, the innkeeper, and his insistent crab cakes, and made their way down Route 30 toward Winhall. There was a local watering hole which they’d spotted earlier that boasted cheap wings and cheaper beer, and Decker was certain half the town would be there after work. And he was right. The place was packed full of locals. It seemed that the visiting ski crowd had yet to descend from the slopes.

  In the end—although they split up and talked to as many people as they could—they didn’t learn anything new. No one seemed to know very much about Zimmerman, although everyone was convinced his death had been a simple car accident.

  “Fox,” someone said, speculating on the animal that Zimmerman was trying to avoid on the highway. “Moose,” someone else said. “No, it was obviously a beaver since he drowned in a beaver pond.” And so it went, back and forth.

  “I almost skidded off the road there just a day or two earlier,” someone added dramatically. “Beaver came up out of the pond. I tried to avoid him and skidded. Bang! Hit the railing but didn’t punch through, thank goodness. It’s a dangerous bend.” And someone else added, “And you drive a Toyota as well.”

  Someone said the accident had occurred in Jamaica but Chief Brody of the Winhall Police had insisted on taking the case as Zimmerman lived in his jurisdiction. And, strangely, said Lulu, reporting back from a chat with yet another talkative bar fly, the police chief from Jamaica had agreed. “How convenient,” she sneered, raising an eyebrow.

  Decker pointed at a corner booth and they moved from the bar with their pitcher and wings.