The Fallen

by David Baldacci

  “And she had a car. So there was gas, insurance, and expenses like that,” added Jamison. “You think someone was helping her?”

  “Well, I don’t know that someone wasn’t helping her. And this looks like the sort of place that if your rent check was late, your ass is out on the street. Trust me, I’ve lived in places like that.”

  “So have I.”

  “Let’s check out her ride,” Decker said.

  The vehicle, a twelve-year-old gray Nissan, was parked on the street.

  Decker used a key that Green had given him to open the car door.

  “She was a smoker,” said Jamison, as she waved her hand in front of her face in an attempt to dispel the stench. “You could probably get lung cancer just by sitting in here for a few days.”

  Decker had squeezed his big body into the driver’s seat of the compact car and was looking around.

  Jamison noted a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.

  “Think she was into gambling?”

  “Lots of people have fuzzy dice who never rolled a pair for real,” said Decker.

  “I was just kidding.”

  “From what Green and Lassiter could find out, the last time anyone saw her was three days before her death.”

  “A lot can happen in three days.”

  “I also wonder how she was paying her credit card bill.”

  Jamison said, “So again perhaps a secret source of money? Maybe it’s tied to her murder. Drugs? That would connect her to Swanson at least.”

  They climbed out of the car and Decker walked around it. He stopped and knelt next to the rear passenger tire. He used the car key to dig something out of the tread. He finally freed the object and held it up.

  “A nail,” said Jamison.

  “More precisely, it’s a framing nail, that they use in a powered nail gun.”

  “She could have picked that up anywhere at any time.”

  “Don’t think so. Look at the tire.”

  With the nail removed, it was already deflating. They could hear air escaping.

  “It’s not rusted or anything. And if it had been there a while and she had driven on it, the nail would have worked itself through the surface of the tread and the tire would have started leaking and then gone flat. And this tire looks newer than the others. The inspection sticker on the windshield shows that she had it inspected this month. I bet the tire didn’t pass inspection and she had to replace it with this one.”

  “Okay, but she still could have picked up the nail anywhere, like the parking lot of a hardware store.”

  “Possibly, but these nails are set in a strip carrier, sort of like an ammo belt on a machine gun. They don’t just fall out.”

  Jamison took a picture of the tire and nail with her phone. “Anything else?”

  “Tanner’s car is here, so that means she got to the house where her body was found another way, unless whoever killed her drove it back here.”

  “Maybe she went in her killer’s car?”

  “Or did she go separately? Maybe with Toby Babbot?”

  “Decker, the police can show no connection between those two.”

  “You’re wrong, they have one very strong connection.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They died together.”

  Chapter 15

  BEFORE HE WAS murdered, Toby Babbot didn’t live in a house or an apartment. He resided in an old dented mobile home trailer a few miles outside of town. The road in was part gravel and part dirt, and the small plot of yellowed grass surrounding the trailer was encircled by trees.

  Jamison pulled their SUV to a stop in front of the trailer and they got out.

  Decker immediately pulled his gun. “Someone’s inside,” he whispered to Jamison, who also drew her weapon.

  Decker had glimpsed a shadow pass in front of one of the trailer’s windows.

  “Do you think there’s a back door?” asked Jamison as they approached.

  The next moment they heard someone running away from the rear of the trailer.

  “I guess that answers that,” said Decker as he raced toward the dwelling, Jamison hard on his heels.

  They reached the corner of the structure and stopped for a few moments, scanning the area behind it.

  “There!” barked Jamison, pointing toward the right side of the thick woods.

  She and Decker reached the tree line and plunged ahead. Though Decker was big and bulky and not in the best of shape, he maneuvered around the trees with a surprising nimbleness. Only he had lost sight of the person and stopped so abruptly that Jamison ran into him.

  Gasping, Decker looked around. The sounds of the person running seemed to echo from all directions.

  “Where did he go?” said Jamison.

  Decker shook his head. “Lost him.”

  They heard a car door slam shut and an engine roar to life.

  Decker once again sprinted forward, yet he broke free of the trees only in time to see twin taillights disappearing down another gravel road.

  Jamison joined him a few moments later. They were both bent over sucking in air.

  Regaining her breath, Jamison said, “I will never pull your chain again about not being in shape.”

  Decker straightened and muttered, “Well, I wasn’t fast enough to catch the person. I couldn’t even see if it was a man or a woman. And I got zip on the vehicle, not even a letter on the license plate.” He kicked a rusty old can lying on the ground.

  “Decker, we did all we could.”

  “Let’s at least see if we can find out what they were looking for,” he grumbled, stalking off toward the trailer.

  They went in through the rear door.

  “No forced entry here. And the front door didn’t look damaged either.”

  “So it was either open or the person had a key,” reasoned Jamison.

  Inside, the place didn’t look like it had been searched. Yet there was stuff everywhere, neatly stacked on tables, chairs, counters, and the floor.

  “Pack rat,” said Decker knowingly. “But when you don’t have a lot, you don’t throw anything away.”

  “Green said they got no prints from here other than Babbot’s.”

  “So no visitors, unless they wore gloves.”

  “Well, the place just had a visitor,” Jamison pointed out.

  When they were finished searching, Decker leaned against the wall in the tiny kitchen. “No grab bars or special toilet in the bath. No wheelchair access. But a bunch of empty bottles for prescription painkillers. So what was his disability?”

  “Green said he was going to check.”

  “If it were obvious he wouldn’t have to check. And where’s the guy’s car?”

  Jamison looked out the front window. “Maybe he didn’t have one.”

  “He did at some point. There are wheel ruts in the dirt. He probably parked in the same spot every time. And there are old empty cans of Valvoline motor oil behind the trailer.”

  “Maybe Babbot drove his car to the house where his body was found.”

  “If he did, that should have been in the file. Since it wasn’t I’m assuming that’s not what happened.”

  Decker went back over to a table built into the wall halfway between the kitchen and the front room.

  There was a large pad of graph paper on it.

  He sat down at the table and looked at the pad. “I wonder what this is for?”

  Jamison joined him and stared down at the paper.

  “I used something like that when I would do my math homework in high school, but my pad was a lot smaller.”

  Decker bent down and looked more closely at the top sheet. “There are impressions on it.”

  “You mean from whatever was written on the sheet above it?”

  Decker nodded. “I think so.”

  He carefully tore off the sheet and handed it to Jamison, who slid it into a plastic evidence pouch she had brought from the SUV and then placed it into her bag.

&
nbsp; Decker picked up some magazines from a table and flipped through them. He did the same with some books on a small shelf. “Babbot had an interesting mix of reading tastes,” he said. “From porn to mechanical to guns to history to conspiracy theories.”

  “Sounds just like a lot of America,” said Jamison impishly.

  Decker next picked up an empty prescription bottle from the kitchen counter. “And unfortunately, this is a lot of America.” He eyed the label. “This was Percocet. But there were other empty bottles for Vicodin, OxyContin, Tylox, and Demerol. All potent stuff.”

  “And all addictive. Overmedicating. It’s one reason we have an opioid crisis.”

  “Dr. Freedman,” he said, reading off the prescription label. “That was the name on the other bottles.”

  “Then Freedman might know about the disability,” replied Jamison.

  Decker looked around. “I wonder how long Babbot lived here? He was on disability. It doesn’t exactly pay enough to allow you to live in luxury. And if he had to move recently because his bills were adding up, we could at least have a shot at talking to a neighbor. They might be able to tell us something helpful about Babbot. Green will probably have that information.”

  He looked out the rear window at the trees and grumbled, “Here all we have are squirrels and deer.”

  “What was that?” said Jamison suddenly.

  Decker looked at her. “What?”

  “Thought I heard something. At the front of the trailer.”

  They went over to the front window and looked out. It was very dark now.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Decker.

  “Might have been an animal.”

  He sniffed the air. “You smell that?”

  Jamison took a whiff. “Smoke?”

  “Fire,” said Decker.

  They ran to the front door. Decker grabbed the knob and turned it. But the door didn’t budge.

  They looked at each other.

  “The noise I heard?” said Jamison.

  Decker ran to the back door and tried to open it.

  “Both doors are jammed,” he called out.

  There was a whoosh and one end of the trailer erupted in flames. They burst from the floor and quickly ignited the walls and ceiling.

  “Oh my God!” screamed Jamison. “Decker!”

  Decker was looking around as the flames crept closer.

  Books and magazines were bursting into flames. The air was thick with smoke. Jamison started coughing violently. They backed away from the approaching fire but there was no way out.

  Before they’d come inside, Decker had glimpsed a propane tank attached to the back side of the trailer about halfway along the frame. Once the flames hit that, the whole thing was going to go up.

  The smoke was so heavy now he could barely see Jamison. The windows were far too small to crawl through, but he used a chair to smash one open anyway, leaned his head out, and gulped in some fresh air.

  He pulled his gun and shot out the front door lock. He tried the door. It still wouldn’t budge.

  “Alex, get on my back.”

  “What?” gasped Jamison.

  “Piggyback. Now!”

  She jumped onto his back and locked her legs around his waist.

  “Keep your head down,” he bellowed.

  He backed up, got a running start, and smashed right into the door.

  It buckled and partially gave way. He put his shoulder down, set his legs into a squat and erupted forward again. The door came off its hinges and fell into the yard.

  The next moment Decker was stumbling to their Yukon with Jamison still clinging to his back.

  Decker looked behind him. The flames had reached the front door—or where the door had been. That was about the midpoint of the trailer.

  That meant they had maybe a few seconds.

  Breathing heavily now, he carried Jamison behind the SUV. Then he dropped to his knees, and Jamison hopped off him.

  “Get under the truck, Alex, now!” he gasped.

  He helped push her under the Yukon until just her feet were exposed. Decker was too big to fit under the vehicle. He covered her feet with his body.

  The next instant, the flames reached the propane tank.

  The resulting explosion lifted the trailer entirely off its cinderblock foundation, pieces of it flying in all directions. Objects came down and hit the big Yukon, which had been buffeted by the concussive force of the detonation. Decker heard the windshield crack. Something punched into the vehicle’s roof.

  Jamison screamed.

  Decker could not seem to catch his breath. His chest was tightening. It felt like a huge weight dead center of his broad chest.

  Shit! Am I having a heart attack? Now?

  The next instant something dropped from the sky and struck him in the head.

  Everything went black for Amos Decker.

  Chapter 16

  IT WAS A new color.

  Yellow.

  Blue meant death in his synesthetic brain.

  So what the hell did yellow mean?

  Heaven?

  Am I dead?

  He couldn’t seem to open his eyes, so maybe he was.

  Yet the fact that his eyes weren’t open and he could still see the color yellow meant that he was viewing it in his head. Was that evidence of conscious thought and thus life?

  Or was it his afterlife?

  He felt something. A poke, a prod. It seemed distant and distinct from him.

  His ears hurt. But he could sense something there too.

  He was vaguely aware of a loud sound. Like a cannon going off.

  He could feel nothing else about himself. Just the sound. And the color yellow.

  And the poke and the prod.

  The sensation in his ears continued. Growing in intensity.

  Something hit his face. Lightly, then harder.

  He tried to open his eyes, but the only thing he seemed able to manage was to scrunch up his forehead.

  The next blow on his face did the trick.

  With a monumental effort, he managed to blink.

  At first all he saw was darkness.

  Then he glimpsed something in the middle of that darkness. It was hairy and close to him; he could smell its breath.

  Then his eyes closed again. He seemed to sink into the ground.

  He remembered now. They had been out in the woods.

  The trailer.

  The trailer had exploded.

  Then Decker stopped thinking. His chest stopped rising.

  He had a moment’s sensation of the hairy creature’s breaths coming closer.

  An animal. An animal come to feast on him.

  He dropped into unconsciousness. He dropped into something maybe more than that.

  Right before everything went black again he felt his mouth being prodded open. And then something hit him right below his chest.

  Black.

  He had no idea how much time had passed.

  He felt himself jerk up and then fall to the side. He vomited and lay there moaning for a few seconds.

  He felt something on his arm and pushed it away violently. Then Decker got to his knees and tried to scramble away.

  He thought of the hairy creature. The pokes and prods. The breath. The blow to his chest. He was scared. Terrified. Was it a bear?

  “Amos!”

  At the sound of her voice Decker stopped scrambling, turned, and dropped to his butt, panting.

  Jamison was on her haunches a few feet away. She looked dirty and disheveled, but unhurt. Yet there was such a look of terror in her features that Decker could only gape.

  “A-Alex, are you okay?”

  She rose on unsteady feet. “Me? You…stopped breathing. I had to perform CPR.”

  Decker touched his lips and then his sternum.

  CPR?

  That had been Jamison breathing and pounding life back into him.

  “That was you? I just saw…hair. I thought it was an animal. A big, h
airy animal.”

  Jamison frowned and pushed her thick hair out of her face. “Well, that’s the first time I’ve been equated with a big, hairy animal.” Her features softened. “Are you feeling okay now?”

  Decker took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his head. When he took his hand away, it was bloody. “I felt something hit me back there. I guess it did some damage.”

  “Oh no,” exclaimed Jamison. She took out her phone, engaged the flashlight feature, and examined the back of his head. “It’s cut, a deep gash. You need medical attention.”

  She pulled some tissues from her bag and pressed them against the wound. “Here, hold that there.”

  Decker did so. “I thought I’d had a heart attack, but I don’t think that’s possible. I’d be out for the count.”

  He slowly rose to his feet and looked around. The trailer was gone. Their Yukon was heavily damaged.

  “You saved my life,” he said.

  “Well, you certainly saved mine.” She pointed at where the trailer had been. “That would have been our crematorium.”

  He nodded and took a series of long, deep breaths. “It must have been all that smoke in my lungs. And then running.”

  “With me on your back. And then your head wound. It must have been debris from the explosion that hit you. I wish you could have fit under the car.”

  “Even when I was thinner I really never could have fit under even an SUV.”

  “We need to call an ambulance.”

  “We need to call somebody if we want to get back to town.” He looked at the two front tires of the Yukon. They were flat and the wheels were pushed in. “And the fire department needs to come out here and douse those flames before the forest catches on fire.”

  Jamison pulled out her phone and called Green, succinctly explaining to him what had happened. The detective promised a response ASAP.

  She put the phone away and looked back at the trailer. “Somebody really wanted us dead.”

  “That’s actually a good thing.”

  “What do you mean?” she said, looking horrified by his words.

  “It means we’re making somebody nervous. Which means we’re heading in the right direction. Which is a good thing.”