URING THE FLIGHT back to Burlington they all read over the case notes of the Leopolds’ murders in a village twenty kilometers from Vienna. At the request of the FBI the Austrian police had also sent along information on Leopold’s background.

“There is nothing in here about cops possibly killing Leopold’s family,” said Lancaster.

“Well, if it was true, I doubt they’d put that in the file,” said Bogart.

Decker, who had been reading over the autopsy reports on the two victims, looked up at Bogart. “You have any string on this jet?”

“String?”

“Or rope.”

They found some rope in an emergency kit stowed in a storage bin, and Bogart watched as Decker took lengths of rope and started forming knots out of them.

“What’s that?” asked Bogart.

“It might be something or it might not,” was all Decker would say.

Later he read down the “Justice Denied” paper that someone had left at Clyde Evers’s door. Then he looked at the knots he had formed with the rope and then at the page. He read over the Leopold murder file, again absorbing every bit of information. Finished, he closed his eyes and began putting the pieces together. His eyes were still closed when the jet touched down.

“Amos, time to go,” said Lancaster.

As they drove away in the SUV, Bogart said, “My people will trace this website and see what we can find out.”

Lancaster nodded and then glanced at Decker, who was staring out the window.

“What do you think, Amos?”

He was sitting in his seat still holding the knotted lengths of rope.

“I’m thinking that a lot of people are dead because of a bunch of ignorant folks.”

“Wyatt and Leopold made choices, bad ones,” said Bogart. “Horrible ones. They’re responsible for this and no one else.”

“And human beings have limits,” said Decker. “And you can say all you want about the world being unfair and people rising above the atrocities done to them, but everyone is different. Some are hard as steel, but some are fragile, and you never know which one you’re going to get.”

“They killed your family, Decker,” barked Bogart.

Lancaster and Jamison exchanged nervous glances.

Decker didn’t look at the FBI agent. “Which is why we’re going to catch them and their lives will end either in prison or in a death chamber. But don’t expect me to fully blame Wyatt for this. Because I can’t, and I won’t.”

“I wonder where Giles Evers is,” said Jamison.

“In hell, I hope,” replied Decker.

* * *

Decker asked to be dropped off at the Residence Inn. He walked up the steps to the second floor and gazed back as the SUV rolled out of the parking lot. Jamison was staring out the window at him. She gave him a tiny wave.

He didn’t return it.

He went into his room and sat on the bed, the springs sagging under his girth.

He closed his eyes and let his mind whir back to two images of the same person but in different situations and garb.

Billy the waitress at the bar.

Billy the mop boy at the 7-Eleven.

He had gotten a good look at Billy the mop boy’s face, not so with Billy the waitress. He scrunched his eyes tighter as though refocusing a camera. The chin was the same on both. The line of the jaw. And the hands. People always forgot about the hands, but they could be as distinctive as a fingerprint if you knew what to look for.

Long, delicate fingers, short right pinky, no nail polish on the waitress, split nail on the left index, small wart on the right thumb. Same person absolutely.

He opened his eyes wide in surprise.

He had just seen Billy. In color. For the first time.

Gray.

For him, as for many folks, it was a confusing color. It lent itself to no particular interpretation. It was a color that could go one way or the other. People desperately wanted the world to be clear-cut in black and white. It made life so much easier: Tough decisions faded away; everything was nicely organized and cataloged. And so were people. But the world was not like that. And neither were the people who inhabited it. At least for those who bothered to explore its complexity.

Its grayness.

Now, for him, Leopold was yellow. Yellow was not ambivalent. Yellow was hostile, cunning. Sometimes colors were spot on. As clear-cut as numbers, actually.

The pieces were falling into place.

But why target me? What the hell did I ever do to you, Belinda/Billy? What?

Their only contact had been at the institute twenty years ago. His family had been killed more than sixteen months ago. Quite a gap. Why the wait? Because she had run into Sebastian Leopold during that time? And he had given her a way to get back at Decker? Avenge herself? But for what?

The institute. Ground zero for them both. Interaction limited. Words spoken directly to each other? Exactly none.

He closed his eyes again. He had to get this right. He had to be thorough. Wyatt had a reason for everything. She had been amazingly meticulous. The symmetry was spellbinding in its depravity. In its horror. So there had to be a reason for this too.

His DVR whirred back and forth. Images flashed past with astonishing speed, but he missed nothing. He saw everything that was there as though it was happening to him right then and at normal speed. No, in slow motion. Every word, every moment, everything moving at the pace of a snail.

In the group sessions he had spoken of his future. His hopes and dreams. But so had everyone else. Well, everyone except Belinda. She had been given the opportunity, but had not volunteered any information about her future plans. She apparently didn’t have any future plans, at least not then.

Well, that changed.

Some knew of Decker’s past, of his trauma, his near death on the playing field. He had not known of Belinda’s plight, though perhaps she didn’t know that. She might have thought that if she knew about him, he knew about her. But what did that matter, really?

He opened his eyes, his brow creasing with the failure of his mind—his extraordinary brain-traumatized, bastardized mind that had been born to him after his death and resurrection—to solve the one conundrum that would make all the other pieces fall into place.

He left because he could not stay here.

Thirty minutes later he walked into the Burlington police station. Captain Miller was there. Bogart had already briefed him on the trip to Utah, Miller informed him.

“You don’t look so good, Amos,” Miller said.

“Should I?” Decker said back.

Miller tapped his head. “It’s not coming?”

“It’s there. I just can’t make it tell me what I need to know.”

“You have an exceptional mind, but it’s still a lot to figure out.”

“Well, someone has to. And if it’s not me, it has to be someone else.”

“You think they might pull up their tent and leave?”

“Not yet.”

“What are they waiting for?” asked Miller.

“Me.”

He went down to the evidence locker and filled out the necessary paperwork with Miller’s authorization to step inside the locker and look through the evidence gathered thus far. Since he was no longer with the police, someone had to accompany him.

That person was Sally Brimmer, who explained, “It’s not like I have a higher priority than this case, Decker.”

They sat at a table as Decker went over every evidence bag, many of them twice. He finally came to his uniform the second time around.

“Technically, you should have turned in your badge,” admonished Brimmer. “It’s no good anymore anyway. The way they defaced it.”

Decker picked up the bag and looked through the plastic at the badge with the X cut through it.

X-ing me out, he thought. Like you did Giles Evers. He was wearing a uniform when he took you under false pretenses, Belinda. In a sense they were all in uniform. The cop, the football players, the coach, even theassistant principal, cloaked in the authority of the school. You were surrounded by people who should have protected you, but they didn’t. Instead, they destroyed you. Starting with a cop. With a badge. Just like mine.

He rubbed the metal through the plastic. Then he stopped. It was like rubbing a genie’s lamp. He had made a silly wish, never thinking it would come true. But it just had.

The last piece had just fallen into place.

And Amos Decker finally understood what he had done to deserve all this.