Memory Man (17 page)

D
ECKER WALKED UP
and down the street in both directions for a hundred yards. There was one alleyway next to the bar, but it was a dead end and no doors opened off it other than the bar’s side entrance and a door to an adjacent pharmacy that was both barred and bolted shut. There were no other side streets that Leopold could have reached in fifteen seconds if he’d been flat-out sprinting. Decker ducked back into the bar to see if maybe Leopold had circled back in there through the side door in the alley, but he hadn’t.

There were a few shops that were open, but Leopold was in none of them and no one in any of those places remembered seeing him pass by. There were no people on the street who might have witnessed anything.

There could be only one answer: Someone had picked up Leopold in a car and they had driven off. And that pickup, however absurd as it sounded, might have been prearranged. This of course deepened Decker’s suspicion of the man. And made him doubly upset that he had managed to lose him.

Yet there was nothing more to be done here, so he set off for Mansfield High.

The mourners had gone and had been replaced by two groups of protestors stationed just outside the yellow police tape. One group was pro-gun, the other on the flip side of the debate. They chanted and screamed and occasionally briefly skirmished with each other.

More guns! No guns! Second Amendment! Guns kill! No, people kill! Where does the slaughter end! Go to hell!

Decker bypassed all this and used his new credentials to get past the security perimeter. He met up with Lancaster at the command center in the library.

When he told her what had happened at the arraignment she appeared dumbfounded.

“He just walked?”

Decker nodded.

“Mac is gonna be pissed about that. And I would have expected better from Sheila Lynch. Looks like she got blindsided by the PD.”

“He was just doing his job. Truth and justice don’t necessarily enter the equation. The fact was, Abernathy probably made the right decision. With the confession recanted there was no evidence to hold him. And Abernathy was already ticked at the prosecution. He was probably looking for a way to drop the hammer. And he did. We’ve both seen that before.”

Decker had participated in so many trials over the years that he felt he was a lawyer in every way except as a holder of the official sheepskin and bar card.

“I’m glad you can look at it in such a coldly efficient way, Amos,” she said, a distinct frostiness in her own tone.

“How else do you want me to look at it?” he said just as bluntly. “Otherwise I’ve got my head in my ass, and where does that get us?”

She looked away and chewed her gum. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m just having a shitty day.”

Decker didn’t tell her about his tailing and then losing Leopold at the bar. He didn’t think it would add anything to the scenario, and he felt like an idiot for having let it happen. And even with an altered brain, who wanted to look like an idiot?

“The FBI seems excited,” he observed. The suits were running around with an even greater degree of energy than they normally exhibited.

“Mass murderer, connected cases, the stuff you found with Debbie Watson. It’s definitely upped the stakes.” She paused and fiddled with some pages in front of her. “And they want to talk to you, Amos. The FBI, I mean.”

He looked mildly surprised. “Why is that?”

“Foremost, because you’re the one discovering all the fresh clues. But it’s also clear that the killer has a personal thing with you. The message at your old home was directed at you. The coded note at Debbie’s house was about you too. So the FBI wants to basically question you to see if they can get any leads from whoever might have a vendetta against you.”

“And when do they want to do this?”

“Now would be a good time, actually.”

Decker looked up to see a six-foot-tall, broad-shouldered man in his forties standing next to him. His suit was impeccable down to the yellow pocket square that neatly matched the tie. He was clean-shaven and fit. He seemed to be the leader of the pack, if the way the other agents were anxiously staring at him was any indication.

Decker had never seen him before. He must have just arrived on the scene, perhaps from Washington. A heavy gun brought in for a heavy case that was gaining widespread attention across the country. It just seemed like the federal way. Leave the chickenshit cases to the local chickens while they grabbed the glory on the ones destined for the national pipeline.

The man put out a hand and smiled, revealing a slight gap between his very white front teeth. “Special Agent Ross Bogart. I’m a little late to the party. I was finishing up some things in D.C. Mr. Decker, let’s find a quiet place to go over some things, if you don’t mind.”

“Would it matter if I did mind?”

“We all have the same goal. I know you were a cop and then a detective. You know the drill, nothing too small. Nothing too obscure to follow up. Shall we?” He pointed to a door at the back of the library that Decker had previously discovered was used as a reading classroom for ESL students.

He rose and followed the man back. Another agent joined them, a woman Decker had seen before. She was blonde, in her thirties, with muscled calves and a jaw that jutted out like a slab of stone. She had a recorder in one hand and a notebook and pen in the other. A federal shield rode on her hip.

“Special Agent Lafferty will be joining us,” said Bogart.

“How about Detective Lancaster joining us, then?” suggested Decker. “She’s been right in the middle of this too.”

“Maybe later,” Bogart said with a smile, as he held open the door and flicked on the light.

They all sat around a small table, Decker on one side, the two special agents on the other. Lafferty turned on her recorder and held her notebook open, looking ready to write down everything that was said in the room.

“Do they still teach shorthand with all the digital stuff they have these days?” asked Decker, looking at her. “It seems that a recording would be one hundred percent accurate, whereas your shorthand might contain interpretations and selective nuances, of which you might not be even consciously aware, instead of what was actually said. Just a thought.”

She did not seem to know how to respond to this, so she glanced at her boss.

Bogart said, “Let’s start at the beginning, if you will, to help me come up to speed.”

“Why don’t you just let me summarize so we don’t waste time?” said Decker. He didn’t wait for an assent from Bogart but plunged ahead. “My family was killed sixteen months ago. The case is unsolved.” He then told the FBI agents about Sebastian Leopold’s confessing to the crime, being jailed, recanting, and then being released because there was no evidence to hold him. “As you know, ballistics has tied that case and this one together.”

“And you’re sure he couldn’t have been the school shooter?” asked Bogart.

“Impossible. He was in jail at the time. Hours before the guy started his rampage.”

“You figured out where he might have been hiding,” said Bogart. “In the cafeteria. The food locker.”

“I tied some witness statements together and made an educated guess.”

“Then you found the notebook in Debbie Watson’s locker with the picture of the shooter.”

“Another educated guess.”

Bogart went on, seeming not to have heard him. “Then you went to Watson’s house and made the discovery of the coded message held in the musical score. And then there was the earlier message, or taunt really, that someone left on the wall of your old house, where your family was murdered. You spotted that too.” Bogart paused for a moment and then said, “Aren’t you going to say, ‘Another educated guess’?”

“I
guess
I don’t have to now, seeing as you said it for me.”

“You seem to be taking this all rather lightly. Can I ask why?”

“I’m not taking any of this lightly. That’s why I’m working the case even though I’m not on the police force.”

Bogart glanced at a file in front of him. “
Cases
, really, isn’t it? Separated by sixteen months.”

“Actually sixteen months, two days, twelve hours, and six minutes.”

“And how do you know that so precisely? You didn’t even look at your watch.”

“There’s a clock on the wall behind you.”

Bogart didn’t turn and look but Lafferty did and she wrote something down.

Decker hadn’t needed to look at the wall clock. He had his internal timer that kept that count faithfully. Better than a Rolex and a lot cheaper.

“Still,” said Bogart. “To the minute?”

“To the
second
in case you’re interested,” replied Decker evenly. “And if you’re wondering where I was when the school shooting was happening, I was at the Second Precinct.”

Bogart’s brow furrowed and he looked bemusedly at Decker. “Why would you offer up an alibi in the first place? Do you think you’re under suspicion somehow?”

“If you really
think
about it, everybody’s under suspicion
somehow
.”

Decker watched as Lafferty wrote this down word for word.

“Are you being deliberately antagonistic, Mr. Decker?” asked Bogart politely.

“No, this is just my personality. Ask anyone who knows me. I have no filters. I lost them years ago and never found them again.”

“You had an outstanding record in the police force. You and your partner.”

“Former partner,” Decker corrected, for he had a need for things to be precise, especially right now.

“Former partner,” conceded Bogart. “But in talks with people it seems that you were the clear leader of the pair. I won’t say you were the brains, because I have no desire to minimize Detective Lancaster’s contributions to your casework.”

“That’s very nice to hear,” said Decker. “Because Mary is a good detective and works her ass off.” He looked at Lafferty. “And if you work hard too, you might become more than a note taker for your boss. I’m sure you have the ability if you’re ever given the chance to use it.”

Lafferty flushed and set her pen down.

Bogart leaned forward. “This person seems to have a vendetta against you. Any idea who that could be?”

“If I did I would have already provided the information to the
Burlington Police Department
.”

“We’re all in this together,” said Bogart, who was no longer smiling politely.

“I’m glad that you think so.”

“So no one comes to mind?”

“When I talked with Leopold he said I had dissed him at the 7-Eleven. This was about a month before my family was killed. Only I never dissed anyone there. And if someone had a problem with me I would’ve remembered.”

“Are you saying your memory is infallible?”

“I’m saying I would have remembered if someone had a problem with me.”

“But all that time ago, you could have forgotten. And it might have been something slight, or seemingly innocuous. It might not have even registered with you. We all miss things. And memories are inherently fallible.”

“When were you born?”

“What?” asked Bogart sharply.

“Tell me when you were born, month, day, year.”

Bogart glanced at Lafferty and then said, “June 2, 1968.”

Decker blinked five times and said, “Then you were born on a Sunday.”

Bogart sat back. “That’s right. I of course didn’t know it at the time. How did you know? Did you look up my personnel file?”

“I wouldn’t have had access. And until five minutes ago I didn’t even know you existed. If you want more proof I can do the same thing for your colleague.”

“And your point?”

“I would’ve remembered dissing someone at the 7-Eleven whether it was seventeen months or seventeen years ago.”

“You think Leopold was lying, then?”

“I think Sebastian Leopold is not what he wants us to think he is.”

“And what exactly is that?”

“Homeless and more than slightly out of his mind.”

“So you’re saying he’s neither homeless nor out of his mind?”

“I’m saying that I think he’s dangerous.”

“But you said he couldn’t have been the school shooter. Do you think he killed your family?”

“He couldn’t personally have done it. He has an alibi for that too. But I’m rethinking whether he was still involved somehow.”

“Why?”

“Because he walked on a murder charge he confessed to. And now he’s disappeared. You don’t luck yourself into either one of those results.”

“So you
do
think he’s involved somehow. And now he’s disappeared?”

“I have no proof. And even if we find him we can’t charge him with what we have, which is basically nothing.”

“So why do you think he’s involved?”

This came from Agent Lafferty.

Bogart turned to her, seemingly surprised that she had uttered actual words.

Decker stared dead at her. “Because he’s inexplicable. And I don’t like people who are inexplicable.”

D
ECKER LEFT BOGART
and Lafferty in the little reading room and walked across the hall to the cafeteria. This was where it all started, and it seemed that the old checkerboard linoleum-floored space kept calling out to him.

Maybe like a Siren serenades a sailor to his doom
.

He walked around the perimeter of the space, looked in the freezer, turned the corner, and checked the kitchen area, then the outdoor loading dock, which led off into the woods. Initially they thought the shooter had escaped that way. Well, many of them still thought that, which was why a forensics team had been scouring the entire path and its environs ever since Decker had discovered what he had in the cafeteria.

But Decker no longer believed it.

He came back in and parked himself in one of the chairs the kids used. His wide butt hung off both sides of it and he could almost hear the scream of the seat’s spindly legs as it supported a bulk not usually seen in a high school.

So why had the shooter really been in the cafeteria? It was far from where the shooting spree started. The farthest possible spot except for the office and the library, places that would have had people in them at that time of the morning.

7:28—Melissa Dalton heard the whooshing sound as the freezer door opened.

8:41—Cammie Man was caught on video.

8:42—Debbie Watson lost her face and her life.

Basically one hour and thirteen minutes were unaccounted for. What took all that time? If he was already dressed and gunned up? Why had he waited? Or had he waited at all? Perhaps he was
doing
something. Perhaps he was doing something critical to his plan that took some time.

Decker sat there for a few minutes while his mind chewed on this.

No one had been seen walking from the cafeteria to the far hallway where Debbie Watson had died. They had identified and interviewed two people—both teachers—who most likely would have seen someone walk that route at that time. It was not guaranteed, because a minute off here or there or a head turning to the right instead of the left and there would have been a blind spot.

But if the killer started in the cafeteria, he had to get to the other end of the school unseen. That was point A.

He
had
done it. That was point B.

Point C would be
how
he had done it. Point C was what Decker desperately needed to understand.

And then something trickled into the back of his head, was run through the meticulous filter that his mind had become because of a hellacious hit by a Bayou boy, and the trickle came out the other end reformulated into something.

Decker rose and hurried outside. He hustled over to the cornerstone of the school and read off the date.

1946.

He already knew this, but looking at the numbers seemed to bolster his confidence in the theory forming in his head. Colors had flashed in his mind when his gaze fell on some of the numbers, but colors did not interest him right now.

1946.

A year after the big war ended.

And a new one had almost immediately begun.

The Cold War.

Nuclear war threats. Armageddon. Kids huddling under their flimsy desks as part of emergency drills in case a hydrogen bomb was coming their way. As though an inch-thick laminate shield would protect them from the equivalent of a million tons of TNT.

Decker hustled back to the cafeteria, passing several suspicious-looking Bureau agents in the hall as he did so. He didn’t acknowledge them. He barely noticed them. He was on the scent. He had formed walls in his head that had compartmentalized everything down to this one line of inquiry that might answer the one question that seemed unanswerable.

He stood in the middle of the room and looked in all four corners, then pulled his gaze back. He went into the kitchen and did the same thing. Then the loading platform.

He didn’t see anything remotely close to what he was looking for. The problem was, he didn’t know enough. That was always the damn problem with police work.

I don’t know enough. The man who can’t forget anything doesn’t know enough. How ironic is that?

But if Decker didn’t know enough, then maybe the shooter didn’t either. Maybe the shooter had had to turn to someone who
did
know enough.

Or who knew someone who knew enough.

Now, that theory, if played out, might answer several questions.

The school was a facility, a building. Changes could be made. Changes undoubtedly
were
made here over the decades. The drop ceiling over his head had assuredly not been here in 1946. What else had been added or taken away?

Or covered up? Because it was no longer necessary? And then forgotten?

Decker slipped into the library and motioned for Lancaster to join him. She finished up a phone call and then hurried over to the entrance to the library where Decker was standing. Decker was acutely aware that Special Agent Bogart and his special agent note taker Lafferty were both watching him from a distant corner of the space.

He spoke to Lancaster in a low voice, his features relaxed. He might just be shooting the breeze with her. They turned and left together.

Once outside in the hall, Lancaster said, “Do you really think it’s possible? I mean, I never heard of such a thing.”

“Just because you haven’t heard of it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“You went here. Did you ever hear talk of something like that?”

“No. But then again I never thought to ask, either. And it might’ve been from a long time ago. In fact, it probably was.”

“But who would know for sure? From what you said, it could have been put in over sixty years ago. And maybe never used. Anybody who might have known about it is probably dead or nearly so.”

“How about students from back then?”

“Well, they’d be pretty elderly too. And the teachers are almost certainly all dead.”

“There has to be a way, Mary. Records have to be kept—”

They had walked outside, and Decker broke off his sentence as he looked to his left, where the old military base was.

“The Army might have record of it,” he noted.

“The Army! Why them?”

“That base has been here since, what, the thirties?”

“That’s right. My grandfather worked there along with half the other people in Burlington. They had a big buildup during World War II, like every other military installation in the country.”

“So clearly it was there before the school was built. And lots of parents who worked at the base sent their kids to Mansfield.”

Lancaster appeared to understand where he was going with this. “So you think they might have initiated it?”

“And what if Debbie Watson’s great-grandfather, who worked at the base starting in the late sixties, knew all about it, and told little Debbie when he went to live with them?”

“And you think she might have told the shooter?”

“I can’t think of another reason why he would have needed her.”

“But how would he have found out that Debbie would know something like that?”

“It could have been any number of ways. That’s not important. But if I’m right, we’ll know how the shooter got from the cafeteria to the back hall unseen. And if we can nail that down we might be able to work backward to where the son of a bitch came from.”

They hurried off to Lancaster’s car.

At the window watching them was Special Agent Bogart. And the man from Washington did not look pleased.

Next to him Special Agent Lafferty was busily writing down notes.