Memory Man (4 page)

D
ECKER WENT BACK
to his room and pulled out his phone. He didn’t like having to pay for a phone that had Internet access, but it was like having a huge library and an army of research assistants on the cheap. He checked the news feeds. They must have a lockdown on the Leopold arrest, because he found nothing. When he searched the name online he got a few hits but obviously it was other people only with the same name.

The guy had walked in and copped to three homicides. Even if he did plead insanity, he was looking at a lifetime inside. Was he the real deal? Had he done it? The cops should be able to tell pretty easily. Decker knew they had held back many details from the public about the crimes. They would interrogate Leopold, if that was his real name, and quickly determine if he was the guy or lying for some reason.

If he was the guy what would Decker do? Try to thwart the criminal justice system and kill him? And then end up in prison himself? But if he wasn’t the guy, well, that offered up possibilities too.

Right now he could do nothing. Nothing constructive, at least. Leopold would be arraigned and formally charged, or let go, depending on the outcome of the interrogation. If he were kept locked up there would be a trial, or maybe not if the guy pled, which most defendants did, either because they were poor and had no money for a decent attorney or they were guilty or they were both. Rich guys always fought it out, especially with jail time in the equation. They had a lot to lose.

But the prosecution wouldn’t have to offer a plea. They might want to try this sucker for their own professional gain. If so, Decker would be in the courtroom every day. Every minute. He wanted to see this guy. Smell this guy. Size him up.

He lay back on the bed. He looked like he was sleeping, but he was far from it. He was remembering. He was thinking back to what he once was. And what he was now. He thought about this often, even when he didn’t want to. Sometimes, most of the time, the decision wasn’t up to him. It was up to his brain, which, ironically enough, seemed to have a mind of its own.

I am Amos Decker. I’m forty-two years old and look at least ten years older (on a good day, of which I haven’t had one in four hundred and seventy-nine days), and feel at least a century older than that. I used to be a cop and then a detective but am no longer gainfully employed in either occupation. I have hyperthymesia, which means I never forget anything. I’m not talking about memory techniques where you can teach yourself to remember things better, like the order of a pack of cards using association tricks. No, with me it’s just a turbocharged brain that has somehow unlocked what we all have but never use. There aren’t many hyper-Ts—my shorthand—in the world. But I’m officially one of them.

And it seems my sensory pathways have also crossed streams so that I count in colors and see time as pictures in my head. In fact, colors intrude on my thoughts at the most random times. We’re called synesthetes. So I count in color and I “see” time and sometimes I also associate color with people or objects.

Many people with synesthesia are also autistic or have Asperger’s syndrome. Not me. But I no longer like to be touched. And jokes don’t really register with me anymore.
But that may be because I don’t ever intend to laugh again.

I was once normal, or as close as humans get to that state.

And now I’m not.

His phone buzzed. He looked at the screen. He didn’t recognize the number, but that meant nothing. In drumming up PI work he had left his phone number a lot of places. He didn’t want to focus on work right now, but then again, he couldn’t ignore paying clients either. If he got kicked out of this dump for nonpayment it was back to cardboard. And winter was coming. And while he had a lot of fat on him to keep warm, he would always take a firm roof over paper products.

“Decker,” he answered.

“Mr. Decker, I’m Alexandra Jamison with the
News Leader
. Can I ask you some questions about the recent development in the case involving your family?”

“How’d you get this number?”

“Friend of a friend.”

“Second time I’ve heard that phrase today. Don’t like it any better this go-round.”

“Mr. Decker, it’s been sixteen months. You must be feeling something knowing that the police have finally made an arrest.”

“How do you know they have?”

“I work the police beat. I have contacts. Solid ones that told me a suspect is in custody. Do you know any more than that? If you do—”

Decker hit the end button and her voice was cut off. The phone immediately rang again, and he turned it off completely.

He hadn’t liked the press when he was a detective, though they could be useful in small measures. However, as a PI he had no use for them at all. And they would get no story or help from him about the case “involving” his family.

He left his room and caught a bus at the corner and rode it to a second bus, which he took all the way downtown. There were a few skyscrapers mixed in with a bunch of other buildings of low and medium height, some in good shape, others not. The streets were well laid out on a tight grid of right angles and straight thoroughfares. He hadn’t spent much time downtown. Crime, the serious crime at least, was either on the north side of town or in the suburbs. But the precinct where he had worked, and where the holding cell was for arrestees, was right here, smack in the center.

He stood on the street and stared across at a building he had walked into every day for a very long time: Precinct Number 2. It was actually Precinct Number 1, because the old number 1 had burned down. But no one had taken the time to redo the numbers. Probably not in the budget.

It was named after Walter James O’Malley, a chief of distinction some forty years ago. He’d dropped dead outside a bar with his mistress clinging to his arm. But that had not stopped them from naming a building after him, which proved conclusively that adultery did not really harm one’s legacy. Even if it killed you.

His old digs were on the third floor. He could see the one window he would stare out, when he wasn’t looking at Lancaster, who sat directly opposite him in the cramped quarters. The holding cells were in the basement and on the side facing this street, which meant that Sebastian Leopold was barely fifty feet away from him.

He had never been this close to his family’s alleged killer. Yet maybe he had, when he’d apparently dissed this guy at the 7-Eleven.

He turned away when he saw two plainclothes and a uniform that he knew. Though he had changed a lot since he’d left the force, he doubted they could miss him. Stepping into an alley, he leaned against the wall. His anxiety level was riding high. Headaches came and went. His brain grew tired because it just never stopped. Not even when he was asleep. It was as though his subconscious was actually his conscious. For a man who never forgot anything it was difficult for him to remember who he used to be. And how he had gotten to be what he was now.

He closed his eyes.

This “gift” came to me when I was all of twenty-two years old. I was a middling college football player who walked on to an NFL team carrying only fair ability, but a ferocious chip on my shoulder. I stepped on the field for the first game of the season after playing my butt off during the preseason and surviving the final cut. I’m on the kickoff team. My job is simple: Sacrifice my body to create mayhem and holes in the return team so other guys can make the stop. I run my ass down the field. I’m about to make mayhem. I’m running so hard that snot is flying from my nose and spit from my mouth. I’m being paid more money than I’ve ever made in my life. I aim to earn it. I’m about to lay some dude out, stone cold out.

And that’s all I remember. Dwayne LeCroix, a rookie out of LSU, was five inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than me but apparently a force to be reckoned with, because he laid me out on that field with a hit I never saw coming. The dude blew me up, as they say in the NFL. He would be out of the league in four years with both knees
devoid of cartilage, his left shoulder pared down to nothing but bone on bone, and his bank account overdrawn. He was currently residing in a max prison in Shreveport for crimes committed against his fellow humans, and he would die there one day either soon or distant. But on that day he walked away, fist pumping and sauntering like the cock over the hens, while I lay on the field unconscious.

And after that collision nothing for me would ever be the same.

Not a damn thing.

D
ECKER OPENED HIS
eyes when he heard the commotion across the street. Doors were being thrown open. Cars were squealing as rubber kissed pavement way too hard. Sirens sounded. Raised voices, metal clattering on metal. Heavy boots on concrete.

He stepped clear of the alley and looked across the street as patrol cars, sirens wailing, poured out of the precinct’s underground garage. More officers and plainclothes had burst out of the front door of the precinct and raced to cruisers and unmarked cars parked on the street.

He continued to watch as a bulky SWAT truck lumbered down a side alley on the precinct side of the street, made its turn, and then the driver slammed his foot on the gas and the metal rhino charged down the road.

Decker inched closer to the street, joining a bunch of citizens who had appeared from the crevices of their lives to watch this disturbing spectacle. He listened to the others to see if they knew what was happening, but everyone there seemed to be stunned by what they were seeing.

Decker hurried across the street when he saw the man emerge from the precinct.

“Pete?” said Decker.

The man was dressed in a suit with stains on the sleeve. He was in his early sixties, very near retirement, slightly stooped and with comb-over gray hair. He stopped and looked up at him. Decker could see that Pete Rourke had his service weapon out and was checking the mag.

“Amos? What the hell are you doing here?“

“I was just passing by. What’s going on?”

Pete turned pale and looked ready to collapse on the pavement. “Got some sicko at Mansfield High School. Walked in loaded for war and started shooting up the place. Lots of bodies, Decker. Mostly kids. I gotta go.” He let out a quick sob. “Shit, my grandson goes there. He’s just a freshman. Don’t know if he…”

He turned and stumbled toward his car, a light tan Malibu, fell inside, started it up, and left tire rubber on the street.

Decker watched him go. An army of cops heading to a shot-up high school? Mansfield High. Where Decker had gone, a thousand years ago.

He looked around as the sounds of the sirens dissipated. The folks across the street were dispersing, returning to their slivers of existence. Many were checking their phones for news. Decker did the same, but there was nothing as yet. It was all still just happening. However, the news
would
pick it up and then not let it go.

Until the next shooting came along. Then they would rush headlong that way.

Until the next one.

Decker stared up at the door to the precinct. He wondered how many personnel would be left in the building. Surely they would have kept some behind. They had a high-profile prisoner in a cage there.

He touched the bulge of the gun at his waistband. That would be a problem. A magnetometer was right inside the front door. He looked around and spotted the trash can next to the building. He walked over and lifted the top. It was barely a quarter full. Trash pickup wasn’t until the end of the week, he recalled. There was a rag on top of the trash pile. He slipped out his gun, wrapped it in the rag, and set it down in the can.

He looked down at his clothes. Another problem. He glanced around and saw the storefront. He had bought some things there before. A long time before.

Grady’s Big and Tall Shop.

Well, I’m big and I’m tall. Right now I’m bigger than I am tall.

He slid out his credit card. It had a limit. A pretty low limit. But it might just be enough.

He went to the shop and the doorbell tinkled when he walked in.

A well-dressed, rotund man came over to him and then just as quickly took a step back.

“Can I help you?” he said from a respectful distance. He probably thought Decker was homeless and looking to rob him.

Decker took out his wallet and flashed his PI badge. He did it fast so it looked like something else. He glanced down the street toward the precinct to add another layer to this subterfuge. Lying did not come naturally to him. And after the hit on the gridiron his filter had been vastly reduced, so it was even harder for him not to always tell the literal truth. He instinctively craved precision and was reluctant to accept anything less than that. Yet as a policeman who often moved in the underbelly of the criminal world, he had had to prevaricate. As a detective and now a PI, he had to be able to bullshit, otherwise his job would have been impossible. He had finally struck on a method that had seemed to work.

I will lie, perfectly.

He said to the man, “I’ve been working an assignment for too long. Let myself go. Chase rats you have to look like one. Gotta get back to civilization. Understand?”

The man had followed Decker’s gaze to the precinct and nodded. His manner relaxed. He even smiled.

“You’re not the first,” he said encouragingly. “We get lots of customers from the Burlington Police Department.”

“I’ve shopped here before,” said Decker.

“Sure, I remember you,” lied the man.

Decker shopped fast. Jacket, size fifty-four extra long. Pants, size forty-eight, which were still snug, and he let his belly droop over the waistband as many out-of-shape men did. He opted against purchasing a belt. His pants were definitely not going to fall down. Luckily his legs were long and he could get a pair already hemmed that fit. Shirt, mammoth. Tie, cheap but effective. Shoes, size fourteens. He opted for the faux leather. They pinched his feet. He didn’t care.

“Wouldn’t happen to have a brush and an electric razor?” asked Decker, looking in the mirror.

“In our toiletries section over here.”

“Briefcase?”

“Accessories, over here.”

He paid for everything on credit. When Decker asked, the clerk threw in a legal pad and some pens that he had behind the counter in a box of office supplies.

“They keep cutting our budget,” Decker explained. “How do we protect people if we can’t even afford pens?”

“It’s a crying shame,” said the man. “World’s going to hell. You interested in a tie clip or pocket square?”

Decker took everything to the restroom, rinsed off in the sink, rolled on antiperspirant he had purchased, buzzed off much of his beard, leaving only a shallow layer of fuzz over his chin, jaw, and upper lip, trimmed and tidied his hair, dressed in his new clothes and shoes, and put the old ones in the store’s bag.

He walked out carrying the bag and headed back to the precinct. The tie cut into his throat, and despite the deodorant, he already felt a bit sweaty under the armpits, though the air was cool. But he didn’t look like he had looked before. He hadn’t looked this respectable even when he’d
been
a cop.

He added the bag of clothes to the gun in the trash can and marched up the steps of the precinct. He knew this was stupid. Insane. He hadn’t been gone that long from the force. He could be recognized at any moment, like with Pete Rourke. But he didn’t care. He really didn’t. This was his shot. Maybe his only one. He was taking it.

He cleared the magnetometer. There was one young cop in the lobby manning the entrance. Decker didn’t know him and he didn’t know Decker.

Good and good.

He walked over to the information desk. The elderly woman sitting there was obviously not in uniform. She must be a civilian. Having a uniformed officer sitting at the front desk was not a smart deployment of resources.

His cover story formed in his head, Decker looked down at her. She looked up at him. Her eyes widened, perhaps simply to take in the whole of him.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“You have a prisoner in the holding cell, Sebastian Leopold?”

She blinked in confusion. “I’m not sure what you—”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“And who are—”

“He needs counsel. I don’t think anyone has been appointed to rep him yet.”

“I’m not sure—”

“Sixth Amendment, right to counsel. Can’t be denied. Just need a few minutes with him.”

“I’ll have to phone—”

“If you have to you have to. But I know things are pretty hairy around here right now. So if you don’t get an answer, I just need a few minutes with him.”

Decker lifted up his briefcase so she could see it and patted the side. “His arraignment is coming up. He’ll need to be prepped for the plea. I’ve got some ideas.”

“If you could have a seat.”

Decker looked around at the police officer manning the magnetometer. He was staring at Decker, which was not good.

Realizing he might have just blown a bunch of money he didn’t have on lawyer-looking attire, Decker sat down in a chair bolted to the wall and waited. The old woman picked up her phone and slowly, ever so slowly, punched in numbers.

Numbers. Always numbers.

They had a hypnotic effect on him, sending him to places he didn’t always want to go.

Decker closed his eyes and his mind began to whir, back…back to the day, no, to the exact
moment
when his life changed forever.