Memory Man

Chapter 35

Shop class.

Shop class that never was this year because the teacher had quit before the school year started.

Decker had wondered if there was another reason — other than the passageway coming up in the storage room off the classroom — for the shooter to want access to this particular space.

He stepped through and into the storage room in the rear. He eyed the mounds of junk from old projects left behind like dinosaur bones waiting for an archaeological dig.

Well, Decker intended to dig.

He started at the top of each mound and worked his way to the bottom.

He found nothing useful. So he sat on the floor and thought about it. He went through the possible steps in his head. Up here, he decided, would not be pragmatic. The shooter would need more privacy, more of a buffer zone.

He left the storage room and went down the steps to the other room that had the false wall made of balsa wood. The junk pile here had been moved to the side by the shooter.

Decker didn’t have to dig very deeply through all the crap.

He pulled out the object and held it up.

A chicken-wire and leather contraption with padding built into it. The form was instantly recognizable to an old jock like Decker.

Football shoulder pads.

But much more than that. The structure went all the way down to the waist and included supports for the arms, broadening and thickening at every point. It was built on hinges that swung open when he undid two latches, like a shorter version of the Iron Maiden torture device from medieval times. It was like an entire torso that one could strap on and become basically twice one’s size.

He opened the contraption fully and tried to put it on. The thing was, though, he was already nearly the same size, so it wouldn’t fit him. But it would fit someone half his size. Instant giant. He marveled at how flexible and malleable were the wire and leather and straps holding it all together. It would have to be this flexible, because the person had had to both move and shoot while wearing it.

One-forty became two-hundred-plus pounds. Slim became the build of a defensive tackle.

Next in the mounds of junk he found pads that strapped onto the legs, adding weight and depth to the lower frame, matching the enhancements to the upper.

Okay, that solved the question of literal bulk.

Now came the question of height.

He kept digging.

And found it wedged between two old lamps and a table made partly from a tree stump.

He held it up, measured it with his eye. It was a boot with no heel, but rather a thickened sole running the length of the footwear. Wearing it would raise a person’s height about three or so inches. And he concluded that it would do so more effectively than a heel. Three-inch heels would severely limit one’s agility. This was simply like walking on a level raised platform. He placed the boot against his own shoe. Far smaller. Nine or nine and a half.

He found the matching one a few seconds later.

He put the boots on the floor. Even though he couldn’t wedge his far larger feet inside them, he was able to stand on top of them.

Six-five instantly became six-eight.

The same way five-ten or five-eleven became six-two.

He doubted that the shooter could have brought this equipment in with him on the night of the school play, stashed it in the cafeteria, and then taken it with him along the passageway. But he didn’t have to. He could have snuck all this in anytime he wanted and left it right here.

He found a trash bag and piled all of the items into it.

Okay, that solved the size, and also how the man had gotten through the door from the passageway without moving the AC units. He had been a much thinner man then, perhaps as lean as Lancaster, who’d had no trouble getting through the narrow opening. Lean like the waitress; she could have managed it.

Decker’s mind flashed to the camera at the rear entrance to the school. Only from the waist up. The shooter didn’t want any possibility that the platform boots would be videotaped.

The shooter wouldn’t have worried about eyewitnesses observing his feet. Those who weren’t dead surely wouldn’t have bothered to notice the footwear, not when someone was shooting at them.

He called Lancaster and told her what he’d found.

Several “holy shits” later she said she would be there in ten minutes to pick up the evidence in the trash bag.

Decker perched on a counter in the middle of the shop class and looked around. He wanted to order this all in his head, putting the puzzle pieces together, if only to see how many empty spots he still had.

Shooter comes into the school the night of the play, holes up in the freezer in the cafeteria. He comes out the next morning, uses the passageway from the cafeteria to get to the back of the school unseen. He’d arranged to meet Debbie Watson in the shop class. He knocks her out, changes into his gear, guns up, walks in front of the camera after dragging Debbie out of the shop class and positioning her next to her locker, and then turns the corner and shoots her. Then he goes on his killing spree. From the back to the front of the school. Then he flees through the passage in the cafeteria that connected to McDonald Army Base, the existence of which he found out from Debbie Watson. He stashes the elements of his disguise in the junk pile, which would account for the second set of shoeprints going up those stairs. After that, he makes his escape through the old Army base after accessing the passageway revealed through the supposedly solid wall Decker had discovered.

Okay, if that’s how it went down, Decker had one very important question.

Why Mansfield? Why shoot this place up?

He had one idea.

He had attended school here. But if this really was personal to him, there were things here that were very personal to Amos Decker. They literally had his name on them.

He lowered himself off the counter and strode down the hall.

School had not resumed and there was talk that students would be transported to other high schools in the area to finish out at least the first semester. Then over the holidays the town would figure out what to do about the rest of the year.

Decker was torn about students ever returning here.

Part of him wanted this place demolished and turned into some sort of memorial for the dead.

The other part of him didn’t want to give the bastards the satisfaction of having forced the town to take such a drastic step. It would be like giving in to terrorists.

He entered the gymnasium and walked quickly over to a large display cabinet set against one wall. In here were all the trophies and other awards won by Mansfield over the years. They were arranged in chronological order, so it was easy enough for Decker to find what he was looking for.

Only they weren’t there.

Every award that he had won, every trophy that had held his name — and there were about a dozen — was gone. He checked and rechecked. They were not there.

He leaned against the case and put his hand up to his mouth.

Someone had come in here and shot up Mansfield High. And the mass murderer had done it because of him. Amos Decker.

Same motivation for his family’s being murdered.

Me, Amos Decker.

He suddenly felt like Dwayne LeCroix had leveled him again.

His phone buzzed. He thought it was Lancaster.

It wasn’t. It was Bogart.

“Decker, we found something in a Dumpster in the alley where Nora Lafferty was taken. You were right. It was a policeman’s uniform.”

Decker sensed something else coming, though, from the man’s unnerved tone.

“What else?”

“The uniform was authentic. It was a Burlington Police Department standard issue.”

“And?”

“And the uniform had a name stitched on it.”

“They all do. Whose name was it?”

But somehow Decker already knew the answer.

“It was your name,” replied Bogart.