Memory Man

Chapter 38

It was late and they were sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor of the storage unit going through boxes. Jamison had returned a few minutes before with dinner in the form of Chinese takeout. She had laid out napkins, paper plates, and plastic utensils and filled Decker’s plate with food before doing her own.

He looked at her in some surprise.

She explained, “I’m not domesticated, but I am the oldest of seven kids. I’m used to playing parent at mealtime.”

He nodded and bit off a chunk of a spring roll while Jamison spooned some egg drop soup into her mouth. She had brought them each a beer as well. Decker took a swig of his and then set the bottle down.

Jamison looked around the unit. “You really kept everything, didn’t you?”

“Things that were important to me.”

“I don’t see anything here from your playing days.”

He shrugged and stabbed his fork at a piece of shrimp. “Not important to me.”

She nodded slowly. “But with what happened to your family doesn’t it hurt to keep all this stuff? Your daughter’s clothes? Your wife’s cookbooks? Letters? Pictures?”

“The only thing that hurts is not having them here.” He looked at her. “How long were you married?”

“Too long.”

He looked at her expectantly.

“Two years and three months,” she finally said. “I guess not that long, actually.”

“What happened?”

“Things just went sideways. He wasn’t the guy I thought he was. And I guess I wasn’t the woman he thought I was.”

“Kids?”

“Thank God, no. That would have made it a lot harder.”

“Yeah, it would. Kids make everything better. And harder.”

She leaned back against a cardboard box, drew her knees up, and sipped her beer. She tapped her head. “So the hit altered your mind somehow?”

Decker nodded and took a swig of beer.

“I saw some of the reports from that institute place in the box back there. Was it weird?”

He set the beer down and rubbed at his beard. “Do you mean did I feel like a guinea pig? Yes.”

“How did the others come by it?”

“None of us were told that officially. I guess patient privacy. But there’s always scuttlebutt. Most were probably born with it. A few, like me, suffered a brain trauma. I think some of the folks at the institute knew about me because the hit was on TV.”

“Did you all have similar...?”

“Gifts? There was a core part of it. Near-total recall of certain things. Aside from that, it differed quite a bit. One of them could play any musical instrument with pretty much no instruction. Another could divide any prime number in his head no matter how large. There was this other woman who had qualified as a grand master of memory when she was seven.”

“Grand master of memory? What did she have to do?”

“Three tasks. The first was to memorize one thousand random numbers in an hour. Next, she had to memorize the order of ten decks of cards in an hour. And lastly, memorize the order of one deck of cards in under two minutes.”

“Wow, who knew it would be so easy,” said Jamison sarcastically.

“There are around one hundred and fifty people in the world who have successfully performed the three tasks.”

“Didn’t think it would be that many.”

“It’s not, in the grand scheme of seven billion people.”

“Could you do it?”

“I’ve never tried. Never saw the point.”

They both fell silent.

Jamison watched Decker closely.

“Even though this guy’s motivation is you, it’s not about you, you realize that, don’t you?”

“Now thirteen people have been murdered because somebody has a problem with me. This is definitely about me.”

“You didn’t pull the trigger. Someone else did. And whatever he thinks you did, it doesn’t justify what he’s done.”

“Tell it to the victims’ families.”

“You are the family of victims.”

Decker pushed his plate away and struggled up. His knees and back were killing him and he had to take a leak.

He went outside and around the corner, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself.

He was surprised when Jamison spoke. She had apparently followed him.

“You don’t need to guilt-trip yourself. That’s what he wants. You know that. It’s all part of it. He gets inside your head, he wins, on two fronts. One, his brain beats your brain, so he gets personal satisfaction. And if you’re not thinking straight you have no shot at tracking him down. Win-win for him. He’s counting on that.”

Decker zipped his pants back up and turned to her. “I know that.”

“So don’t let him do it.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Maybe for someone with an average mind. You don’t have one of those.”

He advanced on her, backing her up against the wall of the storage unit. “You think having a freak mind means I don’t have emotions? That I don’t feel anything? Is that what you think? Because you’re wrong.”

“It’s not what I think. I think the other guy doesn’t feel anything. He’s abnormal in that way. You’re not.”

“Then what the hell are you saying?”

“You can feel anything you want, Decker. You’re pissed beyond belief right now. I get that. You think the slaughter begins and ends at your doorstep. Maybe you want to hit somebody or something. Drive your fist through that wall. Okay, but don’t let him mess with the part of your brain that you will need to one day put handcuffs on this son of a bitch and then watch him take his last breath in the death chamber. You want to score this game? That’s how you score it. Winner lives, loser gets the needle.”

Decker took a step back. She didn’t move.

He looked away, then down at the asphalt. Then he walked back to the storage unit to keep digging.

Two hours later they had gone through every box and had pretty much nothing.

Decker sat back against a shelving unit. “I’ve gone back to the first day I put on the uniform to see who I might have dissed that could have pulled this off. Nobody. I didn’t piss off anyone at the 7-Eleven. I busted bad guys, sure, but I didn’t do anything to give anyone this sort of personal vendetta.”

He rubbed his face and closed his eyes.

Jamison rubbed a kink out of her neck and looked across at him, suddenly looking puzzled.

“Why did you only go back to when you put on the cop uniform?”

He opened his eyes. “I also went through anybody at Mansfield that might have something against me. There’s nothing there, Jamison. Nothing.”

“So you covered your growing up in Burlington. And you covered your life after coming back to Burlington. What about in between?”

“What, you think the guy who laid me out on that hit is behind this? After his knees and shoulders gave out, he was cut from his team, went broke, turned to selling drugs, and he’s currently in the custody of the Louisiana prison system. And I was never a good enough football player to make anyone jealous of me in college or the pros.”

Jamison yawned. “So if Sebastian Leopold is involved, why would he have told the cops you dissed him at the 7-Eleven if you didn’t?”

“You mean why would a murderer lie?”

“I mean, how could you not know him if you did something so bad he’s doing all this in retaliation? And his crazy act could just be that, an act. But this guy strikes me as literal. Your family, Mansfield High. The communications to you, can you tell me what they were about?”

“One was written on the wall at my old house.”

“What did it say?”

He repeated the message to her.

“And the others?”

He told her about the code embedded in the musical score on Debbie Watson’s wall. And then the words carved into Lafferty.

“Jesus,” she exclaimed. “So he refers to you as ‘bro’ in each message?”

Decker nodded.

“And he also says you two are a lot alike. That you’re all the other has.”

“Yes.”

“And with the last message he’s asserting that you actually have control of this thing. That you can determine when to end it.”

Decker looked at her. “Meaning him or me.”

“And he obviously wants to be the one left standing.”

“I would expect so.”

“Okay. But it seems to me that he feels like he’s in competition with you. Brothers. Part of something that we’re just not seeing.”

Decker opened his eyes. “Like a team?”

“You were never in the military?”

He shook his head.

“Then maybe like a team.”

“I already told you, I was never good enough to tick someone off in football. I never took somebody’s position and along with it a paycheck. Besides, I can’t see someone murdering all these people because he was third string to my second string on a college football team. And in the pros I was just a spare piece of meat. I was never missed.”

“But you’re convinced Leopold is involved in this?”

“Yes.”

“Based on your gut?”

“Based on the fact that he’s disappeared. I’ve checked every homeless shelter in town. He’s never been to any of them. He played me. He walked out of that bar knowing that he was going to disappear. And the waitress was working with him. The waitress is the other person. The one with the beef against me. She’s the one I really want.”

“But you mentioned that this waitress might be a man.”

“Yes. Our shooter, in fact. Leopold was in lockup both times. It had to be the other one.”

“And he used the stuff you found at the school to make himself appear bigger.”

“Pretty clever since the cops live and die by physical description. Once they get that height and size in their heads they never look at anyone outside that box. It’s just beaten into us.”

“So Leopold and/or the shooter might know how cops think?”

“Yes.”

Jamison mulled this over. “Then the only direct fact he’s really told anyone is that you dissed him at your local 7-Eleven. But you’re sure he’s lying about that. So we have to go back to that and start from there — Decker?”

Decker had lurched to his feet and was looking down at her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You said it was our only direct fact.”

“Right, I know. But—”

“But it’s not.”

“Not what?”

“A fact.”

He hurried from the storage space without another word. She jumped to her feet, grabbed her bag, and followed.