David Baldacci: Memory Man

He eyed the lanyard ID riding on her hip.

Sally Brimmer. Public Affairs. She must have come on after he left. His luck was running great right now.

Lie perfectly, Amos. You can do this. You have to do this. Every word counts. Because there will be blowback on this. Every word... So hit it.

He stood and held out his hand. “Yes, Ms. Brimmer?”

They shook hands. Hers was swallowed by his and he hoped she didn’t interpret his sweaty palm as evidence of his deceit.

She said, “I was told you wanted to meet with Sebastian Leopold?”

“That’s right. I understand he needs legal counsel.”

“And who do you understand that from?”

Decker fought back the anxiety building in his chest, fast-framed through his mental DVR, formulated his response, and out came the words.

“I have a contact at the News Leader , Alex Jamison. Heard of her?”

“Yeah, I have. She’s good. She probably does know. And you’re a lawyer?”

He showed her a business card with an office address on the other side of the city that was actually the address of a law firm.

She stared down at this and then handed it back. “We’ve got an emergency going down,” she said.

“I heard. Pete Rourke told me on the way in. Mansfield High School. His grandson goes there. I hope he’s okay.”

“So you know Pete?”

“We go way back, Ms. Brimmer.”

She sighed and looked around. “I’m not really the one who should be making this decision.”

“I could come back.” Before she could react to this offer he quickly added, “But Leopold has to be arraigned in forty-eight hours or else he gets released. I doubt anyone here wants that.”

“No, no they don’t. It’s just that—”

The right words flashed through Decker’s mind. It was like he was reading off a teleprompter. “And sending him to an arraignment without counsel or with ill-prepared counsel could create a legal snafu that could come back to bite the department in the ass, pardon the French. I know you don’t want that either. No law-abiding citizen would.”

She started to nod halfway through his spiel.

“You’ll only need a few minutes?”

“All I’ll need,” he said.

She hesitated and he could read the vacillation in her eyes.

She wanted no part of this and was feeling boxed into making a decision.

The farther he got into this lie the more anxiety he started to feel. He drew a long breath, pushing the bile back down his throat with the exhalation. “Just a few minutes,” he said. “Then I’ll be out of here. And he won’t be able to complain later.”

Decker truly meant this last part.

“You know what he’s accused of?” she asked.

“Yes, I know it pretty well, actually. But regardless of these heinous acts, he is entitled to counsel. And if he’s found guilty they can lethal-inject him without one complaint from yours truly. That I promise.”

The truth will surely set you free, Amos.

Her vacillation finally broke, like water from a womb.

“Okay, follow me.”

And Amos Decker followed her.

They rounded the corner of the hall and there he was, a rat in a cage, at least to Decker’s thinking. But that wasn’t enough. He needed to be sure.

Brimmer looked at Decker and then Leopold.

“There he is. I can give you fifteen minutes, max.”

“All I’ll need,” replied Decker.

There was a jailer there, again a guy that Decker didn’t recognize. As a detective for ten years he hadn’t mixed that much with the uniforms.

“Open it up, please,” said Brimmer to the jailer.

Keys came out and the door slid back and Decker walked into the cell and stared down at the man, who sat perched like a cat on the bunk bed.

Brimmer said, “Fifteen minutes, okay?”

Decker nodded but didn’t look at her. Her heels tap-tapped away. Decker waited until the jailer went back to his desk at the end of the corridor before moving forward and fully focusing on the prisoner.

Sebastian Leopold wasn’t as big as he would have thought from Lancaster’s description.

Or maybe I’ve just gotten a lot bigger.

They’d put him in an orange prison jumpsuit. His hands and feet were manacled and the waist chain bolted to the wall. Which was a pity because if he tried to attack Decker, Decker could just kill him in self-defense.

The head turned to Decker and he braced for some sort of recognition from Leopold. But none came. Strange, since he’d apparently dissed this guy so badly he’d taken his revenge in the slaughter of Decker’s family.

The eyes were bloodshot, the pupils dilated. Decker figured the cops had given him a drug test, made him pee into a bottle, taken a cheek swab for DNA and breathalyzed him for booze. The jumpsuit had short sleeves, so the man’s forearms were revealed. There was a tattoo of twin dolphins on his right arm. That was interesting.

There were also drug tracks. And they looked relatively new. He wondered if the man had taken a pop before waltzing in here and copping to three murders. You’d need some extra juice to do something like that, Decker thought.

Part of one finger on his left hand was gone, cut off at the first section. There was a scar on his face. A busted nose that slid ten degrees to the left. Hands heavily callused and strong-looking. He had done manual labor.

And are those the hands that took Molly from me?

“Mr. Leopold?” he said.

Leopold continued to look at him without really seeing anything. At least it seemed that way to Decker.

Still no recognition. And with the cleanup and cutting of beard and hair, Decker looked closer to the cop he’d been seventeen months ago when he’d allegedly dissed Leopold at the 7-Eleven.

He stared into the man’s face and turned on his DVR. Frame after frame raced through his mind, going back to the precise time period when he had supposedly run into the man. The date flashed up in his head so close that it seemed to be on the other side of his eyeballs. One month before the murders, that’s what Lancaster had said. Decker tacked on one week on either side of that date just to be sure.

His DVR whirred and frames flew past by the hour, by the minute. Decker had been to that 7-Eleven three times during that period.

Sebastian Leopold was simply not in there.

Decker shut off his DVR and sat down in a chair built into the wall.

“Mr. Leopold,” he said in a low voice. “Do you recognize me?”

Leopold seemed to be listening but not actually hearing.

“Do you recognize me?”

Leopold gave a shake of the head.

He moved his hands in odd ways in front of him. Decker observed the precise patterns the man was making.

“You need an attorney,” said Decker, and he patted his briefcase.

Leopold stopped moving his hands and nodded at this.

Decker took out his pad and pen.

“Can you tell me what happened that night?”

“Why?”

There was a sudden caginess in the voice that slightly surprised Decker. He had interviewed many prisoners, many accused. Many were dumb as dirt and had committed crimes for reasons stupider than they were. But some were a lot smarter than folks gave them credit for. And maybe Leopold was one of those.

“You need a defense. You’ve confessed to three murders.”

“I’m guilty. I done it.”

“You still need legal representation.”

“Why?”

“It’s just how the legal system works. So I need to know the facts.”

“They’re going to execute me.” The tone was of a child confessing his expected punishment. The cagey prisoner had transformed into a little boy. Decker wondered if it were the drugs doing this to him, making a pinball game out of his thought process.