David Baldacci - Memory Man

In the end it had been for naught. His playing days long over, his law enforcement career also in the toilet, he sat on the hard aluminum bleacher with the row of ridges that guaranteed your butt would be rubbed raw after only one half of a football game. And in doing so decided that he could not look any farther ahead in his life than the next morning. But he had the rest of the day to think about things. And what he was thinking about were ways for a killer to escape from this place.

There were exit doors all over Mansfield, front, rear, left, and right sides. The place was built long enough ago that people did not walk in with AK-47s and open fire, and thus the original builders had never considered that possibility. But over the years, as the number of school shootings multiplied, many of the doors had been locked down or could only be opened from the inside. Visitors were now supposed to go to the front entrance and check in at the office. There had been talk of putting in metal detectors, but the cost was prohibitive for a nearly bankrupt school system. The school did have an automatic alert mechanism that would be sent out to folks’ emails in the event of an emergency. Presumably that had been deployed today in what was by far the worst emergency the city had ever suffered.

Outside the ring of police vehicles and media trucks stood the families. When he had passed them earlier Decker saw as much pain in those faces as he was ever likely to see in another human being.

Molly would have gone to Mansfield when she entered the ninth grade. He could have been one of the parents standing out there, feet stamping lightly on the ground, hands in pockets, faces looking at shoes, a few murmurs between grieving folks. It was all horrible, and Decker felt his gut clench.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Inside was a fading photo of his daughter on her ninth birthday — as it turned out, the last one she would ever celebrate. He traced the line of her impish smile and then the curls of her hair. Her eyes were her mother’s, hazel and sprightly. He remembered, of course, exactly when the picture was taken and precisely what he was doing when the camera had flashed. It had been early summer, so he’d been barbecuing in the backyard, grilling two of his daughter’s favorite foods: ribs from Kansas City and water-soaked corn on the cob still in their husks.

He looked back at the school and wondered again how the person had done it. First, gotten into the school with weaponry. Second, committed the murders. Third, managed the exit. That was the crux of the thing, really. Point number three: the exit. With all those people around, many of them still alive, how did you get away with no one seeing you?

“Dollar for your thoughts?”

He looked down on the ground near the crushed gravel path that ran around the football field, which itself was enclosed by a waist-high chain-link fence.

Mary Lancaster was staring up at him, a cigarette perched in her right hand, while the left one rode on her hip trembling away.

She slowly made her way up the steps and sat down next to him. She had looked pale and uncomfortable this morning. Now she looked crushed and even disoriented. It was amazing what life could do to you in less than a day.

She puffed on her smoke, said nothing, but gazed out onto the empty field.

“Shitty time,” noted Decker quietly.

She nodded but didn’t answer.

“What’s the situation?” he asked.

“You want to come and see for yourself?”

He turned to stare at her. Before he could speak she said, “I heard what you did with Leopold.”

“I never mentioned you coming to tell me.”

“If it was me, I probably would have just shot him.”

He knew that Lancaster had one child, Sandy, who had Down syndrome. Her husband, Earl, was in construction, which meant right now he was probably not working very much. They subsisted mostly on Lancaster’s salary, which wasn’t that large, but did come with good health benefits at least.

“You don’t think he’s good for it, do you?” she asked.

“I’d have to know a lot more.”

“He’ll get arraigned in the morning. With the confession we can hold him. They’re asking for no bail because he has no known address, no ties to the community, and thus is a decent flight risk. They’ll set it for trial once he lawyers up.”

“PD?” asked Decker, referring to a public defender.

“Looks that way. So, the Mansfield crime scene? You want to see?”

“I can’t go in there, Mary, you know that.”

“You can, if Mac says it’s okay. As an official consultant to the Burlington Police Department. A paid consultant. You won’t get rich off it, but it’s probably more than your PI gig is paying you.”

“He really said it was okay?”

She held out her phone. “Want to read the email yourself? Or let me do it for you.” She turned the screen back to her and read, ‘Get Decker on Mansfield. See what he sees. We need help and him sitting on his fat ass feeling sorry for himself or obsessing over Leopold or playing private dick for lowlifes is not a good use of his time.’”

“I see he’s been following my recent career.”

“I guess so.” She rose, puffed her smoke nearly all the way down, and then flicked the butt away. Decker watched as it dropped down to the crushed gravel, flamed for a sec, and then went out.

Like all those dead in the school, thought Decker as he rose and followed his old partner down the steps.

Schools should never be this quiet. That was Decker’s first thought as he walked down the hall next to Lancaster. His second thought was that this was the grimmest place he would ever visit.

He passed pictures on the wall of long-ago principals of Mansfield, including the man who had headed up the school when he was there. He glanced at rooms where he had sat in class, sometimes listening, sometimes taking notes, and sometimes sleeping while pretending to listen and take notes.

He forgot about the past when he saw the leg right at the juncture of two halls. It was a bare calf, which told Decker the body probably would be female.

As they made the turn, his deduction was confirmed. She was sprawled on the linoleum that looked old enough to have been there when Decker had trod these halls.

Photos and measurements had already been taken, and forensics gathered or nearly so, Lancaster had told him. The girl seemed posed, one hand out like she had been waving to a friend when someone had violently stolen the remainder of her life.

“Debbie Watson,” said Lancaster as Decker stared down at the girl. “Senior. Just turned eighteen. Her parents have been notified.”

Decker looked around. He had been working crime scenes for twenty years as a beat cop and then a detective. He should feel perfectly natural here looking for things he had looked for a thousand times before. But he did not feel natural. He felt like an outsider. He felt like all the air in the school was being sucked away from him.

He fought hard against this inner turmoil and said, “But they haven’t seen her?”

She shook her head. “You know the drill. Crime scene. No one gets in, including parents. Besides, why would they want to see her... like this?”

Decker had put on plastic booties and gloves Lancaster had given him. He knelt down next to Debbie Watson. As he did so his head started to spin. He cleared his throat and focused on her body.

She had taken what looked to be a round of buckshot full in the face. The result was she no longer had a face. He glanced at the wall behind her. It was splattered with bits of her. Books lay beside her; a notebook was soaked in blood. He looked down at a piece of paper that apparently had fallen out of a book. If these were the girl’s doodles she had been a good artist, thought Decker.