David Baldacci - Memory Man

He went up the blue steps and stepped into the blue kitchen. It was full of dust and some dead insects were on the floor and on the countertops. He eyed the spot where the kitchen table had been. That’s where Johnny Sacks had been attacked.

The blood had long since been cleaned up, but Decker remembered where every drop had been. Not red now, all blue, like the color of blood as seen inside veins through one’s skin, only a thousand times more potent.

He passed into the next room and up the stairs. The same stairs he had taken three at a time on that night. Bouncing off walls, oblivious to whoever might have been in here harming his family.

The mattress and box springs were gone from their bedroom. Evidence. They were at a secure storage unit maintained by the Burlington police. They might be there forever.

Still, he clearly saw her bare foot raised up above the bed. He crossed the room and looked down and saw neon-blue Cassie on the floor. The only thing that wasn’t blue about her was the single gunshot wound to her head. Even in Decker’s altered mind it would forever be just like it actually was: black and blistered.

He turned and left because his resistance was wearing down and he had other rooms to visit.

He opened the bathroom door and looked at the toilet where his child had been seated, the bathrobe cord cruelly holding her dead body in place.

Leopold had not explained that. He had just done it. Didn’t really know why. Felt right. He said . The man no one could identify. The man who wanted to plead guilty and die.

He looked down at the spot where he had sat cross-legged with the gun first inside his mouth and then pressed against his temple. His dead daughter in front of him. He had wanted to join her, he guessed, in death. But he hadn’t pulled the trigger. The cops had come and recognized him and talked him out of the weapon. It was a wonder they hadn’t shot him. Maybe it would have been better if they had.

He turned and walked back down the hall to the next door.

Molly’s room. He had only been here a few times since cleaning it out after her death.

The noise from inside caused him to stop, his hand halfway to the knob. He looked around. He had left his gun back in his room because he knew he had been going to the courthouse. He listened some more and then his tension eased. It was not human feet he was hearing.

Scampering, tapping, tiny.

He opened the door in time to see a rat disappear into a hole in the drywall.

He could recall every stick of furniture, the placement of every stuffed animal, the location of each book, for Molly had been a voracious reader.

Decker had been about to fully enter the room when he stopped and stiffened. There was something here that his perfect memory did not recall, and with good reason. Because it had not been here the last time Decker had been in this room.

On the wall, written in red block letters.

We are so much alike, Amos. So much. Like brothers. Do you have a brother? Of course you don’t. I checked. Sisters, yes, but no brother. So can I be yours? We’re really all the other has now. We need each other.

He read through this message three times. He wanted to dig beneath the words and discover the author. But the more he stared at the words, the more unsettled he became. The person had come back here. Had come back here to write this message to him. This was not about some perceived slight at a 7-Eleven. This was deeply personal with Decker.

As the message had said, Decker had no brother. He had two sisters. Long since moved away. One in California with her Army husband and four kids. The other was in Alaska, childless but prospering and enjoying life with her oil executive husband. They had come for the funerals and then had gone back home. He had not spoken to them since. His fault. They had tried. Repeatedly. He had rebuffed. Repeatedly.

But still, he had to make sure. Whoever had written this message had done his homework. Sisters .

He slowly pulled his phone from his pocket and texted each of them. He waited, waited, waited. Then a pop on his phone. California sister was fine and happy to hear from him.

Two minutes later he hadn’t moved. It was even earlier in Alaska. Maybe she wasn’t up—

Another pop. His sister from Fairbanks had texted. She was fine. To please call when he got a chance.

He punched in another number and waited for the person to answer.

“Lancaster,” the voice said.

Decker said, “Mary, you need to see something. And you need to see it now.”

Lancaster had come. Then Captain Miller. Then the uniforms. Then the forensics team with all its bags of gadgets. It was like that night all over again, only he wasn’t staring at his dead daughter while holding a gun against his head.

The message had been written with a red Sharpie. The ink dried almost immediately, and there was no telling how long it had been there. Thus Leopold was not in the clear. He had only been locked up since very early yesterday morning.

Miller had wanted to know how the killer would have known Decker would come back here, enter this room, and see this message.

“I’ve been back here before,” admitted Decker.

“And you went inside each time,” said Lancaster.

“Not every time, no. I couldn’t... every time.”

“When was the last time you were in this room?” asked Lancaster.

“Four weeks and three days ago, right about this time.”

“So at least we have a time window to work with,” noted Lancaster.

“Maybe this guy has been following you and knows you come here,” said Miller. “That’s why he put this message up.”

“We can canvass the neighborhood, see if anyone saw something,” said Lancaster.

“They didn’t see who murdered three people,” countered Decker. “I don’t see why they would have seen the person who did this.”

“But still,” replied Miller. “We’re going to do it.”

“Brothers?” said Lancaster curiously as a police photographer took shots of the message. “We might want to get a shrink in on this to analyze what’s going on inside the dude’s head.”

“So you think this is Leopold’s work?” asked Miller. He was staring at the graffiti like it was part of an inscription on the doorway to hell.

Decker said nothing because he had nothing to say. In his head the words were indeed a flaming red, thus not so far away from hell. Whoever had written this was either being straightforward, at least in a deranged way, or else he was playing head games with him. Decker turned and left, ignoring Lancaster’s calling after him.

He never saw Miller grab Lancaster by the arm. He didn’t hear his old captain tell her to let him be. He didn’t hear Lancaster’s retort, and then Miller’s request sharpen into a direct order for her to stand down.

They both watched him from the window striding down the sidewalk with a purpose. He soon turned the corner and was gone from their sight.

Decker didn’t stop walking until he reached the 7-Eleven on DeSalle at Fourteenth. This marked the first time in his life he had not traveled there by car.

There were no cars parked in front. He opened the door, heard the bell tinkle, and then let it close behind him.

There was a woman behind the counter. She was short but looked taller because of the elevated floor there. Her hair was dark and straight, falling to her shoulders. She looked Latina. She had on a beige long-sleeved blouse with a bra strap showing on one side. She was around fifty and her eye sockets were starting to recede into her face like a pond starting to dry up. A large dark mole was on her left cheek. She had some sheets of paper in front of her and was studying them and then counting off packs of cigarettes shelved in slots overhead.