David Baldacci - Memory Man

Debbie had drawn a picture on this page. It was a good sketch, actually. The girl had possessed talent.

But Decker was far more focused on the subject of the drawing.

It was a man in full camouflage gear.

With a big heart drawn right next to it.

Decker had showered, changed his clothes, carefully combed his hair, and put on his most professional expression. He believed that the folks sitting opposite him deserved nothing less than that.

Debbie Watson’s mother and father stared back at him. The dad was a small, mousy man in his midforties, with a little scrap of mustache above his thin top lip. He had a stunted right arm, the malformed hand hanging from the elbow.

He looked like a freight train was bearing down on him.

Debbie’s mom was chain-smoking. The ashtray in front of her was filled with butts. Nicotine’s ability to rob the blood of oxygen had whittled fine lines prematurely around her mouth and deeply and unflatteringly chiseled a face that had probably not been pretty even in youth. Her forearms were veiny and darkened and spotted, probably from lying out during the summer in the hammock Decker had seen strung between two trees in the small side yard. The mom didn’t look like she’d seen a freight train. She looked as though someone had sucked her soul out. And the smell of the liquor easily crossed the width of the scarred coffee table set between them.

On Decker’s right, Lancaster was perched on the couch like a cat on a ledge. Her features were tight and serious and hunkered down and had been ever since Decker had showed her the drawing of cammie man in Debbie’s notebook. She occasionally looked lustfully at Beth’s cigarette, as if waiting for an invitation to pull out her own smokes.

They had not shown the sketch to the FBI or anyone else. They had decided to keep it to themselves for now. Decker had said, and Lancaster had agreed, that before anything was released publicly they needed to talk to the parents. If the sketch was unconnected to the murders, then they didn’t want Debbie’s family to suffer unnecessarily. In the world of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the Watson family would be sliced and diced to such a degree that no matter what exculpatory facts were revealed later, the truth would never be able to rise above the earlier electronic tsunami.

Decker had prefaced his questions with a lot of disclaimers. He had waited until the Watsons were fully prepped before showing them the sketch. When their gazes had held on the image, both had recoiled and then stiffened like they’d been electrocuted.

Decker saw them both outlined in a creamy white. For him death was blue, while white represented despair. When he looked at himself in the mirror for a full year after his family’s murders, he had figured he was the whitest white man in the whole world.

“Can you think of a reason why Debbie would have drawn these images?” asked Decker quietly. He pointed first to the cammie figure and then the heart. “Was she seeing anyone?” he added. The heart seemed to indicate this was a possibility. Even in the twenty-first century a heart drawn by a young woman next to the image of a man probably meant exactly what it had always meant throughout time.

George Watson shook his head, his mustache trembling along with the rest of him. His stunted arm swung next to his torso. Decker wondered how many jibes the man had endured over his life for his unusual appendage. That abnormality had probably defined everything about him, not because it should but because sometimes the world and the people in it could be so cruel.

Beth Watson didn’t shake her head. She nodded slightly and both Decker and Lancaster immediately focused on her.

“Who was he?” asked Lancaster.

“Never knew,” said Beth haltingly. “I mean, she never brought anyone home that we didn’t know.”

“We’re interested in anyone she might have brought home,” said Decker.

“No, I mean those were boys. You said this person was big. The paper said six-two, couple hundred pounds or more. Debbie never brought anyone home bigger than her father.”

George cleared his throat and said ruefully, “And I’m not even five-eight. Had my first growth spurt in tenth grade and never had another.” Then he fell silent, looking perplexed and a bit appalled that he had bothered to offer up triviality in the face of such tragedy.

“And they were all boys from school,” said Beth. “One of them’s dead too, in fact. Like my poor Debbie.”

“Which one?” asked Lancaster, her pen poised over her pad.

“Jimmy Schikel. Nice kid, played on the football team. Very popular. We’ve known them for years. Debbie and Jimmy went to elementary school together. He took Debbie to the junior prom, but they were just friends.” She bowed her head and said, “You just can’t imagine what it’s like to lose your child.” She picked up a paper towel off the coffee table and dabbed at her eyes while her husband awkwardly rubbed her shoulder.

At the woman’s words, Lancaster had shot Decker a glance, but he didn’t return it. He kept his gaze on Beth. He knew exactly what it was like to lose a child. And that fact wouldn’t matter in the least in this circumstance. There could be no commiseration among such people despite the seeming commonality of loss, because it was actually each parent’s totally unique hell.

“But there was someone else?” prompted Decker. “Someone you didn’t know but that Debbie also didn’t bring here? That’s what you mean, right?”

Beth balled up the paper towel and dropped it on the carpet. Her husband picked it up and placed it on the coffee table. She flicked him an annoyed look, and in observing that, Decker wondered how bad the marriage was. Just the little paper cuts that added up over the long term and that most unions survived? Or was it more than that? Enough to bring them to the point where losing Debbie might become the irreparable crack? Then again, it could cause them to circle the wagons. He had seen that happen too.

“She’d post stuff online about him. But she never talked directly about him. Even so, I picked up the signs here and there. A mom just does.”

“So you read the online posts?”

“I had her password for a while. When she found out, she changed it. She never named him. But she did have a pet name for him.”

“What was that?” asked Lancaster.

“Jesus.”

“How do you know that? Was it in one of the posts?”

“No. I saw it on the chalkboard that’s in her room. She had done some little poem about Jesus. Debbie wasn’t religious. I mean, we don’t go to church or anything, so it wasn’t that. It was a guy. The poem... was a little personal. It was definitely about a guy. When I went to ask her about it, she ran to her room and erased it.”

Decker and Lancaster exchanged a glance. He said, “But do you know if it was biblical or a Latino reference?” When she looked at him puzzled, he added, “I mean Jesus or Hey-soos.”

“Oh, well hell, I never thought about that. I just... I just thought she had some sort of God complex with the guy. But I don’t think my Debbie would have been hanging out with some Hey-soos Mexican,” she added in an offended tone. She wiped her nose and smoked her cigarette. “I mean, moms always know, even if their daughters don’t believe they can know stuff. Debbie certainly thought we were clueless.” She gave a sideways glance at her husband. “And some are clueless. Really clueless.”

Hubby removed his hand from her shoulder and dropped it between his legs, like a dog doing the same with its tail. He might have trousers on, thought Decker, but he clearly didn’t wear the pants in this family.