David Baldacci - Memory Man

“To the second in case you’re interested,” replied Decker evenly. “And if you’re wondering where I was when the school shooting was happening, I was at the Second Precinct.”

Bogart’s brow furrowed and he looked bemusedly at Decker. “Why would you offer up an alibi in the first place? Do you think you’re under suspicion somehow?”

“If you really think about it, everybody’s under suspicion somehow .”

Decker watched as Lafferty wrote this down word for word.

“Are you being deliberately antagonistic, Mr. Decker?” asked Bogart politely.

“No, this is just my personality. Ask anyone who knows me. I have no filters. I lost them years ago and never found them again.”

“You had an outstanding record in the police force. You and your partner.”

“Former partner,” Decker corrected, for he had a need for things to be precise, especially right now.

“Former partner,” conceded Bogart. “But in talks with people it seems that you were the clear leader of the pair. I won’t say you were the brains, because I have no desire to minimize Detective Lancaster’s contributions to your casework.”

“That’s very nice to hear,” said Decker. “Because Mary is a good detective and works her ass off.” He looked at Lafferty. “And if you work hard too, you might become more than a note taker for your boss. I’m sure you have the ability if you’re ever given the chance to use it.”

Lafferty flushed and set her pen down.

Bogart leaned forward. “This person seems to have a vendetta against you. Any idea who that could be?”

“If I did I would have already provided the information to the Burlington Police Department .”

“We’re all in this together,” said Bogart, who was no longer smiling politely.

“I’m glad that you think so.”

“So no one comes to mind?”

“When I talked with Leopold he said I had dissed him at the 7-Eleven. This was about a month before my family was killed. Only I never dissed anyone there. And if someone had a problem with me I would’ve remembered.”

“Are you saying your memory is infallible?”

“I’m saying I would have remembered if someone had a problem with me.”

“But all that time ago, you could have forgotten. And it might have been something slight, or seemingly innocuous. It might not have even registered with you. We all miss things. And memories are inherently fallible.”

“When were you born?”

“What?” asked Bogart sharply.

“Tell me when you were born, month, day, year.”

Bogart glanced at Lafferty and then said, “June 2, 1968.”

Decker blinked five times and said, “Then you were born on a Sunday.”

Bogart sat back. “That’s right. I of course didn’t know it at the time. How did you know? Did you look up my personnel file?”

“I wouldn’t have had access. And until five minutes ago I didn’t even know you existed. If you want more proof I can do the same thing for your colleague.”

“And your point?”

“I would’ve remembered dissing someone at the 7-Eleven whether it was seventeen months or seventeen years ago.”

“You think Leopold was lying, then?”

“I think Sebastian Leopold is not what he wants us to think he is.”

“And what exactly is that?”

“Homeless and more than slightly out of his mind.”

“So you’re saying he’s neither homeless nor out of his mind?”

“I’m saying that I think he’s dangerous.”

“But you said he couldn’t have been the school shooter. Do you think he killed your family?”

“He couldn’t personally have done it. He has an alibi for that too. But I’m rethinking whether he was still involved somehow.”

“Why?”

“Because he walked on a murder charge he confessed to. And now he’s disappeared. You don’t luck yourself into either one of those results.”

“So you do think he’s involved somehow. And now he’s disappeared?”

“I have no proof. And even if we find him we can’t charge him with what we have, which is basically nothing.”

“So why do you think he’s involved?”

This came from Agent Lafferty.

Bogart turned to her, seemingly surprised that she had uttered actual words.

Decker stared dead at her. “Because he’s inexplicable. And I don’t like people who are inexplicable.”

Decker left Bogart and Lafferty in the little reading room and walked across the hall to the cafeteria. This was where it all started, and it seemed that the old checkerboard linoleum-floored space kept calling out to him.

Maybe like a Siren serenades a sailor to his doom .

He walked around the perimeter of the space, looked in the freezer, turned the corner, and checked the kitchen area, then the outdoor loading dock, which led off into the woods. Initially they thought the shooter had escaped that way. Well, many of them still thought that, which was why a forensics team had been scouring the entire path and its environs ever since Decker had discovered what he had in the cafeteria.

But Decker no longer believed it.

He came back in and parked himself in one of the chairs the kids used. His wide butt hung off both sides of it and he could almost hear the scream of the seat’s spindly legs as it supported a bulk not usually seen in a high school.

So why had the shooter really been in the cafeteria? It was far from where the shooting spree started. The farthest possible spot except for the office and the library, places that would have had people in them at that time of the morning.

7:28 — Melissa Dalton heard the whooshing sound as the freezer door opened.

8:41 — Cammie Man was caught on video.

8:42 — Debbie Watson lost her face and her life.

Basically one hour and thirteen minutes were unaccounted for. What took all that time? If he was already dressed and gunned up? Why had he waited? Or had he waited at all? Perhaps he was doing something. Perhaps he was doing something critical to his plan that took some time.

Decker sat there for a few minutes while his mind chewed on this.

No one had been seen walking from the cafeteria to the far hallway where Debbie Watson had died. They had identified and interviewed two people — both teachers — who most likely would have seen someone walk that route at that time. It was not guaranteed, because a minute off here or there or a head turning to the right instead of the left and there would have been a blind spot.

But if the killer started in the cafeteria, he had to get to the other end of the school unseen. That was point A.

He had done it. That was point B.

Point C would be how he had done it. Point C was what Decker desperately needed to understand.

And then something trickled into the back of his head, was run through the meticulous filter that his mind had become because of a hellacious hit by a Bayou boy, and the trickle came out the other end reformulated into something.

Decker rose and hurried outside. He hustled over to the cornerstone of the school and read off the date.

1946.

He already knew this, but looking at the numbers seemed to bolster his confidence in the theory forming in his head. Colors had flashed in his mind when his gaze fell on some of the numbers, but colors did not interest him right now.

1946.

A year after the big war ended.

And a new one had almost immediately begun.

The Cold War.

Nuclear war threats. Armageddon. Kids huddling under their flimsy desks as part of emergency drills in case a hydrogen bomb was coming their way. As though an inch-thick laminate shield would protect them from the equivalent of a million tons of TNT.