David Baldacci - Memory Man

“Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans.”

“I know the saying. Unfortunately, it’s often wrong.”

They climbed into her car and set off.

She glanced at him. “You seemed like you saw something on the security video.”

“I did. I just don’t know what.”

“How did it feel to go back to that place? The institute?”

“I didn’t. It had moved. I just spoke with one of the people who used to work there.”

“Still a trip down memory lane.”

“My whole life is one long memory lane.”

“Is it that bad?”

“You ever want to get up from a movie?”

“Sure, lots of times.”

“And if you couldn’t turn it off? If you couldn’t get up and leave it because it happens to be running inside your head?”

She gripped the steering wheel and stared ahead. “I guess I can see that.”

The police radio mounted on the dash crackled. The address of a criminal incident was read out by the dispatcher.

Lancaster nearly ran the car off the road before righting it.

She stared horror-struck at Decker.

“That’s my house,” she screamed.

Mary Lancaster’s house was a modest split-level rancher about thirty years old. Even though Earl Lancaster was in the construction business, the house needed painting and the roof required repairs, and there was rot in some of the wood. The asphalt driveway was cracked in numerous spots. The inside was in a bit better shape, but the rooms were small and dark and the air was musty.

The dark sky around the home was lit by the rack lights of the police vehicles.

Lancaster screeched her car to the curb, leapt out, flashed her badge at the two officers coming out the front door, and would have bolted past them if they hadn’t stopped her.

One of them knew her.

“Detective Lancaster—”

She tried to push past him. He grabbed her.

“Wait!” he called out. “I’m trying to tell you—”

The cop struggled with her mightily, because though she was not big, the woman was completely out of control, enraged, screaming, spitting, and clawing. She was going in there.

Then she was snatched from them and held completely off the ground.

The cops looked up at Decker, who had her in a bear hug, her arms pinned to her sides.

She shrieked, “Let me go, Amos! I will kill you! I swear to God I will kill you, you son of a bitch. I... will... kill...”

She kept ranting and struggling, but he held her tight until she finally fell limp in his arms, her head down, her legs dangling. Exhausted. Her breaths came in ragged gasps.

The cop looked up at her. “I was trying to tell you that your family is okay.”

“What!” she screamed. “Then why the hell are all these people here?”

Decker slowly set her on the ground.

The cop said, “Because there was an incident.”

“I tried calling in to dispatch, but I couldn’t get through,” said Lancaster. “Where the hell is my family?”

“They’ve been taken into protective custody.”

“What? Why?”

“Captain Miller’s orders.”

At that moment Miller walked out of the house.

“Captain, what the hell is going on?” asked Lancaster.

“Earl and Sandy are fine.”

“What’s the incident?” asked Decker.

“Some things left in the house.”

“What things?” asked Decker, his gaze dead on Miller.

“Amos, you might want to sit this one out.”

“That won’t be happening unless you have some more officers on the scene.” Decker glanced menacingly at the pair of uniforms who had tried to stop Lancaster.

“All right, then,” said Miller, and he led the way inside.

They entered the kitchen. Decker eyed the beer bottles on the table and the overturned chair.

“I thought you said nothing happened!” cried out Lancaster.

“It’s not what it seems to be,” said Miller. “It’s... it’s all...” He couldn’t finish.

Decker’s gut took a jolt as the man struggled to find the words.

Miller led them into the adjoining room.

On the floor was a body. Well, it wasn’t an actual body. It was a life-size inflatable male mannequin. Someone had colored its head brownish gray. But Decker’s attention was riveted on the streak of red drawn across its neck.

“Was... was that supposed to be Earl?” said Lancaster.

“I think so,” said Miller hesitantly, with a quick glance at Decker. “Sick bastard.”

Decker also noted that an X had been drawn over each of the mannequin’s eyes.

Everyone had seen mannequins before. They were ubiquitous and thus innocuous. But this mannequin — it was the most sinister thing Decker had ever seen. It was like the threes marching in the dark at him. Pale, bloody, staring, silent, lifeless; the symbolism reeked of depravity.

Decker looked toward the stairs. And then he looked all around. He had been here several times in the past. But his mind, while obviously registering this fact, had now connected it to another fact.

This house was nearly an exact copy of Decker’s. Not unusual in working-class cookie-cutter communities, where one builder used the same set of plans in constructing hundreds of houses that were essentially the same structures, but for a different color paint or some minor architectural differences.

“So there’s another one of, what, Sandy?” said Lancaster. She put a hand out and snagged the back of a chair to steady herself.

“There’s another mannequin up there, yes,” said Miller, again nervously eyeing Decker.

In Decker’s mind he thought back to when he had bolted up stairs very much like these at his house the night he had lost everything.

“So there’s just one more of... of these things in my house,” barked Lancaster.

Decker looked back at the mannequin with the “slit” throat and then his gaze settled on Miller. And something in those eyes, coupled with what he had just deduced, made Decker say, “No, there’re two more there.”

“Yes,” said Miller miserably. “Two more.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Lancaster. “There’s just Earl and Sandy. Wait, is one supposed to be me?”

Decker was already heading for the stairs.

The first door they came to was partially open. Decker pushed it all the way open and they stepped inside.

A leg was sticking up on the other side of the bed, just as he knew it would be. He stepped to that side of the bed and looked down. As he knew it would be, this mannequin was a female dressed in a see-through nightgown. There was a blackened dot drawn in the center of its forehead to represent a bullet being fired into its head. Her eyes, too, had been marked with Xs.

Miller said to Decker, “I guess you know where the third victim is?”

Lancaster gaped as the truth struck her. “Oh my God, that’s supposed to be...”

“Cassie,” Decker finished for her.

Miller put an arm on Decker’s shoulder. “Amos, why don’t you go on back downstairs?”

Decker shook his head. “No.”

“Amos, please.”

“No!”

He bolted down the hall and opened the door to the bathroom. The others rushed after him.

On the toilet was the third mannequin, smaller, a child. They had even drawn in curly hair on the head, like Molly’s. The robe belt held her upright. Ligature marks had been drawn in around her throat; Xs had been drawn over the eyes.

The killers had indeed replicated exactly what had happened at Decker’s home, but fortunately substituting mannequins for real people.

But there was one difference, a significant one.

Above the toilet were words inked onto the wall:

This could so easily have been real. But ask yourself this. How much pain will you cause, bro? End it now. Do the right thing. Like you should have back then. Find the courage. Don’t be a coward, bro. Not now. Or next time the blood will be real. Last chance.