David Baldacci: Memory Man

“Hard to say and he didn’t. Maybe early forties, maybe.”

“How big is he?”

“Six feet and about one-seventy.”

“Lean or flabby?”

“Lean. Pretty wiry, from what I could tell.”

“My brother-in-law was my size, construction worker, and he could bench-press a truck. How’d Leopold manage it in a hand-to-hand confrontation?”

“That’s part of the investigation, Amos. I can’t say.”

He looked directly at her again but this time let his silence speak for him.

She sighed, chewed her gum ferociously, and said, “He told us your brother-in-law was drunk at the kitchen table. Never saw it coming. He said he thought he was you, in fact. At least from behind.”

He thought he was killing me when he was slitting my brother-in-law’s throat?

“I don’t look anything like my brother-in-law.”

“From the back, Amos. And I’m telling you, this Leopold is a whack job. His elevator doesn’t leave the basement.”

Decker closed his eyes.

So then this whack job with the broken elevator for a brain next went upstairs and shot my wife and strangled my daughter?

He opened his eyes when Lancaster rose from her seat.

“I have more questions,” he said.

“Well, I have no more answers. I could lose my badge for coming here and telling you what I just did. You know that, Amos.”

He rose too, towering over her, a great big blob of a man who could cause little children to run screaming away in fear just by... being.

“I need to get in to see this guy.”

“Impossible.” Lancaster was already backing away. Then she noticed the bulge at his waistband.

“Are you carrying?” she said incredulously.

He didn’t glance to where she was staring.

“I turned in my weapon when I left the force.”

“Not what I asked. Anybody can buy a gun. One more time. Are you carrying?”

“If I were, there’s no law against it here.”

“Open carry,” she corrected. “But there is a law against carrying one concealed unless you’re a police officer.”

“It’s not concealed. You can see it, can’t you? From where you’re standing?”

“That’s not the same thing, Amos, and you know it.”

He held out his hands one next to the other. “Then cuff me. Take me in and put me in the same holding cell as Sebastian Leopold. You can take my gun. I won’t need it.”

She backed away some more. “Just don’t push this. Let us do our job. We’ve got the guy. Let it run fair and square. We have the death penalty here. He could get the needle for what he did.”

“Yeah, ten years from now, maybe. And so for a decade he gets a home with a bed and three squares. And if he is crazy and his lawyer papers it just the right way, he goes away for life to a nice comfy psych ward to read books, work puzzles, go to counseling, and get free meds that make him feel no pain. From where he’s looking, not bad. I’d take that deal right now, in fact.”

“He confessed to three murders, Amos.”

“Let me see him.”

She had already turned away and was fast-walking back to probably where she had parked her car.

She turned back around once and snarled, “By the way, you’re welcome, you prick!”

He watched until she was gone from the lobby.

He sat back down at his table. He considered it his because everyone needed someplace to call his own. And this spot was it for him.

He had woken up this morning with not a single purpose in life, other than to live until the next morning.

Now that had all changed.

Decker went back to his room and pulled out his phone. He didn’t like having to pay for a phone that had Internet access, but it was like having a huge library and an army of research assistants on the cheap. He checked the news feeds. They must have a lockdown on the Leopold arrest, because he found nothing. When he searched the name online he got a few hits but obviously it was other people only with the same name.

The guy had walked in and copped to three homicides. Even if he did plead insanity, he was looking at a lifetime inside. Was he the real deal? Had he done it? The cops should be able to tell pretty easily. Decker knew they had held back many details from the public about the crimes. They would interrogate Leopold, if that was his real name, and quickly determine if he was the guy or lying for some reason.

If he was the guy what would Decker do? Try to thwart the criminal justice system and kill him? And then end up in prison himself? But if he wasn’t the guy, well, that offered up possibilities too.

Right now he could do nothing. Nothing constructive, at least. Leopold would be arraigned and formally charged, or let go, depending on the outcome of the interrogation. If he were kept locked up there would be a trial, or maybe not if the guy pled, which most defendants did, either because they were poor and had no money for a decent attorney or they were guilty or they were both. Rich guys always fought it out, especially with jail time in the equation. They had a lot to lose.

But the prosecution wouldn’t have to offer a plea. They might want to try this sucker for their own professional gain. If so, Decker would be in the courtroom every day. Every minute. He wanted to see this guy. Smell this guy. Size him up.

He lay back on the bed. He looked like he was sleeping, but he was far from it. He was remembering. He was thinking back to what he once was. And what he was now. He thought about this often, even when he didn’t want to. Sometimes, most of the time, the decision wasn’t up to him. It was up to his brain, which, ironically enough, seemed to have a mind of its own.

I am Amos Decker. I’m forty-two years old and look at least ten years older (on a good day, of which I haven’t had one in four hundred and seventy-nine days), and feel at least a century older than that. I used to be a cop and then a detective but am no longer gainfully employed in either occupation. I have hyperthymesia, which means I never forget anything. I’m not talking about memory techniques where you can teach yourself to remember things better, like the order of a pack of cards using association tricks. No, with me it’s just a turbocharged brain that has somehow unlocked what we all have but never use. There aren’t many hyper-Ts — my shorthand — in the world. But I’m officially one of them.

And it seems my sensory pathways have also crossed streams so that I count in colors and see time as pictures in my head. In fact, colors intrude on my thoughts at the most random times. We’re called synesthetes. So I count in color and I “see” time and sometimes I also associate color with people or objects.

Many people with synesthesia are also autistic or have Asperger’s syndrome. Not me. But I no longer like to be touched. And jokes don’t really register with me anymore. But that may be because I don’t ever intend to laugh again.

I was once normal, or as close as humans get to that state.

And now I’m not.

His phone buzzed. He looked at the screen. He didn’t recognize the number, but that meant nothing. In drumming up PI work he had left his phone number a lot of places. He didn’t want to focus on work right now, but then again, he couldn’t ignore paying clients either. If he got kicked out of this dump for nonpayment it was back to cardboard. And winter was coming. And while he had a lot of fat on him to keep warm, he would always take a firm roof over paper products.

“Decker,” he answered.

“Mr. Decker, I’m Alexandra Jamison with the News Leader . Can I ask you some questions about the recent development in the case involving your family?”