David Baldacci - Memory Man

He opened his eyes to see Agent Bogart standing there.

He and Jamison were in the library at Mansfield.

“You went to see Lancaster?” asked Bogart.

Decker nodded, his thoughts still on the images in his head.

“How’s she doing?”

“Do you still have your jet handy?”

Bogart looked surprised by this. He perched on the edge of the table.

“Yes, why?”

“Can I get a ride on it?”

“If I say you can. What’s up?”

Decker rose. “We need to get to Chicago.”

“You were just there.”

“I need to go again.”

“You have a lead?” Bogart glanced at the laptop screen. His eagerness was palpable.

“I have a lead.”

“Can I come too?” asked Jamison quickly.

Bogart looked at her and then at Decker. The latter shrugged.

Bogart said, “Okay, but keep in mind that the FBI is not running a freaking airline service. And not one word of anything gets printed.”

“I quit my job at the paper.”

“What?” said Decker. “Why?”

“I’m working this case full-time now. And I couldn’t do my other reporting duties. And, quite frankly, it was time to move on.”

She got up and snagged her bag. “So, let’s go. Chop-chop.”

She walked out of the room.

Bogart looked at Decker. “A real piece of work. What’d you do to deserve her?”

“I can’t process that right now,” said Decker.

The jet flew them to a private airstrip south of the Windy City and they took an SUV to the new headquarters of the Cognitive Institute. It was in a three-story building in a campus-style office park about an hour outside of Chicago.

Bogart flashed his FBI credentials at the receptionist, which started a chain reaction that ended with their being escorted to a conference room in the back of the building outfitted in soothing earth colors.

A man in a dark three-piece suit with a pink shirt and yellow bow tie with green dots came in.

He looked at Bogart, who flashed his badge and introduced himself. Then Darren Marshall saw Decker.

“Amos Decker?”

Decker rose and shook his hand. “Dr. Marshall.”

“It’s been, what, twenty years?”

“Plus two months, nine days, and fourteen hours,” said Decker automatically. The calculation came out of his head so fast he didn’t even realize he was doing it. It didn’t seem weird to him anymore. It just... was who he was now.

“Of course, I will take your word for it,” said Marshall. He glanced at Bogart. “Amos was quite an exceptional case.”

“I’m sure. But I know nothing about it.”

Marshall next looked at Jamison. “And are you also with the FBI?”

“No. I’m just an interested citizen trying to help.”

Marshall looked a bit startled by her comment.

“Exceptional case?” prompted Bogart.

Decker said tersely, “I suffered a head trauma. It changed how my mind worked. Made it more efficient in some ways.” He paused. “A manufactured savant, as it were, unlike your brother.”

Bogart nodded, studying him closely. “Okay. Right, I get that.”

“Can you tell me what all this is about?” asked Marshall.

Decker explained the situation to Marshall, who slowly nodded before he was finished.

“I had heard about poor Sizemore of course, but I didn’t know it was part of this... this awful event in Burlington.”

“We had mentioned it to Dr. Rabinowitz,” said Decker.

“So that’s why he was calling,” said Marshall. “I’ve been so busy I haven’t called Harold back yet.”

“It’s connected to even more awful events,” said Bogart. “None of which we need to get into at present.” He glanced expectantly at Decker.

Decker said, “Our killer is almost certainly a male, a male who has partnered with someone calling himself Sebastian Leopold.”

“Never heard of him. But you think it has a connection to the institute?”

“Considering that it was their carefully placed clues that led me back here, yes. And add the fact that Dr. Sizemore has been murdered.”

“And you know they’re connected for certain? I mean, Sizemore’s death and the others?”

“Another message was left at his home. Again, for me.”

Marshall slumped back in his chair looking highly unnerved. “My God, I can hardly believe it.”

Decker said, “There was a woman in my group at the institute, Belinda Wyatt.”

“Yes, I remember her.”

“She was one of Dr. Sizemore’s protégées.”

“Well, we don’t encourage such attachments here.”

“But that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. In fact is it correct to say that Dr. Sizemore was let go from here because he had formed an attachment with patients more recently? Perhaps female patients?”

“I really can’t get into that.”

Bogart leaned forward across the width of the table. “Dr. Marshall, we are hunting a killer who murdered more people than I care to mention, including a slew of high school students and one of my agents. This person has to be stopped before he kills again. So while I respect that you have confidences to maintain, any help you can give us will be much appreciated.”

Marshall let out a long, uneven breath. “Well, I can tell you that Sizemore had crossed the professional line with a female at the institute around the time that he was asked to leave. I really can’t say more than that.”

“Don’t worry, he’s not going to sue you,” said Bogart. “He’s lying in a morgue.” He glanced at Decker. “Do you think Sizemore might have done the same thing with this Wyatt person?”

Decker ignored this query and said to Marshall, “What happened to her?”

“I would have to check the records.”

“Will you do that?”

“This is very treacherous territory professionally speaking.”

“Please, Dr. Marshall, just check the records.”

Marshall rose and picked up the phone on the credenza and spoke into it. Five minutes later a woman entered carrying a bulky expandable file folder. She handed it to Dr. Marshall, turned, and left.

Marshall slipped on his glasses and said, “I’ll need to look over the file.”

Bogart said, “Go right ahead. Take your time.”

Twenty minutes passed and then Marshall looked up. “Okay, what would you like to know?”

“What was her age then?” asked Decker.

“Sixteen.”

“She was a hyper?”

“Yes, of extraordinary ability. Close to yours, in fact. But unlike you, she exhibited no signs of synesthesia.”

“Which made my case more interesting to some here,” said Decker. “The duality of it.”

“And also how you came by it. Blunt-force trauma on the gridiron. Never had one before you. I seriously doubt we’ll ever see another.”

Bogart looked at Decker. “So that’s how it happened?”

Jamison nodded at him. “Yes.”

“She knows this but I don’t?” said Bogart irritably.

Jamison explained, “We spent some long car rides together.”

Decker said to Marshall, “How did Belinda come by hers? We had group sessions, but that fact was never revealed. Although some of the others here learned about my situation through the grapevine, I don’t remember Belinda’s ever being mentioned.”

“Well, your background should not have been disclosed. And Belinda’s was even more... complicated.”

“How complicated?” asked Bogart. When Marshall said nothing, Bogart said, “I don’t want to play hardball, but I can have a subpoena here in an hour. But in that time these people might kill again.”

Marshall looked over at Decker. “Do you really think that this might be connected with all those deaths?”

“I know that it is.”

Marshall took off his glasses and slid the file away. “Belinda Wyatt was a teenager living in rural Utah. When she was sixteen she was, to put it bluntly, gang-raped, sodomized, brutally beaten, and left for dead.”