Memory Man (Amos Decker 1)

“So why wasn’t a PD appointed?” asked Decker.

“Like Lynch said, Leopold didn’t want one. He was totally uncooperative. Kept saying he did it so why did he need a lawyer. We had our hands full with Mansfield or else we would have handled it differently. We basically dropped the ball there.”

Decker stuffed his hands into his pockets and let his chin fall to his chest. “So you lawyer him up, he comes back in, pleads guilty, and then what?”

“Well, hopefully his lawyer will convince him to plead not guilty just so it looks better. We can talk about a deal and see what comes of it. But we also have to see what the psych eval says. If he’s unfit it throws a monkey wrench into things.”

“And if he isn’t guilty?” asked Decker.

“Do you think he is?” asked Miller.

“I met with the guy once. I can’t say definitely what I think.”

“Well, none of this is going to happen today. So we’ve got time.” Miller glanced at Lancaster. “You better get back to Mansfield. I hear the FBI is working hard to take over the case.”

“And if they want to can we really stop them?” asked Lancaster.

“We’re not going to roll over and play dead for the Feds, Mary,” said Miller sternly. He looked at Decker. “You going to be able to continue helping us on it? Leopold will keep. This prick at Mansfield, the longer it goes, the harder it’ll be for us to find him.”

Decker looked off. The answer should have been easy. Only it wasn’t.

Miller studied him for a few moments. “Well, let me know.”

He turned and walked off, leaving Lancaster and Decker standing in the hall. Activity in the courthouse had started to heat up and the corridors were growing full. Moms crying about sons in trouble. Lawyers clustered like chickens in a pen. Cops were coming and going, and folks were wandering around who were already in trouble or about to be.

Lancaster said sharply, “Why the wavering? Last night you said the shooter wasn’t going to get away with it.”

Decker didn’t answer right away. He was watching the reporter standing next to the entrance to the courthouse. She was obviously waiting for him.

“Amos?” said Lancaster.

He glanced back at his former partner. “I’ll be at the high school later today.”

“Does that mean you’re still engaged on it?”

“Later today,” said Decker. He headed for the rear exit.

The reporter caught up to him halfway down the hall.

“Mr. Decker? Mr. Decker?”

Decker’s first plan was to just keep walking, but the woman gave every indication that she would simply follow him out of the building, down the street, and into his next life if need be. So he stopped at the exit, turned, and looked down at her. His mind automatically collected observations and distilled them into an assortment of deductions.

She was in her late twenties, pretty, tall, slim, and brunette, with her hair cut short around her ears. Ears that weren’t pierced even for earrings. He saw tat letters on her left wrist where her cuff rode up.

Iron Butterfly. Well, they did make a comeback after she was born.

Her eyes were a dull blue that clashed with her complexion. One of her incisors was chipped, her nails were bitten down to the rims, her right index finger had once been broken and healed badly with a little bend to it in the middle, and her lips were overly thin and chapped. She didn’t smell of smoke, drink, or perfume.

Her clothes were not new, nor overly clean, but they rode well on her tall, slender figure. She had a dark blotch on the inside of her right middle finger where the pen was held. Not just a keyboard clicker, then. She used ink.

Her face held the wonderful enthusiasm of youth as yet unblemished by life. That age was a nice time in anyone’s life. And it was necessary. To get through what was coming in later years.

If we all started out cynical, what a shitty world that would be.

“Mr. Decker? I’m Alex Jamison with the News Leader.”

“You like ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’? It was Butterfly’s biggest seller. Thirty million and still counting. In the top forty of all time.” Decker had read this in a Rolling Stone article three years ago while eating a PBJ and drinking a cup of coffee at a diner downtown while he was a witness in a case involving a burglary ring he and Lancaster had busted. It was on page forty-two of the magazine, lower right-hand corner. He could see the page and the accompanying picture in his head so clearly it was like he was watching high-def TV. At first this total recall had scared the crap out of him. Now it was as natural to him as swallowing.

She seemed surprised by this until she glanced down at her tat. She looked back at him, smiling. “My mom got me into their early music. Then when the band re-formed the last time I became sort of obsessed. I mean, they played with Jimmy Page and Zeppelin. Lot of tragic stuff with them, though.”

Decker did not follow this up with anything, because music was not why she was here, and he had places to be. She seemed to get this point by his silence.

“I tried calling you. I don’t like to chase people down in the courthouse,” she said a bit defensively.

Decker just kept staring at her. All around them the courthouse activity went on, bees in a hive, oblivious to the pair of intruders into their world of legal higgledy-piggledy.

“Sebastian Leopold didn’t have counsel.”

“That’s right,” said Decker. “But he will.”

“What do you think about all of this?” She held up her recorder. “You mind?”

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“I’m sure you’re going through hell right now. I mean, this guy just pops up out of nowhere and confesses. You must be reeling.”

“I don’t reel,” said Decker. He turned to leave.

“But you must be feeling something. And how was it facing Leopold in there? It must have brought everything back to you.”

Decker faced her. “It didn’t bring everything back to me.”

She looked stunned. “But I thought—”

“Because it never left me. Now, I have someplace to be.”

Decker walked out of the courthouse and Jamison did not follow him.

Chapter

18

DECKER CAUGHT A bus a block over from the courthouse and rode it to within a half mile of where he was going. As his large feet carried him down the sidewalk, the color blue intensified in his head until it seemed that the entire world had been covered in it. Even the sun seemed to have been transformed into an enormous blueberry so utterly swollen that it seemed it might burst at any moment.

It sickened him but he kept on going, his breath growing heavier and his tread slowing. He was out of shape, but that was not the reason. The reason was just up ahead.

When he turned the corner and saw the house he stopped, but only for a moment. If he didn’t pick up his pace, he knew he would turn and run away.

It was still bank-owned. No one had wanted to move in there even at a reduced price. Hell, they probably couldn’t give it away. And there were lots of empty houses in Burlington. It was a place one wanted to get away from, not move to. The front door, he knew, was locked. The door off the carport and into the kitchen had always been easy to jimmy. He wondered if the killer had gone in that way. Leopold had said that was his ingress, if he was to be