Memory Man (24 page)

D
ECKER ARRIVED BREATHLESS
outside the building. He rushed over to the gate and input the code in the security box. It was not a very secure code. It was Molly’s birthday.

The gate clicked open and he walked through. The storage units all had exterior doors, and he hustled over to the one at the very end. He pulled the key from his pocket, but then saw that the lock was gone from his unit.

They had done that intentionally. They had wanted him to know.

He lifted the roll-up door, his gun in hand just in case. But the place was empty. Empty of living things.

In here were the possessions he had taken from his old home, because where he had moved to after that didn’t have the room. But he couldn’t get rid of them. In here were also his tangible memories of a life spent with the two people he was closest to in the world: Cassie and Molly.

They were all neatly boxed and labeled and placed on sturdy metal shelving. This place was an expense he couldn’t really afford, but he had never missed one payment, going cold and hungry, to afford keeping this place, these memories, intact. This mirrored his mind—full of things but neatly organized, with everything capable of retrieval with minimal effort.

There was one box in here that he needed to look at. Only one.

It was in the rear, to the left, second shelf, fourth box from the right.

He reached that spot and stopped. The box was there but the top was open. He lifted it off the shelf and set it down on the concrete floor. This box contained the remaining items from his career in law enforcement. And part of that was his old police uniform that he had kept when moving up to detective. He had done so because there were times at the department when even plainclothes were expected to don their uniform. When he had left the department, technically he should have turned the uniform in, but it wasn’t like it could have been recycled. There was no one near his size in the Burlington Police Department.

The uniform was not in the box. Someone had used it to fool Nora Lafferty into letting down her guard for a few precious—and ultimately lethal—seconds in that alley.

They know where I live. They know I have this storage unit.

They had desecrated it.

He clicked back in his mind to the last time he had come here.

Twenty-seven days ago, 1:35 in the afternoon. Had they observed him then? Or was it before that last time?

Then he hurried to the gate, where there was a security camera.

He didn’t think it would provide a likely lead and he turned out to be right.

The camera lens had been spray-painted black. Obviously no one had been monitoring this camera if they hadn’t noticed it could no longer record anything for at least nearly a month.

He called Bogart.

Fifteen minutes later several SUVs pulled up to the gate. Decker let them in and then led the team back to the storage locker.

He explained as he went along. When they arrived at the locker, Bogart’s team went into action, searching for prints or other traces and any leave-behinds.

Bogart and Decker stood side by side and watched.

“Why didn’t you turn your uniform back in when you left the force?” the FBI agent asked.

Decker knew exactly where this conversation was going, but there was nothing he could do about it. And, in some ways, Bogart was right.

“I should have,” conceded Decker. “But I didn’t.”

Bogart nodded slowly.

Decker wasn’t sure if the guy was going to lose it again, but he figured probably not, not with his team all around.

“Well,” said Bogart, “it would have taken a real police uniform to fool Lafferty anyway. These guys probably understood that.”

This made Decker feel even guiltier, which was obviously the other man’s intent. A staggering body blow without one physical punch thrown.

“Do you have the uniform?” asked Decker.

“Evidence bag in the truck.”

“Can I see it?”

They pulled the bag.

Bogart said, “The uniform and cap have already been examined for traces. There was nothing usable.”

But Decker wasn’t checking for that. He was probing the pants near the cuff. About six inches from the bottom of the pants he found what he was looking for.

He pointed it out to Bogart.

“Holes?” said the FBI agent.

“From pins. Hemming pins.”

“Hemming pins?”

“I’m six-five with exceptionally long legs,” explained Decker. “The guy who wore this had to take the pant legs up about half a foot. Otherwise Lafferty would have noticed the uniform was not his. I was slimmer back then, but I’m sure the guy had to cinch the waist tight and maybe pin it in the back. The shirt the same.”

He examined the shirt and found two pinholes in the fabric near the center of the back panel. “Here and here. And the guy could have rolled the cuffs over and buttoned them to account for the difference in arm length. And a strip of padding in the cap makes a large cap fit a medium head.”

“So a much smaller man?”

“About five-eleven. And thin.”

“Lancaster told me what you found at the school. Platform boots for height and some sort of contraption to make the shooter look big in the upper body.”

“Like football shoulder pads and padding for the thighs. Made a five-eleven and lean man look much bigger.”

“We found nothing on the email trail. IP went nowhere,” Bogart said.

“Not surprised.”

Decker looked down at the name on the uniform’s chest.

Decker.

The man in blue. The man he used to be.

Then he saw something else. It was faint, but he also knew it was fresh.

“Look at the badge,” he said.

Bogart did so. “Is that an…?”

“It’s an X. Someone has marked an X on the badge.”

“What might that represent? To signify Lafferty’s murder?”

“I don’t know.”

He handed the uniform back to Bogart. The FBI agent took it and then gazed at the activity going on inside the storage unit.

“How come you kept all this stuff?”

Decker looked up and said slowly, far more to himself than Bogart, “It’s all I had left.”

Bogart glanced at him, sympathy flitting across his features.

Decker must have noticed this, because he said, “No reason to feel that way. You make choices. And you live with them.”

“You didn’t
choose
to have your family murdered, Decker.”

“I think the man who did it believed the choice was all mine.”

“That’s truly sick.”

“Yes, he is.”

W
HEN DECKER GOT
back to the Residence Inn after the search at the storage unit turned up nothing, he found that others had visited him and left very telltale signs behind.

A hatchet was stuck in the wood of the door. Slurs had been spray-painted across the window and brick front. Headless baby dolls lay on the concrete. Copies of the news story that Alex Jamison had written were strewn across the catwalk or else taped to the wall, with venomous words scribbled across them. The photo of Decker had been doctored in several of them to make him look like the devil.

Under it was written, “Child Killer.”

Decker pulled the hatchet free, kicked the other items aside, opened his door, and went in, locking the door behind him.

He dropped the hatchet on the bureau, went over to the bed, and lay down. He closed his eyes and tried to think of what he was missing. Because it was there. He knew it was. For the hundredth time he started to go through all the known facts of the case in chronological order.

The knock on his door interrupted these thoughts. He struggled up, crossed the room, and said, “Who is it?”

“Somebody who owes you an apology.”

He recognized the voice and opened the door.

Alex Jamison was standing there holding one of the headless dolls.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, and she actually looked it.

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

“Shit, Decker, you’re making me feel worse than I already do.”

She was dressed all in black, tights, long sweater that covered her butt, low boots with chunky heels, and a short jean jacket. A large bag was slung over one shoulder.

“You have time for a cup of coffee?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I’m not here to interview you.”

“Why, then?”

“Brimmer told me you’ve done all the heavy lifting on this case. Found all the leads, even though she wouldn’t tell me what they were.”

“She’s learning, then.”

“Coffee? I have some things I want to talk to you about. I’ll buy. Please, it’s important.”

He closed the door behind him and they walked down the steps, across the street, and over a few blocks to a coffee shop that occupied a small niche between two larger stores, one of which was boarded up and the other one not far from that fate.

“Whole town is going down the tubes,” observed Jamison as they passed the shuttered store. “Before long I’ll have nothing to write about except bankruptcies and foreclosures.”

They got their coffees and sat at a small table near the back. Decker watched as she spooned sugar into her cup.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked bluntly.

“I
am
sorry about the story, Decker. In retrospect you didn’t deserve that. I don’t think you had anything to do with what happened to your family. Like you said, I think some psychopath is looking to first screw you and then destroy you. And he used me to do that and I jumped at the bait just so I could write a story. But that got me wondering why. I mean, who could have that sort of vendetta against you and you not know it?”

Decker sipped his coffee while eyeing her directly but said nothing.

She added, “And I’m sure you’ve been racking your brain trying to think of the same thing.”

“I have.”

“It has to be personal,” she said.

“Murder almost always is.”

“No, I mean more than that. Brimmer told me there were a couple of communications the killer made. Again, she wouldn’t tell me what they said, but they were apparently directed at you.”

Decker said nothing, but his look clearly told her he was interested.

“So I did some digging.”

“Into what?”

“Into you.”

“How?”

“I’m a reporter. We have ways.”

“And what did you find?”

“You’re from Burlington. Biggest sports star the town ever had. The young man who made good.”

This comment made Decker think of the trophy case at the school. “The shooter took all the trophies with my name on them from the case at Mansfield.”

She sat back and looked satisfied and also puzzled by this. “I wonder when he did that. Surely not the day of the shooting. He’s not going to be hauling hardware around.”

“There are ways,” Decker said. “But I can’t get into that now. Maybe one day you can write the whole story.”

She said, “So the question becomes, is it someone who’s from Burlington who had a grudge against you all these years? Big football star versus some nobody in the background who was jealous of your success? The fact that he took the trophies might indicate it is someone local. Who you went to Mansfield with? He might have thought you were gone for good when you went on to college, and then you come back here and become a cop and do all these great things. And all these years the hatred is building and festering until the guy just explodes.”

“Guys,” said Decker.

“Guys? More than one, you mean?”

“You can’t write that.” He leaned forward. “You really can’t write that, Alexandra. If he reads it, he’ll assume you know not only that but more. More that could be dangerous to him. And then dangerous for you.”

“I get that, Decker. You thoroughly scared me before. I go nowhere without Mace and my phone on 911 speed dial.”

“But you came back. You’re here now trying to help me figure this out. They could be watching. Why take the risk?”

“I didn’t get into journalism to be safe. I got into this line of work because I
wanted
to take risks. You and I are a lot alike on that score.”

“How so?”

“I figure the only job riskier than pro football and police work is being in combat. So you’re a risk-taker. So am I. And if we can do a little good in the meantime, why not? So, any guys you remember from here that hated you?”

“I was good at sports, but I wasn’t good at anything else. And I wasn’t a prick. I had fun. I was a goofball. I made people laugh. I messed up. I was not Mr. Perfect by a long stretch. Aside from what I did on the field, I wasn’t that special.”

“I have a hard time seeing you as a goofball.”

“People change.”

“You
did
change, didn’t you?”

Decker took another sip of his coffee. “People change. I’m no exception.”

“People do change. But I think you changed more than most.”

“How do you mean exactly?”

“The hit. I watched it on YouTube.”

“Good for you.”

“It was horrible watching it. I can’t imagine how it was, actually being the recipient of it.”

“I don’t really remember it. They told me later I shit my pants. Violent collision like that overpowers the central nervous system. During the preseason the equipment guys came in after games to make sure all the girdles with feces in them were hidden from view and never given out to fans. Along with all the blood inside the helmets and on the uniforms. And they kept the reporters out when the guys were in the trainer’s room postgame so they wouldn’t hear the screams. And they gave players pops of ammonia or painkillers so they could talk to the media and hide the fact that half their brain was gone.”

“I’m not a big fan of football. Gladiators of the twenty-first century, wrecking each other for our amusement while we drink beer and eat hot dogs and cheer when a guy gets wiped out. You’d think we would have gotten beyond that. I guess there’s too much money in it.”

“See, people don’t actually change all that much.”

“After the hit you just disappeared for a long time. Got cut by the team, went into limbo. I couldn’t find anything on you. And then you turned up back here and joined the police academy. A buddy of mine got me your test scores.”

“You have a lot of buddies?”

“A good reporter needs all the help she can get. The scores were all perfect.”

“A fact my old captain told me too.”

“So Captain Miller looked into it as well?”

“Why all the interest in me?”

“Because I figure that to find this guy, or guys, we have to work backward, from the motivation to the source. You’re the motivation. So I have to understand you to get to them.” She paused and tapped a spoon against her coffee cup. “So where were you during that time?”

“That’s my business.”

“You don’t want to catch these murderers?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“But you know I’m right. You’re the key to what’s happening.” She leaned forward and tapped his thick hand. “I want to help, Decker.”

“What you want is a Pulitzer.”

“I tell you what. You let me help and I won’t write any story without your permission. You get to vet and approve the whole thing. Or you get to pull the trigger and it’ll never see the light of day.”

“You’d agree to that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Andy Jackson. You know him?”

“The English teacher at Mansfield. Last surviving victim of the shooter. He tried to stop the shooter.”

“He died an hour ago. Andy didn’t always teach at Mansfield. He was a professor at Purdue, where I went. He’s the reason I’m a reporter. He came here to take care of his ailing mother. Sort of person he was.”

“You never said this before.”

“Because that was
my
business. But I’m saying it now.” She put out a hand. “So that’s my deal. No story if you say so. But in exchange I get to help you track these bastards down. What do you say?”

Decker slowly put out his hand and they shook.

“So where do we start?” she asked.

He rose. “At a storage unit.”