Memory Man

  “I asked. More than once. But she didn’t bite.” She paused. “Well, she did slip and say that I wouldn’t understand him. He was so…mature.”

  “Meaning older. Not in high school?” said Decker.

  “That’s what I took it to mean, yes. I mean, she was a senior. She sure as hell wasn’t talking about any of her classmates. And she didn’t bother with the juniors. And Debbie was a real looker. All developed and everything. Lots of boys had their eyes on her. I tried to give her advice, but girls don’t listen. I didn’t listen when my mom tried to tell me. I always went for the bad boys.”

  Her husband looked at the detectives almost apologetically. “And then she married me.”

  “Had to marry you, George. We had Debbie on the way. My mother almost had a heart attack anyway. By far the best thing to come out of our marriage was Debbie. And now I don’t even have her. Which means I’ve got nothing.”

  Lancaster looked away at this and George Watson bit down on his lip and decided to focus on an old water ring mark on the coffee table.

  Decker studied the pair of them. In the wake of such tragedy all other societal rules within a marriage tended to give way. What was never spoken about was now easily and readily revealed. It was as though the dam holding it all back had failed. Debbie might have been the dam. And now her death represented the breach.

  “Why the sketch of the cammie gear?” asked Lancaster. She looked at George. “Do you hunt? Do you have camouflage gear here?”

  He shook his head forcefully. “I couldn’t shoot an animal. I don’t even own a gun.”

  Decker said, “I guess your condition would make it difficult to hold a weapon properly.”

  George looked down at his malformed arm. “I was born with it.” He paused. “It’s made lots of things difficult,” he added resignedly.

  “So the cammie gear might be a reference to this guy Jesus?” said Decker.

  “It might be,” said George cautiously.

  “It had to be,” snapped Beth. “She had a heart next to it.” She glanced at Lancaster with a knowing, exasperated look. “Guys don’t get it, do they? Never set foot in a damn Hallmark store.”

  Decker said, “I saw the laptop on the kitchen counter. Did Debbie use that?”

  “No, she had her own. It’s in her room.”

  “Can we take a look at her room now?”

  They were led down the hall by Beth. Before she turned away she took a last drag on her smoke and said, “However this comes out, there is no way my baby would have had anything to do with something like this, drawing of this asshole or not. No way. Do you hear me? Both of you?”

  “Loud and clear,” said Decker. But he thought if Debbie were involved she had already paid the ultimate price anyway. The state couldn’t exactly kill her again.

  Beth casually flicked the cigarette down the hall, where it sparked and then died out on the faded runner. Then she walked off.

  They opened the door and went into Debbie’s room. Decker stood in the middle of the tiny space and looked around.

  Lancaster said, “We’ll have the tech guys go through her online stuff. Photos on her phone, her laptop over there, the cloud, whatever. Instagram. Twitter. Facebook. Tumblr. Wherever else the kids do their electronic preening. Keeps changing. But our guys will know where to look.”

  Decker didn’t answer her. He just kept looking around, taking the room in, fitting things in little niches in his memory and then pulling them back out if something didn’t seem right as weighed against something else.

  “I just see a typical teenage girl’s room. But what do you see?” asked Lancaster finally.

  He didn’t look at her but said, “Same things you’re seeing. Give me a minute.”

  Decker walked around the small space, looked under piles of papers, in the young woman’s closet, knelt down to see under her bed, scrutinized the wall art that hung everywhere, including a whole section of People magazine covers. She also had chalkboard squares affixed to one wall. On them was a musical score and short snatches of poetry and personal messages to herself:

  Deb, Wake up each day with something to prove.

  “Pretty busy room,” noted Lancaster, who had perched on the edge of the girl’s desk. “We’ll have forensics come and bag it all.”

  She looked at Decker, obviously waiting for him to react to this, but instead he walked out of the room.

  “Decker!”

  “I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder.

  She watched him go and then muttered, “Of all the partners I could have had, I got Rain Man, only giant size.”

  She pulled a stick of gum out of her bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. Over the next several minutes she strolled the room and then came to the mirror on the back of the closet door. She appraised her appearance and ended it with the resigned sigh of a person who knows their best days physically are well in the past. She automatically reached for her smokes but then decided against it. Debbie’s room could be part of a criminal investigation. Her ash and smoke could only taint that investigation.

  She whirled around when Decker came back into the room.

  “Where’d you go?” she asked.

  “Had some questions for the parents, and I wanted to take a look around the rest of the house.”

  “And?”

  He walked over to the musical score written on the chalkboard wall and pointed to it.

  “Debbie didn’t do this.”

  Lancaster gazed at the symbols. “How do you know that?”

  “She doesn’t play an instrument. I checked her school record earlier. She’s never been in the band. I asked her mother. She’s never played an instrument and there are none in the house. Second, there are no sheets of music in this room. Even if you didn’t play an instrument and just composed music, I think you’d have some sheet music or more likely blank score sheets in your room. Third, that’s not Debbie’s handwriting.”

  Lancaster drew closer to the wall and studied the marks there and then compared them with the other writing on the wall.

  “But how can you really tell?” she asked. “I mean, musical scores aren’t like other writing. They’re symbols, not letters.”

  “Because Debbie is right-handed. Who ever wrote this was left-handed. Even though it’s not letters you can still tell by the sweeps, flourishes, and general flow of the marks.” He picked up some chalk and wrote on a different section of the board some of the musical symbols. “I’m right-handed and you can see the difference.”

  He pointed to some smudges on the board. “And that’s where the person’s left sleeve smeared some of the score. For a righty it would be in the opposite place. Like mine.” He pointed to where his sleeve had brushed against some of the chalk marks. “And Leopold is right-handed.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He signed a paper I gave him when I saw him in his prison cell.”

  “Okay, but maybe a friend of hers who is a musician did it.”

  But Decker was already shaking his head. “No.”

  “Why not? I could see a buddy of hers writing out a tune or something on here. Maybe inspirational, to match some of Debbie’s writing.”

  “Because those notes make no sense at all. You couldn’t play it with any instrument of which I’m aware. From a music composition perspective, it’s gibberish.”

  “How do you know? Did you play music?”

  Decker nodded. “In high school, guitar and drums. I know my way around scores. And not just the ones on the football field.”

  Lancaster glanced back at the symbols. “So what is it, then?”

  “I think it’s a code,” said Decker. “And if I’m right about that, it means Jesus was in this house.”

  Chapter

  22

  DECKER AND LANCASTER had sealed off Debbie’s bedroom and called in the forensics team, which had gone over the room and the house in meticulous detail. Burlington had never suffered a crime such as this
one, and everyone, from the rookie on the team to the most senior departmental official, was bringing his A-game.

  The Watsons said they knew nothing of the musical score. Decker tended to believe them. After the forensics team finished, Decker and Lancaster sat down with the Watsons once more.

  “If the guy came to this house to write the score on the wall, could he do so without your knowledge?” Decker asked them.

  “Well, we do have to sleep,” said a defensive Beth. “But the house isn’t that big. And our room is right next to Debbie’s. George and I are both light sleepers. I don’t see how she could have had a guy in her room and we not know about it.”

  “What about during the day?” said Lancaster.

  “I’m a stay-at-home mom. George is a nine-to-fiver. I’m here a lot more than Debbie, actually.”

  “How long ago do you remember seeing the musical score on the chalkboard?” asked Decker.

  “It wasn’t there two weeks ago, I can tell you that,” she replied.

  “How do you know that?” asked Decker.

  “Because I wiped the whole thing clean.” She paused. “We’d had an argument and I just, well, I lost it and wiped all that crap off.” She let out a little sob. “And now I’ll never see her again.”

  “Argument about what?” asked Decker, ignoring her distress. He needed answers. And he needed them now. She could grieve later.

  Beth composed herself. “Debbie was a senior. She took the SAT and did okay, but she hadn’t applied to one damn college. She made excuses about cost. And it’s true that we can’t really help her out. But I kept telling her there’s financial aid out there. And without a degree what was she going to do? Be me?” She paused again as her husband looked away. “So I lost it and wiped her damn board clean. All those messages she had on there about changing the world and having a purpose. It was bullshit! She was doing nothing and going nowhere. So I wiped it clean. Clean slate. Hoped she’d get the point. Guess she didn’t. Guess she never will now. Not now. Oh, shit, my baby. My baby.”

  Beth dissolved into tears and started writhing uncontrollably on the couch. With Decker’s help her husband managed to get her into the bedroom to lie down. Decker could hear her calling out to her dead daughter the whole way as he walked back down the hall to join Lancaster.

  George Watson came back out a few minutes later and said, “I think we’re done for now, if that’s all right.”

  Decker said, “Have you and your wife gone away on a trip recently?”

  George looked at him in some amazement. “How did you know that?”

  “The guy came here and wrote what he wrote. If you had been here you probably would have seen him. And he wouldn’t take that kind of chance. So you were gone at some point?”

  “A week ago we drove to Indiana to be with Beth’s sister. She was ill. We were there two days and then drove back.”

  “And Debbie stayed here?”

  “Yes, we couldn’t take her out of school.”

  “So that’s probably when he came,” said Decker.

  George began to shake, wrapping his arms around himself. “Do you really think that animal was in our house? In our daughter’s bedroom?”

  Decker gave the man with the wrecked arm the once-over. “I think it’s highly possible, yes.”

  Lancaster gave Decker a fierce stare and said quickly, “Well, thanks for your help, Mr. Watson. We’ll be going now. And we’re very sorry for your loss.”

  George walked them to the door. As he opened it he said, “Debbie wouldn’t have helped anyone kill people at Mansfield. They were her friends.”

  “I can appreciate that,” said Decker. “I hope it turns out you’re right.”

  George blinked rapidly, as though he had never considered that he might be wrong. He shut the door behind them.

  Decker and Lancaster walked down the sidewalk.

  “Your bedside manner is as terrific as always,” said Lancaster sarcastically.

  “I’m not here to be his friend and hold his hand, Mary. I’m here to catch whoever killed his daughter.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, “I got an email from forensics. They found nothing pertinent on Debbie’s phone or laptop. No photos, emails, texts, voicemails. And there are no online postings on any site they could think of or which Debbie had access to. Her mom said she had seen some alluding to this guy, but Debbie must’ve deleted them. But maybe our guys can still dig them up somehow.”

  “This guy would never have let her take his picture. No electronic trails either. Far too easy. Our guy may not even have Web access.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I’m seeing someone outside the mainstream. No ties. A loner. He floats from place to place.”

  “Based on what? Something you saw?”

  “No, something I felt. But one thing has me puzzled.”

  “Just one, you’re lucky then,” she said, smiling grimly. “My list is six pages long.”

  He went on as though he hadn’t heard her. “Why Debbie? Why pick her to team with?”

  “Team with? What exactly did she do? I thought she was just his girlfriend.”

  “She gave him something he needed.”

  “Something he needed? At the school? You don’t mean the guns? There’s no way she’s lugging in a pistol and a shotgun.”

  “I don’t necessarily mean the guns, no.”

  “But why would he need her to bring him anything?”

  “That’s what’s puzzling me too. Why her and why the meeting at the school on that day?”

  “Whoa, Decker, you’re pulling way ahead of me. What meeting?”

  “She pretended to be sick. She got out of class, met this guy, probably gave him something, and then he killed her. But there’s a time gap that I can’t figure right now.”

  She asked him another question, only Decker wasn’t listening. His gaze was moving down the street, to his left. It was dark, the night air chilly with mist rising from both their mouths as they exhaled. There seemed to be nothing good out in that blackness. But to Decker the night was suddenly full of threes, his least favorite number.

  It had first happened when he was a rookie cop. Thankfully he’d been out on patrol alone. He’d been sitting in his squad car sipping coffee when out of the darkness came movement. At first he thought it was some people trying to sneak up on him. Back then Burlington had a big gang problem, mostly consisting of young men with no jobs and no hope, too much testosterone, and access to too many guns.

  He’d thrown his coffee out the window, his hand had gone to his gun, and his other hand to his radio. He’d been about to step out of the vehicle and give a warning to whoever was out there. That’s when the figures appeared clearly in front of him. Giant, towering number threes.

  It was like he’d been suddenly propelled into a bad sci-fi novel.

  He thought he was going mad. But something coalesced in the middle of his brain. A small scrap of memory from one of the doctors at the institute outside Chicago where he’d gone after his injury and all the weird things had started happening to him.

  The doctor had said, “Amos, for you, a new day can mean new things. The brain never stops. It is relentless. It is constantly configuring and reconfiguring. I’m trying to tell you that what has happened to you so far may not be the only change you experience with your mind. Tomorrow, next month, next year, a decade hence, you may wake up and discover it is doing something else. There is no way for us to predict it, unfortunately. And it may be terrifying when it does happen. But just know that it’s your mind. It’s just all in your head. It’s not real.”

  With that remembrance, Decker turned back to face the army of numbers, his initial fear receding, but it was replaced with a fresh one.

  What new stuff will tomorrow bring?

  He had gotten off duty, gone home, dropped into bed, and wept quietly so that he wouldn’t awaken Cassie. In the morning he told her what had happened. She was predictably supportive and encouraging.
And Decker was predictably upbeat, blowing it off as something that was actually funny. But it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all. The threes had been gone for a while. In fact, he hadn’t seen them coming out of the darkness since Cassie and Molly