Memory Man

After Miller had called out his name, several suits and a couple of uniforms had recognized Decker and given him nods or grim looks, but none had spoken to him. He had not left the department under the best of circumstances, yet he doubted anyone really held it against him.

But he was here now, and so he might as well get to work.

He looked at Lancaster. “The video?”

Lancaster hit the requisite keys, and a few seconds later Decker was staring at the grainy footage.

“There’s the son of a bitch,” said Lancaster.

He glanced at the time stamp. “Eight-forty-one. When did classes start?”

“Eight-thirty sharp. Everyone needs to be in their class by then.”

“You said he came in through the rear doors? That’s where this image is from, right?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t the exit doors kept locked?”

“They’re supposed to be. But they’re also not hard to jimmy open.”

“Did you find signs of forced entry?”

“Those doors haven’t been replaced since the seventies, Amos. They’re beat to hell. It was really impossible to tell if they’d been forced or not.”

She hit some more keys and zoomed in on the corridor. “Now we’ve identified this as the hall bleeding off…” She faltered. “Sorry, poor choice of words. As the hall coming off the ingress we’ve already identified. He would have made his turn, and that’s where he would have encountered Debbie Watson, say maybe a minute later.”

“So first shot at eight-forty-two or thereabouts, allowing one minute from the video stamp and him encountering Watson?”

“Pretty much. And shotgun blasts folks remember. In fact, a bunch of people looked at the time when they heard it. So eight-forty-two is a good number for the first shot.”

“Okay.” Decker thought about what his next question should be. It should have come automatically, but it didn’t. He was definitely rusty. He looked around at all the seasoned investigators toiling away. He used to be one of them. The fact was, he had checked out of his professional life as soon as he’d found his family dead. Actually, he might be, he had to admit, more of a hindrance here than a help.

He looked down at Lancaster, who was staring up at him, a sympathetic expression on her face.

“It’s like riding a bike, Amos,” she said, apparently reading the self-doubt on his face.

“Maybe not, Mary. I guess I’ll find out. But if I can’t carry my weight, I shouldn’t be here.”

She looked back at the screen. “Okay, the camera doesn’t have audio, so you can’t hear it. And there was no camera on the next hall.”

“Why not?”

“Why else? No money in the budget. We’re lucky to have any functioning cameras at all.”

He thought for a moment. “But they keep them up as a deterrent?”

“Right. Because people didn’t know they weren’t operational.”

“But our guy was able to avoid all of them except this one.”

“It really didn’t matter whether he did or not. He was completely covered, Amos. No way to recognize any feature.”

Decker slowly nodded, feeling once more slow and reactive in his mental process.

He looked back at the image on the screen. Hood and face shield. And the camera shot was reflecting off the glare from the shield. He edged closer to the screen, like a scent hound ferreting prey.

“There’s no direct hit even on his hooded face. He knew where the camera was and avoided it, even though he’s covered.”

“You think that’s important?” she asked.

“At this point in the investigation, there isn’t anything that’s not important.”

Lancaster nodded. “I think that was the second rule you ever taught me.”

“The first being to suspect everybody,” Decker added absently, his gaze still squarely on the shooter.

She said nothing to this and he finally looked at her.

“Like riding a bike, Amos. You were the best I’ve ever seen. I think you still can be.”

He looked away, not really feeling better from her praise, because his altered mind didn’t respond to that anymore either. “Can you run the feed all the way until he turns the corner?”

Lancaster did so, and then, at Decker’s request, did it three more times.

He finally sat back, lost in thought, his gaze still on the screen, though.

She stared over at him. “You see anything that hits you?”

“I see lots of things that hit me. But none more than a guy dressed like that, carrying weapons, who can apparently vanish into thin air.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts or magic.”

“I don’t either, Mary. But I do know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That this guy is not going to get away.”

She kept her gaze on him, her expression becoming concerned. “You sure you’re not talking about Leopold?”

He shrugged, his eyes seeming to stare at somewhere a million miles from here. “In a way, they’re all fucking Leopolds.”

Chapter 13