Memory Man

With Captain Miller’s blessing, Lancaster had arranged temporary credentials and an access badge for Decker. He had worked enough crime scenes to watch where he walked and not disturb or corrupt potential evidence. He looked over reports, studied the video some more, chatted briefly with department folks he knew, nodded to some he didn’t. While he was a long way from feeling comfortable working a crime scene again, he was starting to feel certain things coming back to him. His chief strength had always been observation. Looking around and seeing things, but not the way most people did. He had built convictions from small details that most overlooked, including, most significantly, the ones who had committed the crimes.

And he had observed a lot here so far, and not all of it connected to the shootings.

Principally he noted that the FBI was playing the usual peacock game. Strutting around and overwhelming everyone with their resources. But then again, he knew the police wouldn’t mind the help. The goal was the same. Get the guy who did this.

He fell back into the routine that he had employed in countless other investigations. He walked and observed and asked questions and read more reports. His travels took him around the entire perimeter of the school several times. He looked at it from every possible vantage point. Then he went back inside the school and looked out of every window in the place. It was the darkest moments before dawn broke. He had been here for hours. It felt like ten minutes, because he really hadn’t come up with anything. But that was okay. Miracles and epiphanies rarely happened in the middle of criminal investigations. If you wanted something like that you needed to turn on the TV. Results in the real world came from slow, dogged work, compiling facts and building conclusions and deductions based on those facts. And a little luck never hurt either.

A few minutes before dawn broke the transports were called up to start taking the bodies to the morgue. There was a loading dock in the rear of the school. The police had shielded it from view with a tarp and steel support poles. The vehicles drove one by one through a gap in this wall. Behind the tarp Decker knew the bodies were coming out, housed in black sturdy bags. The bodies had names but also numbers. They weren’t human beings anymore. They were pieces in a criminal investigation. Debbie Watson would be Vic-1. Her body had been the starting point in numbering everybody else who had fallen. Joe Kramer, the gym teacher, had been labeled Vic-2. And on the numbering went, down the list of dead.

Decker leaned against the outside wall of the school near the loading dock and studied the blue tarp. And then he closed his eyes, because he equated the color blue with the slaughter of his family. He didn’t need to see color in the outside world. He had enough of it going on inside his head.

Get back to basics, Amos. Slow and easy. You know how to do this. This was all you did for so many years. Mary is right. You can do this.

Motive.

It always began with that, because motive was just another way of saying, Why would you do something like this? Greed, jealousy, kicks, personal vendetta, perceived slight, insanity? The last was always tough to decipher, because how did you read a mind that was deranged?

But this guy had method. This guy had some inside knowledge of the school. This guy had taken great care to not allow even a piece of his skin to be observed. They didn’t even know if he was black or white. Although most mass murderers were white. And male. And with this shooter’s size and shape, he was most definitely a male.

The face shield was an unusual step. It was not for defense. It couldn’t have stopped a bullet. It was for concealment.

He watched as the last of the transport vehicles pulled away, rack lights on but no sirens engaged. The dead were in no hurry. Each body would be cut up as the medical examiner looked for clues. But the best they could hope for here would be ballistics. What type of bullet had killed them? He doubted the shooter had laid a finger on any of his victims. If you didn’t touch, you didn’t leave any usable trace behind. With the bullets they could at least, one day, match them to the guns that had ben used. And if the guns had an owner, the chain of title to this horrific event possibly could be traced.

He walked back to the library, where Lancaster was sitting and going over case notes. She looked up as he approached.

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” she said, stifling a yawn.

“I have nowhere else I have to be,” said Decker.

He sat next to her.

“Did you do your normal walk-around?” she asked.

He nodded. “But I didn’t really see anything.”

“You will, Amos. Give it time.”

“Earl with Sandy?”