Memory Man

“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 believed.

He passed by the front and opened the chain-link gate to the backyard. The color blue had initially been limited to the bodies. Now the entire property and everything within a half mile of it was blue. He had first experienced this the third time he had returned to the house, and it had been that way ever since. He could never adequately explain to anyone what it felt like to see blue grass, blue trees, blue siding on a house you knew was painted yellow. Even the blue sky felt different because all the clouds were also that color.

He eyed the tree in the back and the swing dangling from it. He’d put that up himself because Molly had wanted one. When she was little Decker would push her. Sometimes he had pushed Cassie and Molly together. It had been cheap entertainment for a young couple with little money.

Now the rope was rotted and the long plank of wood Decker had fashioned for a seat was warped and splintered. The bank was having someone cut the grass, but it was full of weeds.

He turned to look at the rear of the house. The back door led into a small utility room. Had that actually been how the killer had entered?

He jimmied this door easily enough. It seemed none of the locks on the house worked very well, something that, again, caused him enormous guilt. A policeman who couldn’t even secure his own house?

He closed the door behind him and looked around. Short flight of steps up to the kitchen. Where his brother-in-law had sat drinking beer until someone had sliced his neck from ear to ear.