Memory Man

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