Memory Man

After Leopold’s arraignment, Decker decides to visit his old house. The bank still owns Decker’s house because no one wants to buy a house where people have died violently.

As Decker approaches, every object becomes coated in a sickening shade of blue, the color that Decker’s brain associates with the crime: “Even the sun seemed to have been transformed into an enormous blueberry so utterly swollen that it might burst at any moment” (114).

He goes through each room, recalling every detail of the night his family was murdered. Everything looks the same with one exception. When Decker enters his daughter’s bedroom, he finds a note from the killer scrawled across the wall: “We are so much alike, Amos. So much. Like brothers […] We’re really all the other has now. We need each other” (117).

The killer mentions Decker’s sisters. In a panic, Decker texts each one to make sure they’re all right. Once they text back, he’s reassured. Then, Decker calls Lancaster and tells her to come over right away.

Lancaster arrives with Miller, uniformed officers, and a forensics team, and they examine the house for clues. The last time Decker went inside the house was a month earlier; they now have a window of time during which the killer might have written his message. This timeframe doesn’t clear Leopold as a possible suspect.

Decker returns to the 7-Eleven where he supposedly disrespected Leopold. He shows the photo of the suspect to two employees—one is a Latina, the other a young man in his thirties named Billy. Both deny ever having seen Leopold in the store.

While Decker is still talking to Billy, he gets a call from Lancaster. She wants Decker to come to Mansfield immediately. A ballistics report proves that the pistol used in the school killing is the same one that murdered Decker’s wife. 

Decker examines the ballistics report that connects the Mansfield shooting with his family’s murder. When Decker took the job to work on the Mansfield case, he’d constantly questioned whether he belonged there or not. The new evidence linking the guns finally convinces him that he does: “He would be on this case for as long as it took. They would have to dynamite him out of here” (123-24).

Decker reasons that the evidence trail in his family’s murder has gone cold while the Mansfield evidence trail is red hot. He believes if he solves the school shooting, he’ll also solve the other crimes.

As he starts to work the case in earnest, Decker focuses his attention on the first victim, Debbie. He examines the place where she was shot. Debbie had just gotten a pass to the school nurse’s office but had stopped at her locker first before going there. Decker looks inside the classroom next to her locker, an unused shop class. There are three doors at the back of the classroom that turn out to be storage areas with old equipment piled inside.

Decker next examines the contents of Debbie’s locker. He goes through several of her notebooks before he finds something unexpected: Debbie made a sketch of a man in full camo gear and drew a heart right next to the image.

Lancaster and Decker pay a visit to Debbie’s parents, The Watsons, who are still in shock from their daughter’s murder. When Lancaster and Decker show Debbie’s parents the sketch of the man in camo gear, they have no idea what it means. They protest that their daughter had nothing to do with the school shootings.

Debbie may have been involved with someone other than a fellow student—a boyfriend who never came to the house. Mrs. Watson only knew about him because of some hints that Debbie had posted about him on social media. Debbie also had a pet name for this man: She called him Jesus.

Mrs. Watson discovered this fact from a poem Debbie had written on the chalkboard in Debbie’s bedroom. The name wasn’t meant as a religious reference, and Debbie erased the poem right after her mother discovered it.

The two detectives go upstairs to search Debbie’s room. Decker notices musical notes written on the chalkboard. However, Debbie doesn’t play an instrument. Aside from that, the notes make no sense as a musical composition. Decker believes the notes may be a code of some kind and is convinced that Jesus has been inside Debbie’s house.

A police and forensics team arrives to go over the Watson house thoroughly. Decker can pinpoint when the musical score was written on the chalkboard. Debbie’s mother had wiped it clean two weeks earlier, so it must have appeared more recently than that.

Decker asks if the Watson family took a trip during that time. Debbie’s father admits that he and his wife went to visit a sick relative in Indiana, and Debbie stayed behind. Decker believes the shooter entered the house while the parents were away.

Lancaster and Decker leave to discuss the case. The reason the shooter teamed with Debbie puzzles Decker. He must have needed something for her. As they continue walking, Decker starts having a vision of giant number threes lunging at him out of the darkness.

He recalls the first time this happened to him as a rookie cop. He became frightened until he recalled the advice of one of his doctors at the therapy institute: “‘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 […] But just know that it’s your mind. […] It’s not real’” (141).

As Decker continues speaking to Lancaster, he notices that the threes are now sporting knives. Lancaster offers Decker a ride home, but he prefers to walk.

On impulse, Decker goes back to the Watson house and asks about a series of photographs on the mantel. One of the pictures is of Mr. Watson’s grandfather, who lived with the family during his final years. He worked at the army base next to the school and talked to Debbie about the construction work he performed there.

Decker leaves to mull over this information. He receives a call from Lancaster stating that the FBI has cracked the musical note code. The message reads: “‘Good job, Amos. But in the end it won’t get you where you want to go, bro’” (145).

Decker recalls the day he first learned about his altered mental state. He woke up in a hospital bed after being injured on the football field. He now has the capacity to see numbers as colors. After specialists examine him at a research facility outside Chicago, he is certified to be an acquired, or manufactured, savant.

Although categorized as a prodigy, Decker sees himself as a freak: “It was like a stranger had stepped into his body and taken it over, and he could do nothing to get him out” (147).

Decker can no longer relate to others as an average person would. It’s only in his relationship with his wife and daughter that he achieves any semblance of normal feeling: “It was as though his new mind had allowed an exception for these two people, enabling him to be a bit closer to what he once was. But only for these two” (148).

Decker shifts his focus to the day ahead. Leopold is scheduled to reappear before the judge. Decker takes a seat in the courtroom, noticing that Jamison is there. Once the proceedings commence, Leopold’s attorney produces evidence that his client was locked up on vagrancy charges 70 miles away at the time that Decker’s family was murdered. Leopold couldn’t have committed the crime. Leopold only confessed because he is bipolar and wasn’t taking his prescription medicine at the time. The judge throws out the case, and Leopold is set free.