Memory Man

Several policemen, Miller, and Brimmer confront Decker outside of his hotel. Brimmer accuses Decker of impersonating a lawyer. Decker points out that he never actually claimed to be a lawyer, but that Brimmer made assumptions based on Decker’s carefully worded answers to her questions. Because they can’t charge Decker with anything, Miller dismisses the police and Brimmer. Miller admits that the purpose of the police visit was to appease Miller’s own bosses. Once the others are gone, Miller asks to have a talk with Decker.

Miller was Decker’s former captain. Even though Decker never told anyone about his special abilities, Miller suspects that Decker has something that other officers don’t: “‘Don’t think the department didn’t notice your success rate as a cop and then a detective. You had something extra that the others didn’t have’” (59).

Miller isn’t happy about Decker’s interference in the Leopold investigation, but he values Decker’s opinion. Miller asks if Decker thinks Leopold committed the murders. Decker holds back some of the information he discovered but asserts that Leopold isn’t the killer. Because Leopold knew some of the specifics of the crime, Decker speculates that Leopold is connected to the person who killed Decker’s family.

Decker asks Miller to keep him in the loop on the Leopold case, but Miller reminds him that Decker is no longer on the force. Miller also advises him to forget that Leopold is even on the same planet. Miller warns that there will be serious repercussions if Decker interferes again.

Decker goes to the site of the mass shooting. Though he graduated from Mansfield High School himself, it now looks like an abandoned building. It was originally built for the children of government personnel stationed at the army base next door. Once the army moved out, the school lost half of its students, and the town of Burlington never recovered economically either. The school itself is underfunded, understaffed, and populated by students with drug and alcohol problems.

Decker recalls his glory days as a high school football star. Many of the trophies he won are still in the school display case. After the Cleveland Browns drafted him, Decker’s fateful accident occurred. After that, he met his wife while recovering from the injury. They’d wanted a large family but could only conceive their daughter, Molly. He reminds himself that his daughter would have been old enough to attend Mansfield, and he might have been one of the grieving parents standing outside the school grounds.

Decker’s focus returns to the school building. He isn’t on the police force and can’t go inside to investigate the crime scene himself. He walks around the perimeter, trying to figure out how the shooter could possibly have escaped unseen.

Eventually, he takes a seat in the football field stands, lost in thought. Lancaster shows up and comes to sit beside him. She asks if he wants to go inside the school to examine the scene. He points out that he isn’t on the force. Lancaster says that Miller is offering Decker a job as a paid consultant on the case. 

Accompanied by Lancaster, Decker enters the school. They examine the path the shooter would have taken to his first victim, Debbie, who was standing by her locker and died from a shotgun blast to the face.

The shooter then proceeded to kill the gym teacher, several students in different classrooms, and the assistant principal. The shooter also wounded a teacher who was trying to protect his students. Decker speculates that the shooter may have been targeting specific individuals because he bypassed many others while on his rampage.

One of the school’s video cameras captured the shooter from the waist up. He’s fully dressed in camouflage gear with a face shield and mask, and he appears to be tall and massively built.

The shooter began his killing spree at the back of the school and worked his way to the front, yet no one saw him leaving the school building. None of the staff or students match the shooter’s description, so all have been eliminated as possible suspects.

Decker and Lancaster make their way to the police command center in the school library. The FBI has set up operations in one corner of the room, the state police in another section, and the local cops are relegated to the far back left side of the room. Decker tells Miller that the police don’t need Decker’s help, but Miller says that Decker can see things that others miss. Miller wants Decker involved.

Decker and Lancaster study the video of the shooter, whose first victim fell at 8:42 a.m., shortly after classes started. Decker is convinced the shooter knew the placement of all the cameras and how to avoid them. When Lancaster asks Decker if he sees anything else, he replies, “‘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’” (81). 

Decker falls into the routine he used to follow as a detective and painstakingly examines the crime scene from every possible angle. He doesn’t believe in miracles and asserts that slow, dogged work solves crimes and small details often reveal a criminal’s biggest mistakes.

Shortly before dawn, transports arrive to take the victims’ bodies to the morgue. Decker thinks back to the slaughter of his own family, and the sight of so many body bags sickens him. He refocuses his attention on the shooter who slipped away so easily, concluding that the man must have had inside knowledge of the school.

Going back to the command center, Decker sits down to go through witness statements one more time. When something strikes him as odd in one of the reports, he bolts without answering Lancaster’s question about what he’s found; this doesn’t surprise her: “Some bee would get in his bonnet and off he would go without a word to her or anyone else” (85).

Decker is fixated on a small detail: A student heard a strange sound at 7:28 a.m., more than an hour before the first attack. Decker concludes, “Small observations can lead to large breakthroughs” (87).

Decker thinks about Melissa Dalton’s statement that she’d heard a sound at 7:28 a.m., like a door opening with a whooshing sound. He goes to Melissa’s locker, which is positioned directly across from the cafeteria. Decker believes the freezer door in the cafeteria kitchen might have made this sound.

Decker’s theory proves correct. When he investigates the freezer, he discovers that someone dialed up the temperature to 45 degrees. The killer must have been hiding out in the freezer, possibly overnight. Because the cafeteria is at the opposite end of the school from where the shooting began, Decker wonders what possible advantage the shooter would gain from hiding in the freezer. He also wonders how no one saw the shooter cross the entire school.

Upon further investigation, Decker discovers a ceiling panel just outside the freezer that the shooter used to stow his camo gear and weapons. Decker also discovers another door to the loading dock that leads out to the woods next to the school. He believes this is how the shooter exited the scene.

The police and FBI go over the freezer area and ceiling panel for additional clues while Decker and Lancaster turn their attention to the video camera that captured an image of the shooter.

The camera location doesn’t seem to tie in with the shooter’s path of destruction. Decker also notices that someone altered the camera angle to deliberately capture the shooter, and he speculates that this was a premeditated move. The shooter wanted someone to notice him in that location to misdirect the investigation.

Decker says, “‘So that means we have one proven point—the video camera time stamp, and one almost proven point—the shooter was hiding in the cafeteria. If they’re both true, neither makes sense as a whole’” (98). 

Decker and Lancaster have returned to the police command center in the school library. They’re no closer to solving the puzzle of the shooter’s path, but Decker is convinced that the shooter was hiding in the cafeteria freezer and shot the first victim at the opposite end of the school.

The two detectives mull over how it was possible for no one to see the shooter travel all that distance. Even though no one was out in the hallways once classes started, every classroom door contains a window. Multiple people would have spotted someone roaming the halls.

Still in a quandary, Lancaster leaves to take care of other business. She tells Decker to meet her at the station later so they can review the facts again. Decker doesn’t confide that he won’t be at the station later—he plans to attend Leopold’s arraignment hearing.

Even though Decker knows Leopold didn’t kill Decker’s family, Leopold’s testimony doesn’t add up: “Orphan facts, he liked to call them. There was no one to claim ownership because they were lies” (103).