Memory Man

Jamison is a reporter with the News Leader. She is in her late twenties—pretty, tall, and slim with bobbed brunette hair. Jamison initially tries to coerce a story out of Decker. He finds her manner intrusive and avoids her.

Though initially antagonistic, Jamison decides to help Decker investigate the shootings at Mansfield. Because her mentor was killed by the gunman, she has a personal stake in the outcome. She possesses keen analytical skills, and by the end of the novel, she joins Decker as an investigator with a special FBI task force.

Lancaster is Decker’s former partner. She’s the only female detective in the Burlington Police Department. Lancaster is a pencil-thin, 40-year-old blonde who chain smokes. Her face isn’t pretty and has a worn look. Decker respects her toughness as a detective. Together they made more arrests leading to convictions than anyone else in department history.

Lancaster is concerned about Decker’s mental state and wants to bring him back into the mainstream by getting him involved in the school shooting case.

Bogart is a senior FBI agent sent to direct the Mansfield shooting investigation. He’s in his forties, with an athletic build, and he dresses impeccably. Initially, Bogart isn’t aware of the specifics of Decker’s abilities, but he has some interest in Decker’s uniqueness. Bogart understands the upside and the downside of having special mental gifts.

Bogart is ambitious to advance his career at the FBI. To that end, he’s assembling an elite, crime-solving task force which he invites Decker and Jamison to join.

Leopold first appears as a drug-addled victim of bipolar disorder who’s gone off his prescription medicine. He is of medium height, with drug tracks on his arms, and a dolphin tattoo. His face carries scars, and his hands indicate a life of manual labor. He seems vague, disoriented, and claims to have murdered Decker’s family in revenge for a petty insult.

Leopold is a sociopath who preys on victims of unsolved crimes. He killed his own family, and no one suspected him of the double murder. Now terminally ill, he makes a game out of manipulating the people he can lure to his “Justice Denied” website, eventually robbing them of their fortunes and their lives. 

Wyatt is a manufactured savant, like Decker, and met him at the institute. She received her augmented mental powers as the result of a brutal assault suffered when she was 16 years old. Wyatt is an intersex individual, meaning she has both female and male chromosomes. She had a sex-change operation sometime after leaving the institute and now goes by the name of Billy. This individual is in his mid-thirties, five foot eleven, and possesses a wiry build.

When Wyatt teams up with Leopold, they go on a killing rampage to literally and symbolically destroy everyone who wronged Wyatt. In Wyatt’s mind, Decker is a target by association because he was once a football player and a policeman. These groups are both targets of Wyatt’s rage.