Memory Man

The smaller man gagged and spit and cursed and heaved. He knew time was ru

Decker was in terrible pain; the wound was bleeding freely again. He felt his strength start to be sapped by the blood loss. But he didn’t really need strength. He just needed his bulk concentrated on one spot in particular. So he kept working at it and his shoulder finally fell into the crevice that he had been striving so mightily for.

Under Leopold’s chin and directly against the man’s throat.

And then Decker let his weight bear down directly on this spot. His bare feet touched the concrete, gaining traction and leverage, and he thrust his pelvis forward and with it his huge shoulder, ramming it against the man’s windpipe and compressing Leopold’s chest so his lungs could not inflate. His big belly was sucking in and out through the opening of the jumpsuit with the effort of it all. Sweat dripped off him though the room was cold. He was not going to stop until this was done. His heart was hammering out of control. He felt dizzy and sick. His head felt ready to burst. But he didn’t think about any of that. His one focused thought was to kill this man.

Decker let his bulk collapse, making himself as much dead weight as possible. He wished he weighed a ton. He kept driving and driving like he was slamming into a blocking sled over and over. He never had the talent of others on the gridiron, but his motor had never stopped. And no one, from the superstars down to the journeymen, ever worked harder than he did.

So this was his moment. This was his one play to end all plays.

He heard gasping, which wasn’t enough.

He kept compressing. He was a gu

He heard gurgling, which still wasn’t enough.

He pushed down harder. He was a whale on a mi

He heard a long, low exhalation, which would never be enough.

He rammed his body down with all his strength. In his mind his DVR whirled. Every victim, every face raced through his mind while he was slowly killing their killer.

Then his DVR slowed and two faces held steady. Cassie and Molly. That was all he could see in that enormous cavern his mind had become. It was the whole damn universe in there; it could hold so much and was ever-expanding. Yet still, right now, it held only their two faces. That was all. And it seemed more than fitting. More than right.

He smashed down one more time as he mumbled, “I love you, Cassie. I love you, Molly. I love you both so much.”

Then he heard nothing. Nothing at all.

The lungs had not inflated because they no longer could.

And Leopold’s body finally went limp and the gun fell to the concrete.

That was enough.

He lifted his head and stared down at the man.

There were few things in life that were certain.

There were many things in death that were.

He was staring at three of them.

Eyes wide open.

Pupils fixed.

Mouth involuntarily sagging.

Dead.

In Decker’s mind the images of his wife and daughter slowly faded, like a movie ending.

And I miss you both so much. I will miss you forever.

He rolled off Leopold and then lay there panting for a few minutes. He had never felt so tired in all his life. His gut was clenching, his legs and head were throbbing. He could feel the swelling on his face from where Leopold had struck him with the gun. And with his heart racing, blood was now starting to flow more rapidly from his wounded leg.

But most of him—the most important parts of him, anyway—felt good. Felt terrific in fact.

It took him the better part of five minutes, but he finally managed to stand with the chair and the saggy, stretched-out duct tape still wrapped around him. He threw himself against the wall repeatedly until the chair fell away in pieces. Then he tugged and ripped until he was free of the tape, and stepped out of his prison.

He turned to look across the room.

He hadn’t seen it before, during his struggles with Leopold, but, still, he had known.

She hadn’t joined the fight after all, either on his side or Leopold’s.

There had to be a reason for that.

Now he was looking at that reason.

He had been wrong. The Smith and Wesson had killed again. Or it was about to.

He staggered over to where Wyatt lay on the floor, blood still flowing out of her chest from where the shot had struck her.

He knelt down next to her. She looked far more male than female. But to him she would always be a woman. A sixteen-year-old girl, in fact, who’d suffered so much. Too much. More than anyone should.

Dr. Marshall had said that these days someone with Belinda’s intersex condition was always involved in the decision as to what gender to become fully and finally. But someone should never feel compelled to choose to be a man simply because she was terrified of being a woman.

She was not dead yet but she soon would be. The pool of blood around her seemed to exceed what was left inside her. He had no way to stanch the bleeding.

And in truth, Decker also didn’t have the desire.

He looked first at her hands. The hands that had strangled the life out of his daughter. Then at the finger that had pulled the trigger on the gun that had killed his wife. The hands that had slit throats and fired shotguns and wrapped a mother and father in plastic and stabbed an FBI agent in the heart.

Then he gazed down at the face. The eyes were starting to fix, the breathing to relax. The body’s transition to death was commencing in earnest. The brain was telling the rest of the body that it was over and that everything would soon shut down. It was doing all this in as orderly a fashion as possible given that the cause was a hole in the chest driven there by violent means.

Decker had died before too. He didn’t remember white lights, or a tu

He sat down on his haunches next to her. Part of him wanted to take Leopold’s gun and blow her brains out. Part of him wanted to use his huge hands to crush the remaining life out of her. To hurry her on to where she was inevitably going anyway.

But he didn’t. Only once did her eyes flicker and seem to fix on his. There was a look there, just a glimpse, perhaps imagined, Decker didn’t know, when he thought he was looking at the scared sixteen-year-old girl back at the institute.

He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, but didn’t even try to process what had become an unimaginable tragedy all around.

So he simply sat there and watched her die. And when she did, he closed her eyes. But he could close nothing that had come before. And Decker knew he never would.

And whether he wanted it or not, Amos Decker, Sebastian Leopold, and Belinda Wyatt, in life and now in death, were all bound together.

Forever.

But he was immeasurably relieved to be the one left standing.

Chapter

65

A BENCH.

Christmas Eve.

A light snow was falling. It collected on top of the foot that had already fallen over the last three days. The stores were closed. The shopping was done. And after the cataclysmic events at Mansfield, everyone in Burlington was getting ready to sleep and then awake to a day of peace and quiet spent with family.

Well, almost everyone.

Amos Decker sat on the bench staring across at Mansfield High. But really he was staring at…nothing.

In deference to the weather he had on a new overcoat and a wool-lined flapped hat. His hands were gloved and he wore brand-new size fourteen heavy-duty waterproof boots.