Memory Man

by David Baldacci

  Bogart looked at Decker. “A real piece of work. What’d you do to deserve her?”

  “I can’t process that right now,” said Decker.

  * * *

  The jet flew them to a private airstrip south of the Windy City and they took an SUV to the new headquarters of the Cognitive Institute. It was in a three-story building in a campus-style office park about an hour outside of Chicago.

  Bogart flashed his FBI credentials at the receptionist, which started a chain reaction that ended with their being escorted to a conference room in the back of the building outfitted in soothing earth colors.

  A man in a dark three-piece suit with a pink shirt and yellow bow tie with green dots came in.

  He looked at Bogart, who flashed his badge and introduced himself. Then Darren Marshall saw Decker.

  “Amos Decker?”

  Decker rose and shook his hand. “Dr. Marshall.”

  “It’s been, what, twenty years?”

  “Plus two months, nine days, and fourteen hours,” said Decker automatically. The calculation came out of his head so fast he didn’t even realize he was doing it. It didn’t seem weird to him anymore. It just…was who he was now.

  “Of course, I will take your word for it,” said Marshall. He glanced at Bogart. “Amos was quite an exceptional case.”

  “I’m sure. But I know nothing about it.”

  Marshall next looked at Jamison. “And are you also with the FBI?”

  “No. I’m just an interested citizen trying to help.”

  Marshall looked a bit startled by her comment.

  “Exceptional case?” prompted Bogart.

  Decker said tersely, “I suffered a head trauma. It changed how my mind worked. Made it more efficient in some ways.” He paused. “A manufactured savant, as it were, unlike your brother.”

  Bogart nodded, studying him closely. “Okay. Right, I get that.”

  “Can you tell me what all this is about?” asked Marshall.

  Decker explained the situation to Marshall, who slowly nodded before he was finished.

  “I had heard about poor Sizemore of course, but I didn’t know it was part of this…this awful event in Burlington.”

  “We had mentioned it to Dr. Rabinowitz,” said Decker.

  “So that’s why he was calling,” said Marshall. “I’ve been so busy I haven’t called Harold back yet.”

  “It’s connected to even more awful events,” said Bogart. “None of which we need to get into at present.” He glanced expectantly at Decker.

  Decker said, “Our killer is almost certainly a male, a male who has partnered with someone calling himself Sebastian Leopold.”

  “Never heard of him. But you think it has a connection to the institute?”

  “Considering that it was their carefully placed clues that led me back here, yes. And add the fact that Dr. Sizemore has been murdered.”

  “And you know they’re connected for certain? I mean, Sizemore’s death and the others?”

  “Another message was left at his home. Again, for me.”

  Marshall slumped back in his chair looking highly unnerved. “My God, I can hardly believe it.”

  Decker said, “There was a woman in my group at the institute, Belinda Wyatt.”

  “Yes, I remember her.”

  “She was one of Dr. Sizemore’s protégées.”

  “Well, we don’t encourage such attachments here.”

  “But that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. In fact is it correct to say that Dr. Sizemore was let go from here because he had formed an attachment with patients more recently? Perhaps female patients?”

  “I really can’t get into that.”

  Bogart leaned forward across the width of the table. “Dr. Marshall, we are hunting a killer who murdered more people than I care to mention, including a slew of high school students and one of my agents. This person has to be stopped before he kills again. So while I respect that you have confidences to maintain, any help you can give us will be much appreciated.”

  Marshall let out a long, uneven breath. “Well, I can tell you that Sizemore had crossed the professional line with a female at the institute around the time that he was asked to leave. I really can’t say more than that.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s not going to sue you,” said Bogart. “He’s lying in a morgue.” He glanced at Decker. “Do you think Sizemore might have done the same thing with this Wyatt person?”

  Decker ignored this query and said to Marshall, “What happened to her?”

  “I would have to check the records.”

  “Will you do that?”

  “This is very treacherous territory professionally speaking.”

  “Please, Dr. Marshall, just check the records.”

  Marshall rose and picked up the phone on the credenza and spoke into it. Five minutes later a woman entered carrying a bulky expandable file folder. She handed it to Dr. Marshall, turned, and left.

  Marshall slipped on his glasses and said, “I’ll need to look over the file.”

  Bogart said, “Go right ahead. Take your time.”

  Twenty minutes passed and then Marshall looked up. “Okay, what would you like to know?”

  “What was her age then?” asked Decker.

  “Sixteen.”

  “She was a hyper?”

  “Yes, of extraordinary ability. Close to yours, in fact. But unlike you, she exhibited no signs of synesthesia.”

  “Which made my case more interesting to some here,” said Decker. “The duality of it.”

  “And also how you came by it. Blunt-force trauma on the gridiron. Never had one before you. I seriously doubt we’ll ever see another.”

  Bogart looked at Decker. “So that’s how it happened?”

  Jamison nodded at him. “Yes.”

  “She knows this but I don’t?” said Bogart irritably.

  Jamison explained, “We spent some long car rides together.”

  Decker said to Marshall, “How did Belinda come by hers? We had group sessions, but that fact was never revealed. Although some of the others here learned about my situation through the grapevine, I don’t remember Belinda’s ever being mentioned.”

  “Well, your background should not have been disclosed. And Belinda’s was even more…complicated.”

  “How complicated?” asked Bogart. When Marshall said nothing, Bogart said, “I don’t want to play hardball, but I can have a subpoena here in an hour. But in that time these people might kill again.”

  Marshall looked over at Decker. “Do you really think that this might be connected with all those deaths?”

  “I know that it is.”

  Marshall took off his glasses and slid the file away. “Belinda Wyatt was a teenager living in rural Utah. When she was sixteen she was, to put it bluntly, gang-raped, sodomized, brutally beaten, and left for dead.”

  Bogart glanced sharply at Decker, but the latter kept his gaze on Marshall.

  “So she suffered a brain trauma from her injuries and she came out of it with hyperthymesia,” said Decker.

  “Yes. And she also suffered a great deal of emotional trauma, as you can imagine,” added Marshall. “Enough that realistically a full recovery was never going to happen. She was permanently damaged from it, emotionally, and physically as well. With the physical damage done she would never be able to conceive a child, for instance.”

  “My God,” commented Jamison.

  Bogart said, “But, Decker, I’m not following this. Wyatt’s a girl. She can’t be our shooter. It’s a guy.”

  “She can be our shooter. She is our shooter.”

  Bogart glanced at him sharply. “How do you figure that exactly?”

  Decker looked at Marshall. “Belinda had issues, didn’t she? Other than her being beaten and raped? Having to do with sexual orientation perhaps?”

  Marshall said in amazement, “I really don’t know how you possibly could have known that. To my knowledge that was never mentioned in any session.�

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  “I can’t exactly explain it other than in my head some things came together. The line of a jaw, the curve of a thigh, the hands. And mannerisms and movements. All jumbled together. Pieces of a puzzle.”

  “Your mind is truly extraordinary, Amos.”

  “So was that why she was raped and brutalized? I would guess twenty years ago in rural Utah someone like that would not be very popular.”

  “I was not privy to the exact details of the crime, but that could have been the case, yes. I’m not sure how far we’ve come as a society, actually. I would imagine that sort of condition would still provoke severe if totally misguided reactions.”

  “What exactly were her medical conditions?” asked Decker.

  Marshall seemed about to protest, but then resignation swept over his features. “Twenty years ago Belinda Wyatt would have been classified as suffering from true hermaphroditism.”

  Jamison said, “You mean like a hermaphrodite?”

  “Yes,” said Marshall. “Now, that’s an arcane term, no longer in use because it’s more than a bit insensitive. Today we call such conditions intersex or DSD, which is an acronym for ‘disorders of sexual development.’ That’s where there’s a discrepancy between the external and internal genitalia, meaning testes and ovaries respectively, and also where you may have female chromosomes but male genitalia or vice versa. It has four known categories. Belinda technically belonged to a subset of the condition known as true gonadal intersex.”

  “Which means what exactly?” asked Decker.

  “That the person has both ovarian and testicular tissue. Belinda also had both XX and XY chromosomes. She also had one ovary and one testis. As you can imagine, it would be a difficult condition for anyone. The medical community has come a long way now in terms of helping the person to deal with the situation, to make choices, surgical and otherwise. Twenty years ago the decision was often made to have surgery immediately and to make the patient a woman in lieu of a man because the surgical procedures tended to be easier. Now we know there are many other factors involved. It’s often better to wait and come to understand each person’s unique situation and to allow the patient to have substantial input into the decision. I mean, it’s their body and life after all.”

  “But twenty years ago?” said Decker.

  “It was very different,” said Marshall. “And people could be very ignorant. And extremely cruel. Wyatt was sixteen and in high school. That time period is perilous enough for many young people who do not have to deal with, well, being different biologically from other people their age.”

  Jamison said darkly, “So whoever gang-raped and beat her probably knew about her condition. And they were of the ignorant variety? And they decided to teach the girl a lesson?”

  “Presumably, yes.”

  “And her parents?” asked Decker.

  “Since she was not at the age of majority at the time, they had to give their authorization for her to come to the institute.”

  “Did they ever visit her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “To put it delicately, I would number them among the ignorant.”

  “God, talk about being totally abandoned by your parents when you need them most,” remarked Jamison.

  “So they thought their daughter was what, a freak?” asked Decker.

  “I spoke with them on the phone a few times. I don’t think they cared what happened to her. Thoroughly unpleasant people.”

  Bogart said, “Why were you privy to all of this medical information on patients at the institute? I thought you just did research on cognitive issues.”

  “We approach things from a wider perspective. Yes, our primary focus is research into minds that are or have become extraordinary through various factors. But we also are medical doctors. The patients we saw, like Belinda and also Amos, had suffered serious trauma, which in turn caused enormous changes inside their minds. We needed to know their complete medical histories so that we could better understand what had caused the changes and also, we hoped, help them cope with what was essentially a new life.” He looked at Decker. “I know we never did any follow-up with you, Amos. That was a gap in our procedures that we have since rectified. Simply because you leave us physically does not mean we cannot continue to support you.”

  “Your help was much appreciated,” said Decker. “It enabled me to cope on my own.”

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that. Now, in Belinda’s case it was quite evident to us that she was a special case even had she not suffered what she did. I had frank discussions with the doctor in Utah who had seen her and given the preliminary diagnosis of her condition. It’s a total package, particularly when one is dealing with the mind, so we needed to understand everything. And her parents had no objection. I think they wanted to wash their hands of it,” he added with a grimace.

  “Did Belinda receive an operation that made her a man?” asked Decker.

  “I don’t know. She did not have such a procedure before or while she was here, that is for certain.”

  “Have you heard from her since she left here?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Do you have an address for Belinda?” asked Decker.

  “No.”

  “Her parents?”

  “In the file, yes, but it’s fifteen years old.”

  Decker said, “We’ll take it.”

  Chapter

  52

  DECKER SAT AT the table, looking out the window. Jamison sat across from him, watching him nervously.

  In an effort to lighten the mood, she said, “Okay, I have to admit, this beats my Suzuki.”

  “You mean your clown car,” commented Decker, still peering out the window.

  They were traveling at forty-one thousand feet and well over five hundred miles an hour in the Bureau’s sleek tri-engine Falcon.

  He looked up when Bogart placed cups of coffee in front of him and Jamison, then sat down across from him. The FBI agent unbuttoned his jacket and took a sip from his own cup.

  Jamison looked around the plush interior. “Nice ride.”

  Bogart nodded. “The FBI pulls out all the stops for cases like this.” He eyed Decker, who was still staring out the window.

  “So you took a hit on the football field and it changed your life forever?”

  “It changed my brain, and with it my life.”

  “And again, you don’t want to talk about it?”

  Decker said nothing.

  “What do you think we’ll find at the Wyatts’ house in Colorado?” asked Jamison, peering anxiously between the two men.

  Decker said, “Whatever we find will tell us something we didn’t know before. And it will get us one step closer to Belinda Wyatt.”

  Bogart took another sip of coffee. “What made you look in Wyatt’s direction? We were searching for a man and she’s a woman, or she was when you knew her.”

  In answer Decker opened the laptop in front of him and spun it around so Bogart could see the screen. Then he ran the video.

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