Memory Man

“Answers,” said Decker. “I hope.”

They went in through the front and rear while other agents manned the perimeter, to make sure no one inside could possibly escape. They cleared each of the rooms and then settled in the basement.

“Damn!” exclaimed Bogart, gazing around. “I guess I expected to see walls covered in index cards with strings attached, running to other cards, like a manual version of an air traffic control system.”

But there was nothing like that down here. In fact, there was nothing but what one would expect to see in a basement: junk.

“I was hoping for the same thing,” said Decker. He looked all around, taking everything in, and started nodding as though the answer had occurred to him.

“Ironically, I overlooked one obvious but significant point. Wyatt has hyperthymesia. She doesn’t need a wall of index cards. It’s all in her head, every detail. And we don’t know what Leopold is yet, except strange and a hell of an actor. He plays a clueless idiot better than anyone I’ve ever seen. But there’s something else about him that I can’t pinpoint.”

Bogart said, “You told us he was inexplicable.”

“He is inexplicable. Everyone has an agenda, whether altruistic or self-serving. So he has one too. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

Bogart said, “Should we call in the locals?”

Decker shook his head. “No.”

“Why not? They get ticked when we don’t at least inform them of what we’re doing.”

“Because it could be that the ‘locals’ are the reason behind this whole thing. So we’re going to process what little there is down here.”

He started poking around a plastic shelf with a few boxes of junk on them. Jamison started going through stuff in another corner. Lancaster and Bogart exchanged a glance and then did likewise.

* * *

Two hours later, Bogart said, “Okay, there is nothing here. Nothing!”

“No, there is,” said Jamison. She held up a newspaper clipping.

“Where’d you get that?” asked Lancaster.

“It was stuffed in a box and under that table over there with rags on top.”

“So what?” said Bogart. “It’s junk, just like everything else here.”

“No. When people save newspapers, they always save a stack of them. This was the only newspaper in this entire room. To a mind like Wyatt’s I bet it was a particle of disorder. Which made me wonder why it was here. There had to be a reason.”

Decker studied her curiously. “That’s a good deduction, Jamison.”

“Hey, I may not be a hyper-whatsis, but I have my moments. And I can smell newsprint from a mile away.”

“What does it say?” asked Lancaster.

She held up the front page of the newspaper and pointed to the large headline.

Lancaster read, “‘Giles Evers Gone Missing.’”

“Who the hell is Giles Evers?” said Bogart.

Jamison said, “He was a police officer. The news story also said he was the son of Mercy’s most prominent citizen, Clyde Evers. Former mayor, made a lot of money in mining, gave a lot of it to his hometown. Typical big fish in a small pond.”

“Why would Wyatt keep that clipping?” asked Bogart.

Decker answered. “Because Giles Evers raped her. And she made him disappear.”

“Whoa, that’s a helluva leap of logic, Amos,” said Lancaster.

“No it’s not. It would be the only reason this article would be here.”

“When was the article from?” asked Lancaster.

Jamison said, “Nineteen months ago. Right about the time the house was sold to the company we think Wyatt is behind.”

Bogart and Lancaster stared at Decker. “Okay, you’re saying she was attacked by a police officer?” said Bogart in a skeptical tone.

“By police officers,” said Decker. “It was a gang rape. And they did it because of her intersex condition, and Evers’s old man paid off the Wyatts to keep it hush-hush. He got his son in the clear and saved the police department a ton of embarrassment and the rolling of heads. I can’t imagine the Mercy Police Department is all that big. It might be that all the street cops were part of the rape. Hell of a hit for the men in blue to take. And the town. A town that maybe had no sympathy for someone like Belinda Wyatt.”

“But we can’t be sure of that,” said Lancaster. “You’re just speculating.”

“We can confirm it,” said Decker. “Let’s go talk to some folks who were around back then.”

Chapter 59

The police chief from two decades ago had died six years before of a heart attack. There were two officers from that time who were still with the department. Neither of them knew anything about the Wyatt case, they had told Bogart when he and the others showed up at the single police station in town. The group was rapidly shown the door.

As they drove away Lancaster said, “They’re lying. I could see it in their faces.”

“Small town, small enough that everyone knows everyone else’s business,” said Decker. “I say we go to the top of the list.”

“You mean Giles Evers’s father?” said Jamison. “Clyde Evers?”

“If he’s still alive.”

Bogart was looking at his smartphone, on which he had been doing a search. “Apparently he is. And it looks like he still lives here.”

* * *