Memory Man

Fifteen months after the murder of his family, Decker is sitting on a park bench observing passersby. He notices details that leap out at him and tell him about the life of each person he observes. He does this as a mental exercise to pass the time as he waits for someone specific to arrive.

He flashes back to the events that followed the murder of his family—the downward spiral that left him homeless and broke: “Bloated, dirty, wild-haired, bushy-bearded, he looked like he should be living in a cave somewhere attempting to conspire with aliens” (9).

When he realizes how ashamed Cassie and Molly would be if they could see him that way, he pulls himself together. Decker becomes a private investigator, taking whatever cases come his way, and moves into a room at a local Residence Inn.

Decker thinks further back to an event that changed his life forever. Long before he became a cop, he had been a professional football player. He suffered such severe head trauma from a game injury that it affected his brain in such a way that he remembers every event of his life, large or small, in specific detail.

Much as Decker would like to forget the horrific details of the night his family was murdered, he can’t. He also hasn’t been able to get a lead on who might have been responsible for their deaths.

Decker’s musings are cut short when he spots the couple he’s been expecting to see.

Decker follows the couple into a nearby bar. The man is well-dressed and in his late forties, and the woman is doe-eyed and half his age. Decker thinks of each one in terms of numbers and colors: The man is a shark associated with the color purple and the number six, a dirty number in Decker’s estimation. The woman is a dummy associated with the color orange and the number four, innocuous and uninteresting.

Decker’s head injury altered the way he perceives reality, so he often thinks in colors and numbers: “And it wasn’t that he saw them exactly in those colors. It was the perception of those colors. That was the best and only way he could explain the sensation” (15).

Decker watches as the two drink cocktails. He assumes that the shark is going to try to con the dummy out of some of her rich father’s money. After she leaves the bar, Decker confronts the shark and offers him a plane ticket and 50 thousand dollars to break off contact with the woman and leave town.

The shark wants more money, but every time the shark attempts to renegotiate terms, Decker’s offer goes down. Decker baits the shark into saying how stupid the woman is to have believed the shark in the first place.

When the shark is resistant to giving up his prey, Decker shows the shark a concealed digital recorder that has captured every insult. The shark leaves with the plane ticket and nothing more.

Decker goes down to the dining room at the Residence Inn to take advantage of the daily buffet breakfast included with his room rate. He ruefully admits that the hotel is losing money, considering how much food he eats.

He flashes back to the outcome of his last case. Even though he saved his client money by sending the shark out of town with nothing more than a plane ticket, his employer only gave Decker his hourly rate.

After Decker piles his plate high with food and sits down to eat, his former detective partner, Lancaster, arrives. Lancaster is a worn-looking blond in her forties who chain smokes, and Decker secretly admires her tenacity in solving cases. Decker and Lancaster were the most successful detective team in their police department’s history.

Decker resists talking to Lancaster at first. When she offers sympathy for his past tragedy, Decker doesn’t react because his brain injury makes it impossible for him to process certain emotions: “He had never sought sympathy, mainly because his mind didn’t really get that particular sensation. At least not anymore […] sympathy and its even more irritating cousin, empathy, were no longer in his wheelhouse” (23).

Decker deflects attention from himself by observing that Lancaster might have a Vitamin D deficiency. He runs through a catalog of symptoms that he’s casually observed about her. She brushes off his Sherlock Holmes routine to announce the real reason for her visit: Someone has been arrested for killing Decker’s family.

Now that Decker’s attention is riveted, Lancaster reveals that the suspect’s name is Leopold. Decker runs through his catalog of memories to see if he can place the man:

Decker once more closed his eyes and turned on what he liked to call his DVR. This was one of the positives of being what he was. The frames flew past his eyes so fast it was hard to see, but he could still see everything in there (24).

Decker can’t place Leopold. Lancaster informs him that Leopold turned himself in voluntarily. Decker questions the time lapse because the murders took place 16 months earlier. Leopold’s motive is that Decker supposedly disrespected him during a brief encounter at a local 7-Eleven mart.

Decker questions how Leopold knew where he lived if Leopold didn’t own a car. Decker also wonders how Leopold could have killed Decker’s much larger brother-in-law. Lancaster explains that Leopold may have mental problems. Decker wonders to himself, “So then this whack job with the broken elevator for a brain next went upstairs and shot my wife and strangled my daughter?” (27).

Decker presses Lancaster for more information, but she has none to give. Decker wants to see Leopold to question him in person, but Lancaster warns him not to interfere with the investigation.

Decker quietly determines to get answers: “He had woken up this morning with not a single purpose in life, other than to live until the next morning. Now that had all changed” (28).

Decker goes back to his hotel room to process what he’s just learned. A phone call interrupts his thoughts. A reporter named Jamison wants to get Decker’s reaction to recent developments in his family’s murder case, but he cuts her off. Decker never had much use for reporters when he was on the force and has even less so now.

Decker takes a bus to the precinct where he once worked, intending to find a way to question Leopold himself. Outside the building, Decker has another flashback to his injury on the football field: He was 22 years old, and it was his first professional game. He remembers taking the hit but, ironically, can’t recall anything else about the incident that changed his life.

As Decker stands outside, considering how to get into Leopold’s cell to question him, he sees a swarm of officers emerging from the building. There’s been a shooting at Mansfield High School, and multiple people are injured or dead.

In all the confusion, Decker seizes the opportunity to make his move. He assesses his appearance, knowing he looks like a vagrant. He deposits his gun inside a trash can, buys a suit at a nearby store, and stashes his own clothing inside the trash can to retrieve later.

Once inside the police station, Decker tries to convince a receptionist that he’s a public defender sent to represent Leopold and insists on interviewing his client immediately. As Decker waits for the receptionist to clear him, he once again flashes back to that day on the football field.

Decker is back in the moment when he received his head injury during a football game: “The collision changed everything about me, because it essentially rewired my brain. So I died, twice, and then came back, essentially as someone else” (38).

Sally Brimmer from Public Affairs interrupts Decker’s thoughts. She’s too new to remember him from his detective days, so he pretends to be a lawyer sent to represent Leopold and insists that he needs to see his client before the arraignment hearing.

Brimmer hesitates, but Decker quotes rules about the right to legal counsel for the accused. Name-dropping to increase Brimmer’s confidence in him, Decker claims to know Jamison, the reporter, and Pete Rourke, a member of the force.

Brimmer is still vacillating about admitting Decker, but the distraction of the school shooting has left no one with higher authority onsite. This situation forces her to make a spot decision, and she decides to allow Decker to see Leopold.