Memory Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

elevator for a brain next went upstairs and shot my wife and strangled my daughter?
    He opened his eyes when Lancaster rose from her seat.
    “I have more questions,” he said.
    “Well, I have no more answers. I could lose my badge for coming here and telling you what I just did. You know that, Amos.”
    He rose too, towering over her, a great big blob of a man who could cause little children to run screaming away in fear just by…being.
    “I need to get in to see this guy.”
    “Impossible.” Lancaster was already backing away. Then she noticed the bulge at his waistband.
    “Are you carrying?” she said incredulously.
    He didn’t glance to where she was staring.
    “I turned in my weapon when I left the force.”
    “Not what I asked. Anybody can buy a gun. One more time. Are you carrying?”
    “If I were, there’s no law against it here.”
    “Open carry,” she corrected. “But there is a law against carrying one concealed unless you’re a police officer.”
    “It’s not concealed. You can see it, can’t you? From where you’re standing?”
    “That’s not the same thing, Amos, and you know it.”
    He held out his hands one next to the other. “Then cuff me. Take me in and put me in the same holding cell as Sebastian Leopold. You can take my gun. I won’t need it.”
    She backed away some more. “Just don’t push this. Let us do our job. We’ve got the guy. Let it run fair and square. We have the death penalty here. He could get the needle for what he did.”
    “Yeah, ten years from now, maybe. And so for a decade he gets a home with a bed and three squares. And if he
is
crazy and his lawyer papers it just the right way, he goes away for life to a nice comfy psych ward to read books, work puzzles, go to counseling, and get free meds that make him feel no pain. From where he’s looking, not bad. I’d take that deal right now, in fact.”
    “He confessed to three murders, Amos.”
    “Let me see him.”
    She had already turned away and was fast-walking back to probably where she had parked her car.
    She turned back around once and snarled, “By the way, you’re welcome, you prick!”
    He watched until she was gone from the lobby.
    He sat back down at his table. He considered it his because everyone needed someplace to call his own. And this spot was it for him.
    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.

Chapter
    6
    D ECKER WENT BACK to his room and pulled out his phone. He didn’t like having to pay for a phone that had Internet access, but it was like having a huge library and an army of research assistants on the cheap. He checked the news feeds. They must have a lockdown on the Leopold arrest, because he found nothing. When he searched the name online he got a few hits but obviously it was other people only with the same name.
    The guy had walked in and copped to three homicides. Even if he did plead insanity, he was looking at a lifetime inside. Was he the real deal? Had he done it? The cops should be able to tell pretty easily. Decker knew they had held back many details from the public about the crimes. They would interrogate Leopold, if that was his real name, and quickly determine if he was the guy or lying for some reason.
    If he was the guy what would Decker do? Try to thwart the criminal justice system and kill him? And then end up in prison himself? But if he wasn’t the guy, well, that offered up possibilities too.
    Right now he could do nothing. Nothing constructive, at least. Leopold would be arraigned and formally charged, or let go, depending on the outcome of the interrogation. If he were kept locked up there would be a trial, or maybe not if the guy pled, which most defendants did, either because they were poor and had no money for a decent attorney or they were guilty or they were both. Rich guys always fought it out, especially with jail time in the equation. They had a lot to