Memory Man

At the station house, Decker has been going over reports from the Lancasters’ neighbors all morning. Jamison arrives to help him. He again protests that she should leave town, but she insists on working the case.

As they review more files, Decker ponders the possibility that the killers were posing as ordinary passersby or perhaps people who had access to the Lancaster house.

He and Jamison go to the safe house where the Lancasters are staying. Decker asks if they’ve recently hired a cleaning service, and Lancaster confirms this fact. Decker believes that someone posing as a maid was able to make a copy of the house key. The killers knew when the family would be away based on the schedule posted on their refrigerator. This is how they gained access and staged the murder scene with no one the wiser.

Decker and Jamison leave. Decker announces that he needs to watch a video of someone getting out of a car.

After reviewing the surveillance video of the waitress exiting the car, Decker’s inner DVR finally finds a match. He abruptly tells Bogart and Jamison that they need to use the FBI jet to fly to Chicago.

They travel to the Cognitive Research Institute at its new location and meet with a researcher named Dr. Marshall. Decker asks for background on a patient called Belinda Wyatt. He is certain she is the Mansfield shooter.

Marshall is reluctant to give out confidential information but eventually complies. Wyatt was a manufactured savant, like Decker, and was one of Sizemore’s favorites. Her mental powers were the result of a brutal assault suffered when she was 16 years old: Unknown assailants raped and beat Wyatt and left her for dead.

The reason for the attack is Wyatt’s unusual sexual orientation. She is an intersex individual who possesses both male and female genitalia. After Wyatt is sent to the institute, her parents want nothing to do with her.

At the time when Decker knew Wyatt, she had not had a sex change operation but may have had one since. Marshall doesn’t have her current address but gives Decker the address of her parents. 

In the FBI jet en route to the Wyatt home in Colorado, Decker plays the DVD of the waitress getting out of the car. He asks Bogart and Jamison if they notice something odd about the image. When they fail to see anything strange, Decker explains that the waitress exits the car using the body posture of a woman, not a man.

Even though they all know this person is Wyatt, who has since had a sex change operation, he still possesses the muscle memory to move like a woman. Such dexterity would make him doubly difficult to spot while in disguise.

Bogart asks why Wyatt would have killed Sizemore. Decker speculates that Sizemore took sexual advantage of Wyatt at the institute, as Sizemore was fired for a similar incident later in his career.

Jamison wonders how Wyatt and Leopold ever crossed paths. Decker thinks about In Cold Blood—two criminals committing horrible crimes inconceivable if either one was acting alone.

Decker, Jamison, and Bogart arrive with an FBI contingent at the Wyatt home. It’s a mansion indicating that the Wyatt family has money. The place seems deserted, so the FBI breaks down the front door. Inside they find the corpses of Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt, embalmed and sealed in plastic. It’s difficult to guess how long the bodies have been there since they are well-preserved.

The agents discover a shoebox of letters sent by Wyatt when she was at the institute. Her parents never responded. The back page of each letter contains a single capital that forms the message, “I WILL KILL THEM ALL” (329).

The rage suggested by this message leads Decker and company to speculate about the genital mutilation found on the corpses of Decker’s wife and Lafferty. Bogart says that this rage is directed at women as life-givers—mothers.

Jamison turns the conversation to Leopold. No one has yet figured out the connection between the killers. Bogart says the FBI has checked all the criminal databases with no luck. Decker suggests maybe Leopold is listed in a victim database instead. Shared victimization might be the reason why Leopold and Wyatt met. 

Back in Burlington, Bogart insists that Jamison stay at an FBI safe house along with the Lancasters. Decker returns to his hotel room. He can now remember more details about Wyatt. She was almost invisible at the institute—frightened and completely lacking in self-esteem.

His attention shifts to Leopold. In his mind, Decker goes over every detail of their conversations. He fixates on a slip of the tongue that Leopold made. Instead of saying, “it’s good,” he may have said, “ist good.” This could mean he’s German. Decker calls Bogart to tell him to expand his search to European victim databases.

Decker then thinks about Leopold’s deliberate misdirection when making his 7-Eleven statement. Leopold knew that Decker would assume he meant the local 7-Eleven nearest Decker’s house. Something must have been planted there for him to find. Decker decides to visit the store again.

Decker goes back to his local 7-Eleven. The female cashier remembers him from his last visit. He asks about the other worker named Billy. She confirms that Billy left for good on the same day as Decker’s last visit. Decker is convinced that Billy is Wyatt after her sex-change operation.

Decker calls Bogart, and an FBI team comes to the 7-Eleven to try to capture Wyatt’s fingerprints. Decker also gives their sketch artist a description of Wyatt as Billy.

Bogart says there are no prints on file for Wyatt because her assault in Utah was never reported to the police. Decker speculates that her parents covered up the incident.

Bogart then informs him that Leopold turned up in a foreign victims’ database. Leopold is Austrian, and his wife and daughter had been murdered eight years earlier.

Decker meets with Lancaster and Jamison at the school command center. While they wait for more information on Leopold, Decker notices a detail in the Wyatt family file. The family moved to Colorado, but Decker wonders about their lives in Utah where the assault on their daughter happened.

Decker calls the institute, and Marshall provides him with the family’s original address. Marshall also reveals that the Wyatt parents were terrified because they thought their daughter might murder them.

When Decker does a satellite search of the family’s Utah home, it looks middle-class. The parents held ordinary jobs. How did they come by the money to afford their mansion in Colorado? Decker calls Bogart and asks him to follow the money trail. This may finally reveal a motive for the killers’ crimes.

Decker goes to the abandoned army base to think about his time at the institute with Wyatt. He still can’t understand what he did to anger her.

Bogart has gotten a file on the Wyatt family finances. Bogart and Decker go back to the library to review the data with Lancaster and Jamison. The file reveals nothing about the source of the Wyatt’s newfound wealth. Their lifestyle was modest until they built a two-million-dollar home in Colorado.

Decker speculates that the parents may have been blackmailing someone in exchange for their silence about Wyatt’s assault. This would certainly have provoked their daughter’s rage. With her parents now dead, Wyatt has access to the money and may have used it to fund her murderous rampage.

Decker wants the FBI to fly the team to Utah to find out the details of the assault.

The team arrives at the Wyatt home in Utah. It was sold 20 months earlier to a corporation. Decker believes that Wyatt bought her family home through a shell company. It appears empty now, so the investigators let themselves in.

After a thorough search, they find nothing until Jamison spots a saved newspaper that she believes holds significance for Wyatt. The headline announces that a police officer named Giles Evers has gone missing. Giles’ father is a local bigwig and former mayor.

Decker speculates that Giles was part of the group that attacked Wyatt, and Giles’ father paid off Wyatt’s parents to cover up the scandal. Decker is equally certain Wyatt’s attackers were all policemen. Decker suggests the team question some members of the local police force who might have been around then.